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Pro Silverlight 4 In VB
jddp writes "MacDonald is a programmer's programmer, and Pro Silverlight 4 in VB is a model of what a programmer's guide should be. He explains a mass of technical information in considerable detail without losing the big-picture. His clear and concise exposition of concepts and functionality is never confusing or needlessly repetitive. The book's organization is logical, yet the chapters can be read in isolation, as the need or interest arises." Keep reading for the rest of jddp's review.
Pro Silverlight 4 in VB
author
Matthew MacDonald
pages
896
publisher
Apress
rating
9/10
reviewer
jddp
ISBN
1430235489
summary
An invaluable reference for professional developers wanting to discover the new features of Silverlight
One thing this book doesn't provide is an overview of the subject for a novice trying to get the big-picture. After the briefest of introductions (10 pages), the author leaps right into building applications. Nor does it provide every technical detail you will need to complete your application. (That's why we have the web). However, if you want a book that can take you from having a rough map of the territory to being a self-sufficient Silverlight developer, I highly recommend this one.
Starting from the fundamentals of Silverlight such as XAML, Layout and Elements, McDonald rarely puts a step wrong as he winds through the technical details, progressing to specific functional areas such as such as Animation, Data Binding and Web services. Each chapter provides a brief overview of the functionality addressed before stepping through the programming details. His code examples are concise, but also convey the significance and use of the features very clearly. The examples do not sprawl across pages and pages, as in weaker tutorials, but they do build upon one another when necessary. Working code implementing the examples from the text is available at MacDonald's personal site for anyone to download — but apparently only in C# (as far as I could see. The VB version may be coming later, just as the VB book lagged the C# version). Due to the intelligent choice, structuring and clear implementation of his examples, I have found them a useful jumping-off point for "real-life" applications on several occasions. The author has gone beyond the scope of the book in at least one case, implemented an "advanced" capability (support for large file up/downloads via a Web Service) that I was specifically interested in.
As mentioned, the book does not contain an extensive technology overview and this is reflected by the absence of many of the buzzwords associated with Silverlight from the index. You will find no mention of RIA services. MVVM is only touched upon in the context of the new SL 4 support for the Command pattern. (Even so, his brief explanation is a great example of MacDonald's lucid and economical expository style. You could trawl the web for a long time without finding such a straightforward explanation.) However, while MacDonald does not attempt to convey any over-arching architectural vision, he is perfectly capable of clarifying some abstract design concepts. In Chapter 4 of the book he is already tackling the intimidating-sounding topics of Dependency Properties, Attached Properties and Routed Events. By the time you've read a few pages you're wondering what all the fuss was about. After less than six pages, MacDonald is working through a meaningful application of attached properties (a custom layout panel). Most of the chapter is devoted a detailed explanation and illustration of Mouse and Keyboard event handling, and to the new Commanding support in SL 4.
A final caveat: This is not a book for someone wanting to catch up on what's new in Silverlight 4. The information is there, but it is dispersed among the relevant sections of the old book, and there is no helpful index. Contrary to the impression given by the back-cover, the very occasional "What's New" boxes don't help much in homing in on new features. In fact, the organization of the material and most of the content is unchanged from the SL 3 edition, so I wouldn't buy this if you already have that book.
While reading this book, I sometimes wished for a wider view: discussions of the merits of different architectures; comparisons to design patterns used in other technologies, and so forth. This book will not be much help in defining the architecture for your next mega-app. This is a book to seize on when you need to get a handle on programming specific Silverlight features fast. You won't learn about every possible shortcut or dead-end on the trail, but you will never have to wonder where the heck you are.
While this book it isn't all things to all developers, it is hard to overstate its consistent intelligence and clarity, or its sheer usefulness (to programmers). Programmers just aren't supposed to be so articulate – are they?
You can purchase Pro Silverlight 4 in VB from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Starting from the fundamentals of Silverlight such as XAML, Layout and Elements, McDonald rarely puts a step wrong as he winds through the technical details, progressing to specific functional areas such as such as Animation, Data Binding and Web services. Each chapter provides a brief overview of the functionality addressed before stepping through the programming details. His code examples are concise, but also convey the significance and use of the features very clearly. The examples do not sprawl across pages and pages, as in weaker tutorials, but they do build upon one another when necessary. Working code implementing the examples from the text is available at MacDonald's personal site for anyone to download — but apparently only in C# (as far as I could see. The VB version may be coming later, just as the VB book lagged the C# version). Due to the intelligent choice, structuring and clear implementation of his examples, I have found them a useful jumping-off point for "real-life" applications on several occasions. The author has gone beyond the scope of the book in at least one case, implemented an "advanced" capability (support for large file up/downloads via a Web Service) that I was specifically interested in.
As mentioned, the book does not contain an extensive technology overview and this is reflected by the absence of many of the buzzwords associated with Silverlight from the index. You will find no mention of RIA services. MVVM is only touched upon in the context of the new SL 4 support for the Command pattern. (Even so, his brief explanation is a great example of MacDonald's lucid and economical expository style. You could trawl the web for a long time without finding such a straightforward explanation.) However, while MacDonald does not attempt to convey any over-arching architectural vision, he is perfectly capable of clarifying some abstract design concepts. In Chapter 4 of the book he is already tackling the intimidating-sounding topics of Dependency Properties, Attached Properties and Routed Events. By the time you've read a few pages you're wondering what all the fuss was about. After less than six pages, MacDonald is working through a meaningful application of attached properties (a custom layout panel). Most of the chapter is devoted a detailed explanation and illustration of Mouse and Keyboard event handling, and to the new Commanding support in SL 4.
