I think you've seen them on the shelves. Knowledge by the pound. There's gotta be a better way. So if you're looking for an alternative to those cinder-block sized, barely luggable VB .NET books but you don't want to give up the quality?

Harold Davis has written your book!

The "better way" that Davis uses is the concept of power steering. Rather than a comprehensive "encyclopedia" of VB .NET, Davis provides key concepts and examples. He starts the book with an exhaustive explanation of the MessageBox.Show function in VB .NET in chapter 3 and the technique really works. It's not that this function is the key to understanding VB .NET, but rather it's a great example of how most VB .NET functions work. The fundamental properties of variables, argument passing, even the use of the System Log file are introduced with the MessageBox.Show. By the end of the chapter, a respectable system that dynamically modifies the way it's called using VB .NET's new GroupBox, Panel, and Splitter controls has been built. If you thoroughly understand this one, there's no reason why you can't understand the other hundred thousand as well. (OK ... I'm exaggerating.)

With this comprehensive introduction using a real, although reasonably simple, VB .NET function, Davis backs up and takes a more intensive pass at the important parts of VB .NET starting with the most important one: Forms. Davis uses three chapters to go through the "great trinity of VB .NET," properties, events, and methods. He takes care this time to cover the basics (why event driven programming is different from the old sequential programs, for example). Sometimes the rapid-fire treatment brushes over details that might confuse programmers new to VB .NET. For example, Davis explains how an EventArgs object received by a form Resize event can be passed directly to another form event. But he never explains what the EventArgs object is or why it's important in VB .NET.

Many of the chapters of the book are first rate explorations of specific topics. The chapter devoted to the single topic of menus (chapter 11) and a whole chapter covering just the Object Browser (chapter 14) are great.

Most programmers who want to know enough to get the job done and don't have the time to wade through pages and pages of theory and history will appreciate the approach Davis has taken in this book. For example, he doesn't say very much about differences between VB 6 and VB .NET. He assumes that you want to know about VB .NET and not what came before that. (An appendix does summarize the changes.) And he waits until chapter 15 to discuss Object Oriented Programming even though the previous chapters are filled with objects. The discussion of OOP is refreshingly direct. He covers material in just over thirty pages that have inspired whole books bigger than this one. This practical approach is also clearly evident in the generous use of screen-capture illustrations. Just about anything that might be a question has an illustration to make it more clear.

Davis puts a lot of his personality into this book, sometimes adding comments about how useful he thinks the various VB .NET features are ("Events are totally a blast to work with ..."). When the book gets into full tutorial mode, Davis writes that when components are "seated" into forms, it's time to "wire them up" up with code that takes advantage of the "scaffolding" provided by VB .NET. There are two ways to look at this type of programmer jargon. One is that they're not well defined and you won't be able to search on any of these terms at the Microsoft MSDN site (although Davis does provide definitions as he uses them). The other is that real programmers, for better or worse, really do talk this way (at least they do this week ... language like this has a short life span). Reading this book will help you learn this part of the programming craft.

The last four chapters of the book are good introductions to some sizable topics that (in the words of Davis), "you cannot do anything very sophisticated or very useful without." ADO. NET, XML, ASP .NET, and deployment each have a chapter that covers the essential information you need, but not more.

If you're looking for a straightforward book that is pretty narrowly focused on the sweet spot in the middle the title topics: Programming, Visual Basic, and .NET, this is your book. Downloadable code rather than a CD-ROM, black and white illustrations, and a no-fluff style make this book a top value-for-the-money choice.

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