The problem with a lot of computer programming books is that they assume too much. Learn to Program with Visual Basic 6 assumes almost nothing. It then builds upon that modest base until readers have a very solid--and fairly deep--knowledge of computer programming. If you want to learn from the ground up how to make computers do things with Visual Basic, this is the best book for you. Even if you'd like to learn another language, you'll gain a lot by absorbing the background information in Learn to Program with Visual Basic 6.

This book presents itself as an account of a college course, taught by Smiley, in which the students developed a program that allows the customers of a china shop to get price quotes on different table settings. As they work toward delivering the program to the merchant, Smiley's students learn all about figuring out product requirements, designing software, and the many technical details that define Windows programming in general. After quite a bit of planning, Smiley details the mechanics of writing code in Visual Basic 6 (a limited copy of which appears on the book's companion CD-ROM), which eventually enables his students to deliver a working program to the shopkeeper.

Smiley's classroom-style presentation--complete with Aristotelian dialog--means you need to read this book from cover to cover and work through the procedures sequentially at least once. After that, you'll be ready to experiment independently and read more specialized Visual Basic books.

Customer Reviews...

It's For Absolute Beginners, Folks!
Reviewer: kevin63 from Illinois
I am interested in pursuing a career change to the world of programming and have been told by friends in the know that Visual Basic is a good language to start out with for its ease of use compared to other languages and its applicability in the business world today. I therefore went out and bought two different introductory Visual Basic books and Microsoft's Visual Basic learning edition. What I found in reading these books is that they give a good introduction to VB, but then at some point, the authors of the books forget you are a beginner and start introducing topics that seem somewhat advanced with very little explanation. After a while, your head starts to spin and you give up.

I then read some reviews on Amazon.com about other VB books and a lot of folks mentioned the John Smiley series as a good one to start with if you are new to programming and VB. So I picked up his first book. And I'm glad I did. True, the classroom dialog that makes up a fair portion of the book is occaisionally inane, tedious and repetitious. However, if you hear about the same concept again in Chapters 2, 5, 6, 10 and 14, it burns in your head and you aren't as likely to forget it. Generally, this repetition is only for a sentence of two to refresh our memories. But it works. I also think the use of dialog of getting the information communicated allows for a more relaxing way of learning the material than paragraphs chock full of technical data that may take you a half hour just to get through six pages. I agree that you'll probably get more information out of the typical 700 page VB book than Smiley's book, but I'll also bet you aren't as likely to get through that book either, especially if you are a beginner. I was able to get through Smiley's book in less than two weeks at about two hours a night (working through all the many examples he provides). I am currently in the process of skimming the book a second time to strengthen my understanding of some of the tougher concepts of the book (i.e. arrays took a little bit to understand - for me at least).

I have picked up the other three books in the Smiley VB series, which I hope to get through over the next couple of months. Then I might pick up those "beginner" books I started out with again and pick up some more concepts to expand my knowledge base in VB.

Overall, Smiley's book is a great way to start learing VB programming, but only if you are agreeable to a new teaching approach and you aren't expecting to learn advanced concepts in VB.

Good Acquaitance to Visual Basic
Reviewer: Neal Vanderstelt from Tucson, AZ USA
This book covers mainly using controls, using variables, customizing the environment and some event handling. It doesn't have much on programming databases or web applications. It is not a complete reference for the language but it is useful.

This is a good book to have on your shelf if you want to look up how to do a particular programming technique. However it doesn't have all the tricks of the trade that a Visual Basic Programmer would have to use. Some of the wording is a little long winded and perhaps a waste of text but that is just the authors style. I typically like a more straight forward style however it might be entertaining to some. The author does have a very understandable teaching style and speaks in plain english.

This book definetly has a much better teaching method than trying to teach yourself through one giagantic hit or miss project that must work the first time through. I have read some books that have only a single project as the example. It is a little frustrating to have to read cover-to-cover to complete only 1 project when there should be 10 or 15 projects to get a grasp of the language. This is not the case with this book.

This book includes very small concise exercises that are relativly easy to follow through. They exhibit how to add certain features to your own programs. I'm sure there are better books out there with more serious nuts and bolts programming but this one isn't a waste of your money. I wish this book was a huge manual filled with the authors programming techniques. I would pay $100 or more if it did.

I recomend this book far over 1001 Visual Basic Programmer Tips. The best knowlege I have is through expiramenting with programs. Did you know you can make Microsofts Slot Machine example generate random numbers by placing randomize in the next line after every rnd. I would also recomend numbering your source code lines to make repeating code easier and maintaining the code easier.