No comments about Coding4Fun: 10 .NET Programming Projects for Wiimote, YouTube, World of Warcraft, and More.

No comments about Advanced Visual Basic.Net (3rd Edition).

5 comments about OOP: Building Reusable Components with Microsoft Visual Basic .NET (Visual Basic.Net).

1. This book is now required by my development staff to read before developing .NET applications. The first is "Practical Standards for Microsoft Visual Basic .NET". This book picks up where the other has left off.

   There are hundreds of ways to develop software, but Spencer, Eberhard and Alexander have done a great job illustrating one approach that is very practical for an enterprise enviroment. This book shows goes over many of the steps in software development and how to design the many tiers using .NET inheritance and reusing of code.

   My company name is Wharton Computer Consulting and we have been developing software for nearly a decade. I have read over a hundred technical books and have over 20 Microsoft Certifications. This book will allow me to spend less time going over how code should be done. During my technical reviews I will be able to point to chapters in this book on how it should be done.

   I have also taught at several university's and this will now be my recommended book for students interested in learning how to develop using .NET.




2. I have only read 9 books related to vb.net and most of them seem to be a copy of the MSDN library. This book is underrated but I found this book to be precise what I needed. It gives real world solutions, exploiting many of the .NET framework classes. While in other books only two or three chapters are of value this book is withinh the TOP on my list. This book is different because you are creating a full enterprise application, building different classes with specific purposes and then putting it together to have an End-product. It is this putting together that will help you understand the potentials of VB.NET



3. The .Net framework is huge. After professionally developing several web projects I had the nuts and bolts pretty much nailed. However, putting it all together into a sound model/approach is tough.

   I wish I'd read this book earlier on because it would have saved me a lot of pain. After you're past the novice stage and have a handle on the VB.Net syntax and object model, this book is the next step. It contains lots of code snippets and you can download their entire code library used to build the sample apps but the real key here is learning a sound methology.

   One review was critical of their approach. I disagree with his comments. This book offers not only a sound approach to application design using .Net (with some concentration on web development), n-tier architecture is accepted practice. The book offers a sound VB.Net implementation. Of course, it's hardly the only way and is a tad simplistic for the real world intranet apps I'm working on. But it should help intermediate programmers put it all together to move to the next level.

   My only complaint is that I wish it contained more code details, some broader coverage, and was more advanced. But that's a personal gripe because by the time I'd picked this up I'd personally grown past its content through the school of hard knocks.




4. Well, if you have absolutely NO experience with OOP and were looking for a good book to help you learn it . . . don't get this. :P

   I think most of the practices in this book are poor. For example, and this is simply personaly opinion, there is a section on using a data access layer that they wrote (I think it stinks). Hardly a very good DAL in my opinion. The thing I don't like about it is when they tell you to use it from other layers, you still have to know about this concept of SQLServer, connection strings, stored procedures, and parameters, and that is just lame. When I write a DAL, I abstract that stuff out. How in the world would I cleanly swap my DAL out if I wanted to go from SQL Server to Oracle?! Well, using their techniques it seems that I would have to go through the code in my other layers and change quite a bit . . . Horrible!

   Then, when they talk about using a security layer, they say this: "Our first thought was to create the security layer and have ASP.NET developers simply place code to check the login status at the top of each page. This approach is fraught with problems because it places the responsibility on the developer to work out the security on each page and include it." So, what do they do 2 paragraphs later? Tell you to put this header control that will handle it into EVERY page: "All the developer needs to do is put the header on the page and the page is secure." Big deal, they abstract the security into one component, and then call that from this header. But the developer still needs to stick it in every page . . . (I personally would have used inheritence for this, but whatever works.)

   All in all, I think this book is about 5% useful. Seems like a good article would have accomplished the same goal, I don't see that this book has much valuable information. Thankfully I didn't pay for it, just read it via O'Reilly's Safari Subscription service!




5. I found this book was very easy reading. The ASP.Net server controls are very good. I also use the Data Layer in all of my .Net applications. It's very solid code. Simply a great a read.

No comments about Visual Basic Animation Graphics Programming/Book and Disk.

1 comments about Creating Adventure Games On Your Computer.

1. Hartnell's book is a good introduction to adventure game construction. While the book focuses on BASIC programming, which wouldn't be a programmer's choice today, it offers sound design techniques for the absolute beginner. I used this book to write my first text-adventure games on my Apple //c. It's one of the few old computer books that I will still occasionally open.

5 comments about Beginning Access 2002 VBA (Programmer to Programmer).

1. It is not for beginners. It should be called "An Introduction to Access VBA", because it is very theoretical, and the authors seem not have the knowledge of the difficulties the beginners in programming are faced, when trying to run the code by simply copying it from the text.For example, in the ulterior version refering to Access 97, if you dont have the cursor on the name of the procedure or function you wont get it running when the run button or run menu is clicked. That is an information that a beginning book should teach to beginners. This version, refering to Access 2002, is enlarged by new interesting contributions, like to specify records that should be reported using a filter form.I like the way Wrox books are formated, but this book miss revision in text and code.As a beginner in VBA, I can bear errors in text, but when neither the code on the book or on the CD runs, I am disappointed and I would advise only skilled programmers willing to find out why the code didn't work to buy the book.Until a full revision be done, beginners dont buy it. I am longing for a Microsoft Team Access 2002 VBA Step by Step, or a Beginning Access 2002 VBA by John Connell.



2. I had to use this book for a class on "Database Programming". I took the class to (1) get credit for taking a class and (2) to get more help with Access and VBA for work. This book started out excellent, good explaintion very informative and after about chapter 6 it fizzles, with inconsistancies lack of all the information. Code wasn't included on the cd. They could have shown how to build a form that was needed for the chapter. Everyone in our class was given 100 pts for two modules because the book was incomplete. There were 12 modules in this class.
   I felt cheated. I don't know who to blame the School or the book writer. I want to blame the school for not using a book that has complete code/explanations.
   (I have been building databases with Lotus Notes for 7 years. Access is new to me, but programming isn't, so you know my perspective.)



