Rating: 
Summary: Beginner Hardcore
Review: A great book for those who want to become Visual Basic 6.0 power-users. It starts at ground 0, and takes you up to advanced techniques, including the new ADO. Not recommended for light programmers or as a refrence tool. Would be nice wih a CD to follow along on examples in the book, and had programming exwecises that required some independent thinking
Rating: 
Summary: Who this book is for and how it works
Review: After reading the last couple of reviews, we felt we should add our comments on who our book is written for and what it does.First, as the subtitle "Beginner to Pro" implies, we wrote this book for the person who wants to be a professional VB programmer. As a result, it does move at a pretty fast pace, since that's how professional programmers have to work. Some people who have never programmed before will be able to handle that just fine. Others will be happier with a more measured approach (and even they may end up telling us how much they appreciate our book after they've read another beginning book or two - that happens a lot). Second, we believe that you learn best by doing. That's why we didn't include a CD with the sample programs. At the end of each chapter, there are exercises that take you through the development of the examples in that chapter. These let you experience the realities of building apps on your own, before you have to do it on the job. Again, this reflects the workplace. Although you're going to be able to borrow code from earlier apps, you'll often be creating applications from scratch, so you better be able to do that. Third, there's a question about whether we show all the code you need. This one confuses us. All of the sample applications are complete - forms, property settings, and code are all there, in every chapter. Most VB books don't do this and we've found that's very frustrating. So we made sure we supplied all the pieces. We do cover a few features that aren't available to you if you're using the Learning Edition of VB, but these are all detailed for you. Everything works if you're using either the Professional or Enterprise Edition. Hope this clears up any questions. If you want to be an entry-level VB programmer or you're making a transition to VB from another language, this book teaches you everything you need to know, at a professional pace.
Rating:
Summary: Delivers On Promises - fast paced, beginners, database, apps
Review: Although my specialty is QA, I have been a developer off and on for over 25 years. 25 years ago I took a couple college courses as electives and I have been self taught ever since. I have coded professionally on over 20 languages, and although I had learned Visual FoxPro, and non-Visual BASIC's, I had never studied Visual Basic. But I agreed to maintain some code for a friend who had lost his custom programmer, and needed to learn VB and ADO fast. I spent hours on Amazon.com looking for the right book and more hours at the bookstar, before coming across this Murach book, which promised to do in one book what I was considering buying two for.
Having taught programming at community college for years, I can tell you that this book probably wouldn't cut it if you have had zero experience in development. But if you've written macros or learned a non-visual language, or are adept at other visual languages, then this book should do the trick for you in record time.
The content more than makes up for not having a CD and the code is available in a compact bundle on the Net.
For me this was the ideal format and I look forward to learning more languages this way.
Rating: 
Summary: Definitely NOT for the beginner!
Review: As you read this review keep in mind that I am new to programming, and I write this review from that perspective,for the cost of this book it does not provide a CD with code examples, nor is there a web site that does as much. Worse yet, in the book itself, code examples are not always given. If a topic was covered in an earlier chapter, you are expected to have it mastered. Don' expect to see it again. At most the authors will occasionally mention that a topic was coverd in such and such a chapter, but don't hold your breathe for a page reference. More than once, the chapter references are inaccurrate as well. While I am in no position to judge the technical qualifications of the authors, I will say that the style of writing leaves much to be desired. It would seem that a team of three authors could provide clearer directions, accurrate page references, and examples of the required code. I can only surmise that they caved in to the pressure of trying to meet the publication deadline for this book. I bought this book because is states that it is a true beginning book, and the table of contents is awesome in its scope. The material that the authors set out to cover is all of the latest and greatest bells and whistles of VB6. It's stuff I want to know! Alas I will have to learn it elsewhere, or perhaps I can come back to this book again in the future when I have more experience under my belt. For now, this book is over my head and I will send it back. I would give it a ZERO star rating (because of the MISLEADING beginners tag on the cover), but it is not an option.....BEGINNERS BEWARE...Don't be fooled by the cover. A more advanced programmer is likely to find this a very useful book. I myself might buy it again in the future.
Rating:
Summary: Pretty good VB6 book which isn't THICK
Review: Compared to most VB6 books in the market, this one stands out quite well, in terms of thickness and price (I got the lower priced Asian edition). Somehow, I did get to download the source codes from the website and in fact got an update on one the database examples because it used an older DB format. Quite up-to-date don't you think? I'm not sure if I agree with the others, but for me it was good at going straight into real world projects rather than starting off with hundreds of pages just on explaining the IDE, which to me is an absolute time waster. It just really depends on what you really want to get out of the book. If you want to start with the absolute basics, then you might prefer another book which probably is much thicker but turn you off halfway through. John Smiley's books are pretty good at starting you off and doesn't choke you with too much code, just to let u know. Otherwise, this book is pretty good at teaching what you need to know when building real applications and that's the whole aim of the book. The others think its too difficult, but it depends. I have an intermediate programming background in other languages not VB6, but it didn't really bother me that much. In conclusion, just have a skim thru to see if you like it. It'll definitely help you if you're enrolled in a VB6 topic and doing database programming.
