Rating: 
Summary: He still has the guru status in my 'book'!
Review: I found this book, along with most other Dan Appleman books, to be an excellent choice for learning. As he tells you, this is not for the beginner, in fact that is one of the main reasons I bought the book. Dan has a way with words and examples that explain things every step of the way. I am forever amazed at some of the findings he comes up with and the best part about them is that he shares why and how with you including examples that you can run. Another nice part about this book is that even though the title is that of VB.NET he does cover framework issues as well. It is not just another regurgitation of language syntax changes and that makes it stand out above the rest. If you really want to learn about new issues and methodologies, when to and when not to, how to and why, then this book is definitively for you. I gave this a 5-star rating because I truly felt enlightened when I was done with it. Sure, there are times when it might overwhelm you a little (given some of the IL language and assembler instructions) but when you go back and re-read them, you understand why he had to go there. It now becomes clear why he told you what he did.Thanks Dan for another great book. You are, in my mind, still *the* guru!
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Summary: My Choice for a First VB.NET Book
Review: There are a lot of books out there for transitioning to VB.NET from VB6. However, before you grab any other book, I strongly suggest "Moving to VB.NET: Strategies, Concepts, and Code" by Dan Appleman. Written from an in-the-trenches, "I've been there" point of view, Dan introduces the reader to .NET using the single best possible approach: from the ground up. Due to the steep learning curve associated with .NET, approaching this subject is tricky, but I feel Dan has done a truly excellent job. Up front, this book is in my opinion the first book a VB6 person should read on the subject. It also helps that it is structured in such a way that it could be easily broken down for a classroom environment, getting a company up to speed. One thing Dan really stresses is for the reader to familiarize themselves with the MSDN library. That point cannot be stressed enough. Unlike previous versions, MSDN for .NET was written with the VB.NET developer in mind, and is completely VB-friendly. Also, in the rare cases where Dan fails to explain an item right off the bat, such as the 'Shared' operator (he does get to it), or the really cool 'IntPtr' variable type, just quickly look them up in MSDN. The wealth of available information found there is fantastic. When you crack Dan's book, please be sure to download the example files (and any errata updates) from the site location he suggests. Being able to view, run, and hack complete listing is an invaluable tool in comprehending the points he is making regarding each subject (I like them just so I can add expository comments once I understand a technique -comments are sparse, but just to keep space tight because much of the code, broken into blocks, is also in the book). Though easy to read, this book is definitely not one to skip chapters on. If you do not fully understand everything in a previous chapter, the next chapter can be more difficult to digest. I was surprised that often a chapter would require only a second re-read to fully comprehend everything covered. Making reference notes and clarifications in the broad margins as "Notes-To-Self" is also a great help when you finally place this book in your reference library - and it WILL find itself there. This book is loaded with very powerful techniques that you will want to refer back to again and again. This book has also crushed my habit of harkening back to the glory days of VB6, and of calling VB.NET by derogatory names such as Visual Fred and VB.NOT. Not only does the book explain the differences in structure between VB6 and VB.NET, but in the process it completely turned me on to the VB.NET philosophy and the much more powerful, and most-often much simpler methods of doing them in .NET. Every point I had once griped about, such as, for example, the 'lack' of fixed-length strings and arrays in user-defined types was shown to be completely unfounded. Things that I complained that were missing have been in fact replaced by something much better and more powerful. With this book as a launching point, in a day I can now develop applications under VB.NET that are just as powerful, and run just as fast as the C++ applications I used to develop over several weeks under Visual Studio 6. The book's author has shown me the way toward being comfortable with the.NET environment, and made me excited in my transition to it. All things considered, after reading Dan Appleman's book, I now wish Microsoft had come out with .NET after VB5.
