5 comments about Programming Visual Basic .NET, 2nd Edition.

1. Probably the best way to learn how to code in any language is to program with the examples in the book. I'm an experienced programmer in C#, but needed to get up to speed on VB.NET quick for some consulting work. I won a copy of Programming Visual Basic .NET 2nd ed. at a "WeProgram.NET" .NET user group meeting, and started reading it immediately. I skipped reading most of the explanations and went straight to the code (serious coders will understand this urge!). Even without reading much of the text, the code examples, while unimaginative, were selected well enough for me to pick up on the language, including its idiosyncrasies. I also like the fact that, for the text I did read, he explains why he is doing things a certain way. This would be really helpful for someone just learning to program or making the transition to .NET.

   The only problem I really have with the examples is that it did not make clear what code was part of VisualBasic interop. Since I am now coding in two .NET languages, I don't want to have to remember CInt for one language and Convert.ToInt32 for another. I know this book is geared toward experienced VB6 programmers, but let's start doing things the .NET way. That's why it's here.




2. Overall it's a decent book VB language. However if it has more contents/examples on Windows Form will make it a lot better.



3. This book is BOTH good and bad ! This is DEFINITELY NOT for those people who are learning to program and need a VB.Net book that starts with explaining what the CPU and RAM are !

   WHY GOOD - It is a great introduction to VB.Net for experienced programmers (experienced with VB6 or other programming language). The fundamentals of the language cosntruct (like the usual If clause, While loop etc.) are nicely condensed into one single chapter (Ch 3). Every chapter in Part-1 of the book explains one or more related language concepts in an easy to understand manner. Until the end of Part-1, all the code examples can be done using Notepad and compiled with the Visual Basic command line compiler (You do NOT even need Visual Studio.Net !). This is very good since it focuses on learning the language concepts rather than forcing you to get familiar with a strange IDE if you have not used Visual Studio before. Though there are some obvious errors in the code samples in Arrays and Strings chapter, they are no showstoppers in understanding the underlying concepts. Overall the part-1 of this book helps you to get upto speed on VB.Net very quickly. I did not read Part-3 yet, but I expect the treatment to be similar to Part-1, since Part-3 also deals with more theoritical aspects like Part-1.

   WHY BAD - I read every page of this book until Part-1 but Part-2, where each chapter deals with things like Window forms/Ado.Net/Web forms (which themselves are separate books on the market), can be very intimidating as the author tries to cover a lot of ground in a very short space. For example, the code example in Chapter-13 for Windows forms, is gargantuan for a first time Winform program to be developed in Visual Studio.Net. Moreover, the code download from the author's website is also not of much use since the author had hidden some code to save space in the book and uploaded the same thing in his website also !

   Overall, a good starting point to get into VB.Net but don't expect to learn everything about .Net with this book alone ! If you are already into VB.Net and looking to learn more about ADO.Net or Web forms, then this book is definitely NOT for you !




4. Some of the code examples in this book are laughably wrong. Especially the section about declaring arrays. There must be at least a dozen different kinds of errors in the section about declaring arrays. The author even gets wrong that the number you give in an array declaration is the upper-bound not the size. It makes you question how well the author really understands the language. Also, the book skimps on certain important areas, such as dynamically adding event handlers. Overall, I'd say this book is not that great for an introduction (too many errors) and lacking as an advanced guide (not enough detail). So I'm not really sure who it would be useful for.



5. I am an experienced VB6 programmer who was familiar with Object Oriented concepts since I have also programmed a little bit in C++ and Java. This book was perfect for me. It gave me a great overview of the language and reinforced the object oriented concepts.
   
   I use this book as a reference for day to day programming but I also keep
   Programming Microsoft Visual Basic .NET (Core Reference)
   by Francesco Balena
   handy for detailed explanations.

5 comments about Learn to Program Visual Basic Databases (Learn to Program).

1. I don't usually write reviews of books but this book is exceptional. I consider myself a near expert with Microsoft Office VBA but struggled with Visual Basic (the application). The unusual classroom setting of this book made me feel as if I were in the classroom with John Smiley teaching. I was finally being taught by someone who knew how to teach. In chapter 4 I finally ran into a problem I couldn't figure out. John Smiley was gracious enough to post his email address in the front of the book so, at half past midnight I sent him a note discussing my problem. I recieved a response from John at 8:30 that morning. John knew exactly what my problem was and gave me instructions on how to fix it. Once applied, my project worked perfectly. I can't express enough how much I appreciate this kind of customer service. Thanks, John.



