I wish I'd read this book earlier on because it would have saved me a lot of pain. After you're past the novice stage and have a handle on the VB.Net syntax and object model, this book is the next step. It contains lots of code snippets and you can download their entire code library used to build the sample apps but the real key here is learning a sound methology.

One review was critical of their approach. I disagree with his comments. This book offers not only a sound approach to application design using .Net (with some concentration on web development), n-tier architecture is accepted practice. The book offers a sound VB.Net implementation. Of course, it's hardly the only way and is a tad simplistic for the real world intranet apps I'm working on. But it should help intermediate programmers put it all together to move to the next level.

My only complaint is that I wish it contained more code details, some broader coverage, and was more advanced. But that's a personal gripe because by the time I'd picked this up I'd personally grown past its content through the school of hard knocks.