4 comments about Beginning Visual Web Programming in VB .NET: From Novice to Professional.

1. The title says "beginning" but the authors actually take you to very important topics that are at the forefront of much Internet activity. Namely XML and Web Services.
   
   The book goes through a lot of necessary but mundane stuff concerning user interfaces, server control and ADO.NET. Yeah, to know VB.NET, you need this material. But more significant is the long exposition on XML. It is now a de facto standard for markup of structured data. Within the entire .NET portfolio, it is pervasive. And also in the J2EE world. The book shows how Microsoft has integrated web development and VB.NET tightly into using XML. Well worth understanding.
   
   The other big buzz is about Web Services. Here the discussion is not as indepth. The basics are covered. But Web Services Description Language is only tangentially invoked. And what is seeming to be a more powerful language, Business Process Execution Language, doesn't even rate a mention. Perhaps this is why the title says "beginning"? There could well be a sequel in the works, to cover these.



2. I'm really impressed by the thoughtfulness of the organization and writing in this book. Where the reader has questions that require deeper explanation the exposition is there. The content is well researched and the author has obviously spent the time to do some complex information distillation for us. An ideal book for anyone looking to start with VB.NET programming. And well worth the look for those already using the platform who want to broaden their understanding.



3. Book was very well written. Author effectively communicates with novice users in a 'For Dummies' style without being patronizing or condescending. By 'For Dummies' style, I mean that he literally defines which menu option to click, etc. in a similar manner to the popular series.
   
   Intermediate to Advanced users will probably find this book to be a bit unwieldy, not because of the material presented but because of all of the detail given for the benefit of the novice user.
   
   I would absolutely recommend it for someone just getting their feet wet in the VB.Net web development arena.



4. Beginning Visual Web Programming in VB.Net is well worth a read. The book is very straight forward and the examples are such that they guide you through quite easily so that the reader can follow along without much trouble. Chapters 7 and 8 are really nice with their XML information and examples. XML is great if you need a pages that load fast and are efficient.The descriptions that come in these chapters increase your understanding of why it is such an important part of the overall structure. MSDE I personally find can be a bit of a pain when setting it up but with this particular book things seemed to go ok. Overall the book is definately worth reading and will only help in your knowledge of .NET programming.

5 comments about Sams Teach Yourself More Visual Basic 6 in 21 Days (2nd Edition) (Sams Teach Yourself).

1. I wish I had read the others' review about this book before I started to read this book. There are just too many editial erros in it. For example, Figure 1.22 refers to Hierarchical FlexGrid Control but it actually shows Tooltiptext; Figure 1.23 mentions Data Environment Designer but the illustration is about the form of file copying. If you copy and paste the code listing of 1.1, it wouldn't run because it introduced "i" that did not declared. I wonder if the author and the editor even ever read the final proof once, because there are so many obvious errors if you are an experienced VB user. But if you are trying to learn VB, it wouldn't help because it's so confusing.



2. This text is so poorly edited that I am having a hard time understanding anything. The errors occur everywhere. Nearly every graphic is wrong, and a great deal of the examples do not illustrate what the header specifies. Don't waste your time or your money.



3. After reading the first chapter of this book, I got so frustrated with the way this book was written and explained. I decided that I must warn any would be VB programmer to stay away from this book. However, as I was about to write this review, I noticed that a lot of people had already made the mistake and disappointed themselves. Please do not waste your time or money on this crap. This book is so poorly written, I am wondering just how it got published in the first place.It seerms that neither the author nor the publisher speaks English. and that the book was written in a bar on a long weekend. Every example seems to have just that more alcohol in it. My advise to you, is look for a book written by John Smiley or some other real author. Your time and money would be better spent.



4. Fortunately I stumbled on this page when I was looking for a cheap copy of the book. Thanks to the previous reviewers - all very consistent in your comments! - I shall avoid the book like Typhoid Mary and look elsewhere. Thanks again for saving me dollars and headaches!



5. Worst book I ever bought, The example code is incomplete or incorrect. Very frustrating. Buy this book to convince someone to give up programming.

5 comments about ADO Examples and Best Practices.

