Sams Teach Yourself Microsoft Visual Basic .NET 2003 in 21 Days, Second Edition

Rating:
Summary: Excellent book!
Review: Excellent book, filled with examples. As complete as you're going to find it. Good, clear text. Recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Great Book!!!!
Review: I bought some books of .NET, including this one, and for many things this is the best one. This is a book to programming from 0. It includes referenceses, sintaxis, good examples, etc. Really I recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: From a new programmer
Review: I did like that this book is geared towards people who have no visual basic knowledge. However, I did not like the fact that it assumed you have a version of visual basic.net that is not standard (Proffesional or Enterprise.) All of the database examples use a database that comes with ms sql server 2000 which just so happens to not be usable by vb.net standard. Maybe the name of this book should have been "Sams Teach Yourself Microsoft Visual Basic.NET 2003 (as long as it isn't standard version) in 21 days.

Rating:
Summary: Down-to-Earth, good for reference
Review: I found this book to be a superbly written manual for learning Visual Basic and as a reference. The language is very clear and easy to understand. Chapters are well structured, making it easy to skip and search through the book if you forget something. Most important, this book is quite comprehensive and has writing on nearly everything you will encounter in the Visual Basic syntax.

In addition, the later chapters focus on some features that most VB books dare not explore. These features include detailed tutorials to databases, web applications and custom user controls. Those later chapters have come in handy and have made this book an all-in-one reference. It eliminated the need for other specialized books, such as an introduction to ASP.NET. Not only does this book teach Visual Basic, but it is an excellent all around reference for the entire .NET platform.

Novice programmers may find this book too straightforward and boring to read. If you can be easily confused with programming, or prefer to learn at a more humorous and relaxing environment, then I recommend one of the "Visual Basic for Dummies" books. If you already have some experience writing software and are interested in getting to the hardcore Visual Basic right away, then "Sam's Teach Yourself Visual Basic .NET 2003" is an excellent choice.

Rating:
Summary: Down-to-Earth, good for reference
Review: I found this book to be a superbly written manual for learning Visual Basic and as a reference. The language is very clear and easy to understand. Chapters are well structured, making it easy to skip and search through the book if you forget something. Most important, this book is quite comprehensive and has writing on nearly everything you will encounter in the Visual Basic syntax.

Novice programmers may find this book too straightforward and boring to read. If you can be easily confused with programming, or prefer to learn at a more humorous and relaxing environment, then I recommend one of the "Visual Basic for Dummies" books. If you already have some experience writing software and are interested in getting to the hardcore Visual Basic right away, then "Sam's Teach Yourself Visual Basic .NET 2003" is an excellent choice.

Rating:
Summary: Great Book, Easy to understand
Review: I threw out 4 or 5 other books before I bought this one. It is very well presented as a basic reference. FYI I am certified in VB6 and have been to a 40 hour vb.net class and still found this to be a very good book. The samples work and they give you a wide variety of code. I see there is another book by Sams with the exact title as this ??? Wasup with that?

Rating:
Summary: Excelent starter book
Review: I went into the store & sat for a couple hours reading a stack of vb.net books & trying to decide which one to get and this was the one. The writing style is a good mix between narative and reference, providing help where needed and reference where chatter would be no additional help.

The style starts out with a simple program, and introduces basic windows forms controls for a few days in a style that starts with the simple ones & moves on to the more complex ones.

It has some decent coverage of basic oop concepts, but is not the authority on the subject, or imo, sufficient for somebody who has never programmed before. Fortunateley the learn as you go way the book is set up will show you some practical application of how objects work (like the example of drawing new ui objects using a rectangle object to hold the dimensions)

The style after several days of reading became dry and I stopped reading. I recognized the basic pattern of the book at that point & the basic methodology of how the vb components were implemented in the language. By the time the book got dry, I recognized how it can be used as a reference in a concise and efficient way; really a best of both worlds situation. After things click for you, you don't need to finish reading the whole 900 pages or so of information in the book, and can go on to use it as a reference for basic program construction tasks (especially ui components).

I havent hit the chapters on asp programming with vb.net, so i can't comment on their quality. I have no interest in that topic, but i can see how it would be valueable. Instead of those chapters, i would rather see a case study program. After all, by the end of the book, you really don't have a whole picture of how to build an app beginning to end (and with save settings hint hint), only the pieces of how to do it & you're left to figure out how to put them together.

The book does gloss over a lot of other topics to make you aware of them & show some basic implementations (mulithreading, creating user controls) with a decent degree of effectiveness, but no depth (which is to be expected in a beginners book).

I now have several books on the topic and i'm using this one as a reference to form controls and how to interact with them most. It is one of a few books you will need on the subject. I firmly believe that there is no ONE book that covers every subject on this topic (and there shouldn't be, its a big topic).

I'm referring to the mspress vb.net cookbook most for finding system programming solutions (dealing with file system and string parsing). When i first bought it, i thought it was a weak collection of trivial stuff, but i'm using it pretty often.

As far as learning the language components, i'd reccommend any of the oop with vb.net books that are out there (i like the o'rieley ones).

