Rating: 
Summary: The "Visual" Approach is Superb
Review: (By Edward Trimnell, author of "Why You Need a Foreign Language & How to Learn One," ISBN: 1591133343) The novice programmer is historically faced with three choices: 1. Simple "beginner's" books that only teach the basics
2. Telephone book-sized manuals that are written for pros
3. Expensive training videos This book is a perfect alternative (or supplement) to the above three items. The abundance of screen shots enables the reader to completely understand the entire process. At the same time, the book does not skimp on technical details. If you work through the entire book, you will acquire a strong basis for more difficult VB.net texts.
Rating:
Summary: The "Visual" Approach is Superb
Review: (By Edward Trimnell, author of "Why You Need a Foreign Language & How to Learn One," ISBN: 1591133343) The novice programmer is historically faced with three choices: 1. Simple "beginner's" books that only teach the basics
2. Telephone book-sized manuals that are written for pros
3. Expensive training videos This book is a perfect alternative (or supplement) to the above three items. The abundance of screen shots enables the reader to completely understand the entire process. At the same time, the book does not skimp on technical details. If you work through the entire book, you will acquire a strong basis for more difficult VB.net texts.
Rating:
Summary: Great Book!
Review: Easy and fast introduction to VB .NET - gives you the basics and more in an easily digested manner. I like the visual approach that helps in remembering things and easily create a "mental map" of VB.
Rating: 
Summary: Broken Promises
Review: I am a web developer that wanted to learn how to get into the .NET game. This book was a great start. It quickly helped me learn how to use Visual Studio as well as how to start programming in VB. 70% of the book uses windows forms in the examples, 20% of the book uses web forms, and 10% uses console related examples. Overall, I really like the book and would recommend it to anyone that needed a starting point in .NET and Visual Studio. I only wish that the sections on web based (asp.net) forms were expanded. Unfortunately the asp.net counterpart to this book is written in C# by another author and is no where near as good as this book... bummer!
Rating: 
Summary: Great Intro to Visual Studio and .NET Programming...
Review: I am a web developer that wanted to learn how to get into the .NET game. This book was a great start. It quickly helped me learn how to use Visual Studio as well as how to start programming in VB. 70% of the book uses windows forms in the examples, 20% of the book uses web forms, and 10% uses console related examples. Overall, I really like the book and would recommend it to anyone that needed a starting point in .NET and Visual Studio. I only wish that the sections on web based (asp.net) forms were expanded. Unfortunately the asp.net counterpart to this book is written in C# by another author and is no where near as good as this book... bummer!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Approach to VB
Review: I highly recommend this book to any person wanting to learn VB. Richard Bowman did an excellent job keeping things clear and concise. This is a must have for anyone wanting to learn VB. This book is the best I have seen in years.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Approach to VB
Review: I highly recommend this book to any person wanting to learn VB. Richard Bowman did an excellent job keeping things clear and concise. This is a must have for anyone wanting to learn VB. This book is the best I have seen in years.
Rating:
Summary: Broken Promises
Review: Looked promising but the early code examples failed to run as predicted. The book assumes that they will and offers no help when they do not. Several code example failures, no response to emails requesting help, days of frustration and I was off looking for another book.
Rating:
Summary: My book -- some general information
Review: Since Amazon doesn't have a description of the book posted, I thought I would post some information on the book to help you in your buying decisions. I am the author (Richard Bowman) of the book, and welcome your feedback or questions. The book is seperated into a number of spreads, or two facing pages that cover a particular topic. Each two page spread also contains four screenshots along the bottom with task steps that lead you through the task without the need to read the entire chapter before getting started. Special tip boxes on the right page help you learn related code to the topic. The book contains over 150 of these topics in 13 chapters, ranging from setting up and building projects in Chapter 1 to building Windows Forms applications, Web Form applications, all the way to building full Windows Services. The book also includes seperate chapters on using ASP.NET and ADO.NET with VB.NET. The book is meant for beginners and advanced users alike, but does not spend much time on setting up and using the VB environment. This book (in my opinion) is a great book if you want to learn VB.NET and are already familiar with computers and some programming tasks. It provides a organization that allows both simply reading from cover to cover and as a quick reference guide for a multiude of topics.
Rating: 
Summary: good for beginners
Review: There is a good book for beginners. Few things to note there are errors cropping up in his later chapters like the windows service installer excercises and asynchronous callback example, the update in edit data in datagrid. The last three chapters were very clumpsily put together in which someone with 7 years of exp cannot put together why they were even there when the explanation and example were of poor quality. Don't get me wrong, this is a very good dummies book, however after finishing the blueprint examples, a vb.net beginner wrox book would be the next book one should go for to fill in the gaps
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