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Build a Program Now
Graeme Williams writes "My experience with Visual Studio was several years ago, and limited to a support role. My only serious programming experience was more than twenty years ago, so I'm the kind of hobbyist programmer that Visual Basic 2005 Express and this book is aimed at. Microsoft Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition: Build a Program Now! doesn't attempt to teach you programming in general or Visual Basic in particular. It's focused on introducing the features of the Express Edition of Visual Basic 2005. I think this focus serves the book and the reader very well." Read on for the rest of Graeme's review.
Microsoft Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition: Build a Program Now!
author
Patrice Pelland
pages
xi + 209
publisher
Microsoft Press
rating
9
reviewer
Graeme Williams
ISBN
0-7356-2213-2
summary
An excellent introduction to Microsoft's new Visual Basic 2005 Express programming system
At the moment, the book is only available in PDF form as a free download from Microsoft when you register Visual Basic 2005 Express. According to Barnes & Noble, it will also be available as a paperback some time this month. The paperback will include a CD with both Visual Basic 2005 Express and SQL Server 2005 Express. This review is based on the PDF.
The PDF is an inconvenient form for an ebook. It's protected so that you can't create your own bookmarks, and Microsoft doesn't provide any, and there are no clickable links -- in the table of contents, for example. There's a menu item for find, but the text doesn't seemed to be stored as text, so find doesn't actually find anything.
The book starts off with brief descriptions of .NET, object-oriented programming and the new features in Visual Basic 2005 Express. I guess it makes sense as a general introduction, and you can skip it if you like. It's certainly not a thorough explanation of object-oriented programming, but it's enough to let someone know that there's more to learn.
The next chapter leads you through installing the software. This is of doubtful value, since it basically advises you to stay with the defaults, which you almost certainly could have done on your own. If you have a problem, the book points you to some online resources, but that's all. I had a problem because my 'My Documents' folder is on a server, and this was enough to break the default security settings. The installation offers to install SQL Server 2005 Express, but neither the installation nor the book tells you that this will leave SQL Server running all the time.
Once the software is installed, you can start programming. The examples in the book are great. Starting with a simple console application to add two numbers might seem silly, but it makes sense in Visual Basic 2005 because you can't just start typing – you have to start somewhere in particular, and you need to know how to do that. Following that, you build a Windows application to add two numbers, a web browser, a database application, and an application that retrieves data from a web service. Each example builds nicely on the one before, and they're functional enough to be useful in their own right.
As important as the examples is what you learn along the way about the tools that make up the Visual Basic 2005 system. The book shows how simple it is to use the built-in components in Visual Basic 2005 to add features and functions to your application including forms, buttons, menus, toolbars, a splash screen, an about box, web services and database connections. This is where the book really shines. It shows you very clearly how to take advantage of the time (and work) saving features of the system.
The book is pretty good at explaining how to design a form. Form design was just awful in previous versions of Visual Basic, but the book clearly explains the new features that make it a little easier. The system is still not perfect – you can't automatically create three equally spaced textboxes (input fields), for example – but that's not the fault of this book.
The book also does a good job explaining the mechanics of starting a project, building applications and libraries, debugging, and "publishing" your application. "Publishing" is what Microsoft calls the process of turning your completed program into an installer which anyone can run to install your program. There's also an excellent introduction to database tables and how to create and use them within the system.
The graphic design in the book could be better. Each step in the instructions is indicated by a large numbered green bullet, which works well when there are only a few steps on a page, but you can easily get lost when one page has ten bullets and five tables. Also, you spend a considerable amount of time setting object properties. The value for each property is shown in a table, but sometimes a single table will include more than one object and sometimes it won't, which can be confusing. Finally, the screenshots aren't very clear. These may seem like quibbles, but an introductory book has a responsibility to be as clear as possible, and then some.
As you work through the examples in the book, you can really feel yourself gaining momentum. The flip-side of this is that as you go through the book, you get less and less explanation for larger and larger chunks of code. The largest single piece of code is 56 lines long. In context, it's presented clearly enough that it's still easy to digest. One way of measuring the success of an introductory book like this is whether it gives you the confidence to keep going on your own, and I think this book does just that.
But what if you're new to programming? If you're an absolute beginner, this book won't teach you how to program in Visual Basic. For example, the book never mentions structures or recursion. You can't do any serious programming just with what you'll learn about programming from this book, but that's not its purpose. The instructions in this book ARE clear enough that you'll be able to follow along, but if you want to get the most out of this book you'll have to spend some extra time working through the examples and with learning the language, even if it's only via the online help.