Rating:
Summary: You need this book bad if you are a VB programmer
Review: A specter is haunting Visual Basic: the specter of VB.Net. As Dan Appleman makes clear, the party is over for Visual Basic. Because it was its own world with its own rules, projects consistently failed when VB 3..6 was the development language, and there is currently an apparent hiring freeze. Most ads are demanding C++ and Oracle and not VB and SQL Server in my informal surveys. [Note: my observations, not Dan's.] The reason may also be the FUD factor created by VB.Net which Dan does his best to clear up. The news is bad if like many VB programmers you do not know objects cold, and worse if your little "shop" forbids (as happened in an example in my experience) "mere" programmers from creating objects, forcing them to use replicated forms and code. Everything changes. For example, using VB strings to append, although supported in VB.Net, takes TWENTY TIMES the speed that an object (System.Text.Stringbuilder) takes, and Dan reveals StringBuilder and dozens of other solutions. Old Visual Basic spoon-fed functionality by making it part of the syntax. VB.Net, more like C and C++, forces the programmer to refer to a library, in the case of VB.Net, the Net Framework. Dan is breathtaking on multiple threads because he is concerned, unlike many programmers, about the worst bug in the world, and that is the bug you never know about. He shows how this can easily happen when mindless coders use multiple threads as a result of the granularity of the Common Interface Language. Get this book. Wrox press, publisher of far more clunky texts written by developers with their pictures on the cover for some silly reason (for us software types are hardly sexy), has two books on the shelves of my local Noble Barn bookstore, and they manfully give you, like Jack Webb, just the facts. They have their place although as Dan points out in his readable and opinionated way, Visual Basic programmers need to grow up and research primary sources including MSDN and CD Rom documentation. But Dan provides, in his wisdom and experience with VB (which trumps mine, for I started with 3 and Dan started with 1), an interpretive framework. Your manager should also read his book in order to start to do what managers do when they get all visionary, and stuff (like think about next week, and stuff.) For example, while VB.Net fully addresses the need to resize controls and forms, this means that your "shop" needs new standards lest forms start resizing in strange ways. Also, forms now have an incredibly cool Opacity property...for which I cannot think of a use...what would it mean, to an end user, for a form to start fading away, like Hamlet's Dad in the morning? A tech writer at Bell Northern Research, using the IBM mainframe, told me that she felt already like Ingrid Bergman in the film Gaslight, wherein Charles Boyer fools with the analogue settings on the gas-powered lights in order to convince poor Ingrid that she's nuts. Fading forms and forms slowly materializing could really drive sensitive souls crazy. However, they may have a use because they could expose hints, documentation, and subliminal exhortations to work harder. I am using a transparent form as the needle in a speedometer so I can see the rate at which the measured process is proceeding. VB.Net is just chock-full of such cool things and the question for serious developers and managers is what to do with such coolness. VB.Net STILL does not have a simple command to self-interpret (this would enable developers to give VB.Net away) but it does have the ability to generate compiled CIL code...it is now possible to write production compilers in VB.Net. Dan has done the world a service by writing his well-informed opinions. I am a disciple of the Apple man because I like airing opinions too, but Dan backs them up with experience and knowledge, while I have been known to pop off occasionally for the hell of it. This went over great in art school and in Paris but in computers, dominated as they are by clerks, you gotta have your facts straight. Dan can be trusted, and I keep his book handy as I delve in VB.Net.
Rating:
Summary: Another success for Dan Appleman
Review: I've been reading technical books for a long time and each time I pick up a Dan Appleman book I never regret it. With this new book, Dan has delivered another winner. This book does not rehash Microsoft manuals. Nor does it jump right into coding VB.NET. Dan tries, and I believe sucessfully, prepare the reader for more than just programming a new language. He provides extremely valuable information to the reader regarding strategies and concepts used by Microsoft. There is plenty of theory and code packed into this tome. I would certainly recommend this to any VB developer looking to move to VB.NET. It is an easy-read and Dan is really a down-to-earth kinda author. Thanks Dan!
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding
Review: So many .NET books are a rehash of the documentation, or say the same things as a million other books, at best in a slightly different way. This one isn't like that at all. It's full of real-world practical perspective and reality checks such as (to paraphrase) "it will be years before .NET is really being used in production", and "dont use inheritance or threading unless you really know what you're doing". Besides that, its outstandingly well written and oozes attention to detail on every page. One criticism I might level is that its really not all that VB specific - a chunk in the middle is, but much of it applies equally to the other .NET languages. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I am honestly baffled that so many folks gave this book a negative review. Dan, please keep it up!
