Programming Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0

I wrote this review on May 8, 2000. My regard for the book is unchanged. Today (04/17/04) for those who are in need of a "survival set" on "Classic VB," this is one of two "must have" volumes. The second is Charlws Williams' "Professional Visual Basic 6 Databases" by Wrox Press. These two books will see those who are maintaining and even extending VB 6 applications while the new stuff is .Net, these two books will get you through. Original Review: This is the only book that covers everything that you can do with Visual Basic. I know of no other source with that kind of information. Brevity is required to cover this topic in under 1300 pages, of course. This book coupled with the VB 6 Programmers Guide and the three volume "Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 Reference Library" will have what you need to know about Visual Basic. There is a tremendous benefit in having one author tackle the entire subject in one book IT IS COHESIVE! I would advise rookies to tackle this book first and use the Programmer's Guide when they are stuck. The reason for this is that the Programmer Guide's data access is data control oriented. If you are going to be a professional, you want to break out of that mold and use the ADO and DAO methods. Data controls have their place, but it is not in professional programs. Balena covers all the relevant data access methodologies. Finally, the lazy people who are looking for a lot of "cut and paste" to keep from having to understand what they are doing should pass on this book. Balena wont write your program for you.

This book was listed as "acceptable" condition. When I received the book it was obvious that this was brand new with just a little shelf ware...now that is what I call acceptable. The book itself is not for the faint of heart. You better have a good grasp of basic before venturing into these pages. It is obvious that the author(s) have a great deal of knowledge in visual basic but there style of presenting I found is for the seasoned programmer. If your not you might be saying to yourself " that's nice but what do I do with it?". My Idea of a good teaching book would be the following 1. Lets start off with a project like a corporate name and address book of all employees. 2. Lets set up all the forms and fields we need like name ,address etc 3. Lets start simple (just a shell) 4. keep adding to it. When through lets start another project. . I first learned visual basic 3.0 with Peter Norton who .in every chapter, stated this is what were going to do and here is how we get there....... It was the best teaching book I ever read. His later books on the subject, however, fell short. Visual basic has become more and more complex with the "visual studio" concept. I believe this is the biggest problem facing authors and why teaching it has become more and more difficult. Incorporating all languages into visual basic , in my opinion, was a mistake . It just made it more confusing and harder to learn. It is obvious the term "keep it simple" was abandoned long ago and we all pay price today. I would use this book as a reference manual and not a teaching guide I strongly suggest that anybody who wants to learn visual basic should learn basic first...life will be a lot easier.

Although I would not recommend this book as a first book for someone just learning VB, I would enthusiastically recommend this book for everyone who already has a general familiarity with VB and who has written at least a few programs in VB. I have worked with VB since version 3 and as a professional consultant, I believe that my own VB skills are very good. Chapter and chapter and tip after tip, I found myself learning and getting all sorts of ideas to make my programming life easier and my code better. I don't even want to think about how much money I have burned up in books that I have given way, sold or tossed without getting anything out of them. This book was a real find and a genuine pleasure to read. I plan on a re-read and then hanging on to it as a resource. Bottom Line - I highly recommend this book for anyone who has gotten past the VB introductory material and their first few VB programs.

i learn a lot from this book. only 30% contents make me a master in VB

This is strictly my opinion based on my quirks. I was really looking forward to my first Balena book, largely because of reviews I read here. I can't really say I'm disappointed, but I don't think this will become one of my primary references. Overall, the book seems disjointed. For instance, there are two large sections on databases, but they are separated. To me it seemed as if sections this large, and this far separated, should have been taken out and put in a separate book.Doing it the way Balena did seems to distract from my personal goal of finding gold in large chunks, close together, rather than finding a trail of nuggets that can eventually be formed into something really valuable. Another example is putting the comprehensive section on Intrinsic Tools in the last quarter of the book. His approach of treating the similarities between various objects separately from the differences is new to me, and I'm not really comfortable with it.When I need information on a specific object, I would like for all of it to be in one place. As far as the valuable programming tips, templates and general knowledge, that part is great, but, again, it is separated, so finding exactly what I needed was often kind of difficult. One other thing. There seem to be omissions. For instance, one of the reasons I bought the book was that I was hoping for some in depth coverage of Winsock and binary file transfers. If Winsock was mentioned at all, I didn't notice it, and the coverage of binary file transfers was very short, not counting bits and pieces that may have been strewn around the rest of the book. For instance, it looked to me like he covered direct memory transfer in two sentences. So, my advice to anyone contemplating buying this book is to look at a hard copy to find out exactly what is in it and what is not. (The Amazon and publisher reviews here seem to ignore issues like that.) Also, plan on doing a little digging to find the critical points.

lots of useful code snippets and ideas, book has clearly laid out chapters and is written in a way that has each chapter building on the prior one.... with that said if i new absolutely nothing about VB6 before i started this book i may have had a hard time with the first two chapters. when all is said and done though.... he has lots of useful information and great concepts to teach.

Because Visual Basic 6 remains a very useful programming environment for me. Mr. Balena's style goes way beyond a tutorial through menu creation. He tells us about pratfalls of the Microsoft environment ( while writing for Microsoft! ) and useful ways to work around limitations of the environment. If you are still using VB6, like I am, this is a useful reference. We might want to start looking at .NET, eh?

What more can I say about Mr.Francesco Balena..........One Word EXCELLENT If you want to learn visual studio 6.0 and fine the nuts and bolts on how to use the IDE and syntax of the basic language for GOD SAKE BUY this book.....

Visual basic 6 was the last of the Mohicans before object orientated programming took over. Its tricky to get it to run on modern computers as Microsoft now likes making everything as complicated as possible. This is a good book and bear in mind once you have created a program on it Windows 10 will think there is something strange going on, and it is , its called Simplicity. You can be programming very quickly with this book.

Libro semplicemente straordinario su vb6, lo avevo già ma si è perso in qualche trasloco. L ho ricomprato per amarcord e perché ho conosciuto personalmente l autore che mi ha promesso un autografo 😭😭😭

Missing the CD-ROM, but otherwise a great book to learn Visual Basic. Easy to understanding, yet it goes into good detail to make sure the concepts are understood not only superficially. If it had the CD Rom, it would be a 5/5, but unfortunately the seller didn't advertise it as missing, and it doesn't seem to be available online.

Excellent Produits. Je suis très heureux.

Sure, it is a little dated but then so is VB6. This is probably still the best book on VB6 at the moment. If you need to develop in VB6, look no further. It covers classes, events, databases. It is really well written, compact and clear and contains all information needed to create high quality applications. VB6 can be tricky to install on Windows7 but you will find resources on the web to help you with the installation.