Visual Basic .Net: The Complete Reference [With CDROM]

You have to read this book, before you spend thousands on a VB.NET course.I read Mr Shapiro's first VB.NET book in late 2001 and made up my mind that I needed to make the move from VB to VB.NET asap. I am a VB/ASP programmer still struggling with OO design concepts and patterns, and I find his insight into the software development and design process quite remarkable indeed. He writes with a wit and with metaphors I have not seen elsewhere, and made tackling the complex subjects much easier more me. You'll be chuckling at some of the stuff he says. I find it hard to learn from computer books and prefer classrooms, but reading even the first 30 percent of this book, has saved me a bundle in time and money.I am more concerned about code than classes and figured that the new OO in .NET would put me off. But I was especially pleased to see Mr Shapiro tackle stuff like merge sort and quicksort and then place them in context with various .NET "features" like delegates, and interfaces. Incidently, if understanding interfaces and delegates has you scratching your head, this is the only book I found, browsing at the bookstore, that devotes a whole chapter to each subject respectively. At first I thought his notes on why Sun hates delegates would not be much use to me but they go a long way to understanding why .NET has delegates and interfaces and Java only has interfaces.There is also a very comprehensive linked-list example in this book that shows you exactly how to implement interfaces, like IEnumerator, and IList, stuff which very few seem to understand and which are very alien to a VB programmer.No book is perfect. There are a few typos in the text which are clearly last minute changes the publisher forgot to correct. The source code examples compile without issue. I will be looking for his next book for sure.

Simply put, this book is amazing. In order to take fully advantage of the .NET Muscle, you need a full understanding of the .NET Framework. This book will take you there. The chapter that covers the differences between Value Types and Reference Types is hands down the best I've read. Mr. Shapiro has a gift for writing, so be sure to take advantage of it.- MKP

If you really want to know they whys, hows and wherefores of Visual Basic.Net and the .Net framework in general then you should read this book.However, it is not really a reference, like a dictionary. It is a well-written, carefully thought-out explanation of Visual Basic.Net and the .Net framework.There are several chapters on important concepts like delegates, data structures and design patterns and why they are used. You don't see such concise and clear explanations like these in most books.The author does not spend as much time discussing the details of the language or the framework as other books(there are many good books for that out at this point- I liked Programming Microsoft Visual Basic.Net by Franseco Balena). But this book was very important to me to know why- why delegates? why arrays? why structures? why objects? etc.If you want a really good and thorough understanding of this subject then buy this book. You will need another to go over the details or if you need an introduction (or just use the online documentation which is very substantial and has plenty of detailed examples and explanations).

If you are new to programming or if you want to find a book that introduces you to key concepts. You need this book. Mr. Shapiro introduces the new .net platform by giving you a summary of all the components that go into the framework. He provides you with a robust but concise understanding that will guide your programming in such a fashion to promote full use into the potential Microsoft is offering. Without this understanding you will fail to understand the unavoidable failures in your code.Secondly, it is extremely hard to find book that blend a good understanding of Object Oriented Programming with Visual Basic .Net. The .NET framework centers around creating powerful classes and objects. Mr. Shapiro gives you the full story, illustrating his full knowledge on the subject and creating understandable illustrations that bring concepts to full understanding. When I started reading this book I approached OOP with fear and now I feel I can use its full power to accomplish great feats with ease.Many books may be thicker, offer more information on specific form controls and components, but few attempt and succeed at creating an efficient and knowledgeable programmer in the end. Mr. Shapiro provides the theory that brings VB.NET to life.I highly recommend that if you are interested in programming with expertise and joy, that you purchase this primer immediately.

When I started investigating Visual Basic .NET it became clear that the "complete reference" could run to thousands of pages and still not teach you how to program in Visual Basic .NET. I have thus devoted most of this book to five critical areas: Inheritance, interfaces, aggregation, delegates and the core. Concentrate on these five elements, the five stars of this book, and you'll soon be writing the software you never thought you could. Star 1: The first seven chapters cover the core elements. Besides the lexical and syntactical elements of Visual Basic, I devoted one chapter to operators; one to control, flow and iteration; and one (long) chapter to methods.Star 2: Fully understand inheritance. Pay no attention to the "experts" that claim it's "dangerous," "problematic," and "unnecessary." Sure, any powerful tool in foolhardy or untrained or undisciplined hands can be dangerous; but that's all the more reason to obtain an unshakable understanding of inheritance (and all aspects of OO). The reason: Not only is inheritance one of the three legs of the object-oriented programming stool, it is the keystone of .NET. Without it there is no .NET. My chapter on classes covers every aspect of inheritance.Star 3: Understand interfaces like you understand your own soul. I devoted a whole chapter to interfaces and numerous sections in this book, and I probably covered interfaces more than any other author. Interfaces are the very fabric of polymorphism in .NET. You can write software and pretend interfaces don't exist; but know this: unless you master interfaces, you will never be a good .NET programmer. Ignore interfaces and you will not be able to tap into the neural network of .NET.Star 4: Understand aggregation and composition in OO design and how these patterns are translated to code. Yes inheritance is a critical element as I just said; but it's aggregation and composition that allow you to inherit a form or a component that has all kinds of "embedded" components and controls in it. I cover aggregation in many places in detail. In the chapter on data structures I show you how to write a linked-list that utilizes the aggregation, composition and interface patterns. Couple with inheritance the list is easily extended to binary-node or multi-node trees. Star 5: Become an expert on delegates and delegation. I spent so much time on delegates my publisher thought I would never finish the book. I have not given you pages and pages of code showing delegates in action; rather I have gone to great lengths to help you understand them, how they are used, what they accomplish and why they were invented (with code of course). Delegates are better understood when compared to interfaces as well as pointers. (Sun hates delegates and loves interfaces (for Java), but Microsoft loves and gives you both in .NET). Delegates are found everywhere in .NET. They are the foundation of the event model, the thread model, and more. You'll use them in many sophisticated algorith