Visual Basic.Net Programming for Business

After a hiatus of several years, in the summer of 2008 I am once again teaching a course in Visual Basic, this time the .NET version. For this session, I am using "Microsoft Visual Basic Reloaded, Second Edition" by Diane Zak as the text, but as is always the case, I troll for other and better options. That is the context within which I examined this book. I found the coverage to be what I consider the necessities for a beginning course in programming with visual basic. The basic GUI objects and fundamental programming concepts such as variables and their types, the control constructs and functions and subroutines are all covered in a manner accessible to the beginner. Other, less basic concepts such as connecting to databases using ADO.NET, object-oriented programming in the VB.NET environment, creating distributed applications with ASP.NET, XML and using Crystal Reports are also covered. After some serious thought, I decided to stick with the Zak book. The students and I have both found it easy to use and this book does not quite reach the level that I believe the Zak Book does.

This book has some good examples. Its pretty basic stuff and covers most topics. It has some decent code examples. By the end of this book, you will be decent with VB but not an expert. This book is good for people who are starting with VB. If you are doing advanced stuff with VB then this is not the book for you.