On the other hand, I don't think you can know so much that this book won't be very useful. Microsoft in its wisdom changes terminology regularly (toolbar is now toolstrip??) and there are many new features in this version of Visual Basic, so it's a good idea to hire a guide.
Depending on your level of experience, you may need other resources to learn everything you want to about programming in Visual Basic 2005, but this is a great place to start."
You can purchase Microsoft Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition: Build a Program Now! from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
At the moment, the book is only available in PDF form as a free download from Microsoft when you register Visual Basic 2005 Express. According to Barnes & Noble, it will also be available as a paperback some time this month. The paperback will include a CD with both Visual Basic 2005 Express and SQL Server 2005 Express. This review is based on the PDF.
The PDF is an inconvenient form for an ebook. It's protected so that you can't create your own bookmarks, and Microsoft doesn't provide any, and there are no clickable links -- in the table of contents, for example. There's a menu item for find, but the text doesn't seemed to be stored as text, so find doesn't actually find anything.
The book starts off with brief descriptions of .NET, object-oriented programming and the new features in Visual Basic 2005 Express. I guess it makes sense as a general introduction, and you can skip it if you like. It's certainly not a thorough explanation of object-oriented programming, but it's enough to let someone know that there's more to learn.
The next chapter leads you through installing the software. This is of doubtful value, since it basically advises you to stay with the defaults, which you almost certainly could have done on your own. If you have a problem, the book points you to some online resources, but that's all. I had a problem because my 'My Documents' folder is on a server, and this was enough to break the default security settings. The installation offers to install SQL Server 2005 Express, but neither the installation nor the book tells you that this will leave SQL Server running all the time.
Once the software is installed, you can start programming. The examples in the book are great. Starting with a simple console application to add two numbers might seem silly, but it makes sense in Visual Basic 2005 because you can't just start typing – you have to start somewhere in particular, and you need to know how to do that. Following that, you build a Windows application to add two numbers, a web browser, a database application, and an application that retrieves data from a web service. Each example builds nicely on the one before, and they're functional enough to be useful in their own right.
As important as the examples is what you learn along the way about the tools that make up the Visual Basic 2005 system. The book shows how simple it is to use the built-in components in Visual Basic 2005 to add features and functions to your application including forms, buttons, menus, toolbars, a splash screen, an about box, web services and database connections. This is where the book really shines. It shows you very clearly how to take advantage of the time (and work) saving features of the system.
The book is pretty good at explaining how to design a form. Form design was just awful in previous versions of Visual Basic, but the book clearly explains the new features that make it a little easier. The system is still not perfect – you can't automatically create three equally spaced textboxes (input fields), for example – but that's not the fault of this book.
The book also does a good job explaining the mechanics of starting a project, building applications and libraries, debugging, and "publishing" your application. "Publishing" is what Microsoft calls the process of turning your completed program into an installer which anyone can run to install your program. There's also an excellent introduction to database tables and how to create and use them within the system.
The graphic design in the book could be better. Each step in the instructions is indicated by a large numbered green bullet, which works well when there are only a few steps on a page, but you can easily get lost when one page has ten bullets and five tables. Also, you spend a considerable amount of time setting object properties. The value for each property is shown in a table, but sometimes a single table will include more than one object and sometimes it won't, which can be confusing. Finally, the screenshots aren't very clear. These may seem like quibbles, but an introductory book has a responsibility to be as clear as possible, and then some.
As you work through the examples in the book, you can really feel yourself gaining momentum. The flip-side of this is that as you go through the book, you get less and less explanation for larger and larger chunks of code. The largest single piece of code is 56 lines long. In context, it's presented clearly enough that it's still easy to digest. One way of measuring the success of an introductory book like this is whether it gives you the confidence to keep going on your own, and I think this book does just that.
But what if you're new to programming? If you're an absolute beginner, this book won't teach you how to program in Visual Basic. For example, the book never mentions structures or recursion. You can't do any serious programming just with what you'll learn about programming from this book, but that's not its purpose. The instructions in this book ARE clear enough that you'll be able to follow along, but if you want to get the most out of this book you'll have to spend some extra time working through the examples and with learning the language, even if it's only via the online help.
