Rating: 
Summary: A college class taught by a programming expert
Review: "Learn to Program with Visual Basic.Net," by John Smiley, invites you into a college-level introductory programming course, complete with screen shots, classroom discussion, questions and lots of supportive coaching from the instructor. We follow author Smiley in his real-life role as college computer-programming instructor and his class of enthusiastic students while they take on a retail kiosk programming project. Written in a friendly, enthusiastic style, "Learn to Program with Visual Basic.Net" lives up to its title, one does indeed learn computer programming from the ground up while delving into the fundamentals of Visual Basic.Net. Novices are brought up to speed by a quick chapter on the basics of what a computer program is and how Visual Basic interacts with Windows. The remaining chapters tie back to the retail-kiosk programming project by adding more sophisticated coding methods like menus, file input/output, array manipulation, error handling, and using the Windows Registry. The retail-kiosk project is a vehicle for learning the fundamentals of Visual Basic programming applicable to any type of professional application. This highly creative book will be of value both to those just starting out, as well as to those with some experience but with a desire to explore a new programming language. Internet/web programming is not covered in this 600-page volume, but read this book first to build a Visual Basic foundation.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent BEGINNERS book
Review: (Sorry for the spelling mistakes, English is not my native language)
This book is perfect for the public it was intended for: BEGINNERS. For those who complain about this book not talking about any advanced (or Intermediate) topic or new feature in VB.Net, they should remember that the name of the book started as "Learn to program...".
It is not like by reading this book you are ready to take a examination for an MCSD (Microsoft Certified Solution Developer) degree, nor will you be able to work on very elaborated programing projects. But you will be able to understand many of the basics of programing, and you will know how to code or read simple (but yet useful) programs. But most important of all, this book will power you with the basic knowledge to start your learning and development as a programer (a knowledge many books seem to expect you to born whit).
By reading this book you will learn in a very understandable way (an also quite complete for a beginers book):
Some things that can be useful to understand programing:
- Software Developing Live Cycle
- A very brief explanation on how a computer works (which would cause any Assembler programer to laugh histericaly, but that can be realy helpfull for beginers.
All what you might learn at a beginners class
- Variables
- Functions, methods, properties, procedures and events
- Aritmetic and boolean operations
- String handling
- Selection structures
- Placing objects and menues
- Using Arrays (one dimension and multidimensional)
- Creating customized procedures and methods
Some things that due to the rush could not be taught properly in those classes:
- Disck file operations
- Error handling
- Debugging
- Writing to the windows registry
- Procedure referencing
However, if your knowledge goes beyond the 50% of this, maybe you should consider chousing another beginners (yet faster) book.
About the classroom format: I personaly liked it. Shure sometimes it sounds as he was underestimating you, and like 60% of the questions might seem too obvious. But it pays in being quite a lot more pleasant to read (as it is your first programing book), and the 40% left of the questions can be really usefull, some few times you would just say: "Hey, I was about to ask that"
Advice?
1.- You are new to all programing forms = buy it, buy it and buy it!!!!!
2.- You are new to windows (and object oriented / object based) programing = strongly consider buying it (you might need to skip 1 or 2 chapters, but you will enjoy the other 13)
3.- You are new to Visual Basic .Net but you come from C++, C# .Net, Java, etc... = You could buy it and you might still learn something from it, but there are better choices in this cases.
4.- You already know to program in VB.Net and you are loking for information about ADO.Net, OOP, ActiveX, ASP.Net, XML = THIS BOOK IS NOT FOR YOU!!!!!
Anyway, if you decide to buy it, you should consider buying another book (Intermediate level maybe, or a faster beginner's one) soon, this is only the first step into mastering VB.Net programing.
Rating:
Summary: A great introduction to programming and VB.Net
Review: I am a professional VB developer using VB6. Having read others of Mr Smiley's books, and as I am interested in the new VB.NET framework, I decided to go ahead and pick up Mr. Smiley's Learn to Program VB.Net. I knew it was a basic beginner book from the start (what else would you expect from a book titled "Learn To Program"?!) but I still thoroughly enjoyed the book.If you're already an intermediate/advanced VB programmer looking for upgrades to the new .NET framework, this is not necessarily the book for you. It doesn't really pretend to be. This is, however, a fantastic book teaching the basics of programming. Even an experienced programmer could benefit from the methodical teaching given in this book. A lot of us in the VB world entered the programming scene in a sink-or-swim scenario - with no idea where to start programming, but with a deadline for something that needed completion and a sinking feeling that we were in over our head. I wish back then I had access to Mr. Smiley's texts - they teach good programming habits, and demystify programming in a way that isn't nearly as soporific as many other manuals you could find. I highly reccomend his books for the beginner. I even reccommend them for the experienced user who was thrown into programming willy-nilly in the same manner I was. Mr. Smiley does an excellent job of "filling in the gaps." But please, take the book for what it is - an introduction to programming in the given language.
