The book is great once you know your way around. However, the coding style is very poor. It looks more like code for VB6ers who are too dumb or too lazy to switch to .NET but want to use it anyway to get rid of the "Wanna-be coder" attribute. VB has grown, but unfortunately, some authors haven't. I prefer books from authors who can pick up changes quicker than that.

The book is great once you know your way around. However, the coding style is very poor. It looks more like code for VB6ers who are too dumb or too lazy to switch to .NET but want to use it anyway to get rid of the "Wanna-be coder" attribute. VB has grown, but unfortunately, some authors haven't. I prefer books from authors who can pick up changes quicker than that.

I'm an intermediate programmer having worked sporadically in a variety of Object Oriented languages (Java, C++ etc.). I have to ramp up very quickly in order to do a VB.NET app, and bought this book for two reason. First: I wanted to gain a quick familiarity with the Visual Studio IDE, which I had never used before. I also needed a quick primer on the syntax and functionality of VB.NET.

On the first score--understanding the IDE--the book did a fine job of quickly getting me up and running with the basics. That was a few hours of work.

On the second score, I found this book to be alternately easy going and profoundly infuriating. Petroutsos' writing style is fluid and colloquial, essentially talking through many of the basics of the language. As a non-beginner, this served me well. I was able to read through chapters such as the overview of the VB language, quickly identifying areas which I understood from previous programming experience.

However, that easy-going writing style seems to lead to an absolutely unforgivable lack of attention to structure, rigor and detail. Despite much of the book being conceptually familiar, several areas were brand new to me. In the area concerning variable scope, Petroutsos introduces the idea of module level scope without defining a module or explaining what it is. Frustrated, I consulted the Contents and the Index but was unable to find any other place in the book where a module was discussed. Eventually, I pretty much got it through context in other chapters (and a background in OOP). I can't imagine how someone who wasn't already intimately familiar with OOP would fare trying to get through such a concept.

This book also doesn't do much hand-holding through the construction of the code samples, often leaving the reader on his/her own in assembling the code and figuring out what each line/routine does. Again, fine for an experienced programmer--not so fine for a beginner.

And this book is just rife with oversights such as these. This book is clearly targeted at relative beginners (if not absolute beginners) as it explains concepts which are familiar to all programmers (i.e. what is a variable?). And yet I can't imagine a beginner who wouldn't be very frustrated trying to figure out what the Petroutsos merely glosses over.

Finally, the editing of this book is horrible. While the prosaic style generally reads well, the author often re-states the same explanations several times within a chapter. It's clear that this is not for emphasis (since it doesn't read that way) but bad editing. A good editor will strip out such redundancy and help make a much more concise book.

Ultimately, this book served its purpose: a quick primer on a new software platform. I got what I needed out of it. However it was frustrating at times for the reasons I mentioned above. It doesn't succeed as a beginner's learning tool, nor can I imagine that it would succeed well as instructioin on advanced programming techniques.

Unlike so many programming books this one is relatively easy to understand. Even if you don't have any programming experience. Unfortunately, examples contain some errors. Nevertheless, one of the best books for beginners.

This is an excellent book for beginners or intermediate programmers.
Good points:
This book explains subjects that most other books on VB .Net ignore. If you are considering buying any other book on the dot net environment, look in its index and see if it covers FileStream, ArrayList, SortedList. Most do not cover these, but Petroutsos's book does and they really simplify life. They add to the power of your programs and cut down on the amount of work you have to do. This book has a lot of other similar features of the environment that other books skip.

Bad points:
I am appalled by the number of errors in the programming examples and descriptions. Be aware that when he writes "to the right" he often means "to the left" and vice-versa. Be aware that he likes to declare variables that do absolutely nothing in his code segments: they are declared, they use up memory, and the program never refers to them after they are declared. Be aware that the code given in the book does not always conform to the code sample in the CD that accompanies the book.
There iss an errata sheet for the text on the Sybex web, but I have never succeeded in getting them to correct errors I point out to them.

Conclusions:
You can overcome the bad points above so they are minor speed bumps, however annoying. What you cannot do is find a better text for learning the basics of .Net and also learn to use the tools that make you never want to go back to VB Version 6..

This is an excellent book for beginners or intermediate programmers.
Good points:
This book explains subjects that most other books on VB .Net ignore. If you are considering buying any other book on the dot net environment, look in its index and see if it covers FileStream, ArrayList, SortedList. Most do not cover these, but Petroutsos's book does and they really simplify life. They add to the power of your programs and cut down on the amount of work you have to do. This book has a lot of other similar features of the environment that other books skip.

Bad points:
I am appalled by the number of errors in the programming examples and descriptions. Be aware that when he writes "to the right" he often means "to the left" and vice-versa. Be aware that he likes to declare variables that do absolutely nothing in his code segments: they are declared, they use up memory, and the program never refers to them after they are declared. Be aware that the code given in the book does not always conform to the code sample in the CD that accompanies the book.
There iss an errata sheet for the text on the Sybex web, but I have never succeeded in getting them to correct errors I point out to them.