On the other hand, I don't think you can know so much that this book won't be very useful. Microsoft in its wisdom changes terminology regularly (toolbar is now toolstrip??) and there are many new features in this version of Visual Basic, so it's a good idea to hire a guide.
Depending on your level of experience, you may need other resources to learn everything you want to about programming in Visual Basic 2005, but this is a great place to start."
You can purchase Microsoft Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition: Build a Program Now! from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Book Title: Microsoft Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition: Build a Program Now!
From Review: If you're an absolute beginner, this book won't teach you how to program in Visual Basic.
Brilliant!
I had high expectations when I read this book, and I'm pleased to say that I was more than satisfied. My Visual Studio "Hello World" program ROCKS!
"The dew has clearly fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning"
With GUI:
;)
echo "alert('Hello world');" >hello.html
firefox hello.html
(9 seconds
If you're just starting out programming, you probably shouldn't even be using anything as complex as Visual Studio, any edition. At most you should be using something that has code highlighting, and maybe some code completion. A full fledged IDE is not a good tool for teaching programming. Mind you, eventually people should learn how to use and IDE, but only after they actually know how to program. I find that this is where a lot of courses lack. They either get you using the IDE from the start, and you don't learn anything, or they never teach you about the IDE, and therefore you don't know how to use really useful features such as the debugger.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
VB Express (.img file)
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=54764
VB Express (.iso file)
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=57033
"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity but they've always worked for me" - HST
buit they have fixed that recently. VB.net is NOTHING like Vb of yesteryore. they got tired of all the bitching about how VB is not a real language so they convoluted it into a bastardized C++,C# mess.
Honestly most VB dev's I know still have a copy of VB6 around to do the stuff they need running in a hurry... you can not program anything fast in VB.net Even printing is a major PITA compared to the old VB6 days.
Many are abandoning it for other RAD languages. Python for example it's better cross platform and with the right setup your GUI looks good across platforms as well as able to compile to a single EXE.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
What happened to a computer language that is intuitive and very easy, that anybody can learn?
Security mostly. Scope is huge. Being able to define things that only exist within the curly braces is a blessing. Namespaces. Classes. Inheritance. All of that stuff that makes development such a joy. I'm not a computer scientist, I'm an aerospace engineer but I do simulation programming and all of these developments in object-oriented programming make my life so much easier. It is harder then when I was a kid and wrote my first programs in QBASIC, but man I'd much rather dig into a book and have to scratch my head a little learning C++ than go back to the old days...
-everphilski-
I eagerly await future books in the series such as:
Visual Studio 2005: Laying the Groundwork for Future Exploitation
Visual Studio 2005: A Catalyst for System Compromise
Visual Studio 2005: Pseudo-Security; It Makes You Feel Better
Visual Studio 2005: Allowing Users to Do Things You Never Intended
Teaching a person how to create an application WITHOUT programming skills is edging on insanity. Its like teaching a person how to gut the fish, without learning how to get the fish in the first place.
I found that an uncle of mine going through a VB course focused on this kind of approach, learning how to write an application without learning how to program. The problem is, anytime he came across a programming problem he had to solve, he phoned me up and asked me how the code should look. Without understanding the fundamentals of conditional statements, loops, and functions, few can really start to develop a useable application.
The fact is, if you want to do anything NOT mentioned in the book (i.e. anything the examples don't cover), your out of luck, because you will not have learned the necessary skills to find out how to do more then what the book mentions.
I would think this books sounds best for those familiar with programming, but NOT with the VB.Net 2005, for instance, those that are wondering what that new ToolStrip object does. It's designed as a refresher for those looking to understand what new features are and how to use them.
In any regard, VB is a good tool to be able to develop an application with MINIMAL programming skills, but I would be hard pressed to find someone actually wanting to design an application without some desire to understand how to do some basic programming. Anyone earning a paycheck by writing application swithout understanding how to program should seriously consider the morality of cashing his paycheck.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
What's wrong with VB or VB Express ? What's wrong with coding as a hobby and using these tools ?
Did you read the article where he says he's a hobbyist ? Why do you all need to rag on him, the book and program ?
In architechture schools you learn to build houses with cardboard first to understand the concepts, then you get to work with concrete.
Are you all so insecure about your jobs that you wouldn't encourage others to learn to write programs ? I don't see any other ideas from this audience, just hostility.
LouSir