visual basic

I own the VB 6 version of this book. I thought that overall it was great; the book offers excellent examples, esp. with the CD enclosed, it's kind of funny, in a corny sort of way, and it does a good job of explaining things in easy-to-understand english. This book is divided into two sections; the first explains how to make interfaces, and the second explains how to write the code that make the interfaces work.
Unfortunately, at the end of the first section, the author gradually slides into using a lot of BASIC code. Granted, BASIC is the only way to make some of the user interfaces, and he uses good examples. However, the author seems to have forgotten an important detail, that almost by default, the reader does not have much previous experience in BASIC. Thus, it can make things somewhat confusing when attempting to understand the construction of the menus AND deciphering the code.
In many examples later on, the author simply says something like, "In order to make so-and-so type of box, you'll need to use this..." and follows the screenshot up with several or more lines of code, without really explaining what any of the code does. Except for this apparent lapse in logical order, the book is otherwise great. Chapter 14 begins with "the basics of code", which is odd, since a lot of code had already been covered in Chapter 13.

I picked up this book with only a minimal amount of self-taught QBasic education from around 10 years ago. I've just finished it, and only have a couple quirks:

It makes mention a few times to "More Visual Basic for Dummies", a book that doesn't exist for VB6.

I ripped through the first 28 chapters or so, breezing through it thanks to the nice, plain english, sometimes funny, or at least mildly humerous writing (the variable name examples are great)... then it started to bog down. Classes, Modules, Procedures, Objects.. all kinda mish-mashed together.. it looks like he was writing till the day after his deadline and needed to finish his outline.

Other than these two half-issues.... The book is great... now I have a great understanding of the very basics of VB, and can start with one of the more advanced books, like SAMs, or MS.

I used this book, and found it very helpful to begin writing vb code. The only drawback is that it is of course covers only the basic stuff with very little background info. If you want to get started in VB, I would suggest this book to anyone.