| |
|
| |
Review Details |
|
 |
Also see
Reviews and
How To Review. |
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
Review
|
|
|
 |
| |
Reviewed: July, 2006 |
| |
Reviewer:
Brian Reed |
| |
|
| |
As one can imagine from the title this book is written for Absolute
Beginners. The introduction is good in that it gives you a good priming of
what programming, in particular Visual Basic, is all about. The author, Mr.
Wallace Wang, not only explains the how’s and why’s so that the reader can
think like a programmer, but he also delves in to what makes Visual Basic
tick as a programming language. He helps the reader to understand Visual
Basic world before he even gets the reader to boot up the Visual Basic
programming software. Then Chapter 1 starts out with the introduction to the
Integrated Development Environment (IDE) from the ground up. There are
plenty of graphics to show you, especially at the beginning, how it will
look once you have completed the previous steps that were explained. The
book is not chalked full of graphics, which to me is good. I don’t like
reading books that are made up of mostly graphic files. This Visual Basic
2005 Express: Now Playing has a good combination of both graphics and
text/code.
Another feature to the book that I came to appreciate
was the Hands-On Tutorials that are throughout each chapter. It is said that
the average adult learner has, at best, a 20 minute attention span. After
the first 10 minutes, average adults will only retain approximately 70% of
what they have heard. By the end of the 20 minutes, average adults will only
retain approximately 30% of what was said in the last 4 minutes. Therefore
in order to have a good learning experience the time spent learning needs to
be broken up in to segments. I believe that Mr. Wang has experience with
teaching adult learners because the Hands-On Tutorials are placed just right
throughout each chapter. The reader is given the opportunity to step away
from the reading aspect and come out to the computer to try what they just
learned. And Mr. Wang takes the reader step by step through the exercise and
is very thorough in his explanations of what is happening and why.
The last feature that I really appreciate within this
book that I don’t often find in other books is at the end of the chapter Mr.
Wang wrote a “Key Points to Remember” that gives a summary of everything
that was learned in that particular chapter. That really helps, I believe,
to solidify just what the reader is supposed to learn. Rather than looking
at the Table of Contents of the book, the reader who has already read the
book can flip to the “Key Points to Remember” and find possibly the answer
that they are looking for. I know that I have tried to use the Table of
Contents in books previously to find answers and it’s always been very
frustrating. I have tried using indexes too, but knowing that the “Key
Points to Remember” are at the end of each chapter, having read the book I’m
more inclined to flip to those pages to find the answers. And if I don’t,
then I know that the information for that key point is located within that
particular chapter and since Mr. Wang put the key points in order that they
were written, I have a good idea where to find the information within the
chapter.
As a college instructor within the Computer Sciences
division I was required over the years to read/evaluate numerous textbooks
on the subjects that I was teaching. And believe me when I say that there
are plenty of textbooks available on just about every subject there is in
Computer Science. After reading this book if I were still teaching at the
local college, I would HIGHLY recommend that this be the textbook of choice
for the Introduction to Visual Basic Programming courses being offered. The
book is very well written for the first time programmer and is very easy to
understand. I believe that this book is far better at explaining the how’s
and the why’s than the college textbooks because there’s no “fluff” in Mr.
Wang’s book. The text just gets right to the point of this is the how and
this is the why you’re doing it that way.
Also available with the book are 2 CDs in the back. The
first CD contains two different types of files to help learn the language
even better. There are sample applications and programs that readers can
open to look at how the design and code writing are done. There are also
Flash Movie files that are available as well for those that are more of the
visual learner. On the second CD is a Full, Non-Evaluation, copy of Visual
Basic 2005 Express that can be installed on the reader’s computer. This is
another reason why I would so highly suggest this book to colleges as a
possible textbook. The price is MUCH better than the average college
textbook price and also because of the 2 CDs that the No Starch Press
publishing company have made available. Now students don’t have to download
the software or purchase the Visual Basic 2005 software. It is supplied to
them with the book which makes it much easier on the students. |
| |
|
| |
 |
| |
Copyright © 2000 -
2009 Denver Microsoft®
Visual Studio User Group™.
All Rights Reserved. Please see
Notice. |
|
