This is a textbook from the traditional text book publisher, Prentice Hall, that doesn't look like a text book. Part of the reason is that it's the product of another partnership with a consulting-training-writing company - in this case, Object Innovations - and a mainstream publisher.

It does make a difference and the difference is point of view. This book assumes that you're a student and your purpose for reading the book is to learn VB.NET. A Wrox book assumes that you're a programmer and your purpose for reading the book is to be successful in your programming assignment. For example, the "Case Study" highlighted on the book's cover is a complete (?) banking application covered in sixteen pages. On the other hand, I've read other books by business consultants that covered their latest client's system in excessive detail and never really got around to teaching what the book was supposed to be about. At almost 700 pages of carefully constructed text, this book teaches and does a great job of it.

A few examples:

The book IS about VB.NET, not VB 6 generation thinking in a VB.NET book. When it's important to note the differences from VB 6, those differences are highlighted in separate paragraphs and don't interrupt the focused .NET orientation.

Code examples are well balanced with text explanations and are always clearly marked so you know when to look for them in the downloaded source code (available from the author's web site, not Prentice Hall, by the way).

This is a great book for someone who wants to learn VB.NET from scratch. It's complete, it's thorough, and it's very readable.

About the Authors

Dr. Robert Oberg started his career as a mathematician and ended up as a software guy - in his case, chairman of the Computer Science department. He moved to the business side of things when computers got hot in the '80's and has been there ever since. Dr. Dana Wyatt started in the computer department that's where her PhD was earned and where she spent her teaching career before jumping into the business sector as well. Dr. Oberg and Dr. Wyatt are now principals in their own training-consulting-writing company.