Visual Basic Language Developer's Handbook (Developer's Handbook)

Rating:
Summary: Good Reference for VBA
Review: Along with Gilbert and Getz's seminal Access developers' guides over the versions, this is an excellent book both for reference and to read to get different ideas about how to approach things that one may have worked around in earlier versions.

Almost essential given the poor quality of Microsoft's documentation unless you know the exact question to ask.

Rating:
Summary: Um bom livro um tanto maçudo
Review: Embora tenha gostado do livro acho um pouco maçudo e com uma leitura um pouco chata. Cobrindo bastante bem as classes e algumas API's.

É sempre bom ter um livro desses na pratilheira.

Rating:
Summary: Should be titled Visual Basic for Applications Handbook
Review: I was very disappointed with this book. I expected to receive a book on Visual Basic not VBA. While the information is useful for VBA programmers this IS NOT a VB Book.

Rating:
Summary: Should be titled Visual Basic for Applications Handbook
Review: This book, the VBA6 version of Ken Getz's and Mike Gilbert's VBA Developer's Handbook, is a masterpiece. This book contains information on string handling, number/date/time formats, searching and sorting algorithms, using the registry, dealing with the networking API, and just about everything else that you could imagine you might need to use.

It may be true that the last version of the book was passed over by many VB developers who did not recognize that it applied to them; hopefully this will no longer be a problem since the title is one they can pay attention to. And so they should! Its ability to not just provide good code but really explain the best way to write good code yourself is almost unparalleled. They also provide a website that contains updates and new information, an idea I have since used myself after seeing how powerful such an approach can be.

The only thing I could ever fault Ken and Mike for is that they do not cover all of the international issues that can come up in the VB language. On the other hand, they always refer those people to me and my book now, so I guess I can't really even complain about that!

Owning this book is like having Ken Getz an Mike Gilbert on your own development team. And when you consider the fact that Ken probably earn more per hour than the cost of the whole book, and that Mike works for Microsoft so you could not get him to work for you at all. Therefore, anyone who does not own this book has just gotten rid of two of the most potentially valuable members of their development team at the best possible price!

Disclaimer: I am mentioned in the acknowledgements of this book, but that is not the reason I wrote this review. I am flattered to be recognized by them as someone of worth, as I think the two of them are worth significantly more. :-)

Rating:
Summary: Excellent reference, well worth the price
Review: well laid out book with good explanations and examples,includes code examples on the cd as well as the sdk. I especially enjoyed the section on creating dynamic data structures using class modules. Section on the windows API has covers some of the vba functions compared to the API equivalent and lists how the functions differ. Section on the registry was very helpful to me.