Rating: 
Summary: Not Recommended
Review: I can recommend this book only for a novice VB 6.0 programmer looking to write simple apps in .NET. Any other person should look elsewhere for enlightenment.The author has not grasped the fundamental change from pre-.NET VB and .NET VB: VB is now object oriented. His sample code demonstrates procedural programming, and badly at that. When he attempts to explain the concepts of a class, object instance, inheritance vs. composition, polymorphism, and encapsulation, he fails. On exceptions -- one of the better advances in programming languages in recent memory -- he recommends not to use them because of performance. So he reccomends that your code be interspersed with error checking routines simply to save a fraction of a millisecond in execution time. Unfortunately, this book is not even worthwhile as a reference for the .NET API. He does a passable job of explaining the functionality of the most basic API classes. However, his example uses are, again, horrible procedural code. In this massive book he only uses hand-waving to explain important but less-used API classes. I can recommend this book for use as a monitor stand; that is where my copy prominently (and permanently) now stands.
Rating: 
Summary: 5 More Stars for Balena
Review: Best book on VB.NET that I know of. This book will not be all things to all people. If you are a complete beginner, start with a step-by-step book, then get this one. If you are advance, you WILL learn some valuable info and techniques from this book, but it is not primarily an advanced book. Balena's writing raises the bar!
Rating:
Summary: The BEST Visual Basic Book ever!
Review: I just want to say thanks to Francesco for this incredible book.
Rating:
Summary: Forget about the promissed DVD with trial software
Review: This book was delivered by Amazon.com today, as well as Microsoft ADO .NET and the Microsoft Visual C# NET STEP BY. And I was very excited to get started with VB and C# .NET until I when opened the book VB .NET book.
When clicking on 'look inside this book' (on this website) and viewing the backcover of this book, I see that the book "Includes an eBook, sample code, and a trial version of Visual Studio .NET." That means to me, that a DVD should be enclosed and be a part of this product. But there is certainly no DVD enclosed in the book. And further more the backcover on the delivered book is different. It says that the book "includes a searchable eBook and sample code.
Since this DVD, with a trial version of MS Visual Studio .NET, was the main reason for me to purchase exactly this book, I'm very disappointed indeed.
I don't have more than a $1000 to purchase MS Visual Studio .NET and get started with VB and C# or ADO .NET. So I'm sitting here with three books, which I can't use, because of AMAZON.COM false promise/ sales information on the book.
The money back guarantee is also gone, since I have opened the CD/DVD pocked, to check out what was in there.
Rating this book, zero stars are not an option; I therefore give it 1 star, since the book is of absolutely NO value for me without the software!
Best regards from MR very disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: Best .NET book out there
Review: All of the C# programmers out there need to come to the dark side and join us "inferior" VB.NET programmers. Only the ones who want to be productive though. You will not find a similar book out there on C# that compares to what is in this huge tome. Plus VB is just more fun than C#. Come to the dark side...
Rating:
Summary: Simply the best
Review: This book has saved my bacon again, and I have to give it some praise. I have been in .NET a year now. My .NET library is at least 13 books, but I think I could throw them away and just go with this. When covering a topic - lets say DataTables in ADO.NET - I like to survey 2-3 books to get a different perspective. Time-after-time, Balena's approach is superior to anything else out there. I can waste my time plowing through an entire text on ADO or just go here and get consise, relevant answers. I love the code here. He teaches you the language in a very practical, usable way. It's like someone is saying "Ok, this is how you do it in a real app.". He gets right to the point ! Perhaps a funny thing to say about a 1600 page book, but he does it. If you are totally green in experience, you probably would want a beginning 'Step-by-step' type of book first. This is also very object-oriented, so you need to know how to write your own classes to get the most out of it. But if you have any significant VB experience at all, dive into this puppy and learn something.
Rating:
Summary: Good Price
Review: If your going to Fairleigh Dickinson University you will need this book if your taking ASP Developer Price is GOOD
Rating:
Summary: The best programming book I've yet seen
Review: I got into .NET with Visual Basic and this book. Balena warns that you should know VB6 prior to reading this book, but I didn't find that to be the case. I had used VBA, but only for a few months prior to reading this book - and I only twice found myself referring to his earlier VB6 book which is, conveniently, included on CD. I've since moved over to C#, but I still find this book to be my primary reference for classes in the .NET Framework. He covers just about every topic known to man, other than Remoting, COM Interoperability, or COM+. An added bonus of buying this book is the physical workout program of carrying 1600 pages around! Balena put a lot of work into figuring out the proper order to present material. I wouldn't move one chapter around (which is better than I can say for my C# book by Jeff Ferguson). And the writing style kept my attention. In fact, I read the first 15 chapters (668 pages) and only wrote about a dozen lines of code the entire time. Chapter 16 is when you get into the "glory" of writing real windows forms apps - then you can put to use everything you've learned. Others have complained about the brevity on ASP.NET. I haven't found this to be the case at all. In the 300 or so pages on Internet Applications, I found everything I needed (at least to get started). I'm not about ready to write the next Amazon.com using ASP.NET, but I could (and have) put together my own online store utilizing databases and I didn't know anything about ASP OR databases prior to picking up this book. I whole-heartedly recommend this book. Even if I do suggest that everyone learn C# instead of VB.NET (grin)
Rating: 
Summary: Very Good Book, but......
Review: This is one of the best and formal books I could find. However, for an intermediate level VB programmer ii's extremely painful to read and follow. It's working for me but after spending many tears and time.
The author focuses on old VB 6 users. I wish he wasn't forget the new comers like me.
Rating:
Summary: To Buy or Not to Buy !
Review: The main reason I bought this book is because I am familiar with Francesco Balena's writings and I admire his work.
On important thing to note is that this is not a book to read, this is a reference book. If you want reasons to buy this book, here are the reasons:
- You will not appreciate this book if you did not start developing in .net and stumbled upon tasks that you did not know how to do.
- It is clear and concise and you will not need to go through the terrible MSDN documentation (sometimes of course MSDN is unavoidable)
-almost everything you need is in this book. You will find at least one simple example of each topic that will aid you to understand the basic idea. Some topics are covered more extensively than others. If you want reasons not to buy this book, here are the reasons:
- XML, ASP .NET, and ASP data binding controls are not covered extensively here. If this is what you are looking for, try other books.
- The book dwells too much into Win32 application and as a web developer this is not useful for me (around 318 pages). Even ADO.NET is covered with relation to Win32 Application not web forms
- This is something I saw in almost all books I read about .net.
Class libraries that has no examples in the MSDN is almost absent from .Net books. It would be nice to have a book that talks about these forgotten libraries. In general, I did not regret buying this book since it proved to be a simple and easy way to "How to" do things in .Net
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