Wow! One thousand, five hundred pages of instruction (although some are in PDF format on the CD). With color illustrations yet!

Although this is the most expensive book in the entire guide, you DO get value for your money. The "Training Course" is such a great resource that I'll be devoting a separate article all 'About' it later at About Visual Basic. But the book is a crown jewel all by itself.

Since these books are targeted for the classroom, they also feature extras like review exercises at the end of chapters for students (with included answers after the exercises and some without answers).

This book includes information that simply can't be found in other books - such as a explanation of the various number systems involved in computing, and even a chapter on job hunting!

The difference between this book and more advanced books is that this one doesn't try to get into subjects like the .NET Framework and namespaces. They don't tell you everything there is to know about interfaces and class declarations. This is, in fact, another strength of this book. Content that is so difficult that it would be a roadblock for a beginning student is deftly explained at only the level that the student needs to continue to make progress. On the other hand, there really isn't a lot of difference between this book and the Deitel book for experienced programmers. See that review in this Guide for more on this. Bottom line: Absolutely Great Book! There are none better.

Applications: GDI+, ADO.NET, ASP.NET, XML, HTML AND XHTML, Crystal Reports

About the Author

Dr. Harvey Deitel and Paul Deitel are a father and son team who have put together a real powerhouse training and consulting company. Harvey Deitel was in the the Boston academic environment, principally MIT, before launching a business with his son Paul. Paul Deitel is the main man in the company and runs much of their training business for all of the most important companies and government agencies in the US and around the world. Together with several associates and using the extensive resources of their training company, they have created sixteen of the most complete textbooks I have ever seen.