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Summary: It is a VB bible
Review: This is the second Balena's book I ever read. I am not new to VB, but I do not think I am an expert in VB yet. Every time I read his book, I always find something new and profound to think hard about. It is like reading a bible sometime if I can put that way. You can just never fully absorb everything in the book. But if you are fresh to vb or vb.net, this is not a book for you. Start with some entry-level book first, then come back to read it, it would really make your eyes open.
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Summary: The VB.NET book for intermediate-level developers.
Review: I've just completed reading this book, reading about 5 hours a week for the last 4 months.This is a great book. It has both a wide scope and substantial depth. It should take the reader's level of awareness/competence of VB.NET from level 3 to 7 (on scale of 1 to 10). This book is easy to read, it provides many useful code examples to illustrate the concepts being discussed, and additionally Francesco has a welcomed habit of adding excellent tips as side points. It is primarily a tutorial that can be used as a reference source later. The book does make several references to VB6. However because of the clever writing/editing, it was not necessary for me to refer to the VB6 CD at any time. This book should be useful to intermediate-level developers any programming language. I would like to thank Francesco for what he has done.
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Summary: Superbly written with very useful examples
Review: I finally found a book so good that I may not need any other VB books. As you are reading, you might think, "I wish he'd tell me how to do...", then you turn the page and the example tells you exactly what you wanted to know. The chapter on Threading is terrific. I had never used threads in VB, now I feel confident that I can. The section on ADO.net gives you extremely useful information on writing a generic routine that uses the IdbConnection Interface, rather than the individual Connection Classes. This is exactly what I needed to help me in porting some of my VB 6.0 code. The book is just a masterpiece. You would expect a book this size to cover everything broadly but not deeply, but the book continues to impress me every time I pick it up.
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Summary: Well Conceived, Well Written - But Not a Beginners' Book
Review: First, let me start by saying that this is not a "made simple" book. Anyone who is not already an experienced VB programmer should look elsewhere. Having said that, this is a masterful treatment of VB.NET which should appeal to the VB 6.0 designer who wants to learn the VB.NET language in depth. All this makes me wish I had bought the author's VB 6.0 book when it was first available - I would have been much farther ahead (expecially in object design!) I've been very impressed with the current series of .NET books from Microsoft Press - most have been very well put together (unlike some of the "write by committee" titles from Wrox Press lately.)
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Summary: Detailed but do not for beginners
Review: This book is for People interested in detailed explaination of VB.NET. If you are just begining to do VB.NET try some simpler book , later you can come back for this book.
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Summary: The BEST VB.Net book !
Review: I can only agree with the majority of the other reviewers of this book, it is the best VB.Net book out there and maybe the best .Net book. I have spend more money on .net books than I care to tell my wife and most of them I only read a few chapters of , but this book is enjoyable to read and has a wealth of information that you won't find anywhere else. I really think that books that are written by several authors(like most wrox books) are not nearly as good as one written by one author who has thought out the structure of the book in advance, does not repeat things and builds upon what was presented in previous chapters. The style of writing is also excellent and this makes a difference when trying to finish a 1500 page book. I hope that Francesco will publish more .Net book, maybe on the subjects not covered in the book, like Remoting and COM+ interoperability and security.
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Summary: Exactly what I was looking for
Review: If you're an intermediate or advanced VB6 programmer looking to learn VB .NET, this is this is the book for you. Most of the .NET books on the market that I've read rehash the same basic information..."This is how classes work, this is how exception handling works, this is how threading works, etc." The thing I really like about this book is that it provides you with that same basic information, but then goes into greater detail -- providing optimization techniques, benchmarks, and useful examples. Great book.
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Summary: The most informative book that I could find.
