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Title: Programming With Visual Basic.NET by Ted Coombs ISBN: 0-7668-4868-X Publisher: OnWord Press Pub. Date: 03 December, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $49.95

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Average Customer Rating: 3 (2 reviews)

Rating: 1
Summary: Too many sloppy errors
Comment: Ted Coombs has written a lot of technical books, and they've apparently been successful, but with this one he seems to have spread himself too thin. It is riddled with odd, unclear phrases, misleading "explanations" and out-and-out technical errors. Was some of it farmed out to assistants and not checked?

Small example: saying that a Long variable takes 4 bytes (it's 8). Huge example: completely wrong definition of Array.BinarySearch. A binary search has nothing to do with "matching the binary information (I's and 0's)". Every Comp-sci 101 course teaches you that binary search gets its name because it works by successively splitting the array in two - and the essential requirement is that the array is sorted. The (unsorted) example in the book is completely incorrect and only works because it is a tiny array and the search gets a lucky hit at the start, or perhaps because as with some binary search algorithms, when the divided part to be searched gets small (<= 4 items or so) a sequential search is used as a last step. Add some elements to the sample array and of course it doesn't work. This could cause much frustration for the novice.

Another MAJOR error is the description of case-sensitivity in variable names: it is NOT true that you can define "i" and "I" as different variables in the same scope. And thank goodness, because I would hate to have lost the excellent VB6 feature where you can type in a variable reference when you are not quite sure how you spelled it in the definition, and just make one letter in a definitely wrong case - for instance, uppercase the last letter only. If you have spelled it right, VB will automatically pop the name into the correct case: if this doesn't happen, you need to check the definition!

And again...book states that Constants can only have module scope - not true, they can be global, just like VB6. The module scope limit does apply to COMPILATION constants, which are a different animal and which seem to caus the confusion.

It's a pity, because there is also good information - but you can find it all elsewhere. To learn a new technology you need a guide you can rely on. This book is altogether too shaky a support.

Rating: 5
Summary: Great Read!!!!!
Comment: As a programmer I highly recommend this book if your are just trying to get a good handle on VB.NET for the first time. This book starts with the basics (great for beginners or experienced programmers) which presents the programming style of VB. There is also a great introduction and information to the Common Language Runtime and lots of advanced techniques for the more experienced programmers.

Money well spent!!!!