Foundations¿ of Visual Basic® 4 for Windows® 95 Programming

Rating:
Summary: Excellent tutorial book for Visual Basic 4
Review: I selected this book as the text for the professional VB courses that I teach because it covers the material in a clean and concise manner. The book is well organized, and the later chapters can be learned in any order, depending on the needs of the student. The reviews from the students of my course usually rank the book as one of the best they've seen on the topic (many of my students have taken similar classes before)

Rating:
Summary: Demonstrates poor software development technique
Review: Though this book covers all the basics of Visual Basic 4 programming for a completely novice programmer, the author breaks some fundamental rules of good software development technique. The biggest faux pas has to do with the purpose of a variable and the choice of its name.

For instance, in Listing 7-2, on pages 258 to 259, the author uses a dynamic array structure called NameList, but refers to it generally as "the name index" in his comments. In the same example, the variable curRec is serving two purposes: one to calculate the number of records in a file, and the other when its value is set to 0 meaning the user intends to enter a new record in the database. Compare this programming behavior with Steven McConnell's book "Code Complete", 1st ed., 1993, where on pages 224-225 he recommends, "Use each variable for exactly one purpose" and "Avoid variables with hidden meanings."

Another problem with this book is the author's standard for code formatting. He apparently formatted his code so it would print out on adding machine tape, using lots of line continuation characters and indentation that does not clarify the logic of the code. His code listings, both in the book, and on the CD-ROM, are difficult to follow.

The "About the Author" describes the author's background as more of a technical writer and editor, and it does not appear that he has any formal training in computer science or software engineering. This may explain the anomalies I've observed reading his book.

If you're an absolute neophyte to programming, this book will get you started with Visual Basic, but don't expect to learn good software development technique from its examples. Consider reading McConnell's book for that.