Moving to VB .NET: Strategies, Concepts, and Code, Second Edition

In this new edition of his popular title, Moving to VB .NET: Strategies, Concepts, and Code, Second Edition, Visual Basic guru Dan Appleman not only updates the book to include coverage of changes to Visual Basic .NET in Visual Studio .NET 2003, but he extends the areas most important to VB .NET programmers since its release. Topics such as .NET remoting, versioning, and object-oriented programming are further illuminated using Appleman's own personable and highly effective style.

Appleman explains the whys and hows of the VB .NET technology features, and delves into the controversies around many of the choices. Evaluating VB .NET from the perspective of the developer, you'll learn to write high quality VB .NET code in well-designed applications. The author brings the same attention to technical detail and real-world attitude to this second edition as he has brought to all of his past books.

User review
Outstanding
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!

User review
Nothing Special
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.

User review
Dan Appleman has done it again
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.

User review
My Choice for a First VB.NET Book
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.

User review
Hit the mark!
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.