1. This book was clearly rushed out the door early to make someone some extra money - many factual errors littered in the sample code and analysis



2. I do a lot of browser-based application development with ASP/ADO/SQL Server and found this to be one of most useful books I have ever owned. The coverage of ADO is superb and the author's writing style is very enjoyable.



3. If you use ADO, you need this book. Much like Bill Vaughn's early "HitchHiker's Guide to SQL Server" this book tells you everything Microsoft forgot to warn you about in ADO. Filled with tips, tricks and gotcha's, this book could save you countless hours of debugging, and endless frustration. It has for me. Plus, Bill Vaughn is an amusing author, who makes what could be a very dry and boring subject actually entertaining.



4. This book is targetted towards intermediate and advanced users. Hence save your humor about your daughters in some other books. His previous book on VB 5: Hitchhiker's guide to VB was excellent. This one is written for clowns.
   What I mean is: when I buy this kind of book which is targetted towards advanced users, I just need the technics so I can implement them quickly. So save the jokes for some other books. My suggestion is to buy Serious ADO: Universal Data Access with Visual Basic by MacDonald. If you only have a couple of weeks to implement some app using VB and ADO, this book will deliver.
   I got my app running with solid foundations in no time.
   When reading books for ADO, you need to understand connection objects, disconnected recordset, parameter objects etc. Serious ADO illustrates them rigorously - minus the jokes.



5. It's not common to want to write a review about a book this one deserves taking some time out for it. Though I'm not new to programming I am to VB with SQL. I have been developement a quite complicated application with VB with SQL and not a day goes by that I have not used this book and found true real solutions and insight. This book was written for developers and answers the question we make quite directly. It is small but the point. Takes you by the hand (great for begginers in SQL developers, but has enough information for intermediate and advance developres.

5 comments about Practical Standards for Microsoft Visual Basic .NET (Pro-Developer).

1. After seeing the author jump in for a review, I decided I would add my two cents into this fray. While I do not agree with the 1 star "slam" that the author set out to counter, I think 3 stars may be pushing it, however.

   There is a lot of practical advice in this book. While it should be obvious that a developer needs to set up templates without hard-coding and make all procedures perform very specific duties, we find that this is not the case in code. The book has quite a few good pieces of advice around the basic nature of programming. I will disagree with the author, however, on some points. For example, you should certainly minimize fan out (calling many procedures) for all but control functions, fan-in (multiple procedures using the same procedure) is a sign of very specialized functions, which he advised only two pages earlier.

   This book has a whole chapter on naming conventions, using Hungarian. While this is not a cardinal sin, it should be noted that Microsoft has deprecated Hungarian in .NET. The inclusion in the book (chapter 4) suggests that the author has simply updated some of his material from his VB 6 book.

   The suggestions for enumerators, commenting, looping and code flow are fairly decent and may help your coding efforts. Mr. Foxall falls a bit short on exception handling taking the tried and true route (see Richter's book for a better methodology). One item of contention is the idea that you handle unexpected as well as anticipated exceptions. In general, handle what you can and catch what you wish to log. Let the rest get handled on the UI to ensure the user does not get an ugly exception message. Most books on the market advocate catching everything, and then rethrowing the same error; what a waste of CPU cycles. In VB 6, you had to handle every exception, and pass it up the stack if you caught anything. In VB.NET, exception handling gives you the ability to catch those exceptions that you can handle or log for debugging a live application. Using finally, especially with objects with a dispose method, is a much better option.

   I would agree with the 1 star reviewer on the coverage of modules before objects. Modules are a sloppy method of programming in Visual Basic .NET. They are placed in for VB 6 developers that miss their .bas files. On the other hand, this is not enough reason to kill the chapter, as some of the other advice in the chapter (2) is very useful.

   A 2.5 rating would be a bit better as there is some bad advice in this book, but I have to choose between 2 and 3 and would rather give the author the benefit of the doubt. I hope Mr. Foxall has a chance to make a second version of the book that moves completely into the .NET paradigm, as it would be much more useful to developers.