2. If ever you need a book to take you step by step into database programming, this is it. Professor Smiley takes his students slowly and very carefully into the subject of Database programming. This book is focused on depth rather than covers a whole bunch of topics and at the end you learn all of none. I particularly like the classroom setting. You really feel an environment of learning and- who knows? You may even make a few new friends. This book is so well explainde, that you do not need to read over and over to make sense of what he is explaining. I must complement him for writing a really great book. If you have not yet already gotten copies of his other titles. I think you should do so, He makes learning fun.



3. John Smiley's book is supposed to be an introductory level book for novice level programmers. At the time it was written, I'm sure it was. However, the book is written around Access 97 and a lot has changed since then. The code simply will not work without patches, work arounds and lots of digging. It takes far more than a novice programmer to figure this one out. It defeats the purpose. If you don't like frustration, find a more recent book..



4. Unlike any other books, this book is presented in a manner where readers would feel as though the he / she is sitting in a class lecture room and listening to Professor Smiley's lecture.
   
   The reader / prospective reader i.e. YOU will be in class with Valerie, Peter, Kate, Rhonda, Kevin, Tom, Melissa, Rachel, Steve, Kathy, Dave, Ward, Blaine, Linda, Mary, Chuck, Lou and Bob. (If your name is not in the roll, perhaps Professor Smiley missed you out! :) )
   
   Readers will be presented with the China Shop Project Database Project. Professor Smiley starts off with simple problems and ascends to more not-so-simple problems.
   
   While reading the exercises, sufficient Windows diagrams are presented and it is as if you were doing a hands-on on Visual Basic Database.
   
   I personally feel that readers should have some knowledge on Visual Basic before attempting this book.



5. I took an online class with John Smiley several years ago using the Beginning Programming with VB 6.0. I then took a live course using VB.net with XML along with others who have been programming for some time, and could almost keep up with them. It would have been better if I'd gotten through all the Smiley books first.
   
   I tried doing this book on my own a couple of years ago, but got bogged down. However I sent him an email with my problems, which he replied to immediately, remembering me from the class. He suggested a work around, so when I took up the book this time I could work through all the exercises. This was a great review of VB and databases, and now I am really understanding connectivity, which I hope to use with websites some day.
   
   Don't use this book as a starter. It continues where the Introductory book leaves off. I noticed that someone complained that it wasn't introductory enough. They just didn't start the right place.
   
   Next step will be to try his Java book.
   
   I would hope that John Smiley would revise these books for .net and newer versions of Access, as they are very worthwhile beginner books!

5 comments about Microsoft Visual Basic 6: Complete Concepts and Techniques (Shelly Cashman Series).

1. This book was extremely useful to me in and out of my Visual Basic class. I used it for an intro to programming class in which I found it very easy to use. The book went step by step with pictures that basically spelled out exactly how I needed to do each task. The best thing about this book is that it brings you from the basic levels of VB to the more advanced topics. Now, as I go into my more advanced programming courses, I use this book as a reference. It is ideal if you want to learn VB on your own, and as a text book I give an A+. I recommend this to the beginner to intermediate programmer.



2. I am using this book along with a university course in VB6. I find the book helpful and clear, although maybe TOO clear. I mean, once you learn really basic simple stuff like how to draw buttons and place items on a form, I think that they should then drop the painful step-by-step instructions on how to do those things once you get to later chapters and move on to the CODE (the new stuff). Other than that I find the book very helpful.



3. The purchase of this book was a horid mistake. Only people who either want to learn a VERY little bit of VB or have cash to burn (in which case you should e-mail me for some ideas) should buy this book. There are other books which have a much lager, more usefull, scope. The book does hold your hand throughout the proccess, but it never lets go. The pace is way to slow, even for the newest newbie. The authors must have had elementary school children in mind while editing. It's more of a kids picture book than a textbook. Trust me... don't waste your money!!



4. I teach Advanced Visual Basic. I inherited students who took the prerequisite course, Visual Basic from instructors who used this book. All the students I got in Advanced Visual Basic had absolutely no idea about programming. All they could do was draw good looking forms with some controls on them and copy the code from Shelly and Cashman book. It does not provide challenging, unsolved programming projects for the students. All the students learn is to copy its forms and its code. Whatever this book is, it cannot serve as a good textbook!

