VB.NET Language Pocket Reference

I love these pocket reference books. They aren't meant to be read cover to cover, you just look up the specific feature that you need the syntax for. It's a little dated but they are still very handy to have on hand rather than try to look through a 500 page tome to find what you are looking for. I would recommend this pocket reference.

A good concise goto reference.

Interesting reading if you have anything to do with vb.net. It is however the version when it first came out. will give you an understanding of the language. The rest is easily found on the web. Took off a star because I could not take off half a star. Not latest version. Can't go wrong for the price. by A basic programmer since it was.

Easy to read

Not worth it really. It's faster to find something on google than to find something in this book. Although the book is good ...

I expected so much more from an O'Reilly book. The information is great and it’s what I needed but it’s not laid out very well. The book is not in alphabetical order and after reading it, I cannot find any kind of order too it. I do have so many books about PERL from O’Reilly and they are all great. I just don’t know what happened here. Would I recommend this book to any one: no. O’Reilly, fix this book and I will buy a new one.

Good reference, but nothing about creating random files.

There were many reasons why I was disappointed by this book, but I did manage to get some use out of it. First of all, I can't believe I payed 24 dollars for it at a B&M store, especially considering what it's going for here. It's a small book, a pocket reference. My first beef, as I walked out of the store with my wallet a little lighter, was that it has absolutely nothing about objects. If you're looking for help with objects and their properties, do not buy this book. If you're looking for a definitive reference of the structure of the language, ie. constants, data types, math, interaction with files, and help with the registry, go for it. It's worth it for amazon's price. Also, one distinct note. This book, as with many other O'reilly books, is not FOR DUMMIES. The wording is obtusely complicated and will have you (or at least me) re-reading passages. In my opinion, that is a ridiculous oversight, because at heart, VB is a simple language, and overcomplicating it is a bit of a waste.

Great book, speedy dispatch.

Compact and quick ready reference 👍

excellent handy quick reference guide. I have only used it a few times, as internet is first port of call, but decent price.

In general, the O'Reilly Pocket Reference books are brilliant - just what you need if you sort-of know a language or system but need to look up the details, or know it well but don't have a perfect memory for every feature - or even for quickly learning the basics of a new language. BUT this volume is the exception. Firstly, it is now seriously out of date; printed 2002, so it misses the many and significant enhancements Microsoft made to the language with Visual Studio 2005 and 2008 - to say nothing of the now-announced Visual Studio 2010. So for example, Collections are described, but neither Directories nor Hashtables are mentioned. Nor are regular expressions. That might be forgiveable if it was perfect for its time. But it was not. Crucially, it has no index - an essential for reference books which will be used to look up unfamiliar keywords. You have to guess which section the author thought a word fitted into, then find that section, as named on the bottom of right hand pages (though some are incorrectly named), and in an entirely missable heading within the text. When you do find what you are looking for, its description may be incomplete. For example, for Format (expression, style ...) it says style is a "named or user-defined format", but fails to say how the user can define it. Format is as old as VB; there is no excuse for not including a table of format characters and their use. In conclusion: look for a newer and better book than this one.