Sams Teach Yourself Visual Basic 6 in 21 Days, Complete Training Kit - Softcover

Perry, Greg

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0672315122 ISBN 13: 9780672315121

Publisher: Sams, 1998

Synopsis

Visual Basic is one of the easiest programming languages to learn. Because of this, many new programmers choose VB as their first development environment. This boxed set includes the industry's best selling tutorial based book, SAMS Teach Yourself Visual Basic 6 in 21 Days, SAMS Teach Yourself Visual Basic 6 in 10 Minutes, as well as the full Working Model of Microsoft Visual Basic 6. This combination of book and compiler is a must-have to learn Visual Basic.

About this title

Review

Sams Teach Yourself Visual Basic 6 in 21 Days has all the earmarks of a series designed in-house. This is a Bad Thing. It means the book contains elements that obviously came from compromises by people sitting through endless meetings and eventually settling on the most stubborn person's ideas because, well, everyone was tired and wanted to go home and watch TV. And none of those people actually have read any computer books, let alone tried to learn a programming language from one.

The in-house style earmarks are aplenty: the ubiquitous Do and Do Not sidebars; Note and Tip boxes; the New Term paragraphs; Summaries; Q&As; Workshops; end-of-chapter quizzes and exercises. Gadzooks. Whatever happened to an experienced programmer trying to explain the best way to learn something in well-written, down-to-earth, right-to-the-point prose?

On the plus side, this book does have you create your first program on page 24 (day one), which is pretty quick. Though it's not really a program; it's a "project", or something that Visual Basic can whip together for anyone who's ever used one of the Windows Wizards. So, is that cheating? Maybe, but at least the author lets the reader actually do something at that early stage of the game.

As with any book on Visual Basic, the decision is whether to document the programming language or the application environment first. Like everyone else, the author documents the environment for the first week or so. And his logical flow is admirable; the days and weeks build on each other nicely. The pace is pretty even throughout the book.

On the downside, the book has no soul. It's really routine and, well, kind of boring. The programs lack some of the insanity you would find in Wally Wang's Dummies book. But, Greg presents the steps well--at over 800 pages, he gives his steps the space they need. Not bad, but peppered with some insights it could have been better. --Dan Gookin

About the Author

Greg Perry has been a programmer and computer trainer for more than 10 years and he is renowned for his ability to explain complex computer topics to new users. He has authored many programming titles for Macmillan including SAMS Teach Yourself Visual Basic 5 in 24 Hours, SAMS Teach Yourself Microsoft Office 97 in 24 Hours, SAMS Teach Yourself Windows 98 in 24 Hours, and Visual Basic 4 in 12 Easy Lessons.

Edition details

• Publisher: Sams
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0672315122
• ISBN 13: 9780672315121
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 880