Rating: 
Summary: Learning made Easy
Review: As someone who had no previous knowledge of Visual Basic, I set about looking for a book on Visual Basic, which would keep me interested enough to want to learn and keep learning.
I think that the problem with a lot of books is they can get too technical, too quickly and before you know it you either lose interest, or just find things too difficult to understand.
Learn to Program with Visual Basic 6 by John Smiley was the book I chose and I enjoyed learning from it so much that I have since bought 3 other books on Visual Basic(Databases,Objects & Examples) all written by John Smiley.John Smiley uses a unique way of writing(teaching), by making you feel like your part of a class working towards a project. With each chapter you learn about different aspects of Visual Basic whilst creating a project while you are doing so. This may sound odd, but I actually felt that I was learning in a class group, which helped to keep me interested.
For anyone looking to Learn Visual Basic from scratch or anybody with a little bit of experience looking to further there knowledge of Visual Basic, I think this book is absolutely perfect. It would also serve as an excellent reference book for anyone with more experience of Visual Basic.
I am now studying Visual Basic at College, and still use the book now and again to refer to.
Rating: 
Summary: Found this book to be very easy to work with.
Review: Being a main frame programmer for years, learning to program VB6 was having to have a change in thinking. I found this book and it's narrative approach very easy to make the transition. I was really impressed that when emailing Mr. Smiley with a question he responded right away. I would suggest that anyone that wants a straight forward approach to learning VB6 to try this book
Rating:
Summary: Great Book For Beginners
Review: If you are wanting to learn Visal Basic 6! this book is for you.
Mr. Smiley is a good author and excellent teacher. So I would recommend this book to all beginners.
Rating:
Summary: It's for Beginners but it's a great start.
Review: Don't miss the point of the title "For Absolute Beginners". This book definetly is, but even if you have some experience with VB, or even VBA (MS Office programs) this book will be a great starting point for you. As most people have pointed out the "classroom" teaching style of the book can get boring, or even downright dumb, but that doesn't take away from the fact that this book actually does teach you the basics of programming with VB. Don't let the fact that people this ignorant about computers would never in real life take a programming class. Yes, you don't do any coding until page 150 or so, and in fact I found almost nothing useful until about page 220, but I have had some experience in VB. That's not to say the first part of the book isn't important. Some aspects are. It is a good overview of how computers work and what it takes to make software run on them. Which in the long run will help you know why your code does what it does. If you're a beginner you can't go wrong with this book, you may even find the style helpful, it's certainly not a dry as most others.
Rating:
Summary: Solid book
Review: This book is definately for a beginner, like myself, and teaches the basic principals for visual basic very early on. However, I found his "hold your hand" style of teaching a little too slow for me and opted out towards the end of the book. Don't get me wrong, this is a great book and teaches a lot, but it wasn't written exactly for me. I'd suggest this to a beginner with no programming experience whatsoever. However if you do have some experience, even a little, it may be a bit too easy.
Rating:
Summary: It will give you a solid foundation
Review: I purchased this book over a year ago because I had purchased another book on the same topic, but after getting almost halfway through the first book I felt that I did not have the understanding of the subject that I was trying to reach.
I put the the first book, and walked away from the subject for close to a year out of frustration. Last week I decided to start again in ernest with this book. I begain from page one, and have ripped through most of the book with a lot better understanding of many things that were assumed on the other book. It gets a 4 star because it is a bit wordy, but it leads you as the title say from an "Absolute Beginner" starting point; without being too straight forward tech heavy. It will not teach you everything that there is to know about VB 6, but it will get you going in the right direction with a solid foundation to build on.
I intend to follow more of Mr Smiley's books and recommendations as I attempt to increase my programming abilities.
Rating: 
Summary: ok, but you have to read 150 pgs before starting programming
Review: This book has a lot to recommend it: it is easy to read, the author walks you through all of his examples, and the book covers some things that are not covered in most beginner books (such as the "Systems Development Life Cycle"). Most importantly, all of the examples work, and if you do an exercise and find it doesn't work, during the discussion section he points out common mistakes which you may have done to prevent it from working.
Even if you are a rank beginner to programming, you will learn a lot from this book, if you have the discipline to work all the way through it.
But I have given this book only 3 stars because there are many problems with this book.
The main problem with this book it that you have to wade through 110 pages of background before even opening Visual Basic, then the author walks you through the menus for another 40 pages before finally getting to programming. While it is good to give some foundational information before getting going, this is way too much.
Having blown a lot of space unnecessarily, the author does not cover some very basic topics, such as using multiple forms (very easy), working with collections (not hard), and random numbers, just to name a few. These topics are all beginner topics.
If you work through this book, as I have, you will be able to describe yourself as "Familiar with the basics of Visual Basic", and that's about it. This much book should do more for you.
Rating: 
Summary: Strange format
Review: I've never seen a self-help text written in this format. It tries to place you in a classroom situation, as if people sitting around you are asking questions. I found this method very hard to learn by (I kept waiting for someone to ask the question I needed an answer to!) and would be especially hard to allow this book to serve as a reference point in the future.
Rating:
Summary: For Slow Learning Beginners Only!...
Review: Just as the title suggest, this book is aimed at the absolute beginner to programming in any language, here being Visual Basic 6. It can be an attractive buy for a sanitary engineer and his grandmother, because both should come out of it with a very basic knowlege of Basic. Like others have stated, this book can be extremely wordy as it is set in a mock-classroom with students asking questions that is meant to mirror that of what YOU the reader would ask yourself of the material, at least in theory. Yet as a book can only contain finite pages of material, if you fill it to such a large extent of dialogue and less code, then what is really happening? It becomes a fiction novel with a dash of technical information just to barely justify it as a programming tutorial. However, that may suit the sanitary engineer and his grandmother perfectly well... ...For other beginners, look toward other books Like Peter Wright's "Beginning Visual Basic 6" and other exceptional authors for more meaningful information while still being devoid of a "dry read". Finally, the author of this title has certain qualities that also make me scoff. Firstly, he always exploits any opportunity to recommend his books exclusively over other talented authors works. Secondly, he seems to attract a certain type of person that reads his books, such as people with careers in shambles looking for something new, someone with low self esteem looking for some self worth through programming...you get the drift. Programming is a challenging profession, always strive for excellance, and remain skeptical toward easy books, because those books generally shy away from the essence of what you need, knowledge.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book! Worth every penny!
Review: This is an excellent book! It reads like a novel; a real page-turner. I am a John Smiley disciple! His writing is simple, crisp, and to the point. The book explains the concepts of event-driven programming that even a 4th grader could understand. Although the book is SLOW-PACED (perhaps too slow for some), it walks the user, in a step-by-step fashion, through the entire software development life cycle (SDLC). Smiley spends adequate time explaining all of the SDLC phases and gives excellent examples. What's also good are the exercises through out (if you don't get what he's talking about, you can simple test one of the many exercises). The quizzes at the end of the chapter test are also helpful in recalling what you just read. And, the book comes with a pared-down version of MS VB 6.0 IDE. The lean IDE version doesn't have all the VB components, but it's enough to get you started. I'd recommend this book to anyone who has never programmed (also, VB is much easier to learn than Java). In fact, this book is the next best think to actually taking a course because of its slow and step-by-step approach. My only advice to the novice programmer is to PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE. Notwithstanding my raving reviews of this book, no book will teach you to program unless you practice. VB, like any other language or application is best learnt by practicing. As they say, use it or lose it.
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