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Kent, Jeffrey. Visual Basic NET: A Beginner's Guide. Osborne/McGraw-Hill. 2002. 422p. ISBN 0-07-213120-9. pap. $29.99.
Kent, Jeffrey. Visual Basic NET: A Beginner's Guide. Osborne/McGraw-Hill. 2002. 422p. ISBN 0-07-213120-9. pap. $29.99.
MacDonald, Matthew. The Book of VB .NET: NET Insight for VB Developers. No Starch. 2002. 465p. ISBN 1-886411-- 82-4. pap. $39.95.
Prince, Anne. Murach's Beginning Visual Basic NET. Murach. 2002. 724p. ISBN 1-890774-- 15-4. pap. $49.50.
These guides to Microsoft's Visual Basic .NET (see also Computer Media, LJ 4/1/02) suit libraries of all sizes. While Beginner's Guide is appropriate for any institution, Murach's and Book of VB will fit into medium and larger facilities. Beginner's Guide functions as both a lucid teach-- yourself text for programming beginners and a solid crash course for experienced programmers. Drills and quizzes let readers practice concepts, and Q&A sidebars add clarification; important ideas are repeated in introductory goals and ending chapter summaries. In addition, examples and analogies are straightforward; projects are available online. Murach 's, for beginning to intermediate programmers, also includes online project files and exercises, but it focuses entirely on building business applications. It covers more theory and background than Beginner's Guide, but explanations are clear, and chapters build well on skills introduced earlier. It is appropriate for those wanting to delve more deeply into the .NET environment; recommended. Book of VB, for Visual Basic developers needing to move to NET, includes helpful "New in .NET" sections preceding each chapter to facilitate the switch. Real-world examples (code available online) and suggestions for additional resources allow programmers to hone their skills. Thorough explanation and migration help make this useful for larger libraries serving programmers.
Copyright Cahners Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier, Inc. Apr 1, 2003