3 comments about CodeNotes for VB.NET.

1. This book is perfect for the experienced VB 6 programmer looking to quickly get up to speed on VB.NET. The information is relevant, concise, and explained using an easy to understand manner without being condescending.

   The book itself is a little short on details. This works out okay because the book uses CodeNotes Pointers that connect you to more detailed information on the CodeNotes.com web site. I really liked this feature as it allowed me to decide when and where I wanted more details. The information on the web site is just as useful and clear as the book itself; very well done.

   The only thing that stops me from giving 5 stars to this book is the numerous typographical errors. These are the type of errors that a spell checker wouldn't catch, but a human editor should. There are times when this can make a sentence or two difficult to understand, but it only detracts from the overall content slightly.

   At about 200 pages, I would recommend this book to any VB developer looking to get up and running with VB.NET over a weekend. Hopefully, future editions will clean-up the book's typo problems.




2. Codenotes for VB.Net is a nice compact book that covers the differences between VB 6.0 and VB.net. The authors are also knowledgeable of C++ and java so if you know these languages they offer useful comparisons. This book covers exception handling, object oriented programming features, threading, assemblies, reflection, windows forms and an over of .NET technology.

   If you need to quickly get up to speed on VB.net and you are an experienced VB programmer this guide highlights the differences quickly. If you want a reference book with a large number of examples of using VB.net you will want to use a different book. This book is a quick guide to moving from VB to VB.net.




3. This very concise book targets VB programmers who need to get up to speed on VB quickly. It does not provide an introduction to programming, or delve much into day-to-day aspects of Visual Studio.NET. In addition, it does not provide the "big picture" : the why's and wherefore's of web services and Microsoft's vision of .NET. It DOES however a really superb job conveying the essentials to those who already know VB (6.0). Great writing, great clarity and great (but very simple) examples!

No comments about Visual Basic .Net: Student Manual.

No comments about Discrete Mathematics: A Computational Approach Using Basic (Computers and Math Series).

No comments about Microsoft Basic 2.0 for the Apple MacIntosh.

No comments about Visual Basic for DOS Inside & Out.

No comments about Photoshop CS - Curso Completo Con 2 CD.

No comments about Programas En Basic.

No comments about Aldus PageMaker 5.0.

5 comments about Visual Basic Programmer's Library.

1. i'be been programming VB for over 2 years and i've read lots of VB books. i judge a book by how well it teaches a topic to the reader. i read one chapter (21) and i'm so furious that i jumped online to write this critique. first, the authors spend 3-4 pagest to tell me how to drop the controls onto a form but uses 1/2 a page to describe how a winsock control operates. looking at the source, there is no consistent coding convention, no white space, and sparce comments. the descriptions in the book only tell me what the code is doing (which i can tell from reading the code anyway), but not why the code is written in a particular fashion. there is no overview of the design strategy for the application, only a diagram to show how events are raised between classes... finally, i find the programming style confusing. there are many static variables that are passed to an external function to be modified, some variables that were defined but not used, and functions that ! ! don't have a return type or is not scoped by public/private. i think the authors have some interesting topics to talk about, but the way they present the information makes me wonder if they fully understand it themselves. i certainly didn't as i was reading it.



2. I like this book for 1) It's a great source of code, 2) I like the writing style, which is thorough (IMHO), 3) The information in it is unique to this volume. It is one of the first books I look into when coding.



3. This book is a great start to creating some of the infinite types of real world apps. After every function comes a description of what it does. The only drawback however is that i had to read some of the chapters several times, especially the chapter on DCOM, partly because i'm inbetween being a beginner programmer and an intermediate programmer. The beginning of each chapter gives a synopsis of the situation, which can help create the algorithm needed to solve the problem at hand. In the end of each chapter is some suggestions on what can be added to the program, as well as a summary of the things learned. One last thing, the introductions to each of the chapters can get quite confusing.



4. The book promises to be a great help for whatever programming objective one might have. However, the repetitive style of the book soon becomes annoying for the experienced coder, the theory describing the code not always corresponds to the actual code, many variables are declared and are not used, some described methods for working with forms are not correct (for ex., drag-and-dropping to move controls into frames), too many bugs makes one spend a lot time correcting the code and, worse of all, the included CD-ROM does not have the same code as that listed in the book. Too bad, the idea of presenting a group of programming tasks to carry out common needs is great, but the book wastes this opportunity.



5. The first thing I did when I got this book was to pop in the accompanying CD to find an annoying bug: the main window allows the user to resize and hide the button to continue. Minor annoyance? Maybe, but read on, it gets worse.

   Next, I choose to click the button that (supposedly) copies the files from their cd to my hard drive, and it crashes and dumps me out of their program. These guys can't write the rudimentary code to copy files, but they're supposed to teach me something? (but wait, there's more)

   After manually copying the cd, I opened their first example program from chapter 2 (CD player). The stop button acts erratically, and is generally buggy.

   I have to admit that I didn't go much further. If they can't check their work past this, they don't deserve my money. No more "Jamsa Press" books for me.

No comments about Applied Basic for Technology.