Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition for Dummies

You know when you find a book with only very high and very low reviews that you are likely to love it or hate it. Most programming books are very detail/left brain oriented. Not surprising as the majority of programmers are as well. A few are right brain/big picture based. Either can be written at an introductory or advanced level. The problem is that if a left brain person reads a right brain type book they will hate it and vice versa. This book is one of the big picture/just what you need at the moment right brain books. This had also been the orientation and market positioning of VB since it's inception until .net and had made it the most used programming language going. Along the way the author does take many pot shots at Microsoft moving VB so far away from it's roots with .net. This move has indeed caused VB to lose ground in the market. Programmer thinking would appear to be "If the new VB is this hard to learn, I might as well work in another language that pays more." If shots at Microsoft bother you, you will have a problem with this book. The author feels that Microsoft has moved VB back towards it's roots with the Express edition. This would appear to be true. One major slam this book has gotten is the lack of full blown line by line projects. Given the orientation of the book, this is probably a valid complaint. A right brainer might be oriented towards "Just give me the main building blocks, let me put them together the way I want, and discover the others later when I need them." This approach would likely leave everyone else stuck. As someone who taught programming for over 10 years and now works in industry building data mining tools (primarily using MS products), I am very impressed with the content that WAS included in this book. I believe that the addition of a couple more short end to end examples early on and a bit of moderation of the MS bashing (though justified) would have greatly expanded the position of this book as a mainstream "one stop shopping" introductory text. As it is, it is a great suppliment to one of the more dry "cookbook" type offerings that are out there everywhere. Bruce Kirkpatrick MCSE, MCSD, MCDBA, OCP, ...

This is a good book, I'm very suspicious of the bad reviews. I do think I know where they come from though. This book is in true "Dummies" form and is directed at a specific audience (that I belong to). I am NOT a "professional" programmer. Nor, do I wish to be. I have used visual basic for the past 10 years or so, in an off and on, as needed basis for work. I don't know about you, but budgets are tight where I'm at, and we don't have the money to hire a "professional" everytime we think up some very specific "wouldn't it be nice if we could..." type of application. If you have the desire or need, to create very specific "down and dirty" applications to suit your needs, then here's the good news: Visual Basic 2005 Express IS directed at you. And, This book WILL suit your needs. As with all Dummies books, it describes the basics of Visual BASIC 2005 Express in a "just the facts" kind of manner. It will gently hold your hand and walk you through, even if you have no prior experience. Will your programs be flashy or fancy? No. Are you going to get your Microsoft certification after reading it? No. Will you learn how design a video game. No. But who cares! You WILL be able to design small apps to crunch YOUR numbers, keep YOUR database or print the reports YOU need for YOUR work or hobby... in a manner that makes sense to YOU. If you've ever had to work with a "professional" programmer to develop an app, then you'll immediately see the advantage to this. Because the little geek may know how to use the computer, but he doesn't have a clue about YOUR work. The other reviews that are so ANGRY (gee whiz, chill out.) are very unwarranted. When you READ the book, the complaints against Microsoft ARE justified. Especially if you've ever used previous versions of BASIC it'd be readily apparent. Let me sum it up for you: BASIC was originally designed for the "common man." And when it went from QBASIC to Visual Basic (a great thing) it still held that concept. But as time progressed, BASIC changed. BASIC originally had a very simple syntax (grammar), but has slowly went toward the more cryptic languages, (Perl, C++, COBOL) etc. THIS WASN'T NECCESSARY. In fact, that was the beautiful thing about the original visual basic. The design interface did all the cryptic stuff in the back ground and you just used plain old friendly basic on your end. Visual Basic .NET is VERY powerful... it's also the worst version of visual basic for the non professional user yet to be created. BUT don't you apologize "part time programmer", for you are the intended user Visual Basic. (Straight from Gates' mouth) AND DO NOT DESPAIR, because the good news is that MS Visual Basic 2005 EXPRESS has made a good move back towards the true intent of the BASIC language. If you are completely new to programming, NOW is a great time to jump on the bandwagon, with VB Express. Hopefully the next version will be even better and go back towards the true in

The Book is very informative and easy to understand and comes with software to, that's a big + "the software" I'm looking forward to studying and completing it. I've got a project in the making and hope to build it, as I read and study all the info...

I programmed for years in BASIC, QuickBASIC, and Visual Basic, but I haven't done much programming in the last 5-6 years, so I pretty much missed the .NET versions of VB. I recently tried to get back into programming with VB Express. I was shocked and depressed to find how Microsoft had made VB so incredibly and needlessly complicated. The built-in and online help are totally useless for a beginner. I was just about to hang it up when I tried Richard Mansfield's book. It was like a breath of fresh air, and within a few hours, I was programming again and really enjoying it. And I'm NOT a dummy, I just don't respond well to arcane and useless help screens that some Microsoft guru developed to show how sophisticated he/she was. Get this book. As the cover says, it's "a reference for the rest of us."

Visual Basic has had a long and somewhat torturous history from being a simple clean language when it was introduced to becoming part of the .NET Framework (whatever that is) and getting much more complex. The Express Edition, as used in this book, seems to be an attempt to go back to their roots and make a clean simple language again. This book is intended to be an introduction to programming for a complete beginner. It intends to take the beginner from plugging in the CD to getting a working program doing something. The applications he uses as examples are quite simple. They don't do much, but then again, they are intended for the complete beginner. And while simple they do discuss some things like interfacing to the web or to a database that can become parts of fairly serious applications. The book is supplied with two CD's to assist in the programming challenge. Some of this is software, some of it is instructional video.