Customer Reviews
Excellent VB.NET resource 
2007-12-10
I found this VB.NET reference of tremendous help to me. The content covers a wide cross-section of topics and addresses the needs of varying skill levels. Easy to use. Had just the information I initially needed to parse and manipulate XML files. I am very pleased with this book. It is proving to be an excellent resource for now and the future.
Programmers Cookbook 2007-05-15
The book was new as presented and came very quickly in the mail. Thank you
Great recepie book. 
2007-03-14
Book has a lot of practical suggestions, especially for rudimentary string handling operations. It stands out over most other books of this genre on the topic of .net.
Even after i switched to c#.net, this book was still handy.
WOW!!! 2007-01-10
If you're familiar with VB.Net, then this is a great book for you to learn how to add those tricky little details that can make or break
the professionalism of your Applications.
If you are a beginner, you may want to book mark this book and get it
when you feel more comfortable, because you will need it.
Although just about everything can be learned from the MSDN Library and help files that come with Visual Studio.
Its hard to find what your looking for when you dont really know exactly what it is that you need.
Thats where this book comes in. This book covers a vast array of
possibilities, that it'll truely keep you drawn into the fascinating
world of VB.Net coding, and without such a headache in research.
This is a book worth having as a refernce.
Note: some of the examples you may need to modify to bring from a console app to a regular windows app. Which is no big deal.
Just omit "Console.Writelines" for "textboxname.text = "
Recommended 2007-01-09
The Programmer's Cookbook is a great collection of "how-to" articles. It is filled with practical and useable code samples that you can use in your programs. It will not solve all your coding problems, but it is a great place to start when you are trying to solve some specific problem.
Excellent Information, Poorly written. 
2006-02-23
VISUAL BASIC DOT NET PROGRAMMER COOKBOOK
The standard for programming language writing 2005-11-07
The author has that perfect mixture of good writing style and a profound knowledge of both the language and the .net architecture. I read through the book once, with a fairly shallow understanding. Now I refer to it all the time and find guidance for almost any project I am working on. His code snippets (which all work...unusual for a programming book) are instructive, well commented, and always elegeant and concise. He has a focus in his code for efficiency, but the logic is easy to follow.
I only wish this author wrote the C# sister book. In fact, I would read THIS book to learn C#! BY far the best programming book out there and the standard by which all others should be judged.
Ignore the negative review 2005-04-25
For a beginner, I think it's best to get two things: A really good introductory book to learn the basics, and then a cookbook that gives code samples for a variety of tasks. Otherwise you'll beat your head against the wall trying to reinvent the wheel, every time you want to perform some common task in code.
For vb.net, I'd recommend Murach's Beginning Visual Basic .Net as the introductory text (even for a non-programmer) and this book as the cookbook. This book is concise but it contains the info you want. Its problem/solution structure makes it easy to find information (much easier than digging through a typical 1,000+ page comprehensive language review). And the selection of topics/code samples is quite useful, covering a variety of common tasks.
If you've learned the very basics but are struggling to write code, take a look at this book.
Baked Code? 
2004-06-11
FYI, when using the code in Chapter 8-4, "8.4 Ping an IP Address", all seems well and you get the different ping times in your console window. However, I referenced the dll provided in the sample code in a fresh application, and used it to ping ONE ip address several times (which was a machine on my same network segment sitting about 3 feet from me) and I got the SAME EXACT responses as the sample app did, which "SUPPOSEDLY" was pinging yahoo.com, SETI.com, and the local loopback address. In fact, no matter what ip addresses I tried to ping, the ping times were always the same approximate numbers. I would say that the only explanation for this is that the generation of the numbers is hard-coded into the dll, rather than being actual ping times. I would love to hear the explanation for this...
Just a great book to have in the library! Must have! 2004-03-30
There just seems to be so much to learn with VB.NET and the .NET Framework to do things you've always done in VB or VBScript or any other language. Sure, you could go search for it, but just pick up this book. It'll save you hours and hours of hassle! This has been my most valuable book. Buy now!
