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Rating: 
Summary: An essential resource, none better for moving to .NT
Review: As a college instructor, I have literally reviewed more than a dozen books on the Visual Basic .NET language. This books is far above its peers. It is well-organized, thorough, insightful, and clearly presents is topics. I can think of no better resource for experienced developers who need to transition to Visual Studio .NET and Visual Basic .NET.With coverage of essential topics such as the Common Language Runtime, the .NET Framework, changes in object-oriented programming, and managing and deploying assemblies, this text covers EVERY essential change in Visual Basic .NET That having been said, this book is not intended for new Visual Basic developers. You will not find the introductory material necessary to get you up to speed in Visual Basic programming. A familiarity with previous Visual Basic versions and a rock-solid understanding of object-oriented programming theory and methodology is essential. This is a hard-core professional reference, ready to give experienced programmers a jump-start into Visual Basic .NET, and its the best professional coverage of changes in .NET that I've found out there.
Rating: 
Summary: Good learning book, but falls a bit short
Review: As I have been a follower of Ted Pattison for quite some time, I was very excited about getting the chance to peruse his new book. While I am not hitting the stars over this work, it is a very solid book on Visual Basic .NET, which ranks it right down the middle for me. I will start with the negative points first. As I read through the first few chapters, there are some pieces that are misleading. For example, when talking about the command line compiler, the author states "Interestinglyk, this utility [vbc.exe] ships with the .NET Framework itself -- neither Visual Studio .NET nor the .NET Framework SDK is needed to compile and run managed code written in Visual Basic .NET." While this is true, it does not convey that the user will either have to get Windows 2003 (or Longhorn, when released), use Windows Update or download the ".NET Redistributable" to have the .NET Framework installed. He also mentions that you will need a "server-like operating system," which means a system based on the Windows NT kernel. As he uses Windows 2000 and XP as examples of "server-like" OSs, I only give a small deduction here. OK, perhaps I am nitpicking a bit. More importantly is the brushing over of some key topics. For example, attributes are mentioned on pages 10 and 11. While the material gives a good background, a more thorough treatise should be included if attributes are going to be mentioned at all. Now that I have the bad news out of the way (which many of you may not care about), the good news is the theory throughout the rest of this book is very well written and formed. For Visual Basic 6 developers, the "Fundamental Changes" chapter is a necessity as is the book on the Common Type System. These two chapters form a heavy foundation for understanding application development in Visual Basic .NET. Following this foundation, the reader will learn about Object Oriented Programming, with chapters on classes, inheritance and abstraction. In the Delegates chapter, I wish the author would have stayed away from the trip down memory lane (C++ pointers) as it is likely to fall on deaf ears on all but the Trivial Pursuit buffs. It does a nice job of setting up the following chapter on Events, however, so the chapter earns high marks overall. There are chapters on interop and deployment, which are very useful to using .NET in the real world. There is also a chapter on working with assemblies, an advanced topic. This book is designed more for the reader who wants to understand the workings of .NET. It is not a coders book (get one of the cookbooks for quick solutions). Most of the code in the book is on the theory, rather than problem solving, level. As such, it is a book to truly sit down and learn .NET, rather than get a few tricks to help you at your job (or show off for a new job?). In the theory department, the book is excellent, despite my nitpicking at some of the introductory topics.
Rating:
Summary: A must-read book, even for experienced VB programmers
Review: I can't be the only VB programmer who has been dragged, kicking and screaming, into the OO world - as I've followed VB through its update history. But in the .NET world OO is everything, including lots of concepts that I've used but never really got round to reading up on and learning from the ground up. Things like inheritance, polymorphism and delegates are obvious examples. And then there's the .NET-specific stuff, like boxing, value-types and reference-types, method over-riding and dynamic binding. OK, so you can get away with knowing "just enough to get by", but this book really does make it easy to catch up on the concepts and terminology - even if you are fairly new to programming. I found it extremely easy to read, sharp and to the point, and even has those nice disguised touches of humor. I can't figure out yet why the FetchSlippers method in my implementation of the SuperDog class still doesn't work! My advice: if you can't explain straight out to someone what boxing or polymorphism means now, you'll be a better programmer for reading this book. Well done Ted and Joe...
Rating:
Summary: Jaw Droppingly Good - A Masterpiece of Technical Writing.
Review: I toyed with the idea of writing a really long and detailed review about the content of this book (like so many you see on Amazon), but in a nutshell, this book is a masterpiece, it's what all technical books should aspire to be, comprehensive, thorough, mercifully free of unnecessary flab, and deeply intelligent in its choice of concise and ingenious examples. It left me with the feeling that I'd been hit by a truck with the word 'clarity' emblazoned on the side.
you won't be a .Net guru afterwards because .Net is Massive! but... it is in my view the best 'foundation' book of any kind I've ever had the pleasure to read, read it and then read Balena, Esposito et al, but I can't emphasize enough read this first, it is hearteningly and informatively brilliant. You WILL understand Visual Basic .net after reading it, after that go on to books that exploit specific namespaces like ADO.net, ASP.net, winforms, XML web services etc.. this book is not about any of that it's about the compiler, assemblies , types and the framework, the plumbing! this is anatomy class, surgery should come later, and as these things go, it's 'the business'!