A final caveat: This is not a book for someone wanting to catch up on what's new in Silverlight 4. The information is there, but it is dispersed among the relevant sections of the old book, and there is no helpful index. Contrary to the impression given by the back-cover, the very occasional "What's New" boxes don't help much in homing in on new features. In fact, the organization of the material and most of the content is unchanged from the SL 3 edition, so I wouldn't buy this if you already have that book.
While reading this book, I sometimes wished for a wider view: discussions of the merits of different architectures; comparisons to design patterns used in other technologies, and so forth. This book will not be much help in defining the architecture for your next mega-app. This is a book to seize on when you need to get a handle on programming specific Silverlight features fast. You won't learn about every possible shortcut or dead-end on the trail, but you will never have to wonder where the heck you are.
While this book it isn't all things to all developers, it is hard to overstate its consistent intelligence and clarity, or its sheer usefulness (to programmers). Programmers just aren't supposed to be so articulate – are they?
You can purchase Pro Silverlight 4 in VB from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
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No, thats Perl. This is a book about "silverlight"
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I dunno, I think Virginia Beach is a pretty nice place.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Looked like JUSTIF to me, but to be honest, both of those languages look like gibberish to me.
Saying Android is a family of phones is akin to saying Linux is a family of PCs.
How on earth can you justify using 'Pro' and 'VB' in one sentence??
This entire story is a troll.
Yes, VB is the McDonalds of programming. And Silverlight is a big clown ...
Very appropriate book in that regards :)
Every time I work in VB a piece of me dies.
Why post this, here of all places? My guess would be about 70% of Slashdot visitors hate Silverlight and 85% hate VB. Combine the two and you have a Slashdot article?
is like a gourmand's gourmand eating at mcdonald's.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Nuff said..
In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above all, be a sheep.
MacDonald is a programmer's programmer,
I thought it was the beginning of an SAT question.
Home of The Suki Series
While I don't know if this review is a "paid" review or not, I do know (from personal experience) that a lot of them are. Could /. consider adding a rule or guideline requesting the reviewer to state if he/she was given the book for free or otherwise compensated for the review?
Did someone actually just mention /. and editorial guidelines in the same sentence?
This is about as flamebait as they get... dropping an review on VB, the most Microsoft of Microsoft languages, in this place is like dropping off your son to sell lemonade at a NAMBLA convention.
A book review (which we all think is just free publicity/compensated review) about a competitor to Flash (which most of us don't like) from Microsoft (which most of us hate) in VB (which is a joke to most programmers, which comes from Microsoft).
Just because Microsoft offers Silverlight for Mac doesn't mean people are going to install it. I bought a Mac to get away from Microsoft. I wouldn't install anything from them on my computer even if they paid me. I'm sure I'm not the only one.
I predict 90% troll/flamebait and 0.01% insightful comments. The rest, 9.99%, is the usual pointless comments such as this one.
if slashdot wanted a review of a retarded language book, "php for complete drooling dumbasses" would have been better.
There's no better language than the one you know.
"the teaching of BASIC should be rated as a criminal offence: it mutilates the mind beyond recovery. '"Edsger W. Dijkstra
Can we please let basic die? We don't need another book about a horrible language.
http://www.downarchive.com/ebooks/330070-pro-silverlight-4-in-vb.html - but if you're still interested.
In the .Net world, it's not quite that straight forward. For instance, Visual Studio 2010 is almost fully a .Net application (some parts are legacy C++ libraries/controls that just didn't get converted before launch). But being .Net just means that it was compiled to the .Net intermediate language. It could have been written in VB.Net, C#, J#, F#, PHP.Net, or any of the other high level .Net languages.
That's the awesome part of .Net. You can write in what ever language you are familiar with, against the same framework that everyone else uses. The majority of difference between C# and VB at this point are due to there having been 2 teams at MS working on the VB.Net and C# editors for Visual Studio. Now, those teams have been merged. VB.Net has single line parameters, C# has XML Literals, and they are continuing to become more and more similar functionally speaking. The only big difference left now is multi-line lambdas and that C# is case sensitive.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
[a programmer's programmer using VB] is like a gourmand's gourmand eating at mcdonald's.
That analogy does not suggest what you probably mean to suggest. You are probably confusing "gourmand" (glutton) with "gourmet" (connoisseur of fine food).
they bought macs because multiple mouse buttons confuse them.
Matthew MacDonald has been doing Silverlight books since version 1.0. I own his C# flavor of this 4.0 book. He's one of those authors that waits until a new technology has soaked in a bit, his book reflects that (as opposed to getting the book out their as soon as 4.0 was released). This book came out about 4 or 5 months after Silverlight 4.0 was released.
I promised myself that if I used the .net framework on a project again I would shoot myself in the leg.
So after I post this I am going read my ruby on rails book.
It's better to know more than one. This is particularly true if the one you know is VB.
Unless it makes it harder for you to solve the problem at hand.
Having a varied set of tools to solve a problem will allow you to choose the most adequate for the job.
Needless to say, you need to know how to use what you have. It's not use having a gazillion of tools if you have no clue what to with them.
"Science can amuse and fascinate us all, but it is engineering that changes the world. " - Asimov.
Silverlight & Visual Basic! Could it get any worse than this?
I can't buy this, I'm saving for Starter Shockwave 11 in FORTRAN