Rating: 
Summary: good fundamentals book; not advanced; doesn't go deep
Review: As an experienced developer, I thought this book was not bad. I was looking for a book to strengthen up my class building skillset, but most of this material is just a presentation of fundamentals that I already know. Unfortunately, this book failed to clarify on topics where I lack a strong understanding because they don't really go very deep. Writing is repetitive and sometimes hard to decipher.
Rating: 
Summary: Superb:-)
Review: As an experienced VB6 developer I was always frustrated by the lack of OO capabilities. .NET fixes this. This book provides the right balance of reference material and tutorial material. It serves well for wanting a quick answer and equally as well as a general OOP guide specific to VB.NET. I particularly like the 'best practice' feel of this book. .NET as a whole is quite daunting for VB6 developers; we almost have too many options now available. Learning VB.NET from a VB6 background can be confusing because it's difficult to know where to use all of these new techniques now available. This book goes a very long way to showing us how to write VB.NET classes in a pragmatic way.
Rating:
Summary: excellent book
Review: Complete and very detailed. This book could be a text book for teaching a course of class design. I am very satisfied with the verbose approach as it is more understandable (sorry, my english is not as good as I wish). There are some minor bugs in code but I made my own apps following the written code examples, not the downloaded ones and corrected this bugs.
Rating:
Summary: Just what the doctor ordered.
Review: Ever been looking for a book but you were not sure what you were looking for because you were not sure what you don't know.
That was me before I finally found it. I am a self taught VB programmer who was REALLY struggling with the OOP concepts. Before buying this book I had purchased 4 or 5 other VB.NET books that didn't cut the mustard at getting me over the OOP hump. And then I found this book.
This book takes nothing for granted and explains so much in such great detail. What is garbage collection? What happens when you call a Reference Type by Value? By Reference? What is constructor chaining? What is an interface? What is inheritance? (And on and on it goes knocking out one question as a time to the tune of HUNDREDS of questions. I have now red this book four times. (Scanned twice, read once, and now am doing a slow thorough read.) It is TRUE that this book is NOT on Object Modeling/Object Oriented Design (now if I could just get my brain wrapped around that). But that is not a great starting point for learning .NET. What I didn't know that I needed to know was that the CLASS is at the heart of OOP fundamentals. Now I would not say I am an expert, but I can pretty accurately conceptualize OOP principles and how .NET works.
If you are in a similar situation, this book is THE book for you.
SBS
Rating: 
Summary: Great Book. Well worth money. Don't let WROX name scare you.
Review: Finally WROX has produced a complete book that satisfies and is not so thick if you drop it on your foot it will break your toes. It is dirt cheap considering the wealth and quality of information. If you are a beginning to Intermediate VB.net programmer run do not walk to store and get it! The biggest omission is attributes - they should have been in this book.WROX books are often oversized and incomplete or part of a family of books that means you have to figure out which of many books to learn one thing* and even if you buy ALL the books surprisingly you will be missing some vital commands as their editors allow much overlap and rarely check if they covered all relevant commands. * Fast Track VB.net, Beginning VB.net, Beginning VB.net w/ASP.net, Beginning .NET Web Services with VB.NET, Professional ASP.NET Web Services with VB.NET, Professional VB.net, VB.net Namespace Reference, professional ASP.net w/VB.net, Beginning ASP.NET Databases using VB.NET, ad nauseum I usually hate the first chapter in every WROX book. It is usually unsatisfying fluff. This Chapter 1: Defining Types is an awesome chapter. Insightful, useful, easy to read and concise. Great way to start! Chapter 2: Type Members
Chapter 3: Methods
are also great chapters. Easy to read, no fluff, code samples and plenty of insight. Chapter 4: Constructors and the Object Life Cycle
very thorough and clear. The Singleton and factory basics were nice touch. It is a shame they did not cover garbage collection and serialization better. These are very incomplete explanations. Chapter 5: properties
Chapter 6: Events
are just nicely done. I have 47 books next to my desk on VB.net and they all have lousy code samples and over wrought explanations of delegates. The Events and delegate code samples and explanations are what I wish I had months ago. Chapter 7: Inheritance and Polymorphism
this is a decent chapter and easy to read. It however should probably point people to other sources to follow through (WROX should really start including bibliographies with their books) since even if people mechanically can use Inheritance and Interfaces they need be pointed to relevant pattern design, Refactoring and UML books to gain wisdom since this chapter is all knowledge and no wisdom.