2. This is a good book for both the experienced and beginning Visual Basic .NET programmer.

   The purpose of this book is not to show you how to write a program in VB.NET but to provide a style template on how you should write a program; not only for readability but also for maintainability. To that end Foxall provides many examples of "bad" programming practices and styles along with a suggested "good" one.

   The whole argument about using Hungarian notation (HN) or not is really irreverent. The very fact that this book exists and is hopefully read by more than a handful of people means more consistency and more error-free code.

   One of the things I appreciate in this book is the use of color (various shades of blue-green) to mark things like comments in code, section headers, etc.

   Overall this book was an easy read and can easily be grasped by entry level VB.NET programmers and functional enough for more experienced programmers to reference.




3. I bought this book, because I had the VB6 one and was wondering a similar material, but adapted to .NET. If fails short and it's just decorating my desk. The author keeps the same guidelines, for example it recommends using Hungarian when Microsoft guidelines says DO NOT USE IT (even though it's a Microsoft Press book!). Take a look at: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/cpgenref/html/cpconNETFrameworkDesignGuidelines.asp

   Those guidelines are more PRACTICAL and useful than this book. And you know what? IT'S FREE!!!




4. This book might be good for a total novice, but (a) most of the advice in here will already be familiar to VB6 coders (b) some significant areas with major changes from VB6 are completely overlooked (i.e., database), and (c) though this is subjective, some of the advice seems completely wrong-headed (my particular beef: advising against procedure "fan-out", which is one procedure calling many subprocedures. This is in direct contradiction to Martin Fowler's advice in Refactoring, and the key to writing self-commenting code - I'll trust Fowler over Foxall any day).



5. I have used both the VB6 and VB.net versions in my classes. In fact I require this as a additional text for all my classes. I believe very strongly that Hungarian notation should be part of a program.
   
   It sounds like these reviewers that don't like Hungarian notation program in a vacuum. It is alright if you program by yourself to through out notations but if you have ever been a code reviewer and had to try to figure out what datatype or control type was being used, you learn to appreciate good use of notation, any notation to decipher the code.
   
   Also while self documenting code style is what you want to try to acheive, it is very important to have a comment that points out the intent of the structure is, not just that it is an if/then construct. Why is this here. It is important to make this decision.
   
   I think James has done an excellent job with this book and I look forward to his next edition.
   
   Dennis

5 comments about XML Programming with VB and ASP.

1. A poorly written book with bad and simplistic examples. don't waste your money, there are far better books out on the subject.



2. This book doesn't cover all detailed XML is got for you, and it doesn't intend to either. However, Wilson's book gave me a good foundation to explore the XML world. Good choice if you want to start nice and simple, and then focus on details later. Don't get me wrong, this is not a brochure either; it does come with plenty source code and examples.



3. I agree with a number of other reviewers, skip this book. It is more frustrating than it's worth. Shame too, cause it starts out strong and then just fades away.

   Code Examples are REDUNDANT.
   Code Examples are INCOMPLETE in the book. (Even the "Complete" examples. Had to download the source code and go line by line to figure out what was "missing". VERY FRUSTRATING.

   Book skips arround quite a bit and is confusing at times. The Summary Case (3 tier architecture) which I was looking forward to was pretty much......um USELESS.

   Oh well, I didn't listen to the others, maybe you will listen to me. Take a pen, paper and write down the 3 useful pages in this book and save your money.




4. After a mere twenty-two pages into the book, I was starting to doubt the usefulness of this book. The very top of page 22 talks about "examples above" on handling special characters. Flip back to page 21, however, go to the bottom of the page and read about examples that "are described below". I give up, are the examples on the magical page 21 1/2?

   While other reviewers seem willing to let slide the number of typos, omitions and code examples that simply don't work, I am less forgiving. I got this book on the assumption that I would be able to learn how to integrate XML with my knowledge of ASP. Most examples in this book, however, are for Visual Basic, and while that only requires little to moderate tweaking, the pure ASP examples in this book are almost non-existant.

   Add in the fact that the book constantly interrupts a lesson to add new concepts we're supposed to either immediately understand, or bookmark and thumb through the book hoping they remembered to include the examples, makes this a frustrating book to learn from. Doing a quick search on Google for "XML help basics" gave me more insight into XML in just a few minutes than reading this book for a few hours did.