   For my Advanced Visual Basic, I use Chapters 7 through 12 and appendices of "Computer Programming with Visual Basic 6: A Problem-Solving Approach with Cdrom" by Alka R. Harriger,Susan K. Lisack,John K. Gotwals / Paperback / Prentice Hall, and I like it very much. Frankly, Chapters 1-6 of the Harriger et al book would be much better for the first course!




5. First there'e the misleading title - COMPLETE CONCEPTS & TECHNIQUES
   Once I went through this book, I found it very easy & thought I was really a PRO in VB6.
   I got a rude shock when I actually met my programming friends: If you think you are a pro and can create useful applications with this book, you cannot be more WRONG. This book teaches you nothing about VB6 language. All it does is teaching you to layout a nice form & some extremely elementary code.
   I personally do not think you can create anything useful based on the knowledge from this book.

2 comments about Introduction To Programming with Visual Basic .net.

1. This book is an introductory programming text. To be clear, it is not an introduction to Visual Basic.NET for existing programmers; it is entirely aimed at new and learning programmers with no prior experience. It serves such an audience admirably.
   
   The book opens with an historical overview of programming languages and the nature of problem solving. It then progresses in a methodical and sensible manner through working in the IDE, designing forms using visual components, responding to events, working with primitive data types, handling basic user interaction, conditional statements and branching, looping, procedures and functions, scope, arrays and algorithms, database integration, SQL, file handling, ASP.NET, and classes. This gives the book an excellent depth, with material not usually included in introductory texts but which are highly relevant to the construction of functional software.
   
   An especially nice aspect of this book is the development of a "real-world" financial application at the conclusion of each chapter, giving immediate practical exposure to the theoretical concepts being discussed.
   
   Scattered throughout the book are highlighted snippets entitled "tips from the pros". These attempt to convey wisdom from experienced programmers. Their value is somewhat dubious, as for the most part these do not - as may have been reasonably expected - explain best practices or highlight "gotchas" for new programmers. They do pitch sensible ideas, but which are largely common-sense and hardly revelationary.
   
   Additionally, two other matters are irksome. Firstly, the authors leave abstract data types right to the very end chapter, yet this should perhaps be raised earlier, after primitive data types. Secondly, leading on from the first, the authors title this chapter classes, yet beyond constructing one's own data types there is no real coverage of object-oriented design.
   
   That aside, this is an outstanding and very easily digested work. It is well recommended for beginning coders, giving sound instruction in both the art and science of programming and a solid grounding in a popular and contemporary language.



2. Had to get the book for a programming class and actually enjoyed reading it. Easy to understand, well written, need more textbooks like this for college students.
   
   Had a poor index and no class library in the back :(

5 comments about Visual Basic for Testers.

1. This book is long overdue for too long QA resources have been limited by others and themsleves to not look under the bonnet, so to speak or have payed for inflexible third party tools to do a simple job. I have developed entire smart'newbie' QA technical teams that just couldn't believe how easy it was to use code to test an application. It also adds to there skill set, gets them to really think 'how' best to test the application from a code point of view and even improves their test cases.

   Mary Sweeney's book "Visual Basic for Testers" is the starting point for any Manager who wants to do the same and give his/her team that extra weapon for finding issues.




2. This book is really a primer on Visual Basic for someone who has never programmed before. Testing is just an afterthought.
   If you're a developer trying to improve processes through testing this book is not for you.

   If you're a software tester who knows absolutely nothing about programming, nice to meet you, I didn't know you existed, take a look at this book.




3. I've had several college-level courses now in Testing and this is the only book we used that actually had anything to do with testing and programming. This is an absolute essential text for a college curriculum in testing. I checked out several curricula and found that most of them use it. I wonder about those that don't. In our course we also explored the use of .Net for testing and in my opinion it's a lot easier, more clear and way less expensive to use the techniques in this book. If you're trying to learn it on your own, this is still a good book. It's got exercises and examples.

   My wife's been a tester for many years but didn't do programming and she loved it. She said it gave her a lot of ideas. Maybe if you've already been an automated tester and/or developer for many years, this book isn't going to help, since it has a lot of basics. But if you are trying to learn, where else would you go? I liked the way you could just sit down and read it from cover to cover. It's unpretentious and doesn't talk down to us. It does expect you already know testing terminology and basics, but before you read this, you should.




4. This book is exactly what the title says: an introduction to Visual Basic for testers. It succeeds wonderfully at that.
   It is not a book about testing. If you already know VB and want to know how to test your application, there are a few chapters near the end that you will find useful but this book is not really intended for you.



