Rating: 
Summary: Great book for experienced VB developers who don't know .NET
Review: The unique cover of this book caught my eye and the excellent writing kept me reading. Experienced VB developers will immediately be thankful to Matthew MacDonald for assuming his audience is VB savvy and in no mood to again be 'introduced' to the concept of the IDE and the If-Then-Else statement. The author begins his book with an introduction of the philosophical differences between the .NET framework and classic Visual Studio. He then moves onto .NET terminology and concepts. To his credit, Mr. MacDonald does a good job of addressing the 'why' questions one might have of .NET before introducing the 'how-to' solutions. Personally, this put me into a .NET comfort zone, which I expect, many .NET first-time users will appreciate. The author intentionally steers away from building useless 'Hello World' applications and instead focuses on piecemeal snippets of code that highlight exactly the topic at hand. I've purchased many technical books on a variety of subjects and, by far, this one has been the most readable. In my opinion, this is a must-have for experienced VB programmers who want an introduction to the philosophy, concepts, jargon and syntax of the .NET framework and VB.NET.
Rating: 
Summary: Ony cover half the information
Review: There is so much that is lacking in this book. First, it is not user friendly. It is difficult to follow. Second, it simply does not cover enough information that one needs in order to truly be able to use .Net technology.
Rating:
Summary: Perfect and concise. Thanks man, this rocks!!!
Review: This book has a very good intention and concept - to introduce VB6 developers to VB .Net. In general it is a very good book. Not very deep, but good enough to start working with VB .Net and bee reasonably productive. So, if not for sloppy writing, I would probably give that book all 5 stars.
What do I mean by sloppy? For once, author uses terms object and class interchangeably throughout the book. Sometimes it is contextually understandable what he means, but often it might be very confusing, especially for people relatively new to OO. Then there are errors and typos in code examples. Some of them are also very confusing. For example: on page 80 author introduces the new VB concept - delegates. For VB6 folks this is something fundamentally new and strange.
In code example author defines delegate type and calls it ProcessFunction. Then he defines variable of this type and calls it ProcessDelegate. After that on the same page he shows how to use delegates and assigns value to ProcessFunction and retrieves value from ProcessFunction.
From the context one should understand that in the last two cases the variable ProcessDelegate should be used instead, and that this is just a typo. Yet, given that VB .Net now supports shared properties and methods, when Class (Type) name can be used where one expects to see Object (Variable), this types of mistakes are very confusing and annoying.
I would not go here into more examples of books imperfections. There are some more. Not terribly many, but enough to frustrate.
Would I recommend this book? Yes, if you have patience and some other VB .Net book to resolve inevitable confusions.
This could become a great book in its next edition if author takes time to make it a bit more accurate and precise.
Rating:
Summary: Good idea, good concept, sloppy implementation
Review: This book has a very good intention and concept - to introduce VB6 developers to VB .Net. In general it is a very good book. Not very deep, but good enough to start working with VB .Net and bee reasonably productive. So, if not for sloppy writing, I would probably give that book all 5 stars.
What do I mean by sloppy? For once, author uses terms object and class interchangeably throughout the book. Sometimes it is contextually understandable what he means, but often it might be very confusing, especially for people relatively new to OO. Then there are errors and typos in code examples. Some of them are also very confusing. For example: on page 80 author introduces the new VB concept - delegates. For VB6 folks this is something fundamentally new and strange.
In code example author defines delegate type and calls it ProcessFunction. Then he defines variable of this type and calls it ProcessDelegate. After that on the same page he shows how to use delegates and assigns value to ProcessFunction and retrieves value from ProcessFunction.
From the context one should understand that in the last two cases the variable ProcessDelegate should be used instead, and that this is just a typo. Yet, given that VB .Net now supports shared properties and methods, when Class (Type) name can be used where one expects to see Object (Variable), this types of mistakes are very confusing and annoying.
I would not go here into more examples of books imperfections. There are some more. Not terribly many, but enough to frustrate.
Would I recommend this book? Yes, if you have patience and some other VB .Net book to resolve inevitable confusions.
This could become a great book in its next edition if author takes time to make it a bit more accurate and precise.
Rating:
Summary: Just what the doctor ordered!
Review: This book is exactly what I was looking for. It moves at just the right pace to make it very readable. It is perfect for the VB programmer who is moving to VB.net.
Rating:
Summary: If you want to move to VB.Net, Buy This Book!
Review: This book was terrific. I usually do not read technical books cover to cover, I usually just go to the chapters I need when I need them. However, this book was so good, that I read every page. The author does a terrific job of explaining the differences between VB and VB.Net. It has great examples and terrific insight into .Net, OOP, Bugproofing and error handling, XML, databases, ado.net, and much more. If you are serious about becoming a VB.NET developer, you must have this book.
Rating:
Summary: If you want to move to VB.Net, Buy This Book!
Review: This book was terrific. I usually do not read technical books cover to cover, I usually just go to the chapters I need when I need them. However, this book was so good, that I read every page. The author does a terrific job of explaining the differences between VB and VB.Net. It has great examples and terrific insight into .Net, OOP, Bugproofing and error handling, XML, databases, ado.net, and much more. If you are serious about becoming a VB.NET developer, you must have this book.
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