Visual Basic.NET: The Complete Reference [Paperback]

However, it is not really a reference, like a dictionary. It is a well-written, carefully thought-out explanation of Visual Basic.Net and the .Net framework.

There are several chapters on important concepts like delegates, data structures and design patterns and why they are used. You don't see such concise and clear explanations like these in most books.

The author does not spend as much time discussing the details of the language or the framework as other books(there are many good books for that out at this point- I liked Programming Microsoft Visual Basic.Net by Franseco Balena). But this book was very important to me to know why- why delegates? why arrays? why structures? why objects? etc.

If you want a really good and thorough understanding of this subject then buy this book. You will need another to go over the details or if you need an introduction (or just use the online documentation which is very substantial and has plenty of detailed examples and explanations).

I read Mr Shapiro's first VB.NET book in late 2001 and made up my mind that I needed to make the move from VB to VB.NET asap. I am a VB/ASP programmer still struggling with OO design concepts and patterns, and I find his insight into the software development and design process quite remarkable indeed.

He writes with a wit and with metaphors I have not seen elsewhere, and made tackling the complex subjects much easier more me. You'll be chuckling at some of the stuff he says. I find it hard to learn from computer books and prefer classrooms, but reading even the first 30 percent of this book, has saved me a bundle in time and money.

I am more concerned about code than classes and figured that the new OO in .NET would put me off. But I was especially pleased to see Mr Shapiro tackle stuff like merge sort and quicksort and then place them in context with various .NET "features" like delegates, and interfaces. Incidently, if understanding interfaces and delegates has you scratching your head, this is the only book I found, browsing at the bookstore, that devotes a whole chapter to each subject respectively. At first I thought his notes on why Sun hates delegates would not be much use to me but they go a long way to understanding why .NET has delegates and interfaces and Java only has interfaces.

There is also a very comprehensive linked-list example in this book that shows you exactly how to implement interfaces, like IEnumerator, and IList, stuff which very few seem to understand and which are very alien to a VB programmer.

No book is perfect. There are a few typos in the text which are clearly last minute changes the publisher forgot to correct. The source code examples compile without issue. I will be looking for his next book for sure.

Don't waste your money, I think that I will get a Wrox book next.