5. This book neither teaches Software Testing nor programming. And is intented for VB related Programmers/testers who know some VB and Testing. There was a possibility of being little more specific, I mean the early chapters of the book talk about VB projects, creating them and the very basic information about IDE rather than testing. There could have been a possibility of taking up a real project implementation, lets say testing/automating the entire MS Office testing using VB.
   But again, this has been a very serious effort for automation and deserves a lot of appreciation.
   
   Abhinav Vaid

1 comments about FORTRAN 90 for Engineers and Scientists.

1. This book is a fairly easy and simple introduction to Fortran 90. It is well directed towards the beginner and the beginner will most definitely profit from buying this book. The example codes are well chosen and the exercises provide ample practice in learning the basics of the language. The book covers much of the Fortran 90 syntax and the language reference in the appendix is handy. Presentation wise it is well constructed with a bi-colour approach which is good and makes the concepts easy to grasp, especially for a textbook, as compared to a one colour layout like a book with black print all over.

5 comments about .NET Gotchas.

1. I got this book as a gift. I'm not sure that I would have bought it myself. Pros: good technical information, one of the few books to give both VB.NET and C# versions. Cons: very dry writing style and the topics seemed disconnected somehow. So, I give it a 5 for technical and a 1 for writing, for an overall of 3.0. I think this is a book you'll like a lot or dislike a lot.



2. Are you among the many programmers who have come to appreciate how powerful Microsoft's .NET Framework can be as a platform for development? If you have, this book is for you! Author Venkat Subramaniam, has done an outstanding job of writing a great book that shares his .NET experiences with developers, to help them avoid the gotchas!
   
   Subramaniam begins by discussing the features in the CLR and the Framework that can impact the behavior and performance of your application. Next, the author focuses on Visual Studio- and compiler-related gotchas. Then, he delves into gotchas at the language and API level of the .NET platform. The author continues by discussing the issues of language operability gotchas. In addition, the author next focuses on concerns related to garbage collection, and how to write code that handles it effectively. He also discusses, the things you need to be aware of in the areas of inheritance and polymorphism so you can make the best use of these important concepts. Next, the author addresses the general problems with threading, the thread pool, asynchronous calls using delegates, and threading problems related to Windows Forms and Web Services. Finally, he focuses on details you should be aware of to make interoperability work for you.
   
   With the preceding in mind, the author has done an excellent job of writing a book that focuses on the .NET Framework and language features that have consistently exhibited behavior that is not obvious to the programmer. So, why should you be interested in learning about these unexpected features? Because, knowning these little gotchas will help you avoid mistakes!



3. ... for many reasons, foremost in my mind - the format makes for very efficient reading - and if all you have is 30 minutes a day, a gotcha or two a day and in a month you are done. That being said, I found some of the topics rather esoteric, so chose to revisit those at some point in the unknown, er, future.
   
   Superb succinct read.



4. I made the mistake of buying this book based on recommendations I had read here on amazon.com -- don't make the same mistake. If you are looking for practical techniques that will help you write .NET applications, this is NOT the book you want. Now this book is sort of interesting and points out weirdnesses of .NET but nothing that I hadn't seen online. So, check this book out first by browsing through a hard copy in a bookstore to see if it's what you want. I wish I had.



5. This book is written with determination and care. Every aspect is explained at length and the examples are abundant.
   
   But this book is not for everyone. If you want to learn .NET, C# or VB.NET programming from it, you won't be able to do it. Also, if you have time to search through zillions of MSDN pages in order to seek various details on .NET and/or .NET languages, then this book is not for you either.
   
   But if your time is tight and you want to have many .NET common mistakes at your fingertips with no effort from your part, then this book is for you.

5 comments about Visual Basic 6 How to Program.

1. This book was on the required list for a class on programming I recently completed (apparently some schools are avoiding using VB.NET in intro classes due to its added complexity). I had always wanted to check out a Deitel book, but the bone-crushing price drove me away more than once. Luckily I was forced into buying it for my class.

   This is a solid book that will teach you everything you need to know to get started writing simple to somewhat complex VB6 code. The book begins with a history of Visual Basic and how it fits into programming in general. Then you're off and diving right into the VB Development Environment and by chapter 3 you've written a simple program. The book gains in complexity from that point on, but at a slow enough pace to take it all in. In fact, sometimes the pace seems stifling.

