Rating: 
Summary: A must buy for novice programmers.
Review: I want everyone who is new to programming, no matter what the language, to purchase this book. It is well written so that anyone can understand and teaches you to think like a programmer. A must have for anyone who wants to have fun programming!
Rating: 
Summary: I returned this one on the first day :(
Review: In my quest to learn Visual Basic, I figured I'd send my brother out to pick me up a good book for absolute beginners. He returned with John Smiley's <u> Learn to Program with Visual Basic 6</u>. I took a brief look through the book... and just didn't see enough charts and tables to keep me interested. The book looked as if it had been written by a 13-year-old for his "teacher for a day" class. I'm sure the content provided was ample, but I didn't feel like wading through the fluff and commentary to find the actual lessons embedded deep within. That's the last time I send my brother out book-hunting. :) I admit that I didn't give this one much of a chance, but for those casually browsing in a bookstore, an initial hint of "first impression charm" was extremely lacking in this publication. If you're patient, be sure to check this one out... but it was absolutely not right for me.
Rating:
Summary: Not very helpfull
Review: The usefull information in this book could be condensed into about 50 pages. Most of the book is fictitious conversations between students and instructor and serves as filler. You will not be proficiant at VB after reading this book. This books not only asumes no prior programming experience, but apparently no prior knowledge of Windows as well. For example, this book provides instruction on how to create a new folder in Windows. Unless you are truly new to computers, I think this book would be a disapointment.
Rating: 
Summary: This book tries to teach too much
Review: I bought two books from Amazon, this one and Microsoft visual basic 6 step by step, as they were bestsellers and they had decent reviews (This one had better reviews too)Now that I have read this book and I am halfway through the other book, I seem not to agree with the other reviews. This book is written in a classroom type situation, its a dialog. This first thing has it pluses and minuses. Plus: Students get to learn in a teacher - student environment who ask questions Minus: Alot of unwanted dialog and text which in total makes up a large portion of the book and alot of stupid questions (You'll understand later) The book is based on the class doing a project for a customer. This is one of my biggest problems. First of all, instead of building up to the making of the program with many different test programs, the class makes the entire program. The writer said that making Hello World programs just give unnessacary satisfaction to the reader for making a program BUT experimenting with many different little programs help you to understand the language better. But that is not my biggest problem for this book. My greatest problem is that the writer tries to write the book to people with little computer knowledge. I strongly disagree with this tactic. Someone who hardly knows what a window is or what dos is should not be learning how to program. They should be learning how to use a computer! Also, the class is suppose to be a university class but I don't think university students trying to learn visual basic would have such litttle computer knowledge. What you end up with is a book which just tries to teach too much. The first 166 Pages of the book are attempts to explain about computers, dos and windows. Now, although I have said so many bad things for this book, the actual visual basic learning is very simple. He successfully breaks down all parts of the programming language and makes it easy to learn. BUT it is fustrating to have to wade through so many lines of endless dialog. I would not recommend this book to anyone. If you are new to computer, don't try to learn programming, try to understand a computer first. If you are accustommed to computers then check out visual basic step by step.
Rating:
Summary: A refreshing approach to teaching through books.
Review: "Learn to Program with Visual Basic 6" is by far, the best computing-related book I have ever read. John Smiley has broken the dry and boring style that seems to have become the standard in technical writings. This book makes you feel like an active participant in a lively classroom setting. It makes learning exciting and keeps you going where many other books are painfully droll and difficult to complete. I ordered the next book in the series by John Smiley, "Learn to Program with Visual Basic Examples," before finishing this one.
Rating:
Summary: A definite "BUY IT" !!!!
Review: While most books jump right in, throwing terms at you that you dont understand, this one does not. For the absolute beginner like myself the book has proven to be very valuable. It builds you up slowly giving you a foundation for the programming knowledge that it is about to give you. Not neccessarily for the experienced VB programmer, but very useful for someone who knows little or nothing. Hey, I bet my mom could learn VB with this book ;-)
Rating:
Summary: It's For Absolute Beginners, Folks!
Review: I am interested in pursuing a career change to the world of programming and have been told by friends in the know that Visual Basic is a good language to start out with for its ease of use compared to other languages and its applicability in the business world today. I therefore went out and bought two different introductory Visual Basic books and Microsoft's Visual Basic learning edition. What I found in reading these books is that they give a good introduction to VB, but then at some point, the authors of the books forget you are a beginner and start introducing topics that seem somewhat advanced with very little explanation. After a while, your head starts to spin and you give up. I then read some reviews on Amazon.com about other VB books and a lot of folks mentioned the John Smiley series as a good one to start with if you are new to programming and VB. So I picked up his first book. And I'm glad I did. True, the classroom dialog that makes up a fair portion of the book is occaisionally inane, tedious and repetitious. However, if you hear about the same concept again in Chapters 2, 5, 6, 10 and 14, it burns in your head and you aren't as likely to forget it. Generally, this repetition is only for a sentence of two to refresh our memories. But it works. I also think the use of dialog of getting the information communicated allows for a more relaxing way of learning the material than paragraphs chock full of technical data that may take you a half hour just to get through six pages. I agree that you'll probably get more information out of the typical 700 page VB book than Smiley's book, but I'll also bet you aren't as likely to get through that book either, especially if you are a beginner. I was able to get through Smiley's book in less than two weeks at about two hours a night (working through all the many examples he provides). I am currently in the process of skimming the book a second time to strengthen my understanding of some of the tougher concepts of the book (i.e. arrays took a little bit to understand - for me at least). I have picked up the other three books in the Smiley VB series, which I hope to get through over the next couple of months. Then I might pick up those "beginner" books I started out with again and pick up some more concepts to expand my knowledge base in VB. Overall, Smiley's book is a great way to start learing VB programming, but only if you are agreeable to a new teaching approach and you aren't expecting to learn advanced concepts in VB.
Rating: 
Summary: For beginning programmers, not beginners at VB
Review: I needed to learn VB quickly so this looked good. After purchasing the book it was apparent that the audience is beginning programmers, not programmers who are new to VB. My mistake, not his. If you are new to programming, this is your book; if you are an experienced programmer who needs to learn VB, look elsewhere.
Rating:
Summary: A great book for beginners
Review: John Smiley's book is really great for beginners and for those who love litterature and stories.. It's fun reading the book, as well as instructive.. I recommend this book for a beginner to programming
Rating:
Summary: John Smiley is the MAN!
Review: I am almost done reading LTP with Visual Basic 6 and I am in awe of the detail and clarity that he presents within the cover of this fine book. I have read other books on the subject, and on various programming languages and I have found that this book was the key, John is a talented writer and a talented teacher and I wish some of my teachers at my college could come down to Johns level of explaining things.
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