Review: This book was an excellent choice for me because since I had almost no experience with VB.NET and I was about to start a job using VB.NET exclusively, I needed to get up to speed fast. The information in this book was much more detailed than other VB.NET books that I had purchased. I found the area on streams very useful since I needed to know how to import a binary file in a project that I am working on. I saw a bad review about this book and I understand why the person that wrote it was not happy. He was coming from a non vb background. However, the examples in this book were just the opposite for me. They were VERY DETAILED. I am coming from a Visual Basic background and since VB.NET is so much different, this book really helped me with the transition to VB.NET! Even though this book does not have an ebook, the author mentions his web site quite often and if you have ever been there you would know that there is a wealth of information and files that you can download as well. To me, that is much more important than an ebook. I looked through many books before purchasing this one, Trust me, this is the best book to buy.
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Summary: Best VB.NET book
Review: When I first set out to write this review, I was not certain I would give the book 5 stars. It is a great book, but was it really the pinnacle of VB.NET programming? Unfortunately, with so many bad books being rated at 5 stars, I have to push the limit here to ensure this book shines above many lesser examples. Francesco Balena is no stranger to Visual Basic. He has written books for previous versions of the product and is intimately involved with Microsoft. He has also worked closely with Jeffrey Richter (see Applied .NET Framework Programming with Visual Basic, another excellent book), who is one of the lead consultants on the .NET Framework. The expertise of the author, however, does not make this a great book. What makes this a great book is how much material is contained between its covers. The book starts out with some "basics". While explained in simple terms, there are a lot of gems here, both for new programmers and for those intimately familiar with older versions of Visual Basic. The book then moves on to OOP in Visual Basic .NET. While the basics are necessary for the newbie, this is where the experienced VB programmer will start to see the book pay off. Combined with the third section, which details huge sections of the .NET Framework base class library, it is a must read for anyone serious about programming .NET. For anyone brave enough to take the task, I would love to see a complete book on this. Section 4 (Windows Applications), I, unfortunately, skipped through, with the exception of Chapter 19, which I find pertinent to my work as an Internet Architect. Section 5 is a bit thin (only 200 pages) for my liking, and may be the one downside of the book. As there are plenty of books on ADO.NET which cover every aspect in detail, the material here can easily be supplemented. Finally, section 6 is another gem. While I do not agree with all of the choices, the sheer amount of material devoted to web applications (300 pages) is a nice addition to a Visual Basic .NET book. As many tend to skip over this important topic and write about Windows Applications, this is a nice touch. Web applications and windows applications are, after all, cut from a very similar cloth, esp. when you look underneath the hood. As many of the books on the market will put you to sleep, a few extra bonus points should be given to Balena for a nicely flowing book. It is not quite a Platt book (Introducing Microsoft .NET, Second Edition -- one of the most entertaining computer books I have ever read), but it is far from being a snorer. The main audience for this book will be those who need to get up to speed on the new version of Visual Basic. While not a beginner's book, per se, the writing style and pace are such that a beginner would not get lost. If you are advanced and can only buy one book, aim for Applied Microsoft .NET Framework Programming with Visual Basic .NET. This book, however, is a nice addition to your library, as there are many techniques that few .NET programmers have written about. One last bit of kudos on this book. As with many MSPress books, this tome comes with a copy of the book on CD-ROM. As the book would make a very large paperweight, if carried around, the addition of the e-book gets a huge thumbs up in my book. I wish more publishers would adopt this stance, as I often move from gig to gig and do not like having to carry large libraries with me. As a final note, I sincerely believe MSPress has created some winners in the .NET space. Unlike the red books, who seems to be rushed to be first to market, the books are well thought out, and created, mostly, by people who have worked on the actual .NET product. As such, the books often have a deeper insight than the competition.
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Summary: Excellent book
Review: I enjoyed reading this book (and still am, cause holiday was too short to finish the 1500 pages). It deals with the differences compared to VB6 where appropriate. Materials are clearly written, lots of good examples, both code snippets as well as complete sample programs on CD (I'll need to study the latter as I left my laptop at home...).
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