Rating:  - The standard for programming language writing
The author has that perfect mixture of good writing style and a profound knowledge of both the language and the .net architecture. I read through the book once, with a fairly shallow understanding. Now I refer to it all the time and find guidance for almost any project I am working on. His code snippets (which all work...unusual for a programming book) are instructive, well commented, and always elegeant and concise. He has a focus in his code for efficiency, but the logic is easy to follow.
I only wish this author wrote the C# sister book. In fact, I would read THIS book to learn C#! BY far the best programming book out there and the standard by which all others should be judged.
Rating: - Ignore the negative review
For a beginner, I think it's best to get two things: A really good introductory book to learn the basics, and then a cookbook that gives code samples for a variety of tasks. Otherwise you'll beat your head against the wall trying to reinvent the wheel, every time you want to perform some common task in code.
For vb.net, I'd recommend Murach's Beginning Visual Basic .Net as the introductory text (even for a non-programmer) and this book as the cookbook. This book is concise but it contains the info you want. Its problem/solution structure makes it easy to find information (much easier than digging through a typical 1,000+ page comprehensive language review). And the selection of topics/code samples is quite useful, covering a variety of common tasks.
If you've learned the very basics but are struggling to write code, take a look at this book.
Rating:  - Baked Code?
FYI, when using the code in Chapter 8-4, "8.4 Ping an IP Address", all seems well and you get the different ping times in your console window. However, I referenced the dll provided in the sample code in a fresh application, and used it to ping ONE ip address several times (which was a machine on my same network segment sitting about 3 feet from me) and I got the SAME EXACT responses as the sample app did, which "SUPPOSEDLY" was pinging yahoo.com, SETI.com, and the local loopback address. In fact, no matter what ip addresses I tried to ping, the ping times were always the same approximate numbers. I would say that the only explanation for this is that the generation of the numbers is hard-coded into the dll, rather than being actual ping times. I would love to hear the explanation for this...
Rating: - Just a great book to have in the library! Must have!
There just seems to be so much to learn with VB.NET and the .NET Framework to do things you've always done in VB or VBScript or any other language. Sure, you could go search for it, but just pick up this book. It'll save you hours and hours of hassle! This has been my most valuable book. Buy now!
Rating: - Essential quick-reference
This book is essentially a roughly-categorized list of neat things you can do with VB.NET. Most of the tasks are ones you would think of and could figure out, but maybe have to struggle through the helpfiles and language reference in order to determine how to do it.
Not so if you own this book. Simply look up a topic it covers, and not only will it present the solution in general terms in plain, easy-to-understand, concise English, but it generally provides easy-to-apply sample code.
This book is an essential reference for any VB.NET programmer and I only wish that the "cookbook" format was used for other languages (Java, C++, C#, or .NET in general).
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