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Summary: Words of caution
Review: If you're a beginner in programming then this book is perfect for you! Else if you're a seasoned programmer looking to migrate to VB, look elsewhere. I often found myself skipping through the text because the content is paced and written for people new to programming. However, I wish that I had this book earlier in my career when I started to learn programming, so it's excellent for beginners. Hope this helps anyone who's buying this book.
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Summary: A Lucky Pick
Review: The shelves at the bookstore bowed from the weight of the VB books available. I thumbed through each. Before plunking down my hard earned money, I would make sure the book was what I needed. I'm a fulltime CIS major, but just didn't feel I was comprehending VB from the class. The class textbook was like a cheap dictionary: a blurb, a syntax example and it moved on. I can still hear the swell of the violins in the love story that began when I started using Halvorson's book. Imagine my joy when he lovingly told me, "I don't want to waste any of your time. Let's write a user interface and that done... you don't have to do it anymore, I'll do it for you." This may sound silly, but I was THAT pleased. As you go through the lessons, the material provided on the CD allows you to concentrate on just that lesson objective. To use an analogy, it's like learning to sew and when it comes time to learn setting in sleeves, the dress is completely done except the sleeve. You complete the sleeve and wear the dress to town. I may be raving, but I really am that pleased with the book. Even the conversational language tone is respectful of my time and my intelligence. One last word: My 14-year old son saw my first program (a slot machine type game) and wrote it himself with no frustration and much gratification - now that's cool!
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Summary: A Begining Programmer or a Begining Visual Basic Programmer
Review: Are you new to programming and to Visual Basic 6.0? Then this is the book for you. I had no previous programming experience and I opened this book and in no time I was writing code and making programs. Michael Halvorson does a excellent job with this book, he has good examples and great explanations. I defaintly suggest buying this book. It helped me out and will always be a book to come back to if you forget something. Buy it!
Rating:
Summary: Good book for beginners
Review: A very good starting for a beginner VB developer. The examples in the book are excellent. The author is clear and concise in presentation. Maintains his good sense of humor all the way. The chapters are well laid out and organized. The reason I gave it 4 stars was because some of the advanced topics are not well covered. Overall, well worth the money.
Rating: 
Summary: Extensive coverage of basics, but important details missing
Review: I am an experienced Windows and C++ programmer, and bought this book based on the rave reviews to just get a handle on the fundamental structure of VB. The text provides very clear coverage of many of the fundamentals of the language, but spends more time showing you how to do something rather than why you should do it that way. (To be fair, however, this book is a cut above the maddening "Teach yourself X in N days" texts, which don't teach you ANYTHING.) The author also persists in some bad programming habits, such as typing everything as a Variant. The simplicity of the presentation is often excessive, causing the book to give short shrift to more advanced topics. Most (if not all) of the "step by step" examples are so obvious there's no need to follow along using the IDE. Then you get to the more advanced database and DHTML material near the end of the book, and the light coverage makes the examples (and much of the text) useless. Although I am the first to admit that this text was TOO simple for my background, I am disappointed that some topics were entirely omitted or not explained clearly, such as: Class Modules, why you would use more than one Standard Module, good practices for declaring and using application and module level constants. So, although you will learn to make a cute VB slot machine and other programs of similar complexity, you won't learn how to produce any VB code that any competent programer would take a second look at. The best advice is probably to read this book in a week's time to get the fundamentals, then find an advanced book that addresses the topics of real importance. When they say this book is for beginners, think "complete beginners" and know what you're getting.
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Summary: Excellent tutorial for newbies and veterans alike.
Review: Mr. Halvorson is obviously very well educated in Visual Basic and it shows through his teachings. There's enough in this book to please a reader of any ability level. The first 7 chapters are a superb introduction to not only Visual Basic but also computer programming in general by covering all the bases. As you go farther, the book begins to go deeper and deeper into some hardcore VB capabilities like advanced database programming, Dynamic HTML design and using the Windows API. I will admit that very few, if any, of these rapidly expanding features are covered in full length but there is certainly enough in here to get you cracking at some code. The only problem I had with this book (and my reason for giving it 4 stars) is the layout of the chapters in the middle of the book which I feel is wrong. It begins discussing multiple forms, printer communication and special effects before it even mentions subroutines, arrays, procedures and modules which are all primary components of computer programming. These topics are not just nice VB features but rather crucial areas of any language and thus I feel they were misplaced. I reccomend that those of you who are new to programming read those chapters first and then go back to chapters 8 and 9. Overall, this is a great tutorial and excellent resource for any VB developer. If you want the best guide available, buy Visual Basic 6.0 Step by Step by Michael Halvorson right now. You will not be disappointed.
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Summary: Great place to Start Visual Basic programming
Review: Step By Step Visual Basic 6 Professional - By Michael Halverson With absolutely no previous programming experience, I bought VB6 a couple of years back, and I bought this book from Comp USA after browsing through most of what was on the shelf. In no time at all, I went from not even knowing what VB was, to writing some pretty sophisticated applications, and having a great time too. Michael Halverson is very clear, concise, easy to read, and provides a generous supply of detailed examples with well written explanations, all in a warm friendly context. You'll probably discover this book to be your favorite to refer to again and again. You'll no doubt buy other books as your experience level increases, but seldom will you find a book that you actually enjoy and benefit from as much as this one.
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Summary: Great way to Learn VB, any beginner would love it
Review: I am a freshman in High School and starting programming in C and C++ between the 8th and 9th grade. I moved to VB mid-9th grade and found this book explained everything and gave you enough information to write good, solid working programs. It showed that object oriented programs CAN be useful(even though C has more freedom). Any beginner wanting to learn VB should read this, it is very usingful.
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Summary: Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 Professional Step-By- Step.
Review: A very nice, succinct and well designed (less boring) book.
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Summary: Good book but not really well laid out
Review: "Visual Basic 6.0 Step by Step" is a good book. It covers many topics in VB programming well and is a decent intro to the language. With that said, I must ask what on Earth was the author thinking when he laid this book out. There are several glaring issues with the way topics are presented. What on Earth does error handling have to do with printers and multiple forms and why are they all three covered in one chapter. Huh? To make matters worse he covers debugging in Chapter 6 with decision structures. Let's see If...Then, Select...Case and Step Into/Breakpoints. WHAT! If I were an editor on this book I would seriously have knocked that structure into Puget Sound and placed things that belong together together. However, even with this somewhat jarring layout the book makes its points well and also provides plenty of good exercises for students. I like that. I recommend the book as a learning text. It is archaic in some areas and it has some layout issues BUT it is a good tome.
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