Amazon.com
Designed for people with an understanding of how things used to be done in Visual Basic, some exposure to the .NET excitement, or a combination of the two, this book assumes less background knowledge than you might think. Matthew MacDonald is tremendously careful to introduce concepts (such as three-tier design of applications, custom exceptions, or ActiveX controls) with a combination of code and explanatory text. Combinations like this help ensure that the reader develops a practical understanding of the subjects at hand--a result of entering and compiling samples--as well as an academic understanding of why things are done as they are. MacDonald keeps one eye on the practical aspects of everything, as well, so trust his advice if you're designing your first VB .NET applications for customers. --David Wall
Topics covered: The VB .NET way of building software applications, including coverage of user interface design, VB-style object orientation, database access via ADO.NET, flat data files (including XML files), and deployment of distributed applications. The coverage of multithreading is particularly nice.
