Murach’s Visual Basic 6 Buy it now at Amazon Read a sample chapter provided by the publisher (PDF format - 450kb)

It was difficult for me to review this book because it is geared more toward beginners and I am definitely not that. So I had to put myself in a beginner's shoes. From what I’ve read the beginner should pick it up quite easily. However, the reader must be quite enthusiastic because this book is very comprehensive. The book has plenty of illustrations to help the reader visually understand what is going on. It is great for the beginner – Murach’s VB6 truly walks you through every nook and cranny. However, be forewarned – you should know something about programming. If you know nothing, you will be one frustrated keyboard monkey. If you know another language (at least a bit), it should help you a lot.

Before I get into the guts of the book, I want to say a few words about a pretty interesting innovation. The entire book is published using paired-pages formatting. This means that when you open the book, on the left you’ll see the discussion of the topic, while on the right there will be images, illustrations completely & visually explained. This makes learning (particularly for newbies) totally easy, instinctive and almost unconscious.

Once you get past the first section, you can consider yourself an accomplished beginner and move on to stuff that can actually make you a lot of money: database programming. Section 2 starts out with a quick intro into how databases work. It talks quite a bit about SQL Server. I would’ve preferred Access, since SQL Server isn’t normally found on a newbie’s computer, but ok – most of the stuff applies to both. On the other hand, you probably won’t find much of Access in corporate environment, so this decision was probably a premeditated and one. From there on, it is a long course on ADO. I liked that from the beginning, the authors dispose of the most misunderstood (by beginners) aspects of ADO: cursors and locking options. Moving on to ADO’s methods, properties and common errors. After that a description of bound and unbound programming. BTW, a note to beginner programmers – if you want to create scalable solutions, then stay away from anything bound. Then the book reviews VB6-only features such as Data Environment Designer, Data Report Designer and Data View window. It rounds out with coverage of MS Help Workshop, Package & Deployment Wizard, DHTML Designer, WebClasses and other goodies. Skip the chapters on DHTML Designer and WebClasses – Microsoft is dropping them for the next version of VB.

Throughout the tome, the authors pretty much use the same example, enhancing it over and over again. This is great, because it lets you leverage your existing knowledge you’ve gained from working with the paradigm in the previous chapter.

I do have several criticisms, though. Classes are introduced past the half point of the book. In my opinion, the programming instructors should introduce students to OOP write off the bat; so that they practice good programming from the get go. In addition, the book states that it is Beginner to Pro. I don’t know what they call Pro, but it differs from my definition.

Aside from these problems, this book is very well written and as such is a winner. Murach’s put together a great combination of detail, visual cues and tons of examples. The bottom line is that if you want to become a professional programmer, get this book and follow through with it.