Rating:  - Exhaustive, and worth every penny.
I am experienced with `Top-Down' programing in Basic. When I finally bought Visual Basic.NET, I discovered that it was a whole different animal from what I was used to, and the Object oriented approach to programing is something I'm still having trouble getting my mind around. (Too many old habits to unlearn.) I needed a thorough book to guide me. That is what I have found in Visual Basic.NET How To Program (Second Edition) by Deitel.
The authors cover a tremendous amount of material. The topics and Visual Basic key words are presented at a swift pace, yet the authors cover each subject in depth. As a result, the book is thick, information dense, and a bit of a dry read.
Some of the more interesting features of Visual Basic wind up pushed off until deep in the book by the depth with which the fundamentals are covered. For example, Timers are not introduced until almost midway through the text, at roughly page 600. And while a simple type of page-flip animation is introduced in the later chapters, bit map graphics, collision detection, sprites, masks, and other game-oriented essentials are not covered at all. This is understandable considering the intent of this textbook. Arcade game programing is simply outside the scope of the book, and had they been included with the same depth, we would probably be looking at a $150 book of 3000 pages or more.
The best way to deal with an information dense book such as this one is to keep a highlighter and supply of blank index-tabs at hand. As each new key item is presented, make and place a tab, encyclopedia style in rows, along the edge. This allows you to instantly flip open to what ever topic you need to review as you study and work with your own programs. I have almost three full rows of tabs (70 in number) for the first 400 pages of the book alone.
There have only been two places in the book I struggled with due to lack of sufficient explanation. As an aid to anyone who plans to buy this book, I will include a couple footnotes at the end of this review to help you over those two areas.
Another very strong point for this book is that the example codes are current and compatible with the latest version of .NET. Many supposedly `.NET' texts were written using beta versions of .NET, and as a result are often not fully compatible. There is nothing more frustrating then trying an example code only to have it blow up because the author used a VB 6.0 command which is no longer supported. The Deitel book does not suffer from this problem.
So, 5 Stars! And if Deitel ever decides to write a book on .NET graphics, I'll be first in line to buy one, even at $70 a copy. This leads me to my one real gripe, which is not associated with the content of the book itself.
My gripe is that I paied a LOT of money for a 1500 page paperback. The book itself is worth the price, but this is a book which deserves a hard cover; especially considering the fine quality of the paper, the colored texts, the cost, and the information dense content. It is a book I will return to again and again, so it pains me to see the edges of the paper covers starting to show foxing and wear in spite of my best efforts to protect them. This is a university textbook after all, worthy of any library, so why not put a hardcover on it??
-Science_1
** FootNotes **
Note: Page 65 &67, Changing the name of a module:
In Visual Basic.NET 2003 there is a third step you must take to change the name of a module or the build will fail and you will get the error message "Sub Main() not found in module...."
The error is the result of a broken link. The compiler winds up looking for a module with the old name and fails to find it because a module with that name no longer exists.
After changing the Program file name and the module name as instructed on pages 65 and 67, you must also change an application property to fix the broken link.
Step 3 then, is to click on the console application name in the Solution Explorer window, and then click on the `Properties' icon at the top of the window. (The Properties icon is the small button on the far right, at the top of the Solution Explorer window.)
The `Properties' window will open. Look for the field labeled, `Startup Object'. You will see that it still contains the old module name. Change the name to your new module name and click the [OK] button. This will fix the broken link and the name change is complete.
*** ***
Note: Page 188 Creating the GUI interface for the example code.
The procedure could have been better explained. Here is what you need to do:
1. Start a new project. (Windows App.)
2. Use the tool box to build the GUI interface.
(Add Textboxes, Labels and Buttons to match the book illustration.
3. Change the names of all components to those used in the book, using the properties window.
4. Double click on the `Maximum' button on the Form, and add only lines 29-43 from page 191 of the book. (The rest of the code you see in the book is added by Visual Basic.NET and is normally hidden from view.)
5. Build and run.
** End Footnotes **
Rating: - Excellent book
I can't believe that a single negative review would be written about this book.
I'm a beginner to VB.net (and programming in general) and had purchased two other books (not by Deitel) prior to this one. The sequential and straight forward teaching style of this book is awesome. If you are a beginner that's serious about learning VB.net, then this is the book to buy. This book is very easy to read because complete code examples are explained line by line - you definitely won't get frustrated trying to figure out how and why partial samples of code interact with other program components (like in other books).
My time is valuable and now I'm not spending time generating "working" code by trial and error. This book is like a "mentor" to me! If I taught VB.net, I would require students to use this book exclusively.
