Rating: 
Summary: Too High Expectations
Review: This book is great for those who have no programming experience if you have some other instruction to help you through the tough points. I took a Cont. Ed. class that used this book and I found it incredibly useful!! Since then, I have had more programming experience and now I use this book as a great reference. It does have some errors and type o's but what programming book doesn't. Those who are not professional programmers should not learn a new language from just a book!! Its like trying to build an engine with just a manual and a motor. Visual Basic is getting a bad rap because its so easy, people are just slapping unsound app's together without understanding the architecture. Remember, programming isn't easy and if you expect to be a whiz and make lots of money after reading any book, your expectations are way too high. If you are new to programming, no matter how smart you are, find a class or a mentor and use the book as a tool!!
Rating: 
Summary: Bored after page 400 and lost....newbie VB user
Review: First of all, you will see alot of bogus reviews put up here by the authors and their publishers and buddies. This is not one of them!!! I had a program in mind which I can sell and probably make several thousand a month from in profit. But, I needed to learn VB to make it work and package the idea for sale. As usual, by page 200, I was starting to get lost in the technical programming code and language, with not any real useful info on how to build an application or how to accomplish my Outline of tasks I have written down on paper. I am a Network Engineer by trade and have been taking a different direction to make money on the side.If you want a book cramming boring code that is difficult to digest and get a feel for what is going on, this is the one for you. It starts out great holding your hand, but by page 200, I was confused with all of the different code variables and their uses with no real examples on how to put it all together. I am on page 475 right now, and am hoping the author salvages the rest of this novel and makes me more interested and knowledgeable to help me develop an application that I can actually sell. That is what the title says, "Open this book as a Novice and finish it as a Pro." Let's hope this is the case, or Amazon will be giving me a refund. I programmed Cobol 10-15 years ago and basic. My father has been a programmer for 30 years. So, I am not an idiot. Maybe a bit unrealistic on the time it will take to learn this stuff, but this book hasn't help me do anything yet but design the layout of my application, and I still have problems with that for different screen resolutions. I hope other's don't have the same experience or expectations that I had. New to programming, forget this book and find one that will give you something useful, unfortunately, there probabably isn't one out there. As usual with all Microsoft products, it will probably take me 6 months to begin to figure out what the heck I am doing and watch 10s of thousands of dollars in potential profit go down the tubes while I figure out how to use VB 6 :( Finally, you can download the code in the author's examples from the press web site. I was disappointed to find many of the examples asking for path e:\xxxx\xxx looking for a CDrom or something to load the code, ultimately not working to bring up the example. Shows me a lack of detail which I personally never overlook in my own work. These little simple mistakes that start to pile up on one another, definitely upsetting the reader and frustrating them. Like one code example to center text in a form top/bottom/side/side, well after typing the code in exactly as shown, the thing would be at the top of the page centered, not centered top/bottom. These mistakes seem far and few between luckily. But, you sit staring at the code and screen wondering if you are an imcompetent fool and can't type simple letters on the screen because of this, definitely deflating your confidence for learning this stuff in any reasonable amount of time. I hope someone else finds this book more useful than me. But, you are sadly mistaken if you think you will pick this book up and know how to write a program that you could sell by the end.
Rating: 
Summary: This book didn't help
Review: This book has several errors. The example tutorials in this book are okay. However it doesn't help me with writing more complex programs. For example, I am working on a program to run my own play-by-mail wrestling league to rival and crush the stagnant IWA, run by Johnny B. Gary Cornell's way of describing syntax statements just didn't help me in my quest.
Rating:
Summary: Too wordy
Review: Basically, it is a good book. Clearly teachs the Visual Basic programming. However, the author usually does not hit the key points right the way, instead, hides the key points in huge paragraphs. It wasted a lot of my time to read this wordy book. I believe if the author could remove the unnecessary words, he can cut the size of the book by half and make this book even better.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Visual Basic book!!
Review: I have to agree with everyone else who reviewed this book below. I'm a C programmer new to VB and needed a VB beginner book. A friend of mine who's a VB programmer recommended this one to me. I found it to be one of the best computer programming books i've ever read. Excellent presentation, code examples, and explanations. After reading this book I was able to understand why this author has won the Visual Basic Programmer's Journal reader's choice award. Excellent book!
Rating: 
Summary: Unbelievable!!!!
Review: DON"T DARE PICK THIS BOOK IF YOU ARE A BEGINNER IN VB PROGRAMMING. I have read quite a few Vb programming books for beginners and this has been the worst so far!! I do not beleive the earlier reveiwers of this book have actually read it! There are endless typo's, POORLY DOCUMENTED CODE, Cornell cannot decide which style to adopt in Dim statements(i.e.Dim I as Integer or Dim I%) There are no exercises at the end of the chapters to help internerlise concepts and please!! who writes a book on programming in 1998 without a DISC!!!!....I could go on forever. This one is a definitely a THUMBS DOWN!!!! This book is way too tedious for a beginner!!!!
Rating:
Summary: excellent beginner's book
Review: i thought the first five chapters of this book were excellent. Cornell covers all basics of the visual basic programming envirnoment. He does a good job explaining and outlining the different aspects of visual basic from forms to controls. But I found the book difficult to follow when Cornell tries to explain some advanced programming techniques. I have found myself repeatdly rereading sections trying to figure out what Cornell is trying to say. Also I feel the code is poorly documented. He relies on the code self-documenting itself to much and doesn't explain what a certain line of code is doing and why it belongs there. But all in all I think it the book is worth while for beginners.
Rating:
Summary: GREAT!
Review: Simple. Fun. Easy. One of the best programming books I have ever read. Makes VB6 feel so easy!
Rating:
Summary: Need more books from Gary Cornell !!!!
Review: Garry Cornell is a true programmer on VB, futhermore, he *knows* how to explain it in words. This book is a MUST read for beginner !!!! Don't start with the Programmer guide comes with VB 6 - it will destroy your interests in VB . So I just wish he writes more books on other languages -
Rating:
Summary: A Materpiece!
Review: This VB book has become my favorite. For me to be saying it's my favorite is really saying something because I have read and reviewed dozens of Visual Basic books on my "Visual Basic Book Reviews" web site. Every beginner to Visual Basic must start with this book. Gary Cornell's University teaching experience in Visual Basic becomes very apparent when reading this book. Every aspect of VB is presented in a clear and concise manner. This one is a definite keeper!!
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