Visual Basic 2008 For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech)) by Bill Sempf

While a decent Dummies book in essence, the problem lies in it's target. The main focus on the book is VB 2008 Professional Edition. I find it hard to think of a common situation where a user would have full access to VB'08 PE, a $650 package at least, and be on a "dummies" level. For a user to have a need of this book, they would normally be on an entry level. Most entry level user's would be using VB'08 Express. There are a lot of... features he highlights that are not available in this edition. This makes this book of little use for a lot of the "dummies" demographic. It does have a lot of useful information in it. With some trial and error and copious use of the Help files, you can adapt this book to the VB Express edition. I have to give it 2 stars for that. I wish I had found another resource instead to waste my money on. more

This book is designed to get you going quickly in Microsoft Visual Basic 2008. It's not a reference, it's probably not for the complete beginner, and true dummies probably won't be up to this level. Rather it is an entertaining tour for those with some modest programming experience on how to get going quickly in VB 2008. If you are a self-starter, this is the book for you! The author packs the book full of useful "how to's." Rather than trying... to answer every question you could possibly ask about VB 2008, the author focuses on the most essential tools you will need. Once you get the basic idea of how a given tool or approach works from the book, you have what you need to apply these tools and/or approaches to other problems you encounter in VB 2008. more

I usually do not buy books for Dummies but at a ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) Symposium I heard Bill Sempf speak and after reading his book; I found things in his book that were explained better and with more detail than in the five professional books I bought. I have been programming for 32 years with many different computer languages and now I am working on Visual Studio 2008. I liked the history and the why things are the way... they are explained in this book. Dean Liming MBA more

The book is written in English rather than computerese, which I appreciate. The inclusion of code examples is critical to learning, and this book's got them. Glad I've got this one.

I needed to take a visual basic course as an elective. Yeah, like a foreign language to a nurse. This book went slow, and really showed in "baby steps" the process, I couldn't have made it through the course without it.