Fair, more intermediate than beginner...
I got the book for free. I am an ASP.NET developer in beginning stages (less than 6 mos).
I immediately noticed that the book seemed more for intermediate level developers than beginners because of the sentence structure and vocabulary in the programming sense. I felt that the authors were writing to a target audience that excluded myself.
There are many things beginners will want more details about when they are not available. Some of the sentences don't make much sense without re-reading several times. The data access chapter is intimidating. The paragraphs at times can be short while the code samples are long. Also agreed is the fact that the code samples themselves can be weak. Code that is too short/weak is not usable for illustrating useful points, whereas code that is too long/complex frustrates the reader. Some of the code in the book seems to go from one spectrum to the other, not settling somewhere in the middle.
I liked how the book covers a little bit about the web and web forms in addition to Windows forms. I also liked how the book seemed to have relevant chapters on many different things, like deployment, XML, OOP, etc. To me however, this book may be more of a reference than an introduction to VB.NET.
I think the data access chapter (in time) will be very useful to me. The error-handling section and OOP section are already helpful.
An Absolute NO!
This is one of the worst Programming books I have Ever seen.This book assumes you know everything! It can be a fair book only for a experienced Visual Basic.NET programmer.
It does a poor job in teaching, organizing ideas.
The book is around 650 pages; it has lots of irrelative stories are inside it.
I'm not sorry for the money I wasted on this book but rather for my precious time I wasted on this, while learning very little.
Bottom line:
If you are trying to learn VB.Net or migrating from VB6 to VB.NET there many better books in the market.
Everything in its right place...
I understand why the people who wrote these other reviews were disappointed. But I don't think this book is useless. If you want a training manual for Visual Studio.NET, definitely go elsewhere. However, if you're like me, and you want to understand how the technologies came about, how they relate to each other, and how they fit into the grand scheme of things, don't write this book off too quickly. There are a lot of good narrative passages that have helped me over some basic humps.I totally agree that the code samples are weak... I'm only on day three and have found examples that just simply DON'T do what the book says they will... But I'm still going to read it for the narrative, and then get another, more training oriented book for learning the IDE's ins and outs.
good starting book
ive read these reviews, and im not stupid, but im not exactly the smartest thing. The gripe about this book is the fact that the author gives code but does not explain where to put the code, that it because the author is just showing you what the code will look like. It's like lookin at a window display and realizing that thats just what it looks like, and not what it looks like in your house, i hope that helps, im a big fan of SAMS work, and i hope any beginner seriously buy this book
Not good at all
Just like the other reviewer noted, I got to day three and that's as far at it goes. The book lets you do a sample "hello world" program, and gives a small taste of using the IDE and then leaves you on your own with 600 more pages to go. The IDE example shows you how to make a button and a text box. You are not shown how to make them even somewhat functional however.
The book (seems) to be giving some examples. These examples are called code that the programmer would write. The book does not even explain where to write the code. I know that sounds impossible and you probably think that going back and re-reading the first 50 pages would give a clue...but it does not.
I am very happy to know that I'm not the only one who cannot go any further with this book because I felt like I was missing something. I now have a little faith in the reviewers at AMZN and will probably pick up one of the other VB.net books I find that is recommended.
I actually have some java programming experience and cannot use this book. Therefore I would expect it to be impossible for those who have absolutely no programming experience. I say that I'm happy to know that I'm not the only one who finds the book useless, but am very annoyed by the loss of the 40 bucks I paid for this truly useless book. I do not like to say this about an author's work, but the book is not good. We all seem to agree.
(13 reviews)
