The Waite Group's Visual Basic 6 Superbible

I checked 3 different VB references looking for answers to the errror messages I was getting in my code and only this book had what I needed. It provided good explanations and nice tables.

If you're thinking this book is going to teach you HOW to write VB programs, it won't. If you already know VB and want a nice, reasonably complete book on everything from standard VB methods to ADO and database access, this is a GREAT reference book. I keep it at my side during all my projects. The on-line help for VB is not always the greatest and this is a good second source for help.There is a big difference between a book that is going to teach you how to write VB code, and a book that you can reference for the proper VB syntax for controls. It does a great job at the latter.

The style of this book could be intimidating to newcomers at first, but if you give it a chance you'll see that it's is a GREAT BOOK nonetheless. I've looked at numerous tutorials and none struck me as having the real-world depth I was looking for. They take you only so far, expose you to only a small subset of VB's fucntions and objects, and give little in the way of real world examples. At the other end of the spectrum are the "expert" books that are impenetrable to people without previous expertise. This book is different - it does not hold your hand or belabor basic programming topics that are common to ALL languages, like conditional expressions, variables, looping, etc. But it gives so many code examples and projects that you really learn by following along and seeing things in real world context. The authors have focused on what makes VB unique as a language - and that's the builtin functions, controls, objects, etc.This book gives the most consise usage summary I've seen; each fucntion is well explained and has actual code examples. At the end of the chapters are projects that utilize the fucntionality of the chapter, are very easy to follow, and have the look and feel of "real" applications. If you're trying to learn VB to actually implement a project you have in mind, this book will give you all the important pieces you need.