Product Description

Millions of programmers are learning Visual Basic .NET, Microsoft's newest version of the Visual Basic language for productively developing applications. In that spirit of productivity, you don't always have the time or the ability to go back to your shelf of reference books to find the bit of information you need. Your answer is the VB.NET Language Pocket Reference. Succinct and easy to use, this pocket guide is a quick reference for everyone making the transition from VB6 to VB.NET. With VB.NET, you're working with a very different framework and language than VB6; you'll welcome a reference book you can use easily and take anywhere. With concise detail and no fluff, this guide presents syntax and brief descriptions of each Visual Basic .NET language element.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #133719 in Books
• Published on: 2002-12-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 144 pages

About the Author
Steven Roman is a professor emeritus of mathematics at the California State University, Fullerton. His previous books with O'Reilly include Access Database Design and Programming; Writing Excel Macros; and VB.NET Language in a Nutshell.

Ron Petrusha is an editor for O'Reilly and the author/coauthor of many books, including VBScript in a Nutshell and VB.NET Language in a Nutshell.

Paul Lomax, author of O'Reilly's VB & VBA in a Nutshell and a coauthor of VBScript in a Nutshell, is an experienced VB programmer with a passion for sharing his knowledge - and his collection of programming tips and techniques gathered from real-world exp

Customer Reviews

Out of date and not up to the usual high O'Reilly standard
In general, the O'Reilly Pocket Reference books are brilliant - just what you need if you sort-of know a language or system but need to look up the details, or know it well but don't have a perfect memory for every feature - or even for quickly learning the basics of a new language.

BUT this volume is the exception.

Firstly, it is now seriously out of date; printed 2002, so it misses the many and significant enhancements Microsoft made to the language with Visual Studio 2005 and 2008 - to say nothing of the now-announced Visual Studio 2010. So for example, Collections are described, but neither Directories nor Hashtables are mentioned. Nor are regular expressions.

That might be forgiveable if it was perfect for its time. But it was not. Crucially, it has no index - an essential for reference books which will be used to look up unfamiliar keywords. You have to guess which section the author thought a word fitted into, then find that section, as named on the bottom of right hand pages (though some are incorrectly named), and in an entirely missable heading within the text.

When you do find what you are looking for, its description may be incomplete. For example, for Format (expression, style ...) it says style is a "named or user-defined format", but fails to say how the user can define it. Format is as old as VB; there is no excuse for not including a table of format characters and their use.

In conclusion: look for a newer and better book than this one.