Hands-On Visual Basic 5 a

after you've completed a beginner, syntax-oriented text. Having worked my way through nearly a dozen programming texts in 4 different languages, I'm happy to say that this is one of the best books of its kind I've ever read. You actually get to work through projects that aren't "toy" programs, but begin to look and feel like real Windows-based appplications. It's a real feeling of accomplishment, and a great way to sharpen your programming skills. Excellent work, Ms. Podlin!

Having read the comments of other reviewers (thanks, guys!), I knew what I was getting into with the typos. I am a real VB beginner and just love the way the book walks you step-by-step through what seems to me to be a pretty sophisticated application. It covers a very wide variety of tasks, along with giving the reader a good understanding of the application development process. But, boy is it frustrating trying to debug the code! And, you can't look at the app on the included CD, because it has incorrect path names embedded in the files, so you can't open the project files. Despite all of that, it's the only book of its kind that I have found--an excellent learning tool, not just another reference book to read. You'll really learn how to develop the application, design the user interface, write the code, and more about debugging than you may have wanted.

I've purchased various other books on VB, but was never sure what chapters to focus on. And I never felt I had gone step-by-step through the program development process. But with the "Hands On Visual Basic 5" book I felt as if the authors of the book were tutoring me one-on-one on how to design real-life programs. I've put all the other books aside and am waiting to finish this one before looking for a VB position. The only reason I did't give it 5 stars is because of all the typos. But the typos gave me a good feeling when the typos I found matched the typos list provided by the author (unfortunately the typos list does not list all typos, though).

I picked this book up at 8 p.m. and didn't put it down until 4 a.m. I couldn't put it down. The book was too good. This is an exciting, real-world approach to learning Visual Basic. I bought 6 or 7 books on Visual Basic, none compare to this. The other books are drier, slower, and I found myself daydreaming and trying to skip chapters to get to the "good stuff". Hands-On Visual Basic starts and ends with the "good stuff". (P.S. I finished this book a few months ago, and it's still the one I recommend after picking up a number of other books. A good companion book is O'Reilly's Access Database Programming and Design for good relational database tutorials and learning SQL).