If you are new to Visual Basic .NET this is a wonderful book to start with. It is also a great book to keep handy on your bookshelf as a reference when you begin developing .NET applications. The book is thorough with screen shots, clean coding techniques, and useful examples. Language essentials are covered well along with the basics of Object Oriented Programming. The book includes a full chapter on XML along with several chapters for database devlopers. If you are a web developer you will find the final two chapters on web forms and web services resourceful.

If you are a fluent programmer of traditional Visual Basic the book will act as a great resource to quickly learn the differences of VB 6.0 and VB.NET.

Excellent first book for transitioning from VB6 to VB.NET

Rating: 5/5

I just passed my Microsoft MCSE and MCDBA certifications and am studying for the MCSD.NET (covering VB.NET, ADO.NET, ASP.NET, and XML Web Services). While studying for my MCDBA I read Murach's SQL for SQL Server and was very impressed. So I bought Murach's Beginning Visual Basic .NET, Murach's VB.NET Database Programming with ADO .NET, and Murach's ASP.NET Web Programming with VB.NET.

I was very impressed with Murach's Visual Basic .NET. The book focuses on building Windows forms applications with light coverage of XML, ADO.NET, ASP.NET, and web services.

I liked the book because it delivers content in bite sized chunks (the 2 page Murach style). Most of the book focuses on building an application that covers the situations most VB.NET developers will face: forms design, classes, exception handling, database access, reading and writing XML files, and reading and writing text/binary files. The format is concept => example => hands on exercise. Concepts are introduced in a logical fashion. Terms are not used before they are defined.

The book does a great job weeding through all the .NET possibilities and highlighting what's useful. As an example, to paraphraze page 446: there are 150 XML classes but at least know these 2; and, this XML class has 27 Write methods but at least know these 6.

Anne Prince writes good tight VB.NET code that serves as good examples for developers new to VB.NET.

The book may also be good for someone brand new to Visual Basic. However, it would be a good idea to first get some background on programming in general, object oriented programming, HTML, and XML before reading this book.

Not enough detail in areas

Rating: 2/5

This book was required for School. I had never touched VB until this class, and this book was not very helpful to me and every one else in the class. When I got to chapter 5 it felt like all I had done was type in code presented in the book. There was very little explanation as to why you were doing some things. It really appears that there was not enough room for explanation because of the layout. The class ended up buying the "Teach Yourself VB.Net in 24 hour" from Sam Publishing. The Sams book breaks the code down in a much more understanding way.