Visual Basic 2005: A Developer's Notebook: A Developer's Notebook

by MacDonald Matthew and Matthew MacDonald

When Microsoft introduced the Visual Basic .NET programming language, as part of its move to the .NET Framework two years ago, many developers willingly made the switch. Millions of others, however,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0596007264
• ISBN13: 9780596007263
• Release Date: May 2005
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media
• Length: 264 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 7.0" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Great for 2003-->2005 Upgrade

This book nicely captures a balance between ultra-condensed "Nutshell" books and the mighty 1,000 page+ tomes. It is aimed at experienced VB developers switching from Visual Studio 2003/CRL 1.1 to Visual Studio 2005/CLR 2.0. It has nice concise examples with great explanations. This book is not an introduction to Visual Basic. If you're just getting into .Net I'd recommend looking for another book--at least at first. But, if you've been coding awhile and are looking to migrate to the latest version, I highly recommend this volume.

Great value

The VB 2005 Developer's Notebook is just chock-full of very useful and immediately usable information, much of which is not readily available elsewhere. For example, I recently made use of the section on adding images and controls to the datagridview. There's also a very useful intro to using the new factory model to write database-agnostic code. The examples are not complex, and chances are that after MacDonald gets you started in the right direction, you'll need to find more detailed information from the SDK or other source as you build a more complex real-world app. But, the value in seeing in a concise and easily accessible example how you might tackle some problem makes this book well worth the price.

A great start for someone moving up to VB 2005

This is an excellent book for people moving from VB 2003 to VB 2005. It just gives an overview of what has changed, pointing out the issues and limitations in 2003 and the improvements to these issues in 2005. It presumes you are already familiar with VB 2003, so this is not a primer. It's a quick read, and had me constantly saying "Thank goodness - they've done something about that". All the examples are straightforward. Writing style is very straightforward. Every topic has where to go for further help.

Learn new language features, deploy smart client networks, and use new forms controls in a workbook

Time-saving tips for software developers and Visual Basic users also reside in Matthew MacDonald's Visual Basic 2005: A Developer's Notebook productivity is the emphasis here, with tips on restoring the missing features such as compile-and-run which were active in the previous version of Visual Basic. Learn new language features, deploy smart client networks, and use new forms controls in a workbook packed with examples.

I can't wait to try some of these new features

This book's format is a perfect fit for the way I approach new applications: I can't get excited about new features until I see some practical use for them. By "chunking" his description of the new features in VB.NET 2005 into easy-to-digest snapshots with just enough code to illustrate the feature, McDonald made it easy for me to see which new features would apply immediately to the kinds of applications I'm building with VB.NET. In case you're curious, my favorites so far are code snippets, generics, TryCast, and user settings. With the hints McDonald provided, I was able to write my first code snippet on the same plane ride where I read the first third of the book.