I wouldn't have bought the other two books if I had known about this particular one first. Unless I forget the Deitel book at the office, I don't even bother to read the other two anymore! I have no regrets
Rating: - Fabulous
This is a thoroughly thought out, well laid out book for those wishing to learn VB.net; Prior Visual Basic experience is not essential but if you have you can get to the topics you want and read-through it at a fairly fast pace. There are lots of examples and these are well illustrative. I wish the examples were more of real-life sceanarios.
The book may look cluttered, but it depends on the way you look at it; the different fonts, colors used is quite helpful in making the topic of discussion stand out.
Now the best part of the book is if you are cramming for an exam; the tips and the exhaustive summary is hard to beat. For an experienced developer, the summary alone is sufficient many times to help identify possible problems. One minor complaint for completeness is the lack of coverage of packaging and deployment of VB.net applications.
Though it is expensive, I highly recommend this book as this is the only book you will need to get started on Vb.Net.
Rating:  - Absolutely the worst!
This is absolutely the worst book I bought on VB. I consider myself a beginner programmer and I work with ASP.NET.
This book's layout alone makes reading frustrating. It is so visually cluttered that you cannot concentrate on the topic. I counted 15 different compinations of colours and typefaces on a single page!
The content is (very) poor. Things are rather mentioned than explained and never go deep enough. The authors are mostly preoccupied with mentioning terms of programming jargon than clarifying and going deeper. For example, you 'll learn that "Private" methods are also called "utility" or "helper methods" and thats all, no other explanation of what "private" is and how to use it! I 'm not joking! Not to mention that neither what a "method" is was explained in the first place!
I also found out that "Live Code" method is nothing more than code blocks with their explanation, something that every book does and worse, in this book you have to constantly go back and forth between pages because they try to show to much stuff in a single block of code instead of breaking it down to pieces.
Overall, this is a very bad book that won't teach you anything in depth neither on a conceptual nor on a practical level. I 'm very surprised by the 5 star ratings here. I guess they refuse to regret their money...
Go for one that stretches the OOP features of VB.NET. An exceptional one is "An introduction to OOP programming with VB.NET" by Dan Clark,Apress.
Rating: - Good - a massive, organized effort
Quite an amazing accomplishment - the book used color and bold type-face to make reading "easy" - except - of course - the reading is anything but easy. The book is priced very cheap in my part of the world - which at first give me an impression that this is some sort of "dummy" guide - the title of "How to program", and the cartoon bug on the front cover - further enhanced this feeling - plus I am aware that there is a similar titled book for "Experienced programmer" - so this book must be for the rookie like me, right? Wrong. While it has attention to those details that rookie needs - the book carry you to some very hard topics, and I always find me searching for other books (like Microsoft press step by step series) before I come back to deal with Deitel's. Use of color code and super clear examples make this book a great reference that I keep coming back to check while writing my rookie program.
Here are some of my notes:
- on almost all topics that Deitels choose to include in this book - they have gave it a more complete treatment, cover more grounds, and push further than "bible" or "unleashed" or "mastering" series. The "step by step" or "dummies" or "idiot" series cannot hope to compare with this book.
- the writing/teaching style tend to be more rigorous than others - which can be a bit intimidating to read, at time stressful. Other authors like to take the easy approach - show you the easy portion - have a happy ending each chapter - but Deitels' keep driving you towards the next level of complexity - gradually in each chapter and also thru the length of the book. Their attitude appears to be "we try to be clear - but not always - and concise, but no we don't just give you the soft stuff - we will drive you hard if we have to". I seldom have the strength to finish more than 50% of every chapter. In this sense, this might not be the ideal first book (e.g. Murach's or Wrox) for all levels.
- the presentation of this book is amazing - it just outclass other technical or non-technical books 10:1 - it probably use more color per square feet than Playboy magazine. This is no exaggeration - I think more than 90% of the pages have color.
- this book - despite its harmless looking physique - is more than 1500 pages. Consider the fact that not a single page is nonsense - that is lots of useful info.
- any setback? Perhaps - I certainly did not like those few chapters towards the end e.g. XML, Webservices - I just couldn't quite get the points that they are trying and hoping to convey - guess those topics really should NOT be covered with the Deitel's approach - a bit like trying to describe a beautiful car by taking it apart and explaining the nuts and bolts. On ADO.NET - In the one page introduction - there is no diagram explaining the relationship among dataset, dataAdapter, data connecton, OleDb, Sql etc. You are then KO with a 300 lines code. Nevertheless, these are again solid chapters that you can always come back to see their code once you get the background somewhere else - I suggest Murach's, Wrox, and a few Ms Press step by step book will do the trick.
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