BTW, "A reader from denver, colorado; AWFUL", you're just wrong. I have gone through this entire book from front to back. I did all the Hands-On Examples and nearly all the Exercises and Case Study problems, all entirely on my own at home, and they all ran just fine for me. And no, I'm not an experienced programmer. In fact, I'm a Sales Rep.

It's true that the book has typos and just skims the surface of some important topics like database programming, graphics, ActiveX, OLE and DLLs. It's also true that it leaves out a few things that are really good to know, like the directory box. But this just supposed to be an introduction to the fundamentals. To really be a VB progammer, you need to study a lot more than just this, including SQL, OCX, etc.

If you read each chapter really carefully, you should have no trouble whatever doing the Hands-On examples on your own without checking the code at all. If you can get through this book, you will be ready for an intermediate course.

I'd be interested in anybody's recommendations for books that are written like this one, i.e., like a math textbook (IMHO, the way ALL computer programming books should be written!)