Microsoft Visual Basic .Net Programmer's Cookbook

For a beginner, I think it's best to get two things: A really good introductory book to learn the basics, and then a cookbook that gives code samples for a variety of tasks. Otherwise you'll beat your head against the wall trying to reinvent the wheel, every time you want to perform some common task in code. For vb.net, I'd recommend Murach's Beginning Visual Basic .Net as the introductory text (even for a non-programmer) and this book as the cookbook. This book is concise but it contains the info you want. Its problem/solution structure makes it easy to find information (much easier than digging through a typical 1,000+ page comprehensive language review). And the selection of topics/code samples is quite useful, covering a variety of common tasks. If you've learned the very basics but are struggling to write code, take a look at this book.

This book is essentially a roughly-categorized list of neat things you can do with VB.NET. Most of the tasks are ones you would think of and could figure out, but maybe have to struggle through the helpfiles and language reference in order to determine how to do it.Not so if you own this book. Simply look up a topic it covers, and not only will it present the solution in general terms in plain, easy-to-understand, concise English, but it generally provides easy-to-apply sample code.This book is an essential reference for any VB.NET programmer and I only wish that the "cookbook" format was used for other languages (Java, C++, C#, or .NET in general).

I wish I had this book a year ago when I first started developing with .NET! Even though I'm no longer a newbie, I'm already using this book as a one-stop reference. I tested it against other books, and this one gave me the quickest solutions for making thread "wrappers", serializing objects in different ways, and writing a timer-based Windows service (three tasks I had in an average week).Overall, this cookbook has a little bit of everything, and the dense examples and explanations are so much better than the typical .NET programming book (most are full of fluff and theory). Even experienced developers should find a few new tricks here. For me, the security chapter was the best new material (including how to restrict permissions on dynamically loaded assemblies, encrypt objects, and use XML signatures). The ADO.NET chapter is good, but I would have liked even more. The ASP.NET and web services chapters are also good, but hard-core ASP.NET developers will probably want a dedicated cookbook for this stuff, because many topics are not covered. The early, more basic chapters, were also great--you'll be surprised how useful it is to have a list of the core .NET interfaces (for making objects serializable, convertible, disposable, comparable, etc.) and examples how to implement them. Overall, this is a great book for browsing, reviewing, or just honing your skills.

Finally, a book with one-stop shopping for VB.NET! I've read several cookbook-style programming titles in the past, and I was pleasantly surprised to find this has much more depth than I expected. It can't cover everything (.NET is huge), but every time I pick the book up I learn something new. There are so many highlights--just browse through the table of contents and you'll see what I mean!Here are some of my favorites:* Send keystrokes to another app* Create a thread-safe control wrapper* Great data-binding tips (image-to-picture box, etc.)* Factory, Registry, Singleton, Memento, and Lazy Initialization patterns* POP3, FTP, and Ping classes in the networking section* How to change a password into a salted hash for storage in a database* Use ZIP and PDF files (disclaimer: some third-party code is required, although it's free)* Manage print jobs that are underway* Get Windows accounts and roles* Do hit testing with custom graphics* Defend against SQL injection* Dynamically generate an ASP.NET graphic* Add ASP.NET controls on the fly* MAPI and MCI (unfortunately, just through the ActiveX controls)* Upload binary data with a web service* Use a web service in VB 6

Not a book to read from start to finish - although a real geek could. Great examples that work. If you want to know how to do something, this book will tell you and give you an example. I sat down with it and got answers to problems that hours of searches on MSDN and VB.NET sites didn't give me. I wish that I had had this book 6 months ago!!!