This is a great first book to buy on the subject though, as it covers all the bases a little.

p.s. This is the first Sams teach yourself book that has been good to me. The other 6 i've had have all been without much value. They need to take this author on for more books.

Rating:
Summary: Excelent starter book
Review: I went into the store & sat for a couple hours reading a stack of vb.net books & trying to decide which one to get and this was the one. The writing style is a good mix between narative and reference, providing help where needed and reference where chatter would be no additional help.

The style starts out with a simple program, and introduces basic windows forms controls for a few days in a style that starts with the simple ones & moves on to the more complex ones.

It has some decent coverage of basic oop concepts, but is not the authority on the subject, or imo, sufficient for somebody who has never programmed before. Fortunateley the learn as you go way the book is set up will show you some practical application of how objects work (like the example of drawing new ui objects using a rectangle object to hold the dimensions)

The style after several days of reading became dry and I stopped reading. I recognized the basic pattern of the book at that point & the basic methodology of how the vb components were implemented in the language. By the time the book got dry, I recognized how it can be used as a reference in a concise and efficient way; really a best of both worlds situation. After things click for you, you don't need to finish reading the whole 900 pages or so of information in the book, and can go on to use it as a reference for basic program construction tasks (especially ui components).

I havent hit the chapters on asp programming with vb.net, so i can't comment on their quality. I have no interest in that topic, but i can see how it would be valueable. Instead of those chapters, i would rather see a case study program. After all, by the end of the book, you really don't have a whole picture of how to build an app beginning to end (and with save settings hint hint), only the pieces of how to do it & you're left to figure out how to put them together.

The book does gloss over a lot of other topics to make you aware of them & show some basic implementations (mulithreading, creating user controls) with a decent degree of effectiveness, but no depth (which is to be expected in a beginners book).

I now have several books on the topic and i'm using this one as a reference to form controls and how to interact with them most. It is one of a few books you will need on the subject. I firmly believe that there is no ONE book that covers every subject on this topic (and there shouldn't be, its a big topic).

I'm referring to the mspress vb.net cookbook most for finding system programming solutions (dealing with file system and string parsing). When i first bought it, i thought it was a weak collection of trivial stuff, but i'm using it pretty often.

As far as learning the language components, i'd reccommend any of the oop with vb.net books that are out there (i like the o'rieley ones).

This is a great first book to buy on the subject though, as it covers all the bases a little.

p.s. This is the first Sams teach yourself book that has been good to me. The other 6 i've had have all been without much value. They need to take this author on for more books.

Rating:
Summary: Excelent starter book
Review: I went into the store & sat for a couple hours reading a stack of vb.net books & trying to decide which one to get and this was the one. The writing style is a good mix between narative and reference, providing help where needed and reference where chatter would be no additional help.

The style starts out with a simple program, and introduces basic windows forms controls for a few days in a style that starts with the simple ones & moves on to the more complex ones.

It has some decent coverage of basic oop concepts, but is not the authority on the subject, or imo, sufficient for somebody who has never programmed before. Fortunateley the learn as you go way the book is set up will show you some practical application of how objects work (like the example of drawing new ui objects using a rectangle object to hold the dimensions)

The style after several days of reading became dry and I stopped reading. I recognized the basic pattern of the book at that point & the basic methodology of how the vb components were implemented in the language. By the time the book got dry, I recognized how it can be used as a reference in a concise and efficient way; really a best of both worlds situation. After things click for you, you don't need to finish reading the whole 900 pages or so of information in the book, and can go on to use it as a reference for basic program construction tasks (especially ui components).

I havent hit the chapters on asp programming with vb.net, so i can't comment on their quality. I have no interest in that topic, but i can see how it would be valueable. Instead of those chapters, i would rather see a case study program. After all, by the end of the book, you really don't have a whole picture of how to build an app beginning to end (and with save settings hint hint), only the pieces of how to do it & you're left to figure out how to put them together.

The book does gloss over a lot of other topics to make you aware of them & show some basic implementations (mulithreading, creating user controls) with a decent degree of effectiveness, but no depth (which is to be expected in a beginners book).

I now have several books on the topic and i'm using this one as a reference to form controls and how to interact with them most. It is one of a few books you will need on the subject. I firmly believe that there is no ONE book that covers every subject on this topic (and there shouldn't be, its a big topic).

I'm referring to the mspress vb.net cookbook most for finding system programming solutions (dealing with file system and string parsing). When i first bought it, i thought it was a weak collection of trivial stuff, but i'm using it pretty often.

As far as learning the language components, i'd reccommend any of the oop with vb.net books that are out there (i like the o'rieley ones).

This is a great first book to buy on the subject though, as it covers all the bases a little.

p.s. This is the first Sams teach yourself book that has been good to me. The other 6 i've had have all been without much value. They need to take this author on for more books.

Rating:
Summary: Solid book
Review: I won't give this book 1 star simply because there is an error in it. At that rate all the books would only get a star. No, this book teaches the exciting new language Visual Basic.Net and does a good job of it. After 21 days you will not be an expert programmer (it takes more than 21 days to become an expert in any field), but you will have a solid foundation to build on. You will have covered all the basics, and better yet will have an ideah on finding solutions to your problems.