If you need to know how VB.NET works, this book, more than the others, will help you make rapid progress early. This guide is clear, but practical: it focuses on the parts of the VB.NET programming language and its runtime environment that every developer must understand. You might want to supplement this book with a more specific related to the database, network, user interface or whatever specific capabilities you need to work with, but this book is probably the best place to start. Attention authors for coding style and design software was a bonus that will help you write code that is not only walking, but more self documenting and easier to debug. Educational value of this book is inversely proportional to its mass Wall. - David Topics covered: How to VB.NET program, with emphasis on the core language itself rather than on any particular development environment or API.