Conclusions:
You can overcome the bad points above so they are minor speed bumps, however annoying. What you cannot do is find a better text for learning the basics of .Net and also learn to use the tools that make you never want to go back to VB Version 6..

This is really an excellent book if you want a very good introduction to the basics of Visual Basic.Net. The book is good read, good examples, very comprehensive. If you are want to start with Visual BAsic.Net, GET THIS BOOK.

Evangelos Petroutsos, Mastering Visual Basic.NET (Sybex, 2002)

It's hard to rate such a multiple-personality book as this one. Much of what is here is in error, or subject to interpretation, at the very least; something unforgivable in a programming book. And yet, when I need a quick reference or a refresher on how to do something basic, this is usually the first place I turn. So there IS some value to it, at least that's the way I see it, but I can't unhesitatingly recommend it for egregious editorial (one assumes) errors.

This is certainly a book for those (like me) who have almost no familiarity with Visual Basic. I'd done a little program modifying a few years ago for my company, and had worked with a much, much earlier version of VB (2.0, for those of you who remember the stone age) a ways back, but my development knowledge lies in other areas. Petroutsos' book, combined with my knowledge of C++ and SQL, got me up to speed exceptionally quickly, but non-programmers picking this up as their first programming book are likely going to be extremely frustrated finding errors they don't know how to debug in the published code. But for the programming veteran who's just a novice to Visual Basic, there is likely a lot to be learned from this book. Just watch your step. ** 1/2

Evangelos Petroutsos, Mastering Visual Basic.NET (Sybex, 2002)

It's hard to rate such a multiple-personality book as this one. Much of what is here is in error, or subject to interpretation, at the very least; something unforgivable in a programming book. And yet, when I need a quick reference or a refresher on how to do something basic, this is usually the first place I turn. So there IS some value to it, at least that's the way I see it, but I can't unhesitatingly recommend it for egregious editorial (one assumes) errors.

This is certainly a book for those (like me) who have almost no familiarity with Visual Basic. I'd done a little program modifying a few years ago for my company, and had worked with a much, much earlier version of VB (2.0, for those of you who remember the stone age) a ways back, but my development knowledge lies in other areas. Petroutsos' book, combined with my knowledge of C++ and SQL, got me up to speed exceptionally quickly, but non-programmers picking this up as their first programming book are likely going to be extremely frustrated finding errors they don't know how to debug in the published code. But for the programming veteran who's just a novice to Visual Basic, there is likely a lot to be learned from this book. Just watch your step. ** 1/2

After reading this book, I still had to read two more to get real world applications developed.

This book could be usefull for an absolute beginner, but even if you had never seen VB .Net in your life, you could benefit more with other books.

I gave it three stars because the chapter on the TreeView, and the ListView controls were usefull because there were important changes in the way those controls are used, but the ADO chapters just get you confused, I had to read another book on ADO .Net to fully understand how some of the examples worked.

The sample applications on the CD-ROM are completely different from the code that is printed, so there's no way to know what the thing is doing after you've spent too much time figuring out on you own.

If you're a beginner, get it, you will find some things helpful, but if you know your stuff, just avoid it.

I found this book to be riddled with errors both in the text and the programming examples. The exercises left out key information and required additional debugging and programming just to make them work correctly. Several of his screen examples did not display the correct information and were misleading. Other screens examples might have been semantically correct, but were not correct within the context they were presented.

In my opinion the book also presented the information backwards, the concept of creating custom controls and such was covered in the beginning of the book while database access and file access were covered at the end.

I bought the book, I'm glad I bought it, and it's more than paid for itself. It's geared toward beginners but there's a lot of material, A LOT, that will be of benefit to experienced developers. If you've used VB6's richtextbox control, you may well find yourself unpleasantly surprised with VB.NEt's implementation. This book did a lot to bridge the divide. His coverage of Office Automation is also excellent, because it's hard to write a large scale app these days without someone wanting it automated in word, exported to Excel, charted and pivot tabled, or sent to their Outlook folder....

And BTW, his other book on database programming is one more must have!

No matter who you are, Visual Basic .NET is as new to you as it is to anyone else. Even those of us that have explored it since it was first released to the public for beta testing find new things in each release. This title, just like it's VB6 predecessor, is the perfect instructor to anyone wishing to learn VB.NET. The author presents the material on Visual Studio .NET, Visual Basic. NET and the .NET framework efficiently and informatively, giving the user something to take with them from each and every page. Regardless of your prior experience with VB6 or VB.NET (or even programming in general), this title will give you the understanding of programming within the .NET framework and the ability to immediately create in VB.NET. The book and accompanying CD-ROM is a must-have, valuable tool for the VB.NET programmer, and one that you will hold on to as a reference long after you have finished reading it.