Review by Charles Ashbacher for Programming in Visual Basic 2008
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First courses in Visual Basic cover the same fundamental topics, so the textbooks follow suit. Furthermore, since the programming activities are also generally the same, there are few differences in that area. This book is no exception. Therefore, the only differentiating characteristic that VB textbooks have is the quality of the exposition and the figures/diagrams.

This book ranks among the best in terms of the exposition yet ranks much lower than others regarding the quality of the diagrams. Unlike other books where the diagrams are color screenshots of what appears on the screen, in this book all of the illustrations are gray. While this is generally not an issue, it certainly can be the case when the topic is the properties of the object that are colors or when color is significant in the display of the form. As a veteran of teaching VB, I can attest to the fact that some beginning students find this important.

Therefore, while I consider this book to be more than adequate as a text, there are circumstances where it is demonstrably inferior to others that utilize color images.

Review by Lyle Mitchell for Programming in Visual Basic 2008
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I unfortunately had to use this textbook for my Visual Basic course and this textbook has got to be one of the worst textbooks that I have ever used in any of my courses and especially in any of my computer courses.

Here are some of MAJOR issues I had with this textbook:

1) too many errors – for a technical textbook to have this many errors is unacceptable. Chapter 7, 8, 9, all had missing lines of code but throughout the book, the authors consistently had minor codes that was wrong or missing from the examples.

2) the examples in the chapters didn’t make sense. I would find the examples to be confusing because the authors would at times, present 3-4 examples but it was hard to decipher which example correlated to the discussion.

3) when working on the case studies, I would refer to the chapter to see if I could get the answer but the authors left elements out in the chapter to help complete the case. For example, in one of the chapters, there was a discussion about coding for websites, chapter 9 I believe. Well there is a wide gap of missing information that the case required but was not mentioned in the textbook. The chapter would discuss how to code a checkbox but the case asked you to code for a radiobutton.

4) an overall presentation of material that skipped around and the material seemed as if it was disorganized and scattered.

If you have programming background, you may be able to get by using this book but for a newbie or someone who is wanting to learn visual basic programming on their own, this is NOT the book for you. I would not have been able to succeed in this course if it wasn’t for my professor.

This textbook by Anne Boehm has a high rating by a lot of people and overall, this textbook helped to understand the course a lot better. You can even purchase this on Amazon!Murach’s Visual Basic 2008

Review by Robert Jackson for Programming in Visual Basic 2008
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This is a pretty horrible book. The end of the chapter hands on programming cases suck, they tend to just go and not really explain what and why. Also there are so many errors in the code, you either have to figure out what is missing or give up, which wastes more of your time. I am sure there are many better books than this. I had to use this for a class and it is not worth the HIGH amount i had to pay. It is sort of like the author had ADD or something, the content bounces around and you never get a full explanation of what is going on. Many people in my class complained about the same thing. This book sucks

Review by Daniel M. Wetzel for Programming in Visual Basic 2008
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I was very pleased with how well this paperback was in perfect condition when i got it

Review by B. Griffith for Programming in Visual Basic 2008
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Explains steps thoroughly, in multiple ways. Only complaint is sometimes too much repeating a different way to do the step you just did.