Rating: 
Summary: Nothing Special
Review: Appleman's Developing ActiveX Components with Visual Basic 5.0 was so good that I bought Developing COM/ActiveX Components with Visual Basic 6.0 when it came out. Both of these were among the very best VB books of all time. Unfortunately, Moving to VB.NET is not in the same camp. The book tries to introduce VB6ers into VB.NET, but does a very bad job of getting from A to B. Most developers can understand most of .NET after discovering that it's 80% Java with keywords changed. Instead of starting with this foundation, the book wastes a lot of space explaining prinicples that are new to only the most hardcore Microsoft zealots. In Appleman's defense, this book was first published when .NET was still in beta and was likely rushed to press. Don't get me wrong, there is some great technical content here as Appleman is still a great technician and good at explaining the "internals" of things. The COM Interop and Accessing the Win32 API chapter is particularly good and helped me get through a VB6/VB.NET integration project. If you're totally new to VB.NET and find this book on sale, buy it; otherwise, don't bother.
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Summary: Dan Appleman has done it again
Review: As I have come to expect from any text by Dan Appleman, Moving to VB .NET gives a thorough discussion of the topic, including tips for evaluating how/when/whether to deploy .NET for your organization based on your particular business needs. Mr. Appleman combines impressive technical knowledge with a sharp sense of humor to make this book as readable as it is informative. I recommend it to any experienced VB programmer looking to make the transition to .NET.
Rating:
Summary: Hit the mark!
Review: This book was all I expected and more. It not only teaches VB .Net by example, but also positions VB .Net with VB 6 and explains Microsoft's reasons for dumping COM to go with CLR (Common Language Runtime). Issues of deployment and productivity are explained in a candid way, unlike the shill-like explanations that come out of MS Press. I'm on the Dan Appleman-as-a-guru bandwagon.
Rating:
Summary: Ooops! He did it again...
Review: Ooops! He did it again... If you have read Dan's books on VB6 COM programming and the Win32 API, and you know his method of explaining topics thoroughly and behind the curtains stories of what's behind the language and architecture, then you must buy this book because it's on the same caliber as the previous ones. I really congratulate the way he starts the book and how he sometimes under different topics questions Microsoft's new technological decisions. At last, here is a book where the author has an unbiased approach towards the new software technologies in the way he questions about what is being offered by Microsoft before accepting it blindly. I congratulate him for that. He has something to say rather than just merely reshuffling topics and coming up with a book like other authors. Moreover, in this book, I had the impression that DAN as a software veteran, has also taken a "Socrates" like approach, philosophying, criticizing, questioning, and answering on various programming methods and architectural designs based on his many years of experience in code development, with the intent of passing that knowledge to his readers. All in all, this book is a must for every serious programmer. If you are the type of person, who is looking for a quick hands on tutorial and a parrot like reshuffled book, then this book is not for you!!! But if you want an in depth and interesting approch to VB.NET, then go ahead and do not hesitate in buying it. One advice to DAN is that the "Linked List" example was boring... The intention was obvious, but the example was boring and loses the reador's attention... Sorry DAN but I had to say it just for the sake of being fair... When it comes to examples, it's better to give real world interesting scenarios rather than computer science related examples, even if the topic is kind of an abstract topic. To conclude, this book is a must...
Rating:
Summary: Good beginning, dies in the middle
Review: If you are an expert VB programmer you may LOVE this book. If you are an intermediate who needs to think about changing the way you code for VB in .NET you may find yourself scratching your head somewhere in the middle of this book. The beginning is good. VERY good which is what makes the middle parts of the book so confusing. He tells us inheritence is almost never the right way to reuse code, that he is going to tell us why, but never clearly does. I would have liked him to give us a concise example of when to use Inheritance and when not to (even if you almost never should). The multithreading chapter could have been clearer too. I say this, because the author makes such a big deal of these two issues in the beginning. I think more time should have been spent in these two chapters. In fact, I was expecting him to concentrate on the this that worry him about .NET at the expense of the other issues that other books deal with. (If it's that important, he should have given these issues more time). I will reread this book after reading some others. I'm not saying it's not worth it for you. But read some parts of the middle chapters before you buy it. It may be over your head or just not what you are looking for. Or perhaps you should do some more learning before you read this text.
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