Programming Microsoft Visual Basic .Net Version 2003 [With CDROM]

Everyone else here has covered the technical aspects about this great book, but I just want to emphasize the writing style. This author, Francesco Balena, is absolutely a brilliant writer. His conversion of thoughts into words is truly incredible. And so is the organization. If you have the earlier edition of his first book by the same name, you would benefit from the upgrade. Definitely worth the money.

I have been using Francesco Balena's "Programming Visual Basic 6.0" (also by MS Press) for several years. That book is clearly written in an understandable way and flows well. Like its predesessor, Programming Visual Basic .NET is clearly written, flows in a logical order and most importantly makes sense! The book is well edited (has very few mistakes/typos) and comes with this book as well as Francesco's VB 6.0 book on the companion CD (as well as all the example code). I also like that this book doesn't try to build a "super app" chapter by chapter as so many books do. In those books, if you want to just read up on a particular topic, you've got to aquaint yourself with everything the author has done up to that point just to understand what you were looking for in the first place. With this book, you can open up to any chapter and not have to have built some application that started 20 chapters back to get it!

If I had to have only one VB.NET book, this would be it. Certainly, it is not the only one on my shelf, but it would do well on a deserted island (where a social life doesn't matter). It covers a wide range of topic areas and covers them well. It is not terse, but it still can be easy to gloss over important items. Big and heavy, but opens flat so that it is easy to place in front of your monitor as you read along and try out the topics. Excellent. Edit: now that I have gone through another dozen or so VB.NET books, this is the ONE book that I would keep on a deserted island.

Let me just say that I have tons of Visual Basic .NET books which include my previous beloved Applied Microsoft .NET Framework Programming in Microsoft Visual Basic .NET (what a mouth full) that also author by Mr. Francesco Balena together with Jeffrey Richter.Well, I don't know why I waited so long before getting Programming Microsoft Visual Basic .NET by Francesco Balena. It has something to do with the fact that I already have a copy of the Framework programming book, or so I thought.Let's just say after reading countless books on the framework and the .NET idioms etc I still find the concepts somewhat elusive, until one day I accidentally flipped throught this book and it instantly made all the concepts clear to me. I put this book in the same category as Mr. Ted Pattison's outstanding Programming Distributed Applications with COM+ and Visual Basic 6.0 book.I got to go study now, but will write some more after I'm through with it.Thanks Mr Balena, and keep playing that Jazz saxophone. By the way, I am a Jazz guitarist as well.

This book SINGLE HANDEDLY trained me and got me my dream job in ASP.NET / SQL Server. IF you want a book that cuts through *all* the BS, and tells you what you NEED to know, you found it! The author's writing style is superb; he keeps the topics interesting and fun. Study .NET with this book and you'll rise to the top and be the envy of all your colleagues - yes, it's *that* good.We have 3 developers at my place of work. We had 4 copies of Programming VB.NET 2002, and just today we got 3 copies in of the 2003 edition. We are very excited to be able jump into this version. Balena adds the much needed .NET Remoting chapter as well as a full text search (PDF) of the whole 2003 book on CD. Also, this book covers VS.NET 2003 and .NET 1.1MAKE your boss buy you this book now.If you're the boss, you know what to do!Happy .NETingJim