3. The book itself is GREAT! Lots of great concepts and tips, etc. The only problem is the book ships with a CD that does not have all of the chapter examples! On page 29 it states they provide a file for each chapter, specifically for the work they have done in that chapter. None of the chapter by chapter examples are on the disk. You have to email the company to get them to send you the disk.



4. All wrox books ship without CDs. You are supposed to download the code from their website.

   Shame on you who can't be bothered to visit their site even once!




5. I was looking for a book that had theory and enough exercises to improve my fluency in use of VBA. This book has the theory but, due to an obviously extremely flawed production process, fails to include the chapter by chapter sample files on its CD that the authors claim are included. This severely constrains its overall utility. Also, as another reviewer has indicated, the authors sometimes play fast and loose with some of their explanations. I could probably overlook this, if the sample files had been included on the CD or if the publishers respected their customers enough to provide them with a page to download the files. Instead, the publishers simply indicate that they will not help title purchasers.
   
   If you want to expand your theoretical understanding of Access 2002 and can get this title at a good discounted rate, you may want to consider purchasing this title. However, if you want both theory and practice, this book has very little to offer.

No comments about 10 starter programs from Family computing: For Apple, Atari, Commodore 64 and VIC-20, TI, Timex and TRS-80.

1 comments about Tso/E Clists: Basics, Applications and Advanced Techniques.

1. There are many examples with explanation of each line of code. ISPF Panel (screen) examples. Great book for the beginner Clist programmer and wonderful reference book for the guru.

2 comments about CCNA Exam Prep Guide (Book w/CD) (Testtaker's Guide Series).

1. It appears that some of the questions are from the previous version of the exam, since some of the commands mentioned in this book are not found in either the official Cisco course material or ICND coursebook (McQuerry).

   The publisher clearly did not do a sufficiently thorough job of checking the text for typos. An obvious one is p.139 showing router B's ip route using 198.16.4.2 which is completely impossible, because the subnet is not mentioned in the example.

   Many of the questions have obvious answers which would not be the case in the actual CCNA exam. The exam is harder than this book's questions.

   Overall, the book is somewhat useful for practicing exams, but for the reasons mentioned above, do not use it as your sole means of practising for the exam.

   Also, the book only has fill-in-the-blank questions and multiple choice. The actual #640-507 exam has drag and drop questions.




2. This book gives only very brief introduction to prepare for the ccna exam. The questions presented in this book are over-simplified.
   
   Generally it helps clarify some concepts if you are novice to cisco routers or switches. So make sure you have other sources of study materials as well.

   In fact, cisco is releasing new examination 640-607 to replace 640-507 from 12 March 2002.

5 comments about Professional Visual Basic 6 XML.

1. This is has been a disappointment for me. I purchased this book because of a project I am working on. It told me everything I already know and gave terribly laid out examples.

   I was never quite sure working through the examples if the code was required or if the Authors were merely showing us what they could do with XML/VB.




2. The following is a sentence from page 131 paragraph 1 of this book: "After declaring a generic Node object to serve as the parent node for the new node, and a variable to hold our function response, which we optimistically set to True - which will be changed if our attempt at adding the node fails, we check to see if the node index is within bounds, using IsNodeIndexOK, described just after this function."

   The logical flow to the entire book in not much better.

   This makes learning anything about XML and VB difficult. I have spent more time attempting to determine what the authors are tring to say than I have learning about XML.

   I was able to work with the sample code to some extent. But even the sample code was incomplete and more difficult to follow than necessary.

   With a complete rewrite this could possibly be a good book.




3. I purchased this book to learn to do DOM programming, not to use the code provided by the authors. I was hoping for clear examples, instead I got a book that expects me to download their sample code or type it all in (and there is ALOT) in order to easily follow the samples. Typically this would be fine, but a majority of the functions and classes you can download are poorly explained, or not explained at all. This book is more like instructions on how to use a lot of code written by the authors to manipulate XML.
   I own two other WROX books, these book were easy to follow and gave just the right amount of code to get me going. This book does neither. Big disappointment.



4. Although Microsoft has moved on to VB.net, many developers are still using VB6. It has become increasingly hard to find VB6 XML info on, say, MSDN, so a book like this is essential.

   The code examples are clear and practical. The book manages to work well both as a how-to and a reference. If I were to nitpick, there are two things would mention. First, because of when the book was published, it does not cover the most currenrt version MSXML. However, porting the code samples to newer versions of the DLL is quite easy. Second, the book does not come with a CD. An HTML or PDF version of the book, with a searchable index, would be sweet.

   Overalll, though, this is a good deal if, like so many, you are still working with VB6.




5. According to an e-mail I recieved from Wiley, "Wrox Press Book Company was liquidated in the Spring and no longer exists. The books were sold to various companies. Wiley acquired only 34 of the over 350 books and the rights to the www.wrox.com website address. You'll find the complete list of books currently available from Wiley/Wrox Press at http://www.wrox.com/misc-pages/booklist.shtml "

   This book is not on that list. That means that the publisher no longer provides support for it, and it will probably never be updated.

   I bought this book because it was one of the very few books available that covers using XML in Visual Basic. Altho not the easiest book to follow, it does contain a great deal of useful information. Unfortunately, both VB and XML are changing rapidly, and the information is getting out of date fast.

   By the way, don't even bother sending in the registration card that comes with this book. Wiley didn't renew the business reply permit, so the card will just bounce back in the mail.