Good Visual Basic Book?

Z

Zxcs

[H]ard|Gawd
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Sep 11, 2004
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I did a quick search on the forums and couldn't find anybody recommending a VB book that wasn't for complete newbies.

I've got LOADS of time ot spare and really want to get VB under my belt. I already have fairly decent knowledge of PHP and some C++ but I've never tried VB.

Can anyone recommend a good VB book that will get me through most of the things I ought to know in say, a month?
 
I suppose I would start by asking if you are going to be using older vb, such as vb6, or the newer .NET stuff, like vb.net 2002/2003/2005?
 
I wanna try and learn the newer stuff such as .NET but still cover all the basics of the old stuff (or as much as I need to know).
 
Zxcs said:
I wanna try and learn the newer stuff such as .NET but still cover all the basics of the old stuff (or as much as I need to know).
Click to expand...
VB6 and VB.NET have many differences in the core language, especially for OOP. It's really 2 different styles of programming. You could pick up the differences from books and tutorials on upgrading VB6 to VB.NET. For example: http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbrun/staythepath/additionalresources/UpgradingVB6/default.aspx

As far as a "good" book for classic VB (VB6), don't bother with the MS books (1998-2000). Most of the stuff is simply recycled from help included with VB, which isn't very well organized to start with. MS has tutorials on VB.NET online: http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/ and there are other free ebooks available. Apress has a free VB.NET ebook here: http://www.apress.com/free/index.html

IMO, if you really want to learn VB.NET forget about concentrating on the forms part of it. It's still important to know how use the components, but even the MS linked tutorials above give a very bad start on good programming practices.
 
I found the O'Reilly "<insert topic here> in a Nutshell" books to be pretty good. They start with a basic intro to using the language, but the majority of the content is reference. The VB/VBA and Java ones were very handy when i started jobs that used those languages. The VB/VBA one i have is VB6 only (actually i think it's VB5/6), but i imagine they have a VB.NET book now as well. Time to look for that actually...
 
Well I was shopping for new speakers today and ended up browsing the bookstore and picked up a copy of "Beginning Visual basic 2005" published by Wrox. Will start reading it tomorrow and let ya'll know how it goes.
 
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