   If you're an impatient person I would avoid this book. It's over 900 very thick pages long and sometimes getting through a single chapter feels like an entire book in itself (chapter 8 "Strings, Dates, and Times" felt this way for me).

   If you're patient and you learn like a sponge, then be prepared to learn bunches and bunches from this book. By the time you're through you'll even have learned about advanced data structures like linked lists and trees. Getting through this book, despite its academic bulk, feels like a real accomplishment.

   The exercises at the end of each chapter are invaluable for solidifying concepts and for getting your hands wet and sloppy with code. Definitely don't skip these, you'll learn more from working through them then you will reading the text.

   It should be noted that the book is not designed for individual study - it is meant to be a textbook for a classroom setting (they say as much in the preface). I think it's most appropriate in that setting (it also has a textbook price).

   Regardless of it's girth, this book will teach you enough VB6 to program applications of decent complexity. What you won't get is a lesson on API calls or Direct X, but the book is thick enough already!




2. The authors take a subject that's not horribly difficult and make it dautingly difficult in this book. The examples they use are NOT real-world examples that anyone would understand. For example, to explain recursion, their two examples involve factorials and Fibonacci numbers. May I remind them that this is not a book on math and Visual Basic? I had to first learn what Fibonacci numbers were and then try to understand the example. I am unfortunately required to read this book as part of a class and am finding myself reading other books to try to understand what this book is saying. Also, key terms aren't in bold, and the way the book is presented is in reverse order than it should be. The process of VB programming involves first creating the user interface and then the coding behind it. They introduce the coding first and the interface in the middle of the book. I am really struggling to read this and I have a master's degree, work in this general area, and have good reading and vocabulary skills. Why they even thought this book would be applicable to anything for anyone is beyond me.



3. This is not a book with big pictures and lots of redundant information: it's packed with valuable information, extremely well structured and geared towards the needs of the beginner as well as the more advanced student. Each chapter is preceded by an introduction to the respective topic followed by programming projects exemplifying the use of commands, procedures, data types, etc. It is rounded off by concise recap of the material covered. All programming examples are supplied on the accompanying CD ROM which also includes - lo and behold! - a MS VISUAL BASIC 6.0 Working Model Edition as a FREEBIE. So you do not even have to have your own Visual Basic Programming environment in order to do all the exercises and try out the examples given in the book. Algorithms and theoretical background are supplied where necessary and just add to the fun of learning. A wealth of good tips is summarized for each chapter under the headings of "Common Programming Errors", "Good Programming Practices", "Software Engineering Observations" and "Testing and Debugging". The practical hands-on approach to programming of the book is topped off by self-review exercises at the end of each of the 21 chapters for which solutions are supplied and discussed adequately to make them a true learning experience. More challenging exercises are offered to the more ambitious student. This is one of the most instructive and comprehensive books on Visual Basic I have ever had a chance to lay my hand upon. Highly recommendable!



4. This book is written well and logical, it has many items other books lack. This book is a first year comp sci book and that is why it does not have all the answers in the back; read the intro people. Comparing this to other titles I have used, this one fits my needs very well, easy to read, follow, and understand. You must put an effort into the reading to get the best out of it. If you do not work at it, its true, you will think this book is difficult. Deitel & Deital books fill my programming library now, don't waste money on other books.



5. This is the best technical book i have ever read. The reason is it actually has some meat to it. Definatly the best visual basic book out there.
   Matt

5 comments about Sams Teach Yourself Visual Basic .NET in 21 Days (Sams Teach Yourself).

1. Just like the other reviewer noted, I got to day three and that's as far at it goes. The book lets you do a sample "hello world" program, and gives a small taste of using the IDE and then leaves you on your own with 600 more pages to go. The IDE example shows you how to make a button and a text box. You are not shown how to make them even somewhat functional however.
   The book (seems) to be giving some examples. These examples are called code that the programmer would write. The book does not even explain where to write the code. I know that sounds impossible and you probably think that going back and re-reading the first 50 pages would give a clue...but it does not.
   I am very happy to know that I'm not the only one who cannot go any further with this book because I felt like I was missing something. I now have a little faith in the reviewers at AMZN and will probably pick up one of the other VB.net books I find that is recommended.
   I actually have some java programming experience and cannot use this book. Therefore I would expect it to be impossible for those who have absolutely no programming experience. I say that I'm happy to know that I'm not the only one who finds the book useless, but am very annoyed by the loss of the 40 bucks I paid for this truly useless book. I do not like to say this about an author's work, but the book is not good. We all seem to agree.



