Amazon Review

Early on in VB.NET Programming the authors state there will be changes before the production version of the software appears and a lot of beta software is required to work with VB.NET. Thus much of the early part of the book is a discussion of development platforms, software versions and installation order for the various components. In the end though, you'll be looking at the VS.NET IDE which runs on top of the .NET Framework SDK. The latter supports VB, C and C++ with the option for vendors to add more languages.

As a .NET programmer you're writing for--effectively--a virtual machine; the CLR (Common Language Runtime) which abstracts out Windows API calls--the first step in creating portable programs. For the first time you're also writing in a genuine object-oriented environment complete with inheritance.

The authors compare the new with the old (to the detriment of the old) and go into detail when the differences affect the way you work. For example, forms are now classes, .frm is replaced with code in the class and events are handled differently. Similarly, ASP is replaced with ASP.NET and more importantly, Webforms, while DCOM is replaced with the lighter weight SOAP. Then there's the ubiquitous XML to deal with.

Windows programmers who don't move to .NET will end up maintaining legacy code, so it makes sense to get started now. VB.NET Programming is a great introduction. Read it and you'll land running when .NET programming software goes gold.