Beginning Visual Basic 2015

helped me get started with VB

This author has a great concept of how to teach new programmers the basics of visual studio. He gives you a little amount to absorb then lets you do it yourself by walking you thru the process. You can use the lessons with the code but I find it better to to write the code along with the author. He lets you run the program and then goes step by step and explains what each line of code is actually doing. I have learned more in a few weeks than I have with any other author.

This book is a wealth of information which not only tells the "how" of Visual Basic but the "why" too. There is vastly more depth here than in the book I read prior to this one, which was Visual Basic 2015 in 24 Hours by James Foxall. The Foxall book starts with the Visual Studio 2015 IDE and works into the code. This book starts with the code and works outward to cover various aspects of the IDE. That said, I'm glad I went through the Foxall book before this one.But part of the learning process, it seems, is working through the bugs in the programming books.Below are some glitches and annoyances I recorded as I worked my way through this book. And yes, I checked the errata for the book and found none of these. Weirdly there are no page numbers for this book in the Kindle edition, so I can't refer to pages.Chapter 7 Displaying Dialogues.In the message box section. System.Windows.Forms.MessageBoxButtons.OKCancel worked. MessageBoxButtons.OKCancel did not. system.windows.forms worked. windows.forms alone did not.Step 5 of working with the PrintDialog control.Putting the code before the class declaration works, not "at the top of the class."Chapter 10 Building ObjectsIn "Creating an Object and Adding a Color Property." Following Step 2 gets me two "Sub Main" statements, but only one is allowed.In "Inheriting from Car" step 6. "Dim objCar As New SportsCar" got me a duplicate object definition error.Why do authors of these books so often say to remove code and type in other code? Why not have the reader comment out code and add new code, then there's something to revert to if the new code doesn't work.Chapter 11.Scanning Favorites. Step 4. WebFavorites worked. WebFavoriteCollection did not.Chapter 12Figure 12.7. Sloppy database diagram. Roster ClassID should be shown linked to the Class ClassID, not just randomly pointed at the box representing Class.Chapter 13Binding simple controls step 3. This block of code should start with a Private Sub statement, but that isn't there.Chapter 14Data Entry and Validation Step 2. It says to add a table with eight rows and three columns. It says "Insert Table under the Table menu." But there is no "Table Menu." It's the HTML menu. Also, once you add the table control you can right click in the middle of the table and access a panel that allows you to change the number of rows and columns of the table. This is not in the table control properties. What a hassle to have to discover this myself.The author writes, "When creating a new page, you have access to update the ContentPlaceHolders." What is this? It's the first time the term is used in the book. Am I supposed to know what a CotentPlaceHolder is already?In the No-Code Data Viewing and Updating section Step 2, Why do I have to copy page long blocks of code to implement the GridView and SqlDataSource controls when those controls are available in the IDE to automatically put on my aspx page?Chapter 15What is an "under the build" menu? It would be nice to have had that term defined.The need to get a developers licence to do a Windows 8 app is no longer necessary. I have Windows 10, and I just went to Settings/Update & Security/For developers and set my machine to Developer Mode.In step 6 of the Tic Tac Toe app the opening "<" of the first Grid tag is missing, causing all that code to fail when entered or copied into the IDE.In step 7, the author writes, "Open the code behind for MainPage.xaml." Well there no "code behind" in the IDE, so how about explicitly telling me what to do in the IDE rather than using jargon when I'm just learning this stuff?Also in this step is a missing "end if" before an "end with" that caused a compile error.All that notwithstanding, this might be the best introduction to Visual Basic 2015 out there right now. I'm glad I slogged through it.

So far I'm only up to the 3rd chapter and I have to say I've learned quite a bit already. I'm not new to programming, but I am kind of new to OOP. I used VB back in 2005-2006, but hadn't touched it since. This version seems to be a lot better, especially since I use Visual Studio 2017 Community Edition.

This is a great help getting re-acclimated to VG. Thank you!

Well written book. My complaint is that the book did not include adequate explanations or code examples for connecting to non SQL databases. Otherwise, it is an understandable book with adequate example code.

I already knew Visual basic but bought this book to update myself to the later version. It is well written and worth the price to learn a lot of the visual basic methodology.

The author took a lot of pains to share everything we should know about Visual Studio. I felt his selfishless