Rating: 
Summary: make sure your personality matches
Review: Please do not get carried away by so many reviews giving five stars. I just want to second Aimee Eppes' review dated March 18, 2001. It has stuff, but could be much conciser. It could be a frustrating experience reading through it.
Rating: 
Summary: Easy to understand and to follow
Review: Excellent book for beginners, Smiley makes it easy to understand the basics of VB. Pleasant to read. The best choice to start off programming with VB.
Rating:
Summary: For the absolute beginner only
Review: The book follows a class of students (18 or so of them) and their instructor, the author. The book is written from a first person perspective (the author) and details his initial meeting with the client, the decision to have his class write the program, the writing of the requirements statement, and finally the coding of the actual VB. Much of the writing is conversational and I found myself bogging down in the details of who's who (is Rose a student and is the client's name Joe or Jim and who is Ward?) and the minutinae of the conversation, rather than being able to focus on the technical end of things.Beyond that, the first 180 pages of the book are excruciatingly detailed in the design process. There's lots of back and forth conversation between the students and the instructor ("What is a computer program?" I asked. "Do you mean a DOS program or a Windows program?" asked Steve.) that covers not only the very basics not only of writing the specs of the program, but of computers and programming overall. It isn't until page 200 or so that the reader actually gets to open VB and create something. Ultimately although the information presented was good and I was able to create a form with the various controls, I got so frustrated with having to wade through pages and pages of dialog between fictional students to get to the meat of the subject that I gave up and returned the book for a credit. I think that this book would be more appropriate for someone who needs/wants a more "folksy" approach to technology or for someone who truly has very little experience with computers beyond running the occasional copy of Myst. If you've done any work with any kind of spreadsheet or database, I suspect this book will be much too basic for you.
Rating: 
Summary: Good choice
Review: The book is written as if you are in a classroom with other students, which gets old in a hurry. There is some elementary stuff in the intro chapters which was necessary for some (I guess..). Overall the book reads easily and building an application was good for my learning curve. Smiley explains good coding practice and holds your hand during concept explanations like arrays, etc. I liked the book enough to come back here and write this review.
Rating:
Summary: Kudos to Mr. Smiley
Review: Reading this book felt a little like reading a "Magic School Bus" book to my daughter, with all the quotes from the kids in class. And the author was a little corny at times. But you don't mind because you know he really is teaching this stuff, not just throwing it out there. Kudos to Mr. Smiley.
Rating:
Summary: Perfect Building Block
Review: I started coding visual basic with this book. I have extensive knowledge of other programing languages such as, perl, java, javascript, original BASIC version ??(Yes nearly ten years ago). This book is written from the perspective of a teacher teaching a class. So there is extensive dialog in the book. The book also centers around one project which is created from start to finish. Don't worry many other examples are given throughout the book. If you never had a intro programing course this book may be very helpful. Smiley explains fundamentaly how a computer works and how the software interacts. Also all concepts are completely explain, there is no assumption of knowledge before this book. I had plenty of programing knowledge prior to this book, and some of the explanations were a bit mundane for me. However the way the book is written you can easily skim what you already know. I finished this book in 5 days and feel that it gave me a great baseline. I highly recommend this book, Now if I could just find an intermediate level book!
Rating:
Summary: Great learning book
Review: John Smiley did an excellent job writing "Learn to program with Visual Basic 6". I felt like one of his students. I would recommend this book to anyone wanting to learn VB. The examples are great and the class project is wonderful. thank you John Smiley!!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent for the Beginner!
Review: I've tried to get into programming by trying to learn C++. I tried taking an intro C++ college course three times. Then I decided to take a step back and try Visual Basic. This book explains things really well, almost to a fault. The hardest part is trying to find a book to follow this one.
Rating:
Summary: Great introduction to programming!
Review: I have been curious about computer programming ever since I began using them and have attempted several times to learn on my own, not for a career or profession but just as a hobby. I tried to read a few introductory to VB books, learn to program in ... days, and I was so totally confused and bored I was ready to throw in the towel until I saw the reviews on Professor Smiley's book here on Amazon and thought I would give it one more chance. Well I actually finished this one cover to cover and really enjoyed every page and had fun completing the exercises and designing the program. I had a few problems and questions along the way and E-mailed Professor Smiley and he responded and got me through. How many authors do you think would actually be that concerned and dedicated to teaching to take the time for that? I can not say enough about this book or Professor Smiley. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants a good foundation in VB programming just as a hobby in my case or as a start to a career in programming. Thank you Professor Smiley.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent for those with no programming background!
Review: I found this book to be extremely easy to follow and understand. It is definitely meant for those with absolutely no programming background. Other reviewers did not like the chatty classroom setting, however, I found that the dialog covered almost all of the questions I had and couldn't ask myself. This is one of the best investments in learning that I have ever made. Looking forward to the next level and feeling confident that I can learn to program.
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