2. ive read these reviews, and im not stupid, but im not exactly the smartest thing. The gripe about this book is the fact that the author gives code but does not explain where to put the code, that it because the author is just showing you what the code will look like. It's like lookin at a window display and realizing that thats just what it looks like, and not what it looks like in your house, i hope that helps, im a big fan of SAMS work, and i hope any beginner seriously buy this book



3. I understand why the people who wrote these other reviews were disappointed. But I don't think this book is useless. If you want a training manual for Visual Studio.NET, definitely go elsewhere. However, if you're like me, and you want to understand how the technologies came about, how they relate to each other, and how they fit into the grand scheme of things, don't write this book off too quickly. There are a lot of good narrative passages that have helped me over some basic humps.

   I totally agree that the code samples are weak... I'm only on day three and have found examples that just simply DON'T do what the book says they will... But I'm still going to read it for the narrative, and then get another, more training oriented book for learning the IDE's ins and outs.




4. This is one of the worst Programming books I have Ever seen.

   This book assumes you know everything! It can be a fair book only for a experienced Visual Basic.NET programmer.

   It does a poor job in teaching, organizing ideas.

   The book is around 650 pages; it has lots of irrelative stories are inside it.

   I'm not sorry for the money I wasted on this book but rather for my precious time I wasted on this, while learning very little.
   Bottom line:

   If you are trying to learn VB.Net or migrating from VB6 to VB.NET there many better books in the market.




5. I got the book for free. I am an ASP.NET developer in beginning stages (less than 6 mos).
   
   I immediately noticed that the book seemed more for intermediate level developers than beginners because of the sentence structure and vocabulary in the programming sense. I felt that the authors were writing to a target audience that excluded myself.
   
   There are many things beginners will want more details about when they are not available. Some of the sentences don't make much sense without re-reading several times. The data access chapter is intimidating. The paragraphs at times can be short while the code samples are long. Also agreed is the fact that the code samples themselves can be weak. Code that is too short/weak is not usable for illustrating useful points, whereas code that is too long/complex frustrates the reader. Some of the code in the book seems to go from one spectrum to the other, not settling somewhere in the middle.
   
   I liked how the book covers a little bit about the web and web forms in addition to Windows forms. I also liked how the book seemed to have relevant chapters on many different things, like deployment, XML, OOP, etc. To me however, this book may be more of a reference than an introduction to VB.NET.
   
   I think the data access chapter (in time) will be very useful to me. The error-handling section and OOP section are already helpful.

5 comments about Access 2002 VBA Handbook.

1. I upgraded from Access 2000 to Access 2002 and wanted a 2002 reference so based on reviews from other sites I bought this book. I have turned to it time and time again only to be disappointed time and time again. I haven't learned really anything from this book and judge the $60 I spent for it a total waste of money. A MUCH better book is the Access 2002 Developer's Hanbook by Paul Litwin etc.



2. You have done the graphical interfaces of Access to the limit and You need more theoretical knowledge to climb a step further, so your projects can advance for their accomplishments.This book will give You high quality information, meaning knowledge that is in harmony with other sciences, for instance mathematics.You will not find usefull new examples of code, once the book is based on the Access Samples (Northwind), thanks God! You wont find the icecream shop, or the whisky bottlement, or the video rent,etc.These originalities are meaningless to the understanding of the structure of VBA. You will not find that a number divided by zero is zero, or that x = x + 1, without further explanations, and that programming has a special type of logic that blows up whatever You thought credible. So I would advise to buy the book because it is an excellent work, linking the many areas of knowledge in a deep way, although the subjects are managed with as few words as possible, enough to You understand how VBA is conceived.



3. I am in chapter 3 and have decided to set the book aside and look for a more hands on approach. It's my learning style. I learn a lot more from a technical book (on a new topic) where you work through more examples. Once I have gone through a book with more examples I suspect that the theoretical approach will be more meaningful. I will come back to read this book at a later time.