5. This really is a poor reference and tutorial. But...
   I haven't found anything better.

5 comments about Microsoft ASP.NET Programming with Microsoft Visual Basic .NET Version 2003 Step By Step (Step By Step (Microsoft)).

1. I started this book with a background in both VB and classic ASP, with the goal of upgrading my knowledge to ASP.NET. I'll state that I think this book is just bad.
   
   It seems that half the book presupposes that you have extensive knowledge of classic ASP, and the other half assumes that you've never used any sort of scripting language before. The examples are horribly simplistic to the point that they have absolutely no relation to modern web applications. But, you won't understand large parts of the book unless you have a background in programming.
   
   The first two parts (six chapters) could actually be somewhat useful to a true beginner. They start slow and build up some very basic skills.
   
   Part 2 is a little different. Chapter 7 on web forms is fairly decent, but could use to be longer. Chapter 8 on server controls is just poorly written. Chapter 9 on accessing date is AWFUL. It presupposes you have a fairly good background in traditional database access with something like ADO, so it's definitely not for beginners. For instance it compares the DataReader object to a read-only forward-only cursor, but if you don't have a background in data access you aren't going to understand how cursors work. This is right next to where he explains that the password key "Specifies the password to use to log into the SQL Server database." Yeah, DUH. Also, a bulk of the chapter is devoted to working with XML data but the chapter sets out to work with databases. For a 68 page chapter it conveys surprisingly little actual new information. No time is given to explaining how databases have traditionally been accessed and used in actual working applications. I just wanted to scream as I read it.
   
   Chapter 10 on creating custom server controls and chapter 11 on creating web services are very brief introductions to some fairly advanced and complicated topics. They provide simplistic examples and then expect you might be able to actually use the knowledge you gained in the chapters. Yeah right.
   
   Chapter 13 is aimed at beginners on deploying ASP.NET applications. Chapter 14 on tracing and debugging is actually not bad. (Not good either.)
   
   Also the book is based on using Visual Studio .NET. I'll state that I have a bias against using IDEs for simple scripting, so I won't comment on appropriateness here. But be forewarned that three-quarters or more of the examples involve VS.NET.



2. I expect that this book will help me learn ASP.NET thru VB.NET. I am very frustrated, it didn't really help me to easily understand the simple thought of ASP.NET thru VB.NET. For beginners like me, I will not suggest this book. Much better to browse the web.



3. As an ASP developer who has not used Visual Studio, I found the first chapters of this book very insightful. The author does a good job explaining ASP.NET and its differences with ASP coding.
   
   But if there's one thing that I can't stand in a programming book, it's a lack of proofreading of the code given in the book and poor programming practices displayed. This book, unfortunately, has a lot of that.
   
   An example (from page 216):
   
   Label6.Text = "Final Balance: $" + CalcBalance(Convert.ToInt32(TextBox1.Text),
   Convert.ToInt32(TextBox2.Text) / 100,
   Convert.ToInt32(TextBox3.Text),
   Convert.ToInt16(DropDownList1.SelectedItem.Value)).ToString();
   
   private string CalculateBalance(int Principal, double Rate, int Years, int Period)
   {
   double result;
   double NumToBeRaised = (1 + Rate + Period);
   result = Principal * System.Math.Pow(NumToBeRaised, (Years * Period));
   return(result.ToString("C"));
   }
   
   This is to be a Compound Interest Calculator.
   
   If you enter this code, as given in the book, it won't run. There are several errors:
   
   Error 1) In the calling procedure, it's CalcBalance. In the function, it's CalculateBalance.
   Error 2) If you fix that oversight and run it, your result is the same as the given Principal. Why? Because the function calls for a double Rate variable, and yet the calling routine converts the Rate to an int variable. If you change "Convert.ToInt32(TextBox2.Text) / 100" to "Convert.ToDouble(TextBox2.Text) / 100", the result is correct - sort of...
   Error 3) The result will be displayed as "$$67,537.12" instead of "$67,537.12". The reason for the double-$ is that the function converts the result to a currency string, but then the calling procedure adds an extra "$".
   