Rating:
Summary: Best primer I've Seen for DB Work
Review: I am the proud owner of 5 books on Visual Basic, from version 4 on. Somehow all of the other books on VB concentrate on code,leaving you with more questions than answers. Murach's VB6 concentrates on concepts first, and then the coding required to bring those concepts into the programming. 50% of the material deals with soup-to-nuts database programming. At last, I can get to the back cover without feeling like a dummy! I reccomend this for concepts and The Visual Guide to Visual Basic by Mansfield for comprehensive VB syntax of commands.
Rating: 
Summary: Not such a great book...
Review: I bought this book based on the high rates given by most of the readers, however I kind of feel disapointed with its content. The first part (which I like the best) guides you very quickly through the use of the Visual Basic IDE and language syntax, and I believe it is just what someone already proficient in another programming language needs. However someone new to programming will miss the lack of source code samples. My deepest regret here is that the explorer-type interface (how to create an application in a single window in two or more panes -- as the Windows Explorer application types) was not developed ("This type of interface, however, isn't presented in this book": just too bad, most developpers who want to develop a commercial application will need it!).
The second part of the book, related to database programming, starts with an introduction (too many pages to my taste) to the concept of relational databases. However, if the first part of the book was easy to understand, this one will confuse any beginner and annoy confirmed programmers. Note that all samples are given for a user who can connect to a company client-server style database as MS SQL Server or Oracle, i.e. not really everybody! Developpers for stand-alone commercial applications for PC's won't find anything interesting because the code samples are so simple you'll only be able to develop some "scripts" whose old-looking user interfaces will only serve as personal purpose.
Here we are reaching the page 435 and there are only 130 pages left, which I haven't read but don't seem really exciting.
I am returning the book, however I must say that I really liked the layout of the book: on the left page you'll find the "course" and the screens shots and outlines on the right page. I wish all books were so neatly presented!
Rating:
Summary: Fair To Middlin At Best.
Review: I bought this book based on the reviews ahead of me. 7 of 8 reviewers gave it a 4 or 5 star rating and only one person rated it poorly. I figured I couldn't go wrong. Well, I am diasppointed. I should've listened to the reviewer who rated it poorly. I rather doubt that the reviewers who rated it so highly actually worked through all of the exercises. The book is hard to follow, with frequently missing examples of source code, and there is nowhere to get it. I was unable to find the source code at the Murach web site, and the book does not provide a CD. I think it is reasonable to expect that type of support from a book in this price range. The strong point of this book is definitely its content. Another reviewer mentioned that it highlights all of the bells and whistles of Visual Basic 6, and I must agree. In a perfect world these subjects would be covered by authors such as John Connell or John Smiley who seem to have a knack for teaching beginners. All in all, this is not a bad book. It's just not easy to use, and definitely not for beginners. (I think the publisher is misleading people by stating that it is a beginners book.) If you like figuring things out on your own and paging through the book to look for information previously covered, you'll like this book. That's what we have to do in the real world!
Rating: 
Summary: Look for a better book!
Review: I gave this book a 4 star review after finishing the first 6 chapters. Now that I have "attempted" to complete 4 aditional chapters, I am lowering my rating considerably. I must agree with several reviewers who were disappointed with the lack of source code...No CD...No website to download it from. Even a written request for source code resulted in a letter from the publisher which Is is enclosed in quotes below: "In summary, I'm sorry that you're still having trouble with the book, but I don't think answering your specific questions is the right solution. Believe me, all the answers are in the book or in online help. You've just got to look for them." After this response I returned this book for a refund. I then discovered John Connells book on database programming with Visual Basic 6, which is an excellent book that I highly recommend.
Rating:
Summary: Look for a better book!
Review: I gave this book a 4 star review after finishing the first 6 chapters. Now that I have "attempted" to complete 4 aditional chapters, I am lowering my rating considerably. I must agree with several reviewers who were disappointed with the lack of source code...No CD...No website to download it from. Even a written request for source code resulted in a letter from the publisher which Is is enclosed in quotes below: "In summary, I'm sorry that you're still having trouble with the book, but I don't think answering your specific questions is the right solution. Believe me, all the answers are in the book or in online help. You've just got to look for them." After this response I returned this book for a refund. I then discovered John Connells book on database programming with Visual Basic 6, which is an excellent book that I highly recommend.
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