61 year oldie seeks advice.

I am 61 years old. At one time in my life I did some programming in FORTRAN and GWBASIC. The programs which I wrote are still useful and valid. Now I want to convert those to GUI based with VB. My problem is that I find books on VB very tough to understand. 35 years ago I learnt FORTRAN from a book called "Fortran by Engineering applications" by Daniel D Mccracken. It was a wonderful book. No introductions, no definitions, no theory and straight on the job. To the best of my memory, the first chapter was finding area of a circle by using Fortran, the second was to convert fahreinheit to cetigrade and vice-versa. In every subsequent chapter, one will learn new things. By the time one has finished the book, he had mastered FORTRAN. I want to know if any such book exists for VB. I know what is variable / constants, arrays, strings, algorithms, compilation, if / then, do loops etc. Please help me and appreciate my desire for learning new things, when my peers are discussing about their blood pressure and colestral count.

My advice would be to go to a LARGE bookstore and browse through the books. Some of the books from O'Reilley Press may suit your requirements, but offhand I can't name one. I have some books on C++ that could be described the way you have described that Fortran book, but I haven't looked for anything like that in VB, and haven't looked for anything like that in ANY language for well over a decade.

I am a 28 years anesthesiologist. I began learning Vb .net as a hobby 4 months ago. I used (Teach yourself VB 2008 in 24 hours). I think it will be perfect for you to know the basics of VB.

It begins with a simple program and it increases the functions of the program with every chapter thus learning more functions.

But if you want to know directly specific codes that you used in the past for your applications so it is better to use a bigger reference book.
I found those books at Amazon.com:
- Mastering visual basic 2008
- Beginning visual basic 2008 (wrox)
- Visual basic 2008 programmer reference (wrox)

The first two books begin from simple levels and advance to more difficult levels.
The third book content is explained from the its name.

I learned GWBasic and Visual basic 5 in the past but I had to begin from nearly zero because .Net is very different from the previous versions.

My advice: don't rush and start from the beginning, the first steps are the hardest.

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Originally Posted by anilsaxena

...By the time one has finished the book, he had mastered FORTRAN...

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Such books don't exist anymore or publishing business would run out of steam much earlier then predicted.
In the past few decades all the books that I had covered entire language (this part isn't relevant) however only 1 or 2 chapters would be at the expert level.
So, the bottom line is to get multple books - as already suggested I would stop at the nearest large bookstore first to check few books but buy it from the on-line place (it's cheaper this way).
For what I needed books published by O'Reilley, Wrox and Microsoft Press served their purposes.
I would also look at "For Dummies..." books - it's a wonderful series and for beginners most of the time would be right to the point.

Good luck.

Thanks a lot. Will come back or seek yr advice, after reading the book. May I have your email . mine is anilsaxena99 at gmail.com

anil have a whack at either

vb.net in 24 hours or vb.net in 21 days.

Then start your app and simply ask on forums if you don't get something or want an improved code model to follow :thumb:

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Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker

My advice would be to go to a LARGE bookstore and browse through the books. Some of the books from O'Reilley Press may suit your requirements, but offhand I can't name one. I have some books on C++ that could be described the way you have described that Fortran book, but I haven't looked for anything like that in VB, and haven't looked for anything like that in ANY language for well over a decade.

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Can you name the book (C++), which you have found, is written in same fashion as "Fortran by Engineeering applications" by Daniel D Mccracken,

To the op, unfortunately there is a lot of theory in modern languages. The key is to find a book that presents a now overwhelming amount of information using a clear, concise and terse structure.

I always recommend this book (well actually the author) as I find his style a perfect marriage of clarity and conciseness. Don't let the pro title full you its just a way of saying this book is for learning not for time wasting. The bonus is that it doubles as a refrence.

My copy is full of notes and post its, the best buy ever: (I even have the C# version)

http://www.apress.com/book/view/9781590598221

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Originally Posted by anilsaxena

Can you name the book (C++), which you have found, is written in same fashion as "Fortran by Engineeering applications" by Daniel D Mccracken,

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I see that I left out a key point: I bought those books 16 years ago. Even if they were still in print, they would deal with the pre-ANSI language, which would leave out so much of the current language as to be only marginally useful.