   Fixing these three errors will solve the problems, but obviously no one tried this code before the book was published.
   
   And a couple of picky points just because I'm so irritated with something so glaring as these errors.
   
   Error 4) Since the function returns as a string, why then convert the result to a string in the calling procedure?? It's unnecessary.
   Error 5) The code uses default naming of objects instead of taking 1 minute to give some meaningful names, like txtPrincipal instead of TextBox1.
   
   Two stars for having no thought to the simplest details.



4. This is the least useful book I have ever bought. It doesn't have anything useful and didn't answer me any questions I had. No wonder it was so cheap. I spent $9.95 for the book from Amozon, but I feel like I was robbed. I can give it to you for free if you ask for, but I would be guilty if I do, becuase it would waste your valuable time. Look at other's review and I was not the only victim, don't buy this one, it is 100% garbage.



5. It's really frustrating to try to learn from a programming book where the author's code doesn't work! None of the examples I tried would actually compile without my having to "fix" his code. In most cases that worked out ok, but in some cases I never really knew if my "fix" was a legitimate way to solve the problem or if it might cause problems later. Not a good way to learn!

5 comments about Mastering Visual Basic 6.

1. I found this reference as one of the most useful tools in understanding VB concepts...and together with the example codes it has was and still an excellent recource that I go back to from time to time even after 5 years of working knowledge with VB...
   Indeed it is one of the most useful resources passing by my hand and staying there...



2. When I first learned Visual Basic, I was self-taught. I did miss a lot of things, until I bought this book. It's been very good on reference and teaching, and it covers a wide variety of techniques. It doesn't matter if you don't know what Visual Basic is, or if you've been programming a year, this book will teach you a lot of things you need to know!



3. No matter what your Visual Basic learning level is, from needing a beginner's introduction to wanting to move up to a more advanced level, this is the book for you. Don't let the 1285 pages scare you. The read is neither dry nor boring, and each page hands-on teaches you something you can take with you. Topics cover the Visual Studio environment, the intrinsic toolbox tools for VB, plus expands into additional components and references, making this a one-stop learning reference. You can not go wrong with this title.



4. I first started learning vb about a year ago and this was the very first book I purchased (going off of friends recommendations). At first I felt a little disappointed with the book and I felt somewhat lost in it. Now that I have more overall knowledge of vb this books seems to become clearer and clearer. I would spend quite a bit of time learning how to make small apps that don't do a whole lot but teach you the basics before getting into this book. The first few chapters are fairly straight forward and aimmed directly towards newbies but before continuing through the book I would pick up a little more experience.



5. This is yet another great book from Sybex. ive purchased most of the visual basic books that sybex put out, and i have yet to buy one i didnt get something - correction - A LOT from. this is not the sort of book a beginner should be looking at, "Visual Basic 6 Complete" (also from Sybex) might be more appropriate there, and "Visual Basic 6 Professional Step By Step" from Microsoft Press would definatly be a good choice. Mastering visual basic 6 provides examples and explanations of graphics processing code, and ActiveX control development, along with dozens of other topics, and for its price (as with all Sybex books), it cant be beat.

5 comments about Visual Basic 6 Core Language Little Black Book: The Indispensable Guide of Day-to-Day VB6 Programming Tips and Techniques.

1. "Immediate Solutions" is what the cover says and, immediate solutions are exactly what Visual Basic programmers get. No timewasting, no schleppy tutorials, but excellent demonstrations on how do get things done! The best part is that very little/no prior knowledge is assumed, unlike many of the books written by authors, whose linguistic styles resemble speech enabled computer systems! Good stuff, Mr.Holzner!



2. While the answer to life, the universe and VB6 would have been many times the size of this book, the author did an excellent job of presenting the fundamentals of VB6 in a way that was very easy to use as a reference. He managed to hit nearly every point I really needed, and gave complete, if somewhat sketchy, examples. No wasted verbiage, no gratuitous editorializing; just solidly-written reference material.



