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Rating: 5 out of 5
A Masterpiece
This is the one book I recommend for all VB.NET developer's coming from a VB6 background! Why? Consider it a first step in walking down a true developer's path. Throw away your Visual Studio .NET crutch, and you might begin to visualize the way Java and C++ programmers tackle real world problems.Be warned though, this is a book most VB developer's will not fully understand the value of! To prove this theory, make note of the mixed review scores for this book. Now, browse over to the C# version of this book and you will find only high review scores. Why would this be true? Because C# is, for the most part, being tackled by the Java and C++ communities, so you are dealing with two different levels of developers. I think you will find "Beziers and Other Splines" one of the most fascinating chapters in the book. Petzold explains these drawing tools exceptionally well! Another chapter worth noting, "Taming the Mouse" explains mouse capture/loss and how to deal with it. You might even learn a thing or two about utilizing an interface if you pay close attention. Once you read this book, you might find yourself shunning the visual designer all together (I prefer to code everything by hand myself), and this is a positive thing. You should know how to write every control outside the designer. This is actually a prerequisite for anyone interested in getting involved in enterprise level development (assuming you are working with a good program manager/senior developer). I also recommend purchasing "Applied .NET Framework Programming" by Richter. Together these books are a valuable addition to any professional developer's library, and should be read from beginning to end!
Rating: 3 out of 5
Programming Microsoft Windows with Microsoft Visual Basic .N
This title has a wealth of information on a whole bunch of irrelevant topics such as brushes as some already mentioned. Another thing about it is that it doesn't show how to program Visual Basic.NET with Visual Studio.NET. Instead, it assumes you will use a notepad like editor and the command line compiler. If you are interested in getting into the raw side of the language, this might be the book for you. If you want a book that takes advantage of the drag and drop features of VS.NET, however, look elsewhere.
Rating: 4 out of 5
It pays to read the title
People browsing reviews of this book may be puzzled by the variation in star ratings. Firstly, this book is about programming Windows applications. It starts from the ground up talking about, in great detail, drawing text, handling mouse and keyboard events etc. It is not about enterprise programming, ASP.Net, multiple tier applications etc. Mr Petzold wants the reader to understand what is going on underneath the hood, behind all of the code that VB.Net generates automatically. The graphical aspects of the IDE are hardly mentioned in the book. In a way, this defeats the purpose of VB.Net - rapid forms development - and indeed this book is more or less a translation of Mr Petzold's book on C#. Mr Petzold tells his story well however, and introduces aspects of object oriented programming along the way in a very readable style, despite the high level of detail. I certainly have a much better understanding of Windows programming after reading this even a few chapters of this book. It is not a definitive guide to VB.Net but it doesn't pretend to be. It is called 'Programming Microsoft Windows with VB.Net'. Mr Belana's more wide ranging book is titled 'Programming Microsoft VB.Net', but does not go into as much detail about Windows programming. I hope this clarifies the situation.
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