visual basic

I have read many Books on the topic of Visual Basic, this one being my first foray into VB.Net. This book contains the best compilation of exercises I have seen in a beginner's book. The explanations are thorough and clearly explained. In addition, the authors appear to go to great lengths to expose the reader to a wide variety of functions throughout the lessons. I will admit that the editing staff for this book might benefit from taking an English class or two, as some of the grammar in the book is painful to read. However, in spite of the ineptitude of the editing staff I think you will be hard pressed to find a better resource for learning VB.Net. This is a how to manual, not a literary work of art. While I have noticed the poor editing, it is not substantial enough to make me want to throw the book across the room (which I have done with some books in the past). I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who needs to get their feet wet with VB.Net.

I bought this book a few days ago and due to other commitments I have only read up to chapter 4. During this reading, I wrote out every example in the book. To my surprise, not only did every example work, but I managed to remember so much more than I thought I would. I even went as far as to debug a friends application, with no assistance from any book. My total reading time thus far for ANY .NET book has been 3 days...and my only source of reading has been this book, and the online classes reference from VB Studio.NET.

I particularly like the fact that the book presents an idea, steps through the code and then details each section of code - what it does, how it works etc. This was very useful in understanding why things are structured the way they are.

I might also add that I have never programmed VB in any way before, making me a total newbie at this (my only other programming language is a little bit of Perl). Even if the other chapters turn out to be rubbish (which I very much doubt), then I would still say, this has been well worth the money. I have learnt (and retained) that much.

I wholeheartedly recommend this book. Go buy it.

This book is geared towards teaching beginning programming skills. It just so happens that the authors chose VB .Net as the language. In the outset they indicate that their intentions are to teach you programming skills, no matter what language you use. This made the book title misleading. I can usually depend on Wrox to produce a pretty good book. If I were a beginning programmer perhaps I would be impressed. If you want to really learn the ins and outs of VB.Net this is definitely not the book for you.