Rating: 
Summary: an excellent resource (one of many you'll need)
Review: First, the disclaimers: 1. If you're buying books, you should be able to learn on your own. 2. If you think you're going to learn VB from a single book, you're mistaken. 3. If you're buying books because you can learn on your own, you don't need a book to tell you when to practice. If you've got the VB software, practice whenever you want.Now then: This an excellent resource for exactly what it advertises, learning step-by-step. It gently walks beginners through a number of basic VB skills and tasks. It perhaps goes into too much detail on some topics I may not consider extremely important, and perhaps doesn't go into enough detail on others, but that's why you need multiple books and resources to learn from. If you've purchased VB6 you already have the very best resource, the MSDN Library. Another great resource is the "Mastering VB6 Development" CD course from Microsoft, although it is not for beginners. The very best way to learn VB is to write VB. Make up a program and write it. Then write another. And another.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent kick-start into VB
Review: Coming from a C++ background, I was completely lost when I started out using the VB MOC "MCSD Training Kit". "Step-by-Step" filled in the gap nicely. You need no prior experience with VB to start using this book. The layout of the book approaches excellence. I would summarize its design as "do first, then learn the details". This approach maps well with how humans learn best - thru mimicking first, then rational thought. Each lesson in the book is self-contained and easy to follow. Lessons 1 thru 7 are "mandatory" after that, you could really just pick and choose what you want to learn about. The code examples in the book are just the right amount - not too little, not too much. The accompanying CD contains all the sources and supporting files the course material requires. One or two of the lessons require Word and Excel. One lesson requires Outlook. A small beef is that the book did not mention that it had to be full blown Outlook and not Outlook Express. While it not for the experienced VB programmer, it is invaluable for programmers new to VB. Overall, an excellent pre-MOC source to learn the basics of VB.
Rating: 
Summary: Much promise - no follow through
Review: As an experienced programmer looking to learn languages I do not regularly use, or asked to recommend a book to someone else for learning a new language, I look at many books. This book is bad. The author takes you by the hand and does everything for you. There aren't any exercises or review questions at the end of chapters. People don't learn that way. To learn something and keep it learned people must do something, perform an exercise, think through and solve a problem. This book isn't much better than a classroom lecture, or a TV show. This book does not make you think!
Rating:
Summary: Great book for a non-programmer looking to start out...
Review: I started programming in BASIC when I was 8 (on an Apple II back in 1978...AppleSoft BASIC written by Bill Gates). I never listened to the naysayers about the spaghetti code, not an OOP language, etc...BASIC and VB are the Rodney Dangerfield of programming languages. I was in a bookstore and bumped into a colleague and she asked me if I had heard anything about Halvorson's VB6 Step by Step...I hadn't until she showed it to me. I skimmed through the book and found that there was a good base of knowledge for someone new to Window's event driven programming. I did notice some of the old BASIC naming conventions, which I won't fault the author with. I did get a more thorough look at the book at work, when my friend would come and ask questions about portions of the material written by Halvorson. Take the title as is...Step By Step. Don't let the bad reviews out here sway your decision if you are new to programming...this will take you to an intermediate level and will set you up to tackle other VB challenges if you choose to explore more. If you want to learn to be a good VB programmer and you are just starting out here is the path to take:
(1) Michael Halvorson's - VB6:Step By Step,
(2) Evangelos Petroutsos' - Mastering VB 6
(3) Deborah Kurata's - Doing Objects in VB6 or Peter Wright's - Beginning VB6 Objects (for chapter on Object Persistence)
(4) Dan Appleman's - VB Programmer's Guide to the Win32 API Whatever course you take expanding your horizons...good luck.
Rating:
Summary: All I had to say is I love it ...... I love the book
Review: Cuurently I am a freshman computer science student at Lamar University here in Beaumont. And I always wanted to learn Visual Basic and in high school they didn't teach VB, but in college as computer science student you don't have a choice, in other words you have to take this class I should say 3 or 5 of these classes. So I started my first semister in August 98 and took a VB class, I found VB quite easy to use programming language. DO YOU KNOW WHY I FOUND VB EASY ? because I bought this book at the first day of my class and this book is the only thing you need if you are a beginner. This Book has sample programs and author teaches new stuff by the help of those programs. I found SBSVB6.0 very useful book and I am ready to sugest it to any beginner of VB. and yeah I also bought a visual basic book name VISUAL BASIC 6 HOW-TO and that book didn't help alot. it was just waste of money. BUT I am 100% sure if you realy want to learn Visual Basic and go on Go get Microsoft Visual basic step by step6. I am 100% sure.....
if you want to know more about Visual Basic books you can E-mail me I will be glad to help you out.
Rating:
Summary: You got to get this book
Review: This book is awesome, I had no idea of were to even start but knew I wanted to learn how to be a programmer. I got this book in addition to the text books that I had gotten in school, this book was a great addition and helped me alot, you got to get this book!
Rating:
Summary: Good for the basic beginner only
Review: Mr. Halvorsen's book is excellent if the student is starting with just a very basic knowledge of Windows and nothing else. He takes you through the basics step by step as the title implies. Don't get this book if you already know something of programming, particularly VB. Pick up something a bit more advanced, such as Francesco Balena's "Programming Visual Basic 6.0" which gives a bit more information and assumes you already know than how to maneuver around the OS.
Rating: 
Summary: Very shallow. Great for beginners.
Review: Like most step by step books from MS press this book is filled with lots of fluff. Just about everything covered in this huge book would be covered in the first chapter or two of most other VB books. That is not always a bad thing though. If you have never programmed in another language before then the hand holding that this book gives you will really help you get your foot in the door although when you are finished you really won't know much more than the very basic concepts. A good combination would be to read this book first and then to read "Visual Basic Programmers Guide" also published by microsoft press.
Rating:
Summary: Something Awful!
Review: Slave females are expected to use all of their abilities to please their masters. Since one of the most pleasurable things a man and woman can do together is have sex, slaves are used often for sexual purposes. On Gor, a woman subjected to sexual use as a slave is not permitted to hold back or inhibit herself in any way. Surprisingly to the Terran, but not to the Gorean, the slave female finds that she cannot help but respond deeply and powerfully to the use of a master: her biological tendency to submission, when allowed to manifest itself, rewards her with extraordinary pleasure in sexual use and sexual drives far beyond what the free woman can experience. Gorean slave girls have been known to break their own bones on the bars of their cages trying to touch a man when they have been secured for a long time. This book is not like that at all. It is very light and fluffy, lacking substance. All that is covered in this book is covered in the first twenty pages of the "Visual Basic 6.0 Programmers Guide" also published by micro$oft press.
Rating:
Summary: Microsoft's Step By Step books aren't robust enough
Review: I was surprised that Microsoft of all companies would have such a watered-down instructional book, but other than being visually pleasing, I didn't find it educational or a good reference because of its shallow descriptions.
--a computer instructor in Missouri
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