Rating: 2 out of 5
Requires a lot of effort to grasp a basic concept
I've programmed with Fortran and C, work with HTML, ASP (VBScript) and COM (Visual FoxPro), and have read a couple of programming books. This one is the first book that made it to my "Do Not Recommend" list. I grew very tired of reading from the book. The reasons being: 1. To understand something I had to read a chapter right from the beginning to the very end, because it's using a very specific case to work its way throughout an entire chapter each time. I flipped back 5-15 pages at a time once I lost track of my reading. 2. This book does not give a good break point to let me pause and let a concept sink in my memory before proceeding with the next. 3. This book cannot, at any rate, be used as a handy reference book. Writing style aside, the format is also terrible. It's probably fine to see black (font) and blue (boxes) in a book. However, this book prints the font so that it looks almost bolded. The paper it's using feels like cheap inkjet printer paper. This book does have VBs intermediate-advanced stuffs such as class programming, MDI, and programming with databases (no ADO, though). If you have some VB experience, proceed with extreme care if you still want to use this book. If you're an absolute VB beginner, this book is not for you! Use David Schneider's book instead.
Rating: 1 out of 5
Too Much Hand-Holding
This book describes, step-by-step, how to write a few specific programs, but does not adequately generalize the concepts it presents.Each chapter guides the reader through creating a particular program, detailing each step that must be taken. ("Name this control x," then, "Make the width of this control 123," and so forth). Even the "homework problems" assigned at the end of each chapter list each step the reader should take toward finishing the program. Of course, readers can certainly ignore these details and focus on the text's conceptual explanations, but since the whole book is organized around the examples, these explanations are not designed to be read alone. The information is organized according to where it's needed in the example program, not necessarily according to where it's easiest to understand. In sum, beginners should look elsewhere for a good introduction that helps build an understanding of the language conceptually, and experts would prefer a more organized reference.
Rating: 1 out of 5
Frustratingly Incomplete, Maddenly Precise
Having worked with Microsoft BASIC since "Basica" aka GW-Basic and QuickBASIC, I've had a chance to look at a **lot** of books about the language that's grown into Visual BASIC. Hands-down Ekedahl & Newman is one of the worst I've seen.It's incomplete! When discussing substring splicing it covers the MID function but completely ignores the complementary RIGHT and LEFT functions. Yes, you can use MID to perform a RIGHT or LEFT slice, but when you're writing self-documenting code it's better to have all three functions available for the sake of clarity. (Update your code six months from now, and you'll be GLAD you used self-documenting techniques!) It rambles! Information that should be in a sidebar or appendix, or that should be in a list are placed in long drawn-out paragraphs in the main text. Typical paragraph: "The Database object contains a reference to several other collections and objects. For example, each Database object contains a reference to the Recordsets collection. This collection contains a reference to zero or more Recordset objects representing the open Recordsets in the database. One recordset object exists for each open recordset in the database. You can open several Recordsets at the same time." (page 387 paragraph 3). Note the inconsistent capitalization on "Recordsets" and the ongoing repetition of one concept. This information would make just as much sense -- maybe more so! -- as a "bulleted list" in a sidebar. Clarity is not the strong suit for these authors. Inadequate illustrations! Figure 8-15 on page 416 is the most ambitious illustration in the book, consisting of long horizontal boxes stacked atop each other. These boxes shrink to the right as you read down from the top, and they are all attached with a line. Other illustrations in the text use the same horizontal-box technique only with fewer boxes, which helps drive home the point that the authors may not know HOW to properly show relationships between functions and objects. (A look at the documentation from the Microsoft Developers Network shows the authors lifted the concept from Microsoft -- and sometimes the exact images -- just to have some sort of illustration. And no, they don't acknowledge Microsoft as the source of their images). There is no succinct "language reference" anywhere in the appendices, a shocking lapse that should be corrected. In a classroom setting, there was a lot of grumbling and complaints about the shortcomings of the text, followed by a significant dropout rate -- close to 50%. The few who stuck with it began purchasing supplemental books, referring to prior texts, scouring the Internet, and gleaning what they could from the MSDN CD-ROM. If you're considering teaching a Visual BASIC class, give this book a pass. If you're going to take a Visual BASIC class, make certain you've got a good instructor to overcome the weaknesses of the text. And if you're just looking to improve your programming skills on a self-study basis, this is not the book for you.
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