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Visual Basic(r).NET: The Complete Reference Review by David Moutray
Quite Appalling, Actually
When you buy a book with "Complete Reference" in the title, you expect one of two things:
1. A thorough reference book that you can use for, uh, reference.
2. A book that will completely explain whatever is in the last half of the title - Visual Basic .NET in this case.
This book fails dreadfully on both accounts.
Let me start by saying that I absolutely love Visual Basic .NET. It is a terrific development environment, and once you start to get a feel for working with objects, you wonder how you ever finished a project before.
This book was actually the first .NET book I bought, over two years ago. I found it utterly incomprehensible and had to go on to other books for help in learning to use Visual Basic .NET. Recently, I've been reading through it again - thinking the book might be useful as a reference now that I have a much better understanding of Visual Basic .NET.
Wrong again. You are much better off with the online reference material that comes with Visual Studio. After realizing that I had wasted $30 and a lot of my precious time on this gigantic paperweight, I was stunned that this sucker got 4.5 stars!
It turns out that one of the first reviews was written by none other than the book's author, Jeffrey Shapiro. (Needless to say, he gave himself five stars.) After reading some of the other five star reviews, I darkly suspect that they must be close, personal friends of the author.
The fundamental problem with this book is that it is so abstract. A reference should, by definition, be detailed. This book spends hundreds and hundreds of pages talking about abstract concepts in object-oriented development in a very vague way. It uses lots of abstract object-oriented terms without really defining them. It doesn't really tell you "how to" do anything. You just come away with a vague impression that however you go about developing something in Visual Basic, it should be "object-oriented".
The book was also poorly organized. (I don't believe that this is the fault of the author, though. It's the fault of the book's editors.) It is very hard to find anything in the book, which severely limits its effectiveness as a "reference". The index is terrible. Concepts which are mentioned in many places throughout the book will only have one or two entries in the index. This, too, severely limits the book's usefulness for its stated purpose.
If you want to learn Visual Basic .NET (and you want to learn it from books) here are my recommendations:
1. MURACH'S BEGINNING VISUAL BASIC .NET, by Anne Prince - This book is 700 pages of meticulous and thorough reference. This book tells you "how to" do almost any basic programming task in VB.NET, from creating user interfaces to accessing databases. The format is very easy to read and understand. Each section is very short, takes one topic at a time and covers it very thoroughly. The entire book is meticulously cross-referenced, making it very easy to find whatever you need. This should be the first book you buy.
2. REFACTORING, by Martin Fowler - This book isn't specifically a Visual Basic .NET book. In fact, it isn't really language specific at all even though all of the references are in Java. However, you do not want to pass up this book. It is a classic in object-oriented development. It is very, very easy to read. (In fact, the very readable Java examples illustrate just how similar VB.NET is to Java.) REFACTORING is absolutely stuffed with simple, easy to follow advice on how to write better code (and how to fix the really lousy code you just wrote). I have had this book for nearly two years, and even now hardly a week goes by but I am picking up this book and leafing through it to glean more and more useful advice. One of the nicest things about REFACTORING is that the author, Martin Fowler, never talks down to you, the reader. He speaks to you as a colleague. The book also displays the author's very finely developed sense of humor. This makes the book easier and more enjoyable to read, but it never gets in the way of the material. I can't recommend REFACTORING enough.
3. MURACH'S BEGINNING VB.NET tells you how to do all of the basic stuff that you're always asking about when you are first learning. REFACTORING tells you how to organize your code in such a way that it is easier understand and maintain. Once you've got these two books as a foundation, you can pick up any of the other excellent "how to" types of programming books for tips on specific topics.
4. You certainly don't need it in order to be an effective developer, but if you want to study the abstract concepts of Object-Oriented Analysis and Design, go straight to the source and buy one of Grady Booch's books. Just be sure to bring your own oxygen: Booch tends to stay up in the stratosphere where the air is cold and thin.