Murach's Beginning Visual Basic .Net

by Anne Prince

Although Murach's Beginning Visual Basic .NET is designed for people who are new to the .NET Framework, Visual Basic, or even programming, its goals are ambitious. In just 20 chapters, you'll learn... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1890774154
• ISBN13: 9781890774158
• Release Date: June 2002
• Publisher: Mike Murach & Associates
• Length: 724 Pages
• Weight: 3.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.5" x 8.1" x 10.0"

Customer Reviews

Excellent but a little bit expensive

I was in several Oracle's training classes. In most classes, each takes approximately from two to five days. If you were in the class, you would get a handout book printing from Instructor's PowerPoint slide. The handout, in bullet format, covers only the closed-to-a-real application examples. It is concise. Instructor covers the slide for 30 mins. Then, he gave you many lab exercises to follow. With this method, I think you can understand the context in the short time. This book is using the same method. By pursuing this book, you do not need the real instructor. All instructor suggestions are already in the book. At the end of each chapter, you will have a chance to modify the project that you already did in the chapter. For example, if the author shows you how to write IF statements, you will have a chance to enhance those statements to be more complex. You are also able to do extra projects that the author has not taught in the text. As a result, you can apply those skills to develop your own projects. Another good thing about this book is that the screen captures are very clear. You can see what the points of the author. In many books, they fail to do so because readers cannot read words on those screens. Before you decide to buy Object-Oriented Text Book, I suggest that you check the example that the book explains to you. You should buy the book that shows you examples like real world examples such as Invoice Class, or DataValidation Class. You should not buy the book that presents only Mammal class, Engine Class, or Dog Class. However, for the price, it seems to me that this book is a little pricy. You can buy a similar book with 1,000+ pages more for 50 dollars. You may need to trade off between the price and the presentation method of the book.

Excellent

I'm a software developer with several years of experience developing applications for the web. However, to my surprise, I've recently been instructed to develop a non-web, desktop application. Once I got the deer in the headlights look out of my eyes, I headed straight to the bookstore to find a book to help me make the transition. This book saved me. Murach's Beginning Visual Basic.NET not only does a great job introducing the reader to creating Windows desktop forms and learning the VB.NET language, but it also provides thorough exposure to Visual Studio, commonly used .NET classes and the most commonly used properties and methods associated with these classes. This book also provides a great introduction to object oriented programming and how to create your own business classes. The information and exercises provide exposure to real world scenarios in bite-sized chunks that anybody can comprehend. I know this review includes terminology that beginners might not be familiar with yet, but don't worry, this book's author doesn't expect you to have any previous experience. My experience with this book has definitely wet my appetite to check out some of Murach's other information technology publications.

Doesn't cover every single thing about VB.NET

This introductory text doesn't cover every single thing there is to know about VB.NET and the .NET Framework -- and that is where its strength is. You can go out and buy one of the more comprehensive books (for example: Programming Microsoft Visual Basic .NET (Core Reference) by Francesco Balena). While such a book would be very important to an established VB.NET developer, other than as supplementary reference, these comprehensive books are of limited use to someone who does not know the language yet and wants to learn it. If, on the other hand, you are looking to teach yourself VB.NET and do not have the time or the cash to take a formal class, then the Murach book is the one for you -- whether you are new to programming or you are someone who is familiar with a legacy language like C, Perl or VB6. This book doesn't ask you to bite off more than you can chew. Once you complete the material in this book you will have a very strong foundation for learning the more advanced topics of VB.NET. The author put a great deal of thought into the organization of this book. She selected the right topics, put them in the right order, and explained each topic well (with good examples). Another strength is the availability of programming exercises. It's not enough to just follow along with the code in a book (especially if you are beginner). You need to write some original code on your own. Hands-on practice is the only way to really learn and this book provides plenty of it. This book is very thoughtful and well laid out. Rather than use a lot of color and razzle-dazzle (which both distracts attention from the content as well as adds to the cost of other books), the author gets right to the point with the subjects you need to learn to obtain the minimum knowledge to start coding in VB.NET at a professional (that is, salaried) level. Feel free to buy additional books for reference purposes. But if you want to LEARN VB.NET on your own, this book provides sufficiently comprehensive introduction. It's the best introductory tutorial for the price.

