Visual Basic 2005 Programmer's Reference Programmer to Programmer

Customer Reviews

Good content. Poor index.

2008-01-25
I had not used Visual Basic for several years before purchasing this book. I had forgotten a lot, and lots of things have changed. As I worked my way through this book, I found the actual content to be extremely useful. There is a good overview of a wide range of topics. The example programs are excellent starting points for understanding the various topics, and most proved easy for me to expand upon.

As I progressed through the book, I would frequently have the desire to use syntax, functionality, examples, etc. that I was sure that I had already read about. Unfortunately, it was not very long before I realized that the index was very underdeveloped for a book containing this much information. The index is a very important part of any good reference book, and is a big weakness of this otherwise good text.

Slightly Problematic.

2008-01-05
I was somewhat frustrated that the chapter dealing with structures and classes said that... Classes are faster when dealing with arrays... Yet there was no example of how to use classes with arrays... And for me, I don't see any other way I would want to use classes.

For example... I was trying to make a layer system for an image manipulation program.

Code such as:
DIM layers(10) as new bitmap
So in order to get layers I had to resort to 3, 3dimensional arrays.
RED(x,y,layer number) etc.

I am sure the book is only frustrating to me because I used it mostly for the graphics section and for code tailored to manipulation of graphics.

I am sure this book is all fine and dandy if you are reading it with no particular focus in mind. But, if you are reading a chapter and then immediately try to apply it to a specific situation, you may come into problems that the book does not address.

But I guess that is how programming works. Even if you know what you are doing you still run into problems when you take your idea from... idea to actual programming.

Must have!!!

2007-10-30
I have found, Visual Basic 2005 Programmer's Reference (Programmer to Programmer) to be a very good reference source. The book offers both Visual Basic references, and .net framework references side by side. I as a newer programmer (novice - intermediate ), and have been looking for a bridge, that goes between beginner and advanced. Visual Basic 2005 Programmer's Reference, has done just that!

The gap that existed for me, was filled in quite nicely. I have been struggling with more advanced concepts and now, I have begun to make the progress that seemed to elude me.
If there is anyone out there looking for the same "bridge", I would recommend this book without hesitation.

It's nice if u have a good background!

2007-04-08
The book is very nice and very reach, but it is writen in a brief language whitch is unsuitable for beginners.

Trust Me. Put this on your shelf.

2007-03-20
This is must-have for all VB programmers whether you are a novice programmer like me or the serious developer.

This is the one of the two (the other book is Programming Microsoft Visual Basic 2005) that I would recommend buying. Visual Basic 2005 Programmer Reference is not the kind of books where you read it, learn something, and then throw the book to one corner. If this is the case, I would just recommend borrowing the book from a local library. But it is the kind of book where you will frequently refer to.

1000 pages of information neatly organized into 18 chapters and 18 appendices. The organization of content, especially the appendices is what makes me feel worthwhile to own this book; it provides you quick and easy lookup of information.

There is a chapter that offers a very good introduction to Windows Form Controls and a dedicated appendix that houses the related materials. This chapter-appendix buddy is easily one of highest frequency lookup because one just cannot remember so many controls with their vast amount of methods and properties.

Another worth mentioning is the Graphics Category which spans from Chapter 19 to 24, my favorite of the book. this is where you will get impressed by Mr Stephens 's expertise in coding drawing related applications. Through these chapters, I had learned lots of tips and hence, leading to the birth of my own custom graphing and painting applications.

Apart from supplying all the how-to information, Mr Stephens also packed some very useful code examples sprinkled across the book that will definitely enlighten readers. While the book provides tons of information like introducing the IDE, the Visual Basic Language, Object-Oriented Programming, Windows Forms, Drawing and Printing to File Handling..., I am a bit disappointed with the lack of contents for the more advanced topics like Regular Expressions and Threading. However, Mr Stephens do make it a point to mention these advanced topics and had provided some links for further read up. For these advanced topics , I recommend Programming Visual Basic: The Language by Francesco Balena which I used in conjunction with the reference book.

Finally, the purchase of this book also gave me an extra bonus. Whenever I encounter any problem, I just post it on Mr Stephen's site or at the Wrox forums, and Mr Stephens or other programmers will provide the help.

