Rating: 
Summary: Great for TRUE beginners!
Review: I've picked up VB here and there wanted someway to learn the old fashion way - from the ground up. The book is set up as if you're in a college class taking an Intro to Visual Basic and knowing NOTHING of programming. I've been programming for years and found this to be what I was looking for as a unique approach. There are 'comments' made by classmates and you are taken through building a working Visual Basic program. For those who have NEVER done programming, this book is the way to take out any intimidation you may have. It comes with VB6 Working Model Edition so you don't have to spend hundreds on software to get going. Also for those who may tinkered in VB, this book explained some things I didn't understand before. I happen to be using this book as a textbook in an Intro to Visual Basic class with Prof. Smiley HIMSELF, but what I NEED to get out of the course IS in his book. So far if I started to have a question, I just keep reading a little further and my question is answered. Prof Smiley can't answer every question I have with 70+ people in the class. Note: THIS IS NOT A VB REFERENCE. This book is intended as a self-study course. If you're looking for a quick reference guide to accompany this great book, check out Visual Basic 6 Visual Quickstart Guide by Peachpit Press.
Rating: 
Summary: If you like to read a transcript for a class--buy this book
Review: The material is here, it just takes a while to get to it. I tend to prefer not reading all the "he said, she said, there were no more questions so we went on, etc" I like to get to the point and get on with it. If you don't mind that then this book has intro information on Visual Basic and can help you. It just takes are really long time to get there.
Rating:
Summary: Thank you!
Review: I would like to thank all the previous reviewers of John Smiley's book and Amazon for hosting such an informative site. If it wasn't for them, I might not have stumbled on to this book by myself. I studied Pascal/Fortran briefly in my University days and some Excel macro language in the late 80's amongst other things; in other words, my background was exclusively in procedural-programming. Several years ago, I started to learn some VB using MS VB 5.0 Deluxe Learning Edition. I very quickly got lost because like so many other authours in this subject, they show you the trees but you get lost in the forest! John Smiley is different. He keeps everything in perspective which gives the VB initiate an excellent foundation on which to build.
Rating:
Summary: Great book for absolute beginners.
Review: A wonderful book to learn from if you're a beginner. It assumes NO programming experience at all and by the end, you will be familiar with designing and building a Visual Basic application (complete with code!). It is written more like a story than a reference, which makes it much easier to read for the very beginner. A must have to get you started with VB6!
Rating: 
Summary: Begginer ONLY!
Review: I think this book is stupid! If you ever tried to Program with anything, or even tried reading a book about programing, you will be annoyed to no end by this book.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book!
Review: This book makes VB very easy to understand! Best Programming Book I have ever read!
Rating:
Summary: Beginners? This one is for you.
Review: As it says right on the cover, "For Absolute Beginners." If you have never programmed in your life, much less in Visual Basic, then this book definitely is geared toward you. The text is very unintimidating, and the author delivers material in more of a conversational format than any other book I have read. If you are looking for a reference for VB, you've come to the wrong place. However, if you want a very gentle approach to programming with Visual Basic, this one is for you. Once you make it through this book, continue on with the series - I think you will gain a lot from it!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent for the begginer
Review: I bought this book because of all the excellent reviews I had read. I was not disappointed! I went from knowing nothing about VB to creating a test tool used in our QA department within a few months. I am someone who learns best by examples and this book is filled with examples. If you are someone who works best with pages of code with limited explanations this book is not for you. I will admit that the examples got a bit tedious after a while but I will not lower the ranking of the book because of that. If you are using this book as an intro to VB programming it is an excellent book to own. If you are using this book as a basis to create your own programs (as I did) you will want to get a more in-depth VB programming book to go along with it. This book covers a lot of topics but leaves many out (how to turn your code into an .EXE or how to include a Help file for example) I found a second more in-depth book to fill in the holes very helpful. The above aside, if you are want to learn VB and want the best introductory book on the market look no further.
Rating: 
Summary: Beginners ONLY!
Review: This book is for a person who has never wrote a visual program or used any visual compiler. If you can write a visual program as simple as "hello world" then you might want a more complete book. This book is by far complete. There are many of the visual tools that are not explained. A better book for a beginner would be (visual basic from the ground up).
Rating:
Summary: Finally, a book for beginners that truly is just that!
Review: I wanted to get started with Visual Basic because I had to develop applications in MS Access and knew that, at some point, I'd have to get down to code. I am not a programmer and have no experience with programming, so I needed a book that gently took me through the process without assuming my knowledge of the concepts of programming. For all those who found the book condescending, I can only say that if you have never been a programmer and you're squeamish about those icy programming waters, this is THE book to buy. I bought this book and read it half way through before taking an "Introduction to Programming with Visual Basic 6" course with Dow Jones Training. I ended up in a class with 3 other people who had programmed before in some language or other ... and was able to keep up fine! Smiley inches you along gently and easily enough to NOT make it stressful. At times, I was so entranced that I could not tear myself away on weekends, when I should have been relaxing. Chapter 13 on, however, gets really down to serious business. Probably no one else could ease you this nicely into concepts like Multi-dimensional arrays, however. If you're new to programming and you don't want to be totally lost, give this book a try. It was my saviour. I was able to get through my $1875 company-paid-for course with no problem. As an additional incentive, you can go to Smiley's own site and find an exercise to do ... he gives you NO code, so you are totally on your own. And, really, the only way to learn is to have an honest-to-goodness real project with real problems to solve. Smiley's site is http://www.johnsmiley.com/ All I can say is Hooray! Finally a book for those with absolutely no programming experience!
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