Microsoft Visual Basic 2008 Step by Step [With CDROM]

First, I'll start off with my background. When I was an engineering student, I took a few computer programming courses. First was an introductory class using the C language, second was an intermediate, and the third was on object oriented programming using C++. I learned a lot in these courses; now I forgot most, especially in regards to code. I decided to get back into programming a hobby and decided to uses Visual Studio 2008. I chose to go the Visual Basic route and decided to buy this book as my first learning resource. It was a good decision and really enjoyed the book. As a few mentioned, there is some repetition that can get annoying, but for going back to reference, it does help. This is a great primer for beginning programming and once completed, you should be able to write some basic programs that look and act nice. This book is a great stepping stone for reading the more advanced books on VB 2008. I recommend it for anybody new to programming

I'm almost to the very end of the book now and I must say Halvorson did a great job with this book. Someone here complained that he kept making references back to other things in the book. Well, yes. However, you gotta keep in mind if you pick this book up just to refresh yourself on a particular task, say learning Printing, you might need to also refer to an earlier part of the book for a particular aspect of programming that is used in Printing. Michael does an excellent job of making references to other stuff in the book just for this very reason. If you need only a particular part of programming, then you'll get it AND the references to other areas of coding in case you've forgotten how they work. As far as I'm concerned this book is set up wonderfully for those who are new to the language as I was. I've dabbled in programming for years now but this was the first time I have tried my hand at developing Windows programs. Michael does quite well at not only explaining different points of the language, but he also gives excellent examples of how you can relate the coding to different Windows functions. I would most definitely recommend this book to anyone who is wanting to learn the Visual Basic language. Bravo Michael! Bravo!

Michael H. is now an old hand at producing VB Step by Step books, and it shows. His treatment of the subject is thorough and to-the-point, as you can see by looking inside the book at the Table of Contents (above). His style is easy to follow, and your confidence level at the end will be high if you carefully follow his lead through this book. If his "Database and Web Programming" section at the end of the book doesn't pique your interest, nothing will. By inserting this section he shows you where VB 2008 is headed. My biggest complaints are minor: 1) he wasted too much ink telling us how things were done back in the days of VB 6.0. Programmers have had about four years to get over that, Michael, but thanks for an otherwise very useful book, and 2) a few menu calls were to menu functions that don't exist. (That's inevitable when a book is based on pre-release software. None of the errors were difficult to overcome.)

I am new to Visual Basic. I've taken a couple of programming classes, but still have had a hard time grasping all of the little nuances. I recently started as an intern working with developers in the medical field. I found myself completely overwhelmed and started buying and reading every programming book I could get my hands on, specifically Visual Basic. This book is great! I'm half way through the book and haven't gotten lost yet! Halvorson walks the reader through each and every process and does it in the correct order. The order in which he presents the materal and the way engages the reader is critical to success! For the first time, I feel like I can jump in and get programming. This is the best book if you are trying to learn Visual Basic!

I'm not new to the visual basic language (I've done some work with VBA) but I was new to visual studio. I just have to say that this book is very easy to follow, it's very detailed, and it's a great place to start learning the language and the use of the IDE. The author guides the reader in a very easy to follow style of writing. He also goes into detail to make sure that you understand what it is that he either wants you to do or wants you to understand. He also makes no assumption regarding your skill level and basically writes so that anyone can understand. The only thing that I wasn't crazy about was that he sometimes repeats the same things over and over in every chapter. For example, "If the form is not visible when you load it, click on it in the Solutions box to make it visible." He'll say that for every project that you open. I guess it's ok because these little things really get pounded into your brain, but I found it just a little annoying. Finally, he does demonstrate a lot of new features in Visual Studio 2008, so the book is great even for experienced users.