Exactly as described

2007-01-10
Visual Basic 2005 Programmer's Reference

Visual Basic 2005 adds new features to Visual Basic (VB) that make it a more powerful programming language than ever before. This combined tutorial and reference describes VB 2005 from scratch, while also offering in-depth content for more advanced developers. Whether you're looking to learn the latest features of VB 2005 or you want a refresher of easily forgotten details, this book is an ideal resource.

Well-known VB expert Rod Stephens features the basics of Visual Basic 2005 programming in the first half of the book. The second half serves as a reference that allows you to quickly locate information for specific language features. It's a comprehensive look at programming using the increased set of language options offered with the VB 2005 release, confirming that there has never been a better time to learn Visual Basic than now.

What you will learn from this book:

The fundamental concepts of object-oriented programming with Visual Basic, including classes and structures, inheritance and interfaces, and generics
How an application can interact with its environment, save and load data in external sources, and use standard dialog controls
The syntax for declaring subroutines, functions, generics, classes, and other important language concepts

Who this book is for:

This book is for programmers at all levels who are either looking to learn Visual Basic 2005 or have already mastered it and want some useful tips, tricks, and language details.

Wrox Programmer's References are designed to give the experienced developer straight facts on a new technology, without hype or unnecessary explanations. They deliver hard information with plenty of practical examples to help you apply new tools to your development projects today.

Well written and intuitively organized 2006-12-12
This was an excellent first VS 2005 book. It had more than I expected with its drawing tutorials and various IDE settings.
Its a good refernce for new programmers and seasoned developers.

Great help for me being a beginner 2006-11-10
Answered many of the problem areas i had

Exceptional book on VB Windows Applications 2006-10-21
This book has a lot more material in it than I expected from reading the Table of Contents. I am really glad I made this choice. It is very nicely organized with supporting subjects covered where needed. It also has real world experience suggestions throughout that will aid the programmer. The code examples are simple but effective and the descriptions of concepts are broad and carefully written. Visual Basic is extremely complex and this is a great source for the programmer. I would not refer to it as a reference book although some of that is there. It is a great walk-through of a lot of the aspects of writing Windows applications.

Academic/math background of author clearly evident - great presentation 2006-08-12
As a C-family programmer with a math background, I found the author's approach to presentation to be excellent: in 3 critical ways.

1) Unlike most VB books, he separates IDE (Integrated Devel. Env.) issues from the actual coding examples. In other words, while the IDE treatment is good, one needn't concern oneself with the IDE in order to understand the fundamental attributes - both syntactic and semantic - of the language. To put it as simply as possible: my objective was to know *what the code looks like, and what it does* as a language, not as a language-cum-development environment. (It's also worth noting that Visual Studio is *not* the only available development environment.)

2) The author spends a lot of time on definitions, and doesn't assume any pre-existing knowledge of the language. Syntax charts appear before presentation of any language construct, so that the reader can clearly see what options are available for that language construct *before* the author begins to actually describe the variations.

3) The examples rely on forms *only* when necessary. From what I can tell, most VB books are addressed to VB programmers - who seem to think of the entire language as being built around forms. (While this may be a historically understandable view, clearly it's inaccurate, given that it's possible to write form-independent and useful component code, such as for use in an ASP .NET application.)

Let me close by saying that after struggling through a number of VB books that were clearly oriented towards forms and/or holding the reader by the hand when it came to walking through the IDE in *every single example*, but were relatively weak when it came to the fundamental syntactic and semantic characteristics of the language, it was a pleasure to read this text, in which *definitions* and *semantics* came first!

If you are looking to have your hand held so you can walk through each example with the IDE, or seeking a "cookbook" that will tell you how to write such-and-such a routine, this may not be the right book for you. But as a programmer who has learned many languages, the first thing I want to know with any new language is: *how to write the code in plain text, and what the code I've written will actually do*.

After reading another Wrox tome (the title of which I won't mention), browsing at my local B&N, and consulting many possible resources on line, this is the best text that I've found which satisfies that seemingly simple-minded criterion. And at Amazon's excellent price, this is a bargain you can't afford to pass up!