Rating: 
Summary: OOP Complexities Made Simple
Review: This is the 2nd book in the Wrox Handbook series I have read. The series is AWESOME - all meat and no bones. This book managed to take OOP concepts that illuded me in my college C++ text book (1000+ pages) and make them all very simple and usable in around 350 pages.For moving from VB6 to VB.NET, this book is essential. The book covers as much about concepts as it does about VB.NET's specific syntax, so C# programmers might enjoy the read as well. C# translates to VB.NET almost line for line in my experience (I'm reading a book on GDI+ for C# now and writing all of the examples in VB.NET with no problems). Another nice thing is that the book breaks down the compiled code and shows you how it runs behind the scenes. They explain everything with no knowledge of MISL required, and these examples made me realize that EVERYTHING is just a realy cool shortcut to a method or a memory address. The book also made quick and EASY work of more difficult topics (or at least I used to find them difficult) such as Deligates and Polymorphism. These topics make perfect sense now and I'm finding ways to make use of them to save me dozens (and sometimes hundreds) of lines of code. They had a few places where I felt a slightly better example could have been presented or felt that they left out an important 1-line best practices snippet but those places were very few (maybe 3 places - so, once every 112 pages). Frankly this would be the case in any book on OOP. Honestly, Wrox's book on OOP far exceeds anything I have ever read before and I feel that it took my programming up not just one but two levels. I feel that I'm now a FAR more capable and compitent programmer for having read it. 5 Stars for a VERY complete book on OOP in an easy-to-read, compact form. I'm glad to see that there are now 7 handbooks out with more on the way. These handbooks are great for the VB.NET programmer. Way to go Wrox!
Rating: 
Summary: The Sins of the Book
Review: Ya know, I'm not a genius, but I'm not a dumb guy either. After reading Charles Carroll's review of this book I was excited and went out and bought it. I returned it 14 days later. This book, in my opinion committed a few sins:
1. It was exceptionally boring
2. It was unnecessarily wordy
3. It was confusing; it clarified NOTHING I struggled through 2-3 chapters and said... no...that's it. This one is a dog.
Rating:
Summary: The Sins of the Book
Review: Ya know, I'm not a genius, but I'm not a dumb guy either. After reading Charles Carroll's review of this book I was excited and went out and bought it. I returned it 14 days later. This book, in my opinion committed a few sins:
1. It was exceptionally boring
2. It was unnecessarily wordy
3. It was confusing; it clarified NOTHING I struggled through 2-3 chapters and said... no...that's it. This one is a dog.
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