Articles Index
ASP.NET 4 and ADO.NET 4 - From Murach!
A full review of Murach's books covering the 4.0 versions of ASP.NET and ADO.NET, main supporting technologies for Visual Basic 2010. This combined review of two books covers what's good and bad about them as well as what's different.
I. M. Wright's Hard Code
Microsoft Insider Eric Brechner publishes the columns that he wrote for nearly a decade about and for internal Microsoft reading. The best practices that made Microsoft great are analyzed and sometimes criticised.
Microsoft ADO.NET 4 Step by Step
Tim Patrick's ADO.NET 4 Step by Step is a beginner level book that introduces Microsoft's data technology. If you're looking for a way to break into ADO.NET, this book will do the job for you.
Seven Languages in Seven Weeks
Tunnel vision is a disease. This book is the cure. A plunge into Ruby, Io, Prolog, Scala, Erlang, Clojure and Haskell. These are seven of the weirdest and most wonderful programming languages today! If you consider yourself to be a "VB" programmer or a "Java" programmer or some other specific language, you need this book. It will help you break out of your paradigms, see beyond your horizons, and be a better VB programmer, Java programmer or whatever.
Coders at Work
After banging my head against a programming problem for half a day or so, I often wonder, "How would a world-class coder handle this problem?" It's not just wondering what the answer is. Would they go out and get drunk, blame the tool, listen to soft music with a warm cloth over their eyes? And what kind of people are these coders. Peter Seibel answers those questions and more in his book, "Coders at Work". This review answers the question, "What kind of book did Peter Seibel write?"
Murach's Visual Basic 2010
A full review of Murach's flagship book on Visual Basic 2010. Murach is a very special publisher because they do things differently. They have a unique format that they use in all their books. They have full time salaried authors on staff rather than contracting with lots of different authors. And their books are designed and written with the specific goal of being the best book for learning that they can be.
A Guide to the Win32 API / Hardcore Visual Basic
This legacy review of both Dan Appleman's classic book "A Guide to the Win32 API" and Bruce McKinney's "Hardcore Visual Basic" is retained on the site simply because both have made their mark as great milestones in technology, even though both are seriously outdated now.
Excel 2010 - The Missing Manual
Excel 2010 - The Missing Manual by Matthew MacDonald is one of the popular O'Reilly Missing Manual series. This review focuses on the Visual Basic macro programming part of the book.
Access 2010 - The Missing Manual
Access 2010 - The Missing Manual by Matthew MacDonald is one of the popular O'Reilly Missing Manual series. This review focuses on the Visual Basic and macro programming parts of the book.
The Design of Design - Frederick Brooks
Frederick P. Brooks, Jr. is a living legend in software development. His project management created IBM's System/360. And System/360 made IBM the supreme player in computers during the mainframe era. When it was all over, Fred wrote "The Mythical Man-Month" - an uncompromising look back at the project - and changed jobs to found the Computer Science department at the University of North Carolina - his home state. "The Design of Design" is the distillation of his lifetime of achievement.
Pro LINQ - Language Integrated Query in VB 2008
The word "Pro" means something in the title of this book. It really is for pro's. As the authors note, most of new functions in VB.NET 2008 are there to support LINQ. So the real subject of the book is "all the new stuff in VB.NET 2008". It's not for beginners, but if you feel comfortable with VB.NET, this book will take you to the next level.
Microsoft Visual Studio Tips
If you write VB.NET code, then you spend most of your day working with Visual Studio. Sara Ford, the author of Microsoft Visual Studio Tips, points out that with this kind of leverage, even saving one or two keystrokes will be multiplied thousands of times as you work with VS all day long.
Learn the New LINQ and Entity Framework ADO.NET Technologies with Murach
ADO.NET 3.5, LINQ, and the Entity Framework with VB 2008 is another great Murach "paired page" book! They're still "focused on learning". This book is an updated version of the Framework 2.0 edition and features the new Microsoft technologies LINQ and the Entity Framework! An About Visual Basic book review.
A database book for the rest of us
Mike Chapple - database guide for About.Com - has written a book for people who don't know a lot about SQL Server databases but need to learn fast. This review gives you both the yin and yang about it.
Tim Patrick's Latest: Programming Visual Basic 2008
A review of Tim Patrick's complete introduction to Visual Basic .NET 2008. Patrick's book does the difficult trick of being both comprehensive, good for beginners, and fun to read. And all this in a reasonable size, too.
Murach's ASP.NET 3.5 with VB 2008
Murach's books are unique in the world of technical publishing and are perfectly suited for the targeted goal of learning and training. This review covers their new ASP.NET 3.5 with VB 2008 book, including what's right and what's wrong.
Sams Teach Yourself Visual Basic 2008 in 24 Hours
This new member of the "24 Hours" series from Sams marches through Visual Basic like clockwork. It's a great introduction for anyone who hasn't programmed before and it would work well as the text for a beginning programming class. Experienced programmers will find that there isn't much here for them. The new features in VB 2008 are largely missing as well.
Serial Port Complete, 2nd Edition by Jan Axelson
A foundation book with all the basics you need to work with serial ports and computers.
ADO.NET 2.0 Database Programming with VB 2005
Murach, the great publisher of books completely focused on learning technology, publishes a book about Microsoft's database programming technology ADO.NET 2.0 with Visual Basic 2005.
Start to Finish Visual Basic 2005
A book-sized tutorial for VB.NET 2005 that uses the development of a complete application - a database centered project for a library - as a way to teach Visual Basic 2005.
The Visual Basic 2005 Cookbook
A review of an anthology of interesting and useful articles showing different ways to use VB.NET 2005.
Pro-ASP.NET 2.0 in VB 2005 by Laurence Moroney, edited by Matthew MacDonald
Pro-ASP.NET 2.0 in VB 2005 by Laurence Moroney, edited by Matthew MacDonald book review
Visual Basic Design Patterns
Visual Basic Design Patterns by Mark Grand and Brad Merrill About Visual Basic book review
Visual Basic 2005 Database Programming - Book Review
Visual Basic 2005 Database Programming - Book Review
Visual Basic 2005 - A Developer's Notebook - Book Review
Visual Basic 2005 - A Developer's Notebook - Book Review