Author: Patrice Pelland
Publisher: Microsoft Press, 2008
Pages: 256
ISBN: 978-0735625419
Aimed at: Beginners 
Rating: 3
Pros: A copy of VB Express bound in
Cons: Many of the examples are too difficult for the beginner
Reviewed by: Mike James

Visual Basic is, or was, the perfect beginner’s language. You could avoid all of the difficult stuff until you were happy you understood the basics. Visual Basic 2005 and 2008 are both a great improvement on the original VB .NET. It is much easier to use but it still isn’t quite as user friendly as the original classic VB.

This book is essentially a second edition of a title covering the Visuall Basic .NET 2005.  version. A short section on WPF and XMAL and a longer one on Linq and a Glossary have been added to expand the original which.  More importantly Patrice Pelland’s book is essentially a re-write of his C# book and this helps to explain why it fails to take into account the sort of problems that beginners might have. It dives straight in with the complexities of object-oriented programming and unless you have a strong constitution you are probably going to drown. On the other hand if you manage to survive, or if you have a buoyancy aid in the form of previous experience, then you might find the book helpful. It has the advantages of being cheap and including a copy of VB Express together with all of the examples from the book on a CD bound into the back.

It’s not a good book, and it certainly isn’t a good introduction for the beginner but it’s worth buying simply for the CD.