Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Discussions of Dealing with Errors in VB
Review: "Visual Basic 6: Error Coding and Layering" is an excellent book for Visual Basic developers of all levels. It is engaging, well-written and thought provoking. I found myself questioning and, in some cases, re-thinking my priorities and approach to the process of writing code. The book includes the best, and most thorough, discussion of dealing with errors in Visual Basic that I have seen anywhere. I highly recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Discussions of Dealing with Errors in VB
Review: "Visual Basic 6: Error Coding and Layering" is an excellent book for Visual Basic developers of all levels. It is engaging, well-written and thought provoking. I found myself questioning and, in some cases, re-thinking my priorities and approach to the process of writing code. The book includes the best, and most thorough, discussion of dealing with errors in Visual Basic that I have seen anywhere. I highly recommend it.
Rating: 
Summary: Some userful information, but most of it impractical
Review: As an independent VB consultant/programmer, I buy a lot of VB books to keep my skills up to date, and to learn new techniques. I had high hopes when I first saw this title. Error handling is a critical requirement in any real-world VB program, but most VB texts don't discuss it in depth.Unfortunately, this book provides a very simplistic approach to error handling. Among other things, it omits any mention of error logging and tracing (i.e., writing out error info to a log file, and tracing the error stack). It's basic architectural recommendations for error handling look cumbersome and unworkable in a real-world context. I agree with the earlier reviewer (Ben Jury) - this book should not be given to junior programmers, or anyone else for that matter.
Rating: 
Summary: Major Disappointment
Review: As an independent VB consultant/programmer, I buy a lot of VB books to keep my skills up to date, and to learn new techniques. I had high hopes when I first saw this title. Error handling is a critical requirement in any real-world VB program, but most VB texts don't discuss it in depth. Unfortunately, this book provides a very simplistic approach to error handling. Among other things, it omits any mention of error logging and tracing (i.e., writing out error info to a log file, and tracing the error stack). It's basic architectural recommendations for error handling look cumbersome and unworkable in a real-world context. I agree with the earlier reviewer (Ben Jury) - this book should not be given to junior programmers, or anyone else for that matter.
Rating: 
Summary: VB6 Error Handling, and so much more....
Review: Every page I read made me wish for two more! Gill has managed to demonstrate in easily understandable words and examples a fully developed framework for creating solid, extensible, easily maintainable software systems. This book hits home across all boundaries of software development. Not just a must read, but a must do, for coders and management alike.
Rating:
Summary: Layering - very interesting architectural approach
Review: I can't say a lot (I'm not a coder but involved with software architecture) about the specific VB error-coding tehniques recommended in the book, but there are plenty of them. The book is focused on error coding concepts and only uses VB to present some examples. Imho the code layering concept alone it's worth enough to buy and read the book. We are testing it now on a project and it looks as good in practice as it sound in theory.
Rating:
Summary: "Awesome" insight on error coding and application layering
Review: I have read this book cover to cover and I am in the process of implementing Tyson Gill's error coding and layering techniques at work. I am a former student of Tyson Gill's VB Database class at UCSD and I have seen him speak at the San Diego VB User Group. I highly recommend this book. You will gain immense insight from Tyson's years of experience in VB software development.
Rating:
Summary: "Awesome" insight on error coding and application layering
Review: I have read this book cover to cover and I am in the process of implementing Tyson Gill's error coding and layering techniques at work. I am a former student of Tyson Gill's VB Database class at UCSD and I have seen him speak at the San Diego VB User Group. I highly recommend this book. You will gain immense insight from Tyson's years of experience in VB software development.
Rating:
Summary: Gives advice which is sometimes inadvisable, or even wrong.
Review: I was asked to order this book for the company I work for to see if we could improve the skills of our junior programmers. After reading the first 6 chapters there was no way I would let our staff read this book. Why? First it is full of incredibly bad programming practices. The author talks about code reuse, which is a concept I am all for. However he his definition of code reuse is to share a module (.BAS) between all your applications, which is a horribly bad thing to do. Code reuse should be 'black box', ie ActiveX dlls or controls. Second point is the book talks about things which are simply not true in VB6. A good example is section 5.5, where he talks about how error handlers work. He talks about the scope of a ON ERROR command -- which he says is only in the current routine, and not any called by the it. This as all VB6 programmers knows is wrong. He also talks about the string parsers such as MID which fail if you ask for something outside the string length which is also not the case. It would seem this book has been written for VB4 as these problems probably were an issue then. (Wasnt for VB5) Third is the horrendous wrapping he performs. He actually wraps the MSGBOX function, to avoid a null being passed into the message. Come on! Any VB programmer knows this is a completely pointless exercise. (In fact the function he suggests does not allow you to pass other MSGBOX parameters) Fourth is the very bad UI design. He suggests if a user doesn't enter a valid value you should not be able to move away from the textbox. (For example.) This is the worst thing you can do. SETFOCUS should only be used in the most exceptional circumstances. It could cause the machine to hang -- as two controls fight for focus, or at the very best frustrate the user. For example, if I would not be able to move away from the textbox to copy data to paste to it. I can go on. He uses variants to much, he suggests always using named parameters. (How much extra time would that take, and for what? A function definition should be static.) He does suggest some good points, like clearing pointers (setting objects to nothing) and sensible variable definition. But the bad completely out weighs the good. Avoid. (And dont give it to young and impressionable programmers.)
Rating:
Summary: Makes making errors a real pleasure!
Review: If there is one area in computers that my knowledge is limited it would have to be programming. So there is a real personal challenge is the reviewing of this book and the author met my every challenge head on and after reading this book I feel that my understanding of Visual Basic has greatly improved. Tyson Gill has over 20 years experience in the software industry and yet he is able to take the complexity out of the subject matter and allow this reader an opportunity to see how simple visual basic can really be. Gill teaches through a step by step, point by point procedures that is so natural it makes we wonder why I didn't get this book sooner. There are an abundance of examples, picture, screen shots, figures and so much more to see and work with this book is a must have for advanced programmers. Pricing on the book will vary and the information makes the purchase a great buy, money well spent. The author is an expert without hesitation and his knowledge can now be passed on to you. From the beginner to the master, Tyson Gill has a book for everyone and everyone should have this book.
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