Well Organized, Comprehensive Classroom in a Book

Mike Murach has been publishing tutorials for IT professionals since the mid-1980s. Many mainframe developers learned their COBOL, DB2, VSAM and CICS skills from Mike Murach publications. These books owe their great following to Murach's model of devoting a single book to specific topic and focusing on making it the best introductory book possible on that topic, rather than publishing a confusing array of books on the same topic with much overlap among books. Murach has continued this model with books that cover topics for today's developers: SQLServer 2000, Java 2, Java Servlets & JSP and Visual Basic.NET.Murach's Beginning Visual Basic.NET is an excellent choice for teaching oneself VB.NET. If you complete all 18 chapters and do the exercises, then you will have mastered enough to go out and get a job as a beginning VB.NET developer. The topics are ordered in a sequence that is very conducive to learning. The book uses Murach's successful "paired page" format with each subtopic presented in 2-page chunks; text on the left hand page with examples and summaries on the right hand page. One of the strengths of this book is the fact that there are plenty of exercises and projects to do. In order to keep the price of the book down, rather than put all the projects and sample code onto a CD, the sample code as well as 80% of the projects are made available on their website requiring a 2 minute download (20 seconds if you have DSL or cable internet access). Just reading a book or copying sample code from a book is not going to help you remember what you learned. This book gives you projects to do as well as many exercises. This makes you learn the topics covered.By the end of Chapter 6 you will have covered all of the basics of VB.NET syntax, using the VS.NET IDE and the basics of coding OO applications (advanced OO topics are covered in a later chapter). Since OO is such a cornerstone of .NET development, the fact that it is introduced so early in the book is a plus! By the end of the 18 chapters you will have developed multiple non-trivial VB.NET projects. These are not trivial coding exercises but serious business applications. Each chapter has several hands-on projects. Additional projects are available for download from the publisher's website.The focus of this book is on coding. Other than covering .NET classes, the book does not cover the details of .NET Framework development such as deployment, assemblies, interoperability with legacy COM components, conversion from VB6, threading, .NET architecture (CLR, CTS, and MSIL) and managed code. Once the reader has used this book to master the basics of designing, coding and debugging VB.NET programs, then he or she can move on to the clinical details of what goes on under the hood as well as thinking about the issues of enterprise development and application deployment. There are plenty of books that cover those topics. You have to learn to walk before you run. This book will have you walking i

The BEST for starting VB.Net!

Murach's Beginning Visual Basic.NET by Anne Prince is by far the best book on the market for us beginners! Had I bought this book first, I would have saved myself lots of dollars and several months time. This is a job well done!Anne has selected a terrific range of material and presented it in a sequence and method that is perfectly suited for beginners. Starting with the basics of the Visual Studio development environment right on thru the coding of windows and web-based database applications, you'll learn how to produce real-world solutions. She starts each topic from the beginning, with code samples and their clear and concise explanations written on the same, or facing page. Thus this book is easier to learn from than any other programming book I have worked with. Each new topic requires only previous topics to understand. You don't have to jump chapters ahead to search for references on the current topic. Such a logical progression builds the reader's confidence, avoids frustration, and saves time.Solutions to the end-of-chapter exercises require both a review of the topic lessons and some user creativity; just the right mixture of confidence building and mental challenge. And the additional downloadable problems offer more mental workout.Whenever I emailed Anne for help, she quickly responded with articulate solutions to my inquiries.I've read plenty of programming books..............cursed at, and wondered why I bought many of them! This is the only one that I feel so good about that I'm willing to take the time to write a signed review.