Visual Basic Design Patterns VB 6.0 and VB.NET (With CD-ROm)

There is no argument that "Design Patterns" by the Gang of Four is a seminal piece and essential reading for any professional OO developer. There has long been a need for those patterns (illustrated in OMT with examples in C++) to be described in UML and VB. Mr Cooper fills that gap.The author starts off by explaining what design patterns are; this is one of the best introductions to the topic that I have read. The following 7 chapters introduce UML, OO Programming and VB.NET. In my opinion, these topics cannot be explained in fewer than 100 pages of any book and hence should have been prerequisites on our part (the readers). The result is that the coverage is neither broad nor deep, but nevertheless serves at getting us all on level ground.The remainder 360 pages focus on describing all the patterns found in the Gamma et al book. It is all very good stuff doing justice to the title, as every pattern description (bar one) is accompanied by examples in both VB6 and VB.NET. Books are coming out continuously that describe various areas of the .NET framework, of the VB language, migration issues etc. It is pleasant to see a book that discusses the deeper aspect of programming good OO software using infamous design patterns. Depending on your programming domain, you will be delighted or disappointed that almost all examples are GUI based (no component stuff here). Also, this is not a book from one VB programmer to another. On contrary, it is evident that the author's first language is not VB and references to Java/Smalltalk can be found in the text. Irrelevant as that may be, I would have preferred to have seen events (VB6) and delegates (VB.NET) to have been leveraged in the patterns.To finish on a positive note, this book (and the CD with all examples' code that accompanies it) serves as a good reference while writing software in VB6 and VS.NET