applications

I found this to be an excellent book for beginners to Visual Basic. As the title states, this book takes you "step by step" through all aspects of Visual Basic .NET. It assumes no prior programming experience with Visual Basic. The book was designed with a variety of skill levels in mind so that new programmers can learn software development fundamentals using real world applications and experienced Visual Basic programmers can quickly master the essential tools and programming techniques offered in the new Visual Basic .NET version.

The book starts off slowly by showing the reader how to create their first simple Visual Basic .NET program. This helps to build confidence and quickly familiarize the reader with the Visual Basic environment. The book is well organized and divided into various parts, such as, creating the user interface, database programming, internet programming, object oriented programming, and more. Each of these parts is clearly presented with plenty of sample code and screen shots.

I highly recommend this book to all beginners to Visual Basic.

Some have criticized Halvorson's book as being too basic, or not basic enough. The truth is that this book is really for either a) the new person who knows some programming and wants to get his or her feet wet in VB.Net, or b) someone who knows VB6 and wants to skim and see changes. It hits the highlights to get you off the ground. The value in it comes more from the programs provided that you can dissect than the instructions that come with the steps. The author takes the time to point out how .Net differs from version 6, including the changes, and removals between the versions. If you are a VB programmer already, this book is below you, except as I mentioned for skimming for changes quickly. But if you are looking to get a simple handle on the changes, or the new .net development platform at all, this gets your foot in the door. It gave me enough to start with and now I can springboard off of that into more detailed books. I'm not going to be writing huge applications right now, but I'm a step along the way. The book delivers on what it sets out to do.

This is a good book for the novice developer. It's more a beginners VB guide than a .NET tutorial. I am taking a.NET class and this is the required book. I was hoping for more. Not enough discussion about .NET. A better book would have been VB .NET The Tutorials by Karl Moore which I have also. The ultimate .NET book in my opinion is Programming Microsoft Visual Basic .NET (Core Reference) by Franseco Balena.