Rating:
Summary: A great book for beginner VB.NET programmers
Review: I baught this book based on it's reviews and I was not disapointed. John Smiley's clear style of writing makes the book enjoyable to read and a lot of basic questions you may have are asked and answered. This is a great book for those who want to start programming on a solid base and covers area's which other books seem to assume you already know. The book also takes you through a complete VB.NET project.
Rating: 
Summary: It is good book for the VB.NET beginners
Review: I have read this book from our Technical Resource Library, it is illustrating VB .NET with example as academic study class room. The conversations between the instructor and the student all very help full and informative. Many times I said "Yes, I wan to ask this question"
Rating:
Summary: This book makes learning VB.Net easy
Review: I just finished this great book as part of Professor Smiley's online VB.Net study group, and was compelled to write a review--particularly when I saw that the previous reviewer gave it one star. I'm not sure what book that person was reading when he said the book doesn't cover .Net--this book taught me how to write a VB.Net Windows program, and I thought it covered the subject well. Granted, there's more to VB.Net than developing Windows programs---but I don't think you'll find a book anywhere that covers all of VB.Net, and if you do, it's bound to be pretty superficial. The book is written for people who want to learn how to program, in the form of a simulated classroom---and that's stated pretty clearly on the front and back cover jackets of the book. The book covers the fundamentals of programming--Programming Logic, If statements, Case Statements, Loops, Error Handling, Menus--in a way that few authors can. Personally, I like the classsroom format--lots of screenshots, lots of questions, and most importantly, lots of answers. It's well organized, taking you from knowing nothing to being able to write your own VB.Net program. If you're trying to get up to speed quickly with VB.Net, I can't recommend a better book.
Rating:
Summary: Professor Smiley Got This Beginner Started!
Review: I started trying to learn my first programming language, VB.NET, with Microsoft's Visual Basic.NET Step By Step and SAMS Teach Yourself Visual Basic.NET. Frustrated with the didactic gaps and presuppositions of prior programming knowledge in these books, I purchased Learn to Program with Visual Basic.NET
by John Smiley. Professor Smiley got this beginner started with VB.NET. I have advanced degrees and IT certifications, so I don't consider myself a "Dummy." This book took it for granted that I had no programming or VB.NET knowledge and taught me the basics of both. If you are like me, you should benefit from this book. If you're a programmer, I would guess that you should look elsewhere to learn VB.NET.
Rating:
Summary: Good enough to get me to write this review!
Review: I've never written in a review for a book here before. After reading this book I felt compelled to do just that. I've read more books than I can recall about learning programs. From Access to Photoshop and all things in between. While I learn a lot from these books without fail I hit areas that are just glossed over and I'm left thinking "Okay, but what about ____?"
This book answered every question that came up. I swear it was like John Smiley was reading my mind. Now make no mistake, it is a beginner's book for sure and I did know a fair bit of the material beforehand but all the topics were covered in such detail that without fail I came away with a deeper understanding of things I thought I already knew.
This book wuld be my first recommendation to anyone learning VB.NET. It will give you a solid foundation to build on as you progress into programming.
Rating:
Summary: Best Book Out There For Beginners
Review: John Smiley is a good teacher of computer programming. If you are completely new to prgramming and would like to learn VB then this is the book for you. Don't hesitate go and buy it NOW!
Rating:
Summary: I think it's a great book
Review: Let me begin by saying that I'm the author, so let's get that out of the way. I'm posting here to point out that the book has a tremendous amount of support materials that have never been advertised. Each of my books has a support page containing a current list of errata, downloadable files (completed exercises from the book), extra links to extra materials I have written and my email address in the event you have problems. I also run a series of online classes so that if you would like to learn with me in a more structured setting, you can do that also. You can access those materials via this link http://www.johnsmiley.com/books.htm I should also say that this book isn't for everyone---and you can read through some of the other reviews posted here to see why and why not. I wrote this book for beginner level programmers, and the book is written in a unique style. You (and I) can thank the now defunct Wrox Publishing house for the style of the book that some people absolutely love and others (primarily hotshot programmers with lots of experience) hate. The book is written as if you are participating in an actual classroom---many people, particularly those learning on their own or in an Independent study setting find comforting. My thanks to the many people who have written to me to tell me how much they've enjoyed my books and how they have helped them achieve their goals of learning to program. John Smiley
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