4. I started using Access a few years ago as an adjunct of Microsoft Office, creating simple databases for my Christmas card list and such. Then about a year ago, because of work, I had the opportunity to dig deeper. Where to start? I began with Alison Balter's Mastering Access 2002 Desktop Development, a frustrating and disorganised tome that seemed to be missing all of the secret handshakes, signals and knowledge I longed for to unlock the supposed power of Microsoft Access. Every time it appeared Ms. Balter was going to get to the actual point and impart the wisdom I was seeking...she swiftly moved on to another topic. The book didn't even serve to help me clarify the mind-boggling vocabulary necessary to describe and understand the application. To me, Ms. Balter seemed like somebody whom, if they possessed a lot of knowledge, wasn't giving any of it away. A job change took care of my deadline but I was still intrigued and inherited a larger project when I committed myself to writing a custom database application for my partner's administrative needs. I needed help and serious instruction to achieve the application designs I had in my head.
   
   I turned to Getz, Litwin & Baron's Access Cookbook (1st edition), thinking I could hi-jack some off the shelf solutions and, if not actually learn to write Access VBA, at least tweak the code they supplied to suit my starry-eyed custom application needs. Not a bad idea. Problem was, as intriguing as the book is, it's really for experienced developers looking to take their skills in another direction (skyward). Very strong on methodology too, which is important, but it wasn't exactly getting me off the launch pad (it wasn't even getting me off my mouse pad, to be more accurate).
   
   Seven months on, two books later and still no real understanding of Access VBA. I checked out Getz, Litwin & Gunderloy's Access 2002 Developer's Handbook Set and was ready to dig deep...but one really needs to know the basics and fundamentals of Access VBA to keep up (otherwise it's like reading a foreign language of which you have very little knowledge). One hundred pages in and I sensed that I had skipped a grade and it wasn't going to get any easier. Even Ken Getz & Co. were repeatedly pointing me toward Novalis & Jones' Access 2002 VBA Handbook (useful for 2003 as well) and I can honestly say, after a few months procrastinating and about 2.5 - 3 weeks of focused study, without any previous programming knowledge or experience, I can now read an Access VBA procedure and understand what is actually going on. It's like I'm speaking their language!
   
   Novalis and Jones are thorough and precise to a fault. Despite the repetitive vocabulary of Access application development, they do a stunning job of continually moving the reader along, down what is, it has to be said, a very tricky and treacherous path. ("Each AccessObject object has an AccessObjectProperties collection object, sometimes just referred to as Properties, a collection object that stores custom properties for the object. Each AccessObjectProperty in the AccessObjectProperties collection object itself has two properties: Name and Value." Don't worry, by the time you get to Chapter 13, from whence that comes, it'll just make you chuckle instead of sweat.) If you've ever tried to learn Access VBA and have been left scratching your head wondering what some author's glib explanation is supposed to actually mean, you won't be disappointed in this book. Novalis and Jones will not leave you behind.
   
   The experience of reading the book is like one of taking a university course called Access VBA 101. You have to concentrate and focus while you do your reading. There are procedures aplenty throughout the book with step-by-step demonstrations and explanations about how to write Access VBA. The book is very well structured with regular variation between activity and explanation. (You will be inclined to start writing customisations and applying your newfound knowledge to the code samples as the book continues.) All of the samples are immediately applicable to the kind of useful procedures you'll want to include in your custom database application--in very simple form. This book is about foundations, however, it is an end in itself because you could finish it and start writing your own procedures. I have 12 different sections specifically earmarked for functionality that I want to include in my application, which is pretty useful. Their section on Creating and Modifying Database Objects (Chapter 14) has given me plenty of ideas about coding tools I want to write to flesh out the VBA IDE and write my code faster. Did I mention that 3 weeks ago I couldn't even read Access VBA?
   
   If at times the book feels like it's hard going, it probably has more to do with the subject itself (maybe I should've taken a few more breaks). You will hit a few walls but everything is surmountable; I made it all the way through the book (save the DAO Appendix) and all of their code worked for me (be careful in Chapter 13 "Working with Groups of Records...", however, because a couple of their early procedures in the chapter will break some of the later ones). Not a quick start and at least a month or so of Sundays but for those looking to lay a solid foundation in Access VBA, this is a wise investment of time and money. I now feel that I know the depth and power of Access using VBA programming and when you're trying to learn and utilise something this complex, that's half the battle.



5. This book has been all that I hoped it would be. I use it as a tutorial one day and a reference the next. I was a beginner Access VBA developer and now with this book I have become much more comfortable around VBA. So much more comfortable that I have developed 4 financial Access applications that are going to be used by multiple departments. I recently picked up the Access 2002 Developer's Handbook Set which is a little more advanced but I keep coming back to this one.