Author: Guy Fouché & Trey Nash
Publisher: Apress, 2007
Pages: 414
ISBN: 978-1590598016 
Aimed at: Intermediate level developers
Rating: 3.5
Pros: Clear explanations and examples
Cons: Pedestrian treatment of standard ideas
Reviewed by: Mike James

Accelerated VB sounds like a good idea if you already know something about objected-oriented programming or some other language. The topics covered in Guy Fouche and Trey Nash’s book are advanced - threading, exception handling, generics, delegates and so on. They also cover many basic ideas, objects, classes, methods and how to work with strings. It is advanced but it’s also pedestrian. The presentation isn’t much beyond the documentation or what you can easily find for free on the Internet. The authors explain the ideas reasonably well and the examples are reasonably small and comprehensible but at no point do you feel that you are being given anything special. There are no deep insights about VB 2005 on offer in this book and this is where it fails. If you are clever enough to read this book you are clever enough to write it. A complete beginner would be lost at Chapter One and so it’s only going to be of value if in the rare state of transition between beginner and expert.