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Visual Basic.NET How to Program, Second Edition Review by Corey Brown
Hard to like
Remember when you had to read classical literature, and it seemed like the author wouldn't change paragraphs for pages at a time, and it was hard to keep your place, pay attention, or care? Well, this book is exactly like that. It is chock full of "information", I'll give it that. Problem is, their examples DON'T WORK. I'm trying to do SQL database management using the code from the book for a template, and it doesn't function whatsoever. I've wasted hours because this book is worthless as a reference, even worse as a textbook.
Also, if you're not a fan of heavy formatting, skip this book. There are more than one bold words per line. Just for kicks, I flipped to a random page (663) and counted 16 bold words in the second paragraph, which is only ten lines long. There's only one paragraph out of six that doesn't have any words bolded. It's almost like they couldn't decide which words were important, so they just went ahead and bolded/italicized everything that seemed even remotely important. This detracts from legibility and readability immensely, and is seriously infuriating when you're trying to scan for a particular keyword. Some people apparently like this style, but I think it's utterly painful to read, much less learn from.
However, all that said, I would definately recommend this book to the following people: masochists, professors who hate their students, people who have never read a halfway decently written/formatted textbook in their lives, and people who like to flush money down the toilet. Also, if you enjoy going to the dentist, this book might be for you. I'm not just someone off the street, either. I've been programming since the days of QBasic, and have read dozens of books on the topic, and this is by far the worst. If I can repel just one person from buying it/choosing it for their class, the world will be a better place and I can die fulfilled.