Visual Basic 6 from Scratch (Scratch Series)

Rating:
Summary: Excellent real world example, but dangerous for beginners
Review: Visual Basic 6 from Scratch is a very good book, but dangerous for beginners. The book text is full of errors, mostly omissions, but fortunately the sample code in the cd seems bug free. Common code errors in the text are omitting function types, upper bounds in loops, and numbers on the right side of the equals sign in expressions. Another problem is that the book has you create a Standard exe file in the very beginning for the application, but it appears that that results in problems later down the road. Instead of a Standard exe file select the other option of Working Model Edition, which automatically puts out more controls in the toolbox. Another problem is that the book uses the MaskedEdit control, but you might not have the license to it, so instead you have to do your best with a regular text box control. The book did not mention nor used the With/End With structure, which comes in handy in many places in the code. All this might leave you Scratching your head. Other than that the book is great. It covers the use of many controls, including many ActiveX controls, covers some database, SQL, and ADO concepts, and covers extensively user defined classes. Best of all is the building of an entire application from Scratch.