3. For all the books on the shelf, I would say this book never collects dust, just attention! The chapters are clear and well defined, making it easy to find code your looking for. Error handlers, Working with Forms, Declaring Variables helped me out.I avoided alot of runtime errors with the code given in the book. I'm convinced, Buy it!!



4. This book served as a very efficient way for me to get started in VB. In about 2 - 3 hours it gave me a good enough overview in VB to start being productive. It gave me a quick overview of each major area of VB and allowed me to easily select the areas where I needed more data. This book saved me money (as I am an independent) and allowed me to study the additional data I want to know about VB while working with it on a day to day basis, which I find a much easier study.



5. This is a great reference, especially if you are a programmer and need to brush up on VB syntax and coding tools. Nice price and size also.

4 comments about COBOL and Visual Basic on .NET: A Guide for the Reformed Mainframe Programmer.

1. I really tried hard to get somthing out of this book. The author just wont sit still long enough to get to the point (show me how this works)... darting from one thought to another without finishing the original thought (except to say 'This is beyond the scope...', then offer some random comments completely off the mark). The book is comprehensive (about 1000 pages and 7-8 pounds), but not clearly written. I am sure the author knows what he is talking about, he just does not know how to include the reader into the process (except to refer to a hundred different places for 'clarification'). Maybe next time (if he bothers), he will write a much shorter book on the subject, keep his flittering comments and comical bursts to himself and concentrate on giving the reader something of value for the time and money invested in trying to learn something from this book. A big disappointment.



2. Comparing / contrasting JES to the CLR, then Object Oriented to JCL...I love that! And it's so perfect and makes so much sense. This book is perfect as an introduction to the world of .NET for the Mainframe programmer.

   I have written in a few books and hundreds of magazine articles, but I have always maintained I'm just a technology guy who writes. Clearly, Chris Richardson is a real writer. And his editor(s) have done a wonderful job. This book is written like a novel. Most technology books are written mostly as reference. This book makes for a very interesting read...especially for those of us with a mainframe background. After reading this book, the COBOL programmer has obtained enough foundation in .NET, related back to the world he/she is comfortable in (mainframes), to take the next step and dive into more generic .NET titles and some real .NET application programming.

   For years my problem has been figuring out how to convert the fantastic amount of talent on the mainframe side of the world to the current technology set so that I can hire them. As everyone knows, this is a brutally tough transition and the learning curve is almost insurmountable. Well, this book is a must for the mainframe programmer who wants to learn application development in .NET and very entertaining for us old guys who love to look back at the way it was.




3. Someone finally built a bridge to help mainframe programmers understand Windows and the Windows programming arena. While this book targets the mainframe COBOL programmer, it is none-the-less and good reference for those of us who have worked in the Windows arena, specifically .NET.

   Chris dove into the .NET Framework with the understanding that after having rad his book you would have a good general understanding of .NET, not an indepth, "let's drown'em with a firehose" manual. Chris provided me with enough information to enable me to learn about the Framework, COBOL and areas where additional information could be found. If I wanted to read further I knew where to look. Chris's style was witty, funny and kept me entertained while I learned.

   The .NET Framework is a huge undertaking in programming. With over 5,000 namespaces Chris covered the essentials to getting going in the Framework, giving the reader enough knowledge to reduce his/her search times and find the information in the Microsoft help files they may need.

   A good read for anyone starting out in the .NET COBOL environment.




4. I bought "COBOL and Visual Basic on .NET" in order to learn VB.NET, but ended up receiving formal training through my employer before completing this 1,000 page book. Nevertheless, I constantly find myself referring to various chapters whenever my old COBOL brain has trouble understanding .NET and object oriented concepts.
   Mr. Richardson's clear writing (despite his well-intentioned attempts at humor) and numerous examples make me very glad that I made the purchase. As long as COBOL and .NET exist, this book is a must-have for programmers like me. Speaking of existence, I bet that COBOL will be with us long after Mr. Gates pulls the plug on .NET.
   If you are or have been a mainframe programmer and whether or not you know anything about .NET, you will be hard pressed to find a book as useful as this or one that is so well written.

No comments about Visual Basic .NET Design Patterns.