Learn to Program with Visual Basic.NET [Paperback]

I am a professional VB developer using VB6. Having read others of Mr Smiley's books, and as I am interested in the new VB.NET framework, I decided to go ahead and pick up Mr. Smiley's Learn to Program VB.Net. I knew it was a basic beginner book from the start (what else would you expect from a book titled "Learn To Program"?!) but I still thoroughly enjoyed the book.

If you're already an intermediate/advanced VB programmer looking for upgrades to the new .NET framework, this is not necessarily the book for you. It doesn't really pretend to be. This is, however, a fantastic book teaching the basics of programming. Even an experienced programmer could benefit from the methodical teaching given in this book. A lot of us in the VB world entered the programming scene in a sink-or-swim scenario - with no idea where to start programming, but with a deadline for something that needed completion and a sinking feeling that we were in over our head. I wish back then I had access to Mr. Smiley's texts - they teach good programming habits, and demystify programming in a way that isn't nearly as soporific as many other manuals you could find.

I highly reccomend his books for the beginner. I even reccommend them for the experienced user who was thrown into programming willy-nilly in the same manner I was. Mr. Smiley does an excellent job of "filling in the gaps."

But please, take the book for what it is - an introduction to programming in the given language.

(Sorry for the spelling mistakes, English is not my native language)

This book is perfect for the public it was intended for: BEGINNERS. For those who complain about this book not talking about any advanced (or Intermediate) topic or new feature in VB.Net, they should remember that the name of the book started as "Learn to program...".

It is not like by reading this book you are ready to take a examination for an MCSD (Microsoft Certified Solution Developer) degree, nor will you be able to work on very elaborated programing projects. But you will be able to understand many of the basics of programing, and you will know how to code or read simple (but yet useful) programs. But most important of all, this book will power you with the basic knowledge to start your learning and development as a programer (a knowledge many books seem to expect you to born whit).

By reading this book you will learn in a very understandable way (an also quite complete for a beginers book):

Some things that can be useful to understand programing:

- Software Developing Live Cycle

- A very brief explanation on how a computer works (which would cause any Assembler programer to laugh histericaly, but that can be realy helpfull for beginers.

All what you might learn at a beginners class

- Variables

- Functions, methods, properties, procedures and events

- Aritmetic and boolean operations

- String handling

- Selection structures

- Placing objects and menues

- Using Arrays (one dimension and multidimensional)

- Creating customized procedures and methods

Some things that due to the rush could not be taught properly in those classes:

- Disck file operations

- Error handling

- Debugging

- Writing to the windows registry

- Procedure referencing

However, if your knowledge goes beyond the 50% of this, maybe you should consider chousing another beginners (yet faster) book.

About the classroom format: I personaly liked it. Shure sometimes it sounds as he was underestimating you, and like 60% of the questions might seem too obvious. But it pays in being quite a lot more pleasant to read (as it is your first programing book), and the 40% left of the questions can be really usefull, some few times you would just say: "Hey, I was about to ask that"

Advice?

1.- You are new to all programing forms = buy it, buy it and buy it!!!!!

2.- You are new to windows (and object oriented / object based) programing = strongly consider buying it (you might need to skip 1 or 2 chapters, but you will enjoy the other 13)

3.- You are new to Visual Basic .Net but you come from C++, C# .Net, Java, etc... = You could buy it and you might still learn something from it, but there are better choices in this cases.

4.- You already know to program in VB.Net and you are loking for information about ADO.Net, OOP, ActiveX, ASP.Net, XML = THIS BOOK IS NOT FOR YOU!!!!!

Anyway, if you decide to buy it, you should consider buying another book (Intermediate level maybe, or a faster beginner's one) soon, this is only the first step into mastering VB.Net programing.

I just finished this great book as part of Professor Smiley's online VB.Net study group, and was compelled to write a review--particularly when I saw that the previous reviewer gave it one star.

I'm not sure what book that person was reading when he said the book doesn't cover .Net--this book taught me how to write a VB.Net Windows program, and I thought it covered the subject well. Granted, there's more to VB.Net than developing Windows programs---but I don't think you'll find a book anywhere that covers all of VB.Net, and if you do, it's bound to be pretty superficial.

The book is written for people who want to learn how to program, in the form of a simulated classroom---and that's stated pretty clearly on the front and back cover jackets of the book. The book covers the fundamentals of programming--Programming Logic, If statements, Case Statements, Loops, Error Handling, Menus--in a way that few authors can.

Personally, I like the classsroom format--lots of screenshots, lots of questions, and most importantly, lots of answers. It's well organized, taking you from knowing nothing to being able to write your own VB.Net program.

If you're trying to get up to speed quickly with VB.Net, I can't recommend a better book.