It just goes to show that there are still people in this world who really do care about what they put their name to.
Rating:
Summary: Jaw Droppingly Good - A Masterpiece of Technical Writing.
Review: I was looking at this book the other day and wasn't sure about it. I've recently picked up a few copies of Addison-Wesley's .NET Developer's series and really loved them, but thought "Oh boy, another VB.NET component book" But, when I looked at the cover, Francesco Balena and Rockford Lhotka both wrote parts of the Foreword and couldnt' have said nicer things. Well, I have everything that either of them have written and respect both of those authors blindly. If Balena or Lhotka say this book is good, it's good. Well, it's fabulous. Pattison is nothing short of amazing. The level of detail he covers things in is almost scarry. If you want to understand your art, and your art is VB.NET, this book is for you.. I couldn't find something to criticize about this book if you paid me to. Great examples, even better explanations and an author that can communicate to anyone - and can get his point across very succinctly! So, now I've now added Pattison to my list of Balena, Appleman, MacDonald and Lhotka as my favorite VB authors!
Rating:
Summary: It doesn't get any better than this
Review: I was looking at this book the other day and wasn't sure about it. I've recently picked up a few copies of Addison-Wesley's .NET Developer's series and really loved them, but thought "Oh boy, another VB.NET component book" But, when I looked at the cover, Francesco Balena and Rockford Lhotka both wrote parts of the Foreword and couldnt' have said nicer things. Well, I have everything that either of them have written and respect both of those authors blindly. If Balena or Lhotka say this book is good, it's good. Well, it's fabulous. Pattison is nothing short of amazing. The level of detail he covers things in is almost scarry. If you want to understand your art, and your art is VB.NET, this book is for you.. I couldn't find something to criticize about this book if you paid me to. Great examples, even better explanations and an author that can communicate to anyone - and can get his point across very succinctly! So, now I've now added Pattison to my list of Balena, Appleman, MacDonald and Lhotka as my favorite VB authors!
Rating:
Summary: It doesn't get any better than this
Review: I was looking at this book the other day and wasn't sure about it. I've recently picked up a few copies of Addison-Wesley's .NET Developer's series and really loved them, but thought "Oh boy, another VB.NET component book" But, when I looked at the cover, Francesco Balena and Rockford Lhotka both wrote parts of the Foreword and couldnt' have said nicer things. Well, I have everything that either of them have written and respect both of those authors blindly. If Balena or Lhotka say this book is good, it's good. Well, it's fabulous. Pattison is nothing short of amazing. The level of detail he covers things in is almost scarry. If you want to understand your art, and your art is VB.NET, this book is for you.. I couldn't find something to criticize about this book if you paid me to. Great examples, even better explanations and an author that can communicate to anyone - and can get his point across very succinctly! So, now I've now added Pattison to my list of Balena, Appleman, MacDonald and Lhotka as my favorite VB authors!
Rating: 
Summary: Unique, Relevant & Well Written
Review: Relevant and interesting .Net book that emphasizes "why" rather than "how" while privileging concepts over code snippets.
The material Pattison and Hummel cover is relevant to all dotnet developers because it revolves around the building of object oriented component-based applications without emphasis to any particular app framework (whether console, asp.net &or windows forms/"smart client" apps). The result is a book that's some what akin to a generic re-usable class (that's a good thing)
Building Apps and Components W/ VB.Net covers the things other books either: ignore, assume you're familiar with, or provide code samples without explaining the context (this observation extends to the MS web application exam too)
Things like:
What a type is
Shared class members VS Instance members
Inheritance
Writing abstract base classes
Scoping considerations
Polymorphism
Interfaces
Event-based programming
Garbage Collection and Object life-time
Values and Objects (Structures Vs Classes)
etc
I concur with the programmer who wrote the following in his review of the book " if you can't explain straight out to someone what boxing or polymorphism means now, you'll be a better programmer for reading this book."
Rating:
Summary: It doesn't get any better.
Review: This book covers the truly essential concepts and techniques for developing applications in VB.Net. It does so with clear short sentences, great and relatively simple examples, appropriate diagrams, no skipping around while learning, and downloadable projects. Enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: In Depth
Review: This book provides a truly in depth look at VB.NET and, very importantly, the .NET framework. This really takes you "under the hood" and shows you what your program is REALLY doing. As noted, this isn't a "code" book, but focuses more on design and theory. If you're already a developer and wish to learn more about VB.NET and the .NET Framwork, this will probably be a good fit. If you're not already comfortable in a programming environment, this definitely would not be a good starting point. Fortunately the authors make clear that you should have prior experience with VB, C++ or Java.
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