Amazon Review
Customer Reviews...
A reader from San Francisco
A required reading for all of us.
It is a very good book. It's McConnel's Code Complete on Visual Basic. You've
got to buy it!
ChrisW from Florida, USA
A good book because it's lessons stick with you while coding
The rule format of the book is a great way to learn how to write good code.
You find yourself quoting the book while your coding. Covers heuristics that
many "self taught" programmers cannot learn anywhere else.
A reader from Schaumburg, IL
Must Have
Should be a required reading for every single Visual Basic developer.
A reader from Virginia, USA
Good treatment of VB error handling techniques.
For me, this book was at its best when Rod describes VB specific error raising
and handling behaviors. There's also alot of advice about general programming
concepts and habits. These parts of the book are ok, but I think those topics
are handled better in Steve McConnell's "Code Complete".
A reader from USA
Good for beginnners - might be too simple for others
This book gives a lot of tips but most of them are pretty thin on substance.
Specifically, there is very little information particular to VB hazards or how
to write an industrial strength error handler in VB. I think I expected more
substance coming from an author who's previous books have been fairly advanced.
If you are a beginning programmer this book is great. If you are an experienced
programmer this book will be a quick read and you might get a tidbit or two
that will save you the cost of the book.
A reader from Houston, TX
Great book. Paid for itself several times over
This is a great book on Bug Proofing your code. Very easy to read. Lots of useful
tips in every chapter. Well organized... and contains ALOT of code examples.
If you're an advanced VB programmer (already have made many mistakes and have
taken up defensive programming), this book could be reduced to 1/3 the size...
and it would still be a great book.
I'll use code from this book. I particularly liked the discussion on how you
could set a form (object) to Nothing and later in your code you reference a
public variable in that form (and unbeknownst to you it loads again). This keeps
the form loaded when you think it's not. He shows coded examples of this sequence.
After reading this book, I'm going to get his other VB Graphics book. He's
a very good author.
One thing I wished he had covered was Error handling when using Access database
routines (non-databound). I like to use subroutines that update separate tables,
and I like to use .BeginTrans, etc. with the .Update method for the opened database.
This allows me to simply use SQL statements.
In this case, I was looking for example code, or recommended logic for using
multiple subroutines. Although he didn't specifically provide this, he did provide
alot of ideas on how to control the Error calling sequence using the .Raise
method. Thanks to his book I understand this process better and hope to solve
this problem directly.
For the beginning programmer this is an excellent book for establishing your
programming standards. You will make a great step forward in programming...
although you may only understand 80 % of this book.
This should be in every VB programmers bookshelf.
John D.
A reader from Houston TX
Must Have
I have several of Rod Stephen's books. Whenever I start with a new client I
bring along my copies of his books on algorithms and graphics. When I saw this
book I had to buy it. I am not disappointed. He spends time writing about how
to verify the data. He writes clearly and points out some of the obscure problems
and our assumptions within Visual Basic. He makes sure that we know that when
we write code we are not writing just for the computer, but for other people
(sometimes ourselves).
A reader from USA
Excellent book and a 'Must Buy' for the novice VB programmer
I get to review a lot of books on VB and while some general VB books give basic
tips on trapping bugs, none really gives the coverage of this important subject
that this book does. This book is devoted in its entirety to avoiding, exposing
and reducing bugs. The author discusses the various debug tools as well as ways
to prevent bugs by using good programming practices during design, coding and
documentation. He draws on his experience as a programmer to identify areas
that are prone to produce bugs and shows ways to 'bug proof' these trouble spots.
In fact the book is full of hard won 'tips' based on the authors experience
that can save you lots of grief if implemented in your development strategy.
Unless you are an experienced VB programmer -or you just want to join the legions
of software developers shipping half complete, buggy products that need a new
patch every week- I recommend that you buy this book. I read a recent article
in 'PC World' that commented on the large amount of developers shipping crappy,
bug-ridden products and this lack of quality is a real problem so time spent
learning to improve the quality of your programs is time well spent.