These two books are becoming the "must have" references of VB.NET in the same way that the reverently regarded Win32 API Guide by Dan Appleman was for pre-.NET VB. The included CD-ROM's are much more than just source code. They're the ultimate references and integrate smoothly and completely with Visual Studio's IDE. That means Dynamic Reference, Index, Content - all the Help tools you get with Visual Studio - are simply extended with these extraordinarily complete references. With these books, O'Reilly is taking the "high road" of adding more value and including more content for your book buying dollar.

The major feature of the Language Nutshell is that it covers all of VB.NET in an A-Z reference format designed to be a working document right there on your desk. In many ways, this is the "Users Guide" that Microsoft fails to put in the box with your software today. The first 150 pages, however, are a great, but very fast paced introduction to VB.NET much like the other books … just more compact.

There are two books available that cover VB.NET's Core Classes, but they use very opposite approaches in doing it. (See the review for the alternative book here.) With the Core Classes Nutshell, the authors go well beyond VB.NET to the entire .NET Framework. Once you get past dragging and dropping components from the Toolbox (and it happens remarkably quickly with VB.NET), you need to know just what is in those References and Imports to use them to maximum effectiveness. The introduction is only a 36 page whirlwind compared to the pretty decent tutorial in the the Language Nutshell, but there are five very useful appendixes to make up for it covering those details that don't seem to be anywhere else such as a complete table of .NET namespaces to DLL's.

Here's a tip that isn't on the jacket or in the CD-ROM description in Core Classes Nutshell. If you're short on cash and you can only buy one, you might think of getting Core Classes instead of Language. Why? Because, at least on my copy, the Visual Studio add-in for BOTH of them are on the CD-ROM in Core Classes. It's an un-advertised two-fer! A warning, however. Since O'Reilly doesn't promise this in any of their documentation, your milage may vary!

About the Authors

Steven Roman, Ph.D., is a professor emeritus of mathematics at the California State University, Fullerton. He has been writing for O'Reilly for years now with over a dozen books under his name there.

Budi Kurniawan and Ted Neward come to VB.NET from the Java side (also known as the "dark side") as well as Microsoft and they're both actually more the working developer game rather than being full time authors. You can see their names very frequently in the high tech magazines and web pages. Ted teaches for the well respected training company, DevelopMentor. The fact that Budi named his company "Brainy Software" should tell you a lot about him, too.