I'm 53 years old and have been programming for 40 years. I picked up Robin's book about 2 years ago. Prior to that my most recent experience was with VBA and Access Basic. 15 years before that I had done some mainframe work in PL/I, SAS and older Basics. I had never done any OOP and my UI was limited to VBA.



This book is an excellent tutorial. You can go through it, chapter by chapter. Don't use the CD -- type in the examples and then alter them little by little and you will learn how this stuff works. I think that if had started with a larger book I would have spent too much time wandering about, and would not have gained a solid foundation.



I hope Robin decides to write a 2005 version.

I'm 53 years old and have been programming for 40 years. I picked up Robin's book about 2 years ago. Prior to that my most recent experience was with VBA and Access Basic. 15 years before that I had done some mainframe work in PL/I, SAS and older Basics. I had never done any OOP and my UI was limited to VBA.

This book is an excellent tutorial. You can go through it, chapter by chapter. Don't use the CD -- type in the examples and then alter them little by little and you will learn how this stuff works. I think that if had started with a larger book I would have spent too much time wandering about, and would not have gained a solid foundation.

I hope Robin decides to write a 2005 version.

I'm 53 years old and have been programming for 40 years. I picked up Robin's book about 2 years ago. Prior to that my most recent experience was with VBA and Access Basic. 15 years before that I had done some mainframe work in PL/I, SAS and older Basics. I had never done any OOP and my UI was limited to VBA.

This book is an excellent tutorial. You can go through it, chapter by chapter. Don't use the CD -- type in the examples and then alter them little by little and you will learn how this stuff works. I think that if had started with a larger book I would have spent too much time wandering about, and would not have gained a solid foundation.

I hope Robin decides to write a 2005 version.

Hmm, a bit thin for a book that lists code for two languages. And often, the author forgets her own advice to "put the reader ahead of being clever". Also, the naming convention she uses will confuse people at times. But then again, if you know what you're doing - and you should be at that level when you start this book - you will find the content outstanding and very useful. Overall, I'd say that this one's great to get into OOP.

Well the book isn't bad at all, the code samples aren't explained enought, some OOP basics are there but I would recommend other readings. For sure this isn't a book for beginners, you must have some background in OOP programming to get it. Mainly the Interface chapters, very confusing.

This book is great for beginners. But this is certainly not for newbie and would be great plus for programmer who knew VB and fundamental of .Net and willing to learn vb.net oops concepts. Examples are chosen well and explain in detail and elaborate. Once you complete the tutorials, you will also get some proficiency in C# too.

Overall a good book to kick start your OOP using VB.net and C#.

The author has perfect understanding of the subject and able to present each topic in a masterly fashion. But there is a terrible flaw in the book. It is the examples chosen for the step-by-step implementation. Most of the chapters have their unique samples getting implemented, and there is no continuity between chapter to chapter examples. Secondly, the examples are not mainstream. For example, Chapter 7 handles Events and Delegates. She has chosen a train running on a track and the track catching fire as the example. To implement this the reader has to draw the tracks on the form and has to learn the Graphics class. Events and Delegates by themselves are very complicated. Why should one complicate the topic further by introducing another difficult topic such as Graphics. Because of this "Events and Delegates" discussion is lost and burried under the Graphics discussion. If the author used a Banking or College registration example, every one understands the business process and could concentrate just on the topic at hand, namely Events and Delegates. Unless you want to get distracted by such examples in each chapter, don't buy this book

I just spent the last couple of days reading Robin A. Reynolds-Haertle's book OOP with Microsoft Visual Basic .NET and Microsoft Visual C# .NET Step by Step by Microsoft Press, 2002 (ISBN 0-7356-1568-3).

Overall this is a good book to purchase for someone starting out in OOP from a VB background or is using C# as their first modern OOP language. The flow of the book is easy with lots of code samples. Note that every example has both VB and C# code. For this reason, I will be highly recommending this book to classic VB'ers. While it helps move the developer into OOP, they can quickly learn how to read in C#. Despite the loyalty that many have to VB and that "Edit and Continue" is back with Whidbey, reading C# is career critical.

I particularly like Chapter 10 - Using Classes Interchangeably Through Polymorphism. I admit, I'm not much of a graphics person, but this was a great example of using classes and abstracting the requirement of numerous class names. Many of the examples are simple in nature and only one is a console app. Despite the simplicity of the concept of the examples, the codes are rich in OOP technology.

For those coming from a Java or C++ background, they need not pick it up the for themselves. There are a few items that very quickly will cause some readers to lose credibility in the text quickly. Ms. Reynolds-Haertle takes a few liberties to help the VB (pre .NET) developer understand some terms. For example, on page 9 the author states,

In this book, I use the word set to mean changing a property. I use the word get to mean retrieving the value of a property. The Get ans Set blocks as a property can be called getters and setters, or accessors.

While I use to refer to properties as getters and setters, I have changed my vocab to reflect java and C++ standards and the standards of many other C# professionals. Therefore, I would never refer to both of these as accessors. I use the terms accessors and mutators respectively. Interestingly, several books on my shelf from the .NET camp refer to only accessors. So maybe I harp for no reason. What do you think?

In conslusion, VB'ers get this book! Then follow up with several of the books listed in the references. You will be on your way to writing efficient code.

Very ambiguous and confusing in places. Heck, page 1, paragraph 1, the author decided to use an example to illustrate what a "class" (as in the blueprint for objects) is. Unfortunately, she chooses to use a college registration illustration, which includes "classes" (as in a college classroom). She then goes on to talk about a "class" a dozen times or more, quite often not being clear if she's talking about the OOP class or the thing the student goes to. Does "class registration" mean when the student goes to sign-up for his class, or when you're initializing the class to create student objects in your code? Again, all this is page 1, paragraph 1.

More examples of confusion and ambiguity show up frequently. I am disappointed.

Not a bad book. Just typing the code, without reading all of the explanations, helped me piece together what was being illustrated, and that's a big plus. I come from vb background and have been programmer for many years.

On the minus, there were certain pieces of code which were not clear (for example, using of shared members without introducing what shared members were).

Some examples did not work on my computer, although the folks at experts-exchange.com were able to help me. The book does have syntax errors but microsoft has not made public any fixes to the book material.

The books starts to use very many complex objects, such as drawing objects, etc. without introducing them. In practical, day to day programming, you will not likely need to use drawing objects. It would have been nice to not use these objects to illustrate the concepts being presented. Some of the objects at the end of the book seemed very complex...there seemed to be lack of clarity about getting a stream and assigning a stream etc. when demonstrating usage of ado.net.

Any objects used by the author should have been first introduced, and explained to the reader, in detail. The author did not do this. Still, just typing all the code and going through the exercizes, I did learn "alot" -- well, you know how the computer field is, "alot" is a relative term; there's so much more to learn than this to prepare for the .net world. I recommend Murach's vb.net database programming with ado.net. Haven't read it yet, but it seems to have excellent reviews and covers just about everything that you will need to know as a vb.net/asp web developer...

this book teaches you two languages c# and vb.net as well as OOP.
A very good book but not as simple as some ppl have put it to be but on the whole very well thought out

the book is pretty good, if you're new to Object Oriented methodology, otherwise it's a waste of money.