Refactoring
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0201485672/learnasp
and
Design Patterns Explained
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0201715945/learnasp
are my recommend reading for anyone doing OO in any language. Chapter 8: Code Organization and MetaData
anther winner! GAC and Reflection are nice touch.
Rating:
Summary: Not what I expected
Review: I bought this book expecting to learn how to derive from classes in the Framework namespace, expecially how to derive from Webforms, etc, and to get some insight into what and how to inherit Custom Controls, etc. Instead, this book is simply a rehash of C++ 101 cloaked in .NET terminolgy,i.e., basic C++ stuff is covered and that's about it. HOWEVER, for anyone COMPLETELY new to C# or .NET, it would be an excellent starter book. If your looking for advanced techniques or insights into the .NET framework namespace, then definitely pass on this one.
Rating:
Summary: Good at exactly what the title says
Review: I had to write this because I get sick of some of the reviewers just slamming stuff for the wrong reasons. First of all, the book definitely does a good job of teaching those who are new to .NET, and more specifically those coming from VB 6 or other non-OO languages, how to design OO classes in VB.NET. It is more of a design book for YOUR classes and not how to derive from forms. Just about EVERY .NET book I've picked up has shown me that, so thank GOD this one came from an angle that I may want to design a class. I would imagine that if you're a C++ programmer you wouldn't want to pickup this book because it says Visual Basic .NET Class Design. If you come from a C++ background, I have to assume that you probably want to use C# since A: it is obviously closer to home with what you've been using and B: there are some features that it implements that VB.NET has been left out in the dark on once again. If you want to get a handle on VB.NET class design, especially if you're coming from VB 6, you should start with this book. The main reason is that it just covers the OO facets that will be very new to you in .NET. Instead of being overwhelmed by some other books that hit you with a lot at once, this book will help you with the new adventure into OO programming. You will definitely need to pickup a couple other books, but this book is a GREAT starter book. To give this book 1 star for errata or for saying it talks to you like you're stupid is absurd. Take these with a grain of salt as they don't even post what they do for a living in their profile. I have developed business applications for 4 years and they are crazy for knocking this book in that fashion.
Rating:
Summary: Good at exactly what the title says
Review: I had to write this because I get sick of some of the reviewers just slamming stuff for the wrong reasons. First of all, the book definitely does a good job of teaching those who are new to .NET, and more specifically those coming from VB 6 or other non-OO languages, how to design OO classes in VB.NET. It is more of a design book for YOUR classes and not how to derive from forms. Just about EVERY .NET book I've picked up has shown me that, so thank GOD this one came from an angle that I may want to design a class. I would imagine that if you're a C++ programmer you wouldn't want to pickup this book because it says Visual Basic .NET Class Design. If you come from a C++ background, I have to assume that you probably want to use C# since A: it is obviously closer to home with what you've been using and B: there are some features that it implements that VB.NET has been left out in the dark on once again. If you want to get a handle on VB.NET class design, especially if you're coming from VB 6, you should start with this book. The main reason is that it just covers the OO facets that will be very new to you in .NET. Instead of being overwhelmed by some other books that hit you with a lot at once, this book will help you with the new adventure into OO programming. You will definitely need to pickup a couple other books, but this book is a GREAT starter book. To give this book 1 star for errata or for saying it talks to you like you're stupid is absurd. Take these with a grain of salt as they don't even post what they do for a living in their profile. I have developed business applications for 4 years and they are crazy for knocking this book in that fashion.
Rating:
Summary: Where's the C#
Review: I see your new handbook books, Class Design, Remoting, and Threading, these area specific type books are long overdue from publishers. Great job,however, they are all for visual basic, curious? When will the C# editions be out? I'll take two C#'s each thank you!
Rating:
Summary: Great book, many bugs
Review: I think this is a great VB.NET book; especially for those coming from VB6 or earlier versions. There are a lot of bugs in the code sample. Most are simple things like variables sharing names with properties or no idea which namespace to import. Good read overall though.
| 
