This book assumes that you have at least a rudimentary knowledge of VB.Net and general programming concepts. "Sams TY VB.Net in 21 Days" can provide that foundation. Unfortunately, this book appears to be a sloppily executed cut-and-paste re-write of the author's previous edition (TY More VB 6 in 21 Days), a book which itself was not very well received. There is some good material here, but not enough to be worth the price.I really hate to criticize a book this severely, since there is so much work involved in writing any complete book manuscript, especially a technical manuscript on a new technology, but I'm afraid this one deserves it.
WEAKNESSES: The review by "The Geek" raises many valid deficiencies. Both the copy editor and technical editor have overlooked conspicuous errors too numerous to count. These are way beyond the usual slips to be expected in similar books. But more importantly, the author teaches an undisciplined programming style that is careless and sometimes confused. The material reflects only a marginal understanding of the unique features of VB.Net and of the .Net Framework. In many chapters, it is clear that VB6 material has been merely refurbished with a veneer of .Net. Since VB.Net is conceptually different from VB6, the author's approach leans heavily on legacy components and constructs.
The author's repeated use of the TreeView control in a "Windows Explorer" type interface tended to confuse many lessons with the cumbersome code needed to populate the nodes of the TreeView. This is even carried to the extreme of downloading a TreeView Web control from Microsoft in order to use one in an ASP.Net application example.
There are several chapters that appear to deal with application architecture and the business side of software development, but they were mostly generalizations. The discussion of optimizations revealed a number of misconceptions. For example, the author recommends using the Long data type for loop variables, since it is optimized in the 32 bit operating system. Well, this is true in VB6. However, in VB.Net, the Integer data type is now an Int32 integer, and the Long is now an Int64. In VB.Net, loop variables typed as Integer are considerably faster than loop variables typed as Short or Long.
STRENGTHS: Yes, I did find some. I thought the chapter on Crystal Reports was well done. The discussion of XML Web Services was brief, but clear.
RECOMMENDATION: Pass on this one.
If there was a list of the worst VB NET books, this book would surely be on it. For a book that claims (on the back cover) to be "intermediate", it does just about everything wrong. Doesn't use object oriented programming correctly (public instance fields??) (Doesn't emphasize or use classes much in fact!)
Still covers the older On Error Syntax and doesn't stress Exception handling.,
Stresses collections from the Vb 6 compatibility layer rather than teaching the more useful collection like classes in the Framework. (In fact much of this code is simply using the compatibility layer rather than the framework, bad bad bad.)
Doesn't cover multithreading..
Doesn't do much of anything in fact...
This book is simply a port of what was probably a not very good VB6 book done quickly. The result was to quickly produce a truly awful VB .NET book. (I thought Sams had crossed a corner with it's great ASP .NET books, they seem to be back at their old game of producing junk quickly.)
If you want a great intermediate book try Cornell's great Apress book or Connel's equally useful Microsoft press book. Then, after you have finished either one of those books and want a more advanced book, try Troelsen's masterpiece from Apress or wait for Balena's sure to be a masterpiece book.
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