Rating: 
Summary: A Good Book, But Far From Being Perfect...
Review: In this book [the author] jumped the gun all the time, giving readers codes that he hadn't explained. Often he would forget to explain things (eg on page 198, he forgot to explain "with...end with" entirely). He also tended to throw somewhat more advanced codes too early on in his examples - and he tried to get away with it by saying things such as "...don't worry about it, we'll come to that later..." Since he did this all the time throughout his book, at least you can't fault him for being inconsistent. On the one hand, I understand [the author's] dilemma - it's hard to completely isolate some concept of a programming language without also touching on some others. But if he had sequenced his example codes more logically, and resisted adding codes from future topics, readers might find his book easier to read, and he might find that he needn't say "come to that later" so frequently. The weakest chapter is probably chapter 6 (making data useful). [The author] seemed to be in a great hurry to finish up this chapter before going to his dinner party. He was very careless in explaining arrays, and he barely scratched the surface of the idea of multi-dimensional arrays. The multi-dimensional arrays topic seemed to have been added as an after-thought, since Pete devoted no more than a page for it. This is quite a gross and unforgivable omission, given that this is such an important topic, even for beginners. [The author] writes in a personal way. You may be surprised to learn that despite the negative points I raised, I would still recommend the book, not to complete beginners (who'd become terribly frustrated), but to new programmers who have read, say, John Smiley's "Learn to Program" book. [The author] teaches good programming practice, and he does explain many concepts beautifully. You'd just have to get use to his style, and not to be put off by his constant use of the phrase "I'll come to that later..." One last point: if you're one of those meticulous readers who simply can't skip ahead without fully comprehend the current page you're working on, you can save yourself some hair by avoiding this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Covers Everything But Coding
Review: I am a beginner to Visual Basic. I have some previous C++ experience. So far I've finished 14 out of 18 chapters. I've learned about adding control buttons, database access, menus, etc. It's all very top-level about creating a graphical user interface. There's very little about the actual coding itself and the coding syntax. The basics are missing. For example, I went to another book to find out how to read in a file, which Peter Wright does not cover. Also, there are many errors in the book. I'm not very impressed.
Rating: 
Summary: Decent, but author's "cutesy" style is distracting
Review: For all the other reviewers that complain there is not enough "meat and detail", LOOK AT THE COVER!!!! "BEGINNING" is the largest word in print! The book covered topics well (for me, a beginner). I think the author could have cut 1-200 pages out of the book (with no loss of useful information) by leaving out conversational anecdotes and observations. It's one thing to blather on when helping the reader to understand, it's another to do it just to up the page count. I found it time-wasting and distracting. I did get lots of VB answers, though. (Just had to sift through the wordiness).
Rating:
Summary: Not Bad
Review: I read this book for my college course. Not a bad book for beginners but a little light on an explanations dealing with CLASS MODULES. I would Concider this a good book for the beginner, other than that one aspect of the book. A good ref. for the beginner VB programer.
Rating:
Summary: Good intro but not a good reference
Review: I used this book as a way to jump-start writing VB6. Since I knew QBasic and had worked with VB3 (long ago) I was able to skip over some of the introductory material and head for the sections on databases and ADO. Wright does not cover any subject in great detail or theory, but there's enough here for someone to get up to speed fairly quickly. Despite the author's insistence that the book is intended for novices, I don't think that it really could be used by someone who has never programmed. You certainly need some familiarity with code structure and databases to really understand what he's trying to do. Given that, you can be writing simple apps after a few days worth of work and without too much pain. However, to go much beyond that you'll need to find a decent reference showing more details about commands, properties, controls and so forth, as well as spending a lot of time reading help files. I knocked an extra star off my evaluation for two reasons: 1) Wright's failure to address the issue of error handling, something noted by a number of reviewers, and 2) A HORRENDOUS job of copy-editing by Wrox. By the 4th edition, the text should have been purged of its numerous typos, run-on sentences and gradeschool grammatical errors. I stopped counting after about a hundred or so goofs and still had several chapters remaining. Among the more annoying, "setup" is used as a verb throughout (that's a noun; the verb is two words - "set up"), and other errors such as the use of "your" to mean "you are" and "it's" as a possessive form pepper the book. The many mistakes do nothing but reinforce the stereotype of coders as illiterate geeks. Neither Wright nor Wrox has any justification for letting so much slip through in a supposedly professional publication.
Rating:
Summary: Had the book for a class text
Review: The book is fairly easy reading and reads fast. Some of the examples however are alittle vague and particularly in chapter 8 the homework is hopeless. It could have been alot simplier for a beginner. I think alittle of the author's ego in his ability to program got in the way of a beginner's view of programming
Rating: 
Summary: Great Book for beginner!
Review: While it is true that sometimes the author does NOT completely explain a complex topic or explain why you would use a feature, this is a very good book for the beginner. I have never done any real programming before and now I have a much better idea on how to use VB effectively. You may need another book to take you to the next level, but this one is a great start! Also.....I am impressed with MOST Wrox books! I always thought that QUE and SAMS published good programming books but they "pale" in comparison to the WROX books. It seems that Wrox has done a great job in getting authors that can TEACH and not just throw ou a bunch of information. I'm looking forward to my next Wrox book.
Rating: 
Summary: There's not much here
Review: Ivor Horton's book on C++ is great. Peter Wright's book on Visual Basic 6 is a joke. He skims over the material in a laughable fashion, not even providing a single code example for some topics. How you can write a book on a programming language and not provide a code example for using mulitdimensional arrays is just plain BAD. Then on numerous occassions the author blows the subject off by saying, "That's all there is to it, so I'm not going to dwell on it anymore." The truth is that there is a lot more to a concept like arrays for example than the skimpy coverage he provides. Books like this just want to make me write my own that much more.
Rating:
Summary: a decent beginner book, but not a complete reference
Review: This book is a good place to start with Visual Basic programming, but it is NOT a Visual Basic language reference. Consequently, after getting started with VB programming using this book, I found myself just two weeks later in the market for a language reference that I can use to explore the syntax obscurities of the language. Although the book lives up to its title, BEGINNING VB6, it will not be the only text you need on the subject.
Rating:
Summary: Good way or getting acknowledged with VB 6
Review: When I first bought this book, I put it to the side thinking that it will not give me more knowledge than I already have ( I know ASP ) but when I opened it and I started reading it, I realized that this is a good step into the VB environment of the Visual Studio. I learned the basics and now I am ready for VB Components for ASP. If you are lazy then forget about this or any book. IF you want to learn something you have to make effort and show interest as opposed to complaining. Go figure
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