No comments about Programming in Quickbasic: Problem Solving With Structure and Style/Book and Disk.

No comments about Microsoft Visual Basic: The Programmer's Companion.

No comments about Corel Draw 12 En Un Solo Libro.

3 comments about Essential Visual Basic 4.

1. This book is a must for any VB 4.0 beginner. I carry this book in my laptop case, because I know that what ever question I have, I'll find the answer here. Very easy to follow, lots & lots of Cool examples, and well written summaries. If your going to buy a book on VB 4.0 make it this one and at the above price, your making out like a bandit. MP



2. This book was perfect for me. I had toyed around with visual basic and bought a 21 day book that was too basic "no pun intended" for me. This book teaches you the fundementals without resorting to a third grade reading level. This book gives you exactly what it says the essentials. A perfect book to take you from the occasional user to programmer.



3. This is a great book for the beginning programmer probably one of the easiest books to follow that I have used so far. Very fiew mistakes and they weren't important. I recommend it highly and at a good price.

No comments about Visual Basic 5: Smartstart.

No comments about Advanced Structured Basic for the IBM PC.

No comments about Visual Basic for MS-DOS Uncovered: Teach Yourself Event Oriented Programming.

5 comments about Visual Basic 6: Error Coding and Layering.

1. While there are some useful tips in this book, there are also a lot of impractical ideas. It comes as no suprise to find that the author teaches VB at a college level, because many of the suggested standards are only practical as an academic exercise and would not work well out in the "real world".



2. Weird. I cannot find in the book most of what Ben Jury says. Moreoever, I cannot agree with him saying "[c]ode reuse should be 'black box', ie ActiveX dlls or controls". Doesn't he know the success of Linux?

   By replacing the first 30pages with eXtreme Programming, rather than just VB error handling, you will enjoy better programming.




3. I can't say a lot (I'm not a coder but involved with software architecture) about the specific VB error-coding tehniques recommended in the book, but there are plenty of them. The book is focused on error coding concepts and only uses VB to present some examples.

   Imho the code layering concept alone it's worth enough to buy and read the book. We are testing it now on a project and it looks as good in practice as it sound in theory.




4. Visual Basic is not my first choice of programming languages, precisely because it encourages very sloppy behavior and gives amateurs with only a little knowledge a dangerous sense of accomplishment :-). If you must use VB (and you must, for its exceedingly high productivity in writing Windows apps), this book offers a well-thought-out strategy for structuring your code. Primarily focused on error handling and prevention (because these are vital topics to VB programmers and VB offers little in the way of advice), the book also pounds the pulpit to "think long term" and write lasting, reusable code. (The choir heard the preacher the first time.)

   Among an absurdly large crowd of dreadful books on VB 6, I found "Error Coding and Layering" singularly useful and applicable to anyone writing Windows apps in VB.




5. One of the best programming books I have read - short, pithy and useful.

   The error coding technique proposed is clearly explained, and is proving practical and robust. Far from being cumbersome, as some reviewers suggest, it is easy to implement and helps avoid code bloat.

   There is a clearly specified framework for the technique, and useful guidelines about how the standards can be introduced, certified and sustained in a development team.

   As a bonus, there is a short but meaty section on an architectural approach which seems to offer a number of advantages over conventional tiered approaches.

   The text claims the approach has been used with success in several large commercial projects and this rings true - there is a strong sense that these are practical lessons learned at the coal-face and not in the ivory tower.

   Please don't be put off this book by the negative reviews below - they are somewhat baffling as most of the criticisms are factually incorrect. For example, the author does not ignore the importance of dlls in code reuse, does not ignore error logging, does not lock users into a text field using SETFOCUS, does not recommend always using named parameters etc etc. For whatever reason, these reviewers haven't given the book a fair reading.

No comments about Applesoft Basic: Fundamentals and Style (Boyd & Fraser Programming Language Series).

No comments about Advanced Basic for the IBM PC.