Best and Worst VB Books

[Paul282]

I thought I'd start this thread so that everyone can see what's hot and what's not in VB books. I love books, and I love learning from them...

I'll Start, but I'm interested in hearing you're comments

SE Using VB 6
Fairly Good beginners book, still often go back to it as an all over reference.
Ready-to-Run VB Algorithms
Good Book, Lot's on lists, searching, sorting and pathfinding
VB Graphics Programming
Great Book, Real power in graphics, not much on direct x etc but a lot on the way things work, ray tracing, shading, 3d modeling, 2d palette handling, math, and some good graphics API stuff
VB Internet Programming
Another Good book, get's you though the different protocals POP, SMPT etc
Visual Basic Controls
Reasonable, just not really necessary, I thought it would go into componant creation but it's just a big help book for the controls you know, good reference I suppose
Win32 API Programming with VB
Great book, at last, details on BSTR, VarPtr, and how everything works under the hood so you can actually trouble shoot your own API calls, also how to HANDLE GPFs, not just avoid them but catch and process them.
VB Guide to Win32 API (Appleman)
Excellent reference, don't make this your first API book, it's not a light read. use it like a dictionary
Database Programming with VB 6
Good book, also not a light read. you'd want to know a bit about DB access in VB before you bought it. Has all you really need to know on SQL too
Code Complete
Heard a lot about it but with so many books only 1/2 read I keep getting distracted, This book is apparently up there with "Writing Solid Code". I just haven't picked it up yet. Let me know if you've read it...

I look foreward to hearing about more good books and which ones to avoid.

What do you think of Murach's Visual Basic 6 book. Has anyone read it? What do you think of it?

I have got "Pure Visual Basic" by Sams publishing, it is absolutely great. Full of code examples and very good explanations. It contains things you actually need to know like naming and coding conventions, array sorting and array searching, and an efficient reference section with all the main VB constants and functions.

Go and beg / borrow / steal it today!

A great book

I picked up 'Learning VB6 In 24 Hours', by Sams as well. I'll look for 'Pure Visual Basic' upon your recommendation. Thanks for the tip!

'24 Hours' appears to be fairly good too. Although personally, I would like more "Hands On" coding examples. Not very far into the book though, one of their source code examples kept giving me an 'Error' in runtime.

After checking and rechecking to see if I didn't either miss something, or mistype it into my code... (Which I didn't.) I re-examined *their* example and then realized a variable wasn't declared properly! :-) I had copied it verbatim, without questioning it. Now I am more diligently watching the source code, and questioning it as I go.

It did put more confidence in my abilities, so it turned out okay. I also like the format their book is in.

vbMarketer

[John]

We have a selection of books that we have reviewed on the site:
http://www.vb-world.net/books/

My must have VB book - Dan Appleman's Guide to the Windows API. THE reference book for the API in my view.

John

[scuzymoto]

Visiual Basic 6 Business Objects from WROX press by Rockford Lhotka is a good book for clean, solid, business applications. It is a good guide for thinking like the end user as the developer. Less code and more theory then most manuals but a good bood still.

[Nitro]

I love Sam's, ZD, Wrox, How to do and sometime Que.

"Sam's, Wrox and How to do" are my favorites.

[Sam Finch]

Another Good one is Visual Basic Annotated Archives by David Jung and Jeff Kent, from Osborne Publishing. It was the First VB Book I bought and It's a great introduction to the API, (you're subclassing from the first page though, be prepared for some hard core code)

[SonGouki]

Amen to that John, Dan Appleman's book is the bible for the API. However, for those trying to learn VB I would have to recommend Deitel & Deitel's How To Program Visual Basic 6, it covers all the bases and includes VB6 Working Model Edition with tons of examples.

[Paul282]

Has anyone read anything along the lines of professional componant creation? The books I have show how to make componants but there's not much on property pages or things to consider if you were planning on trying to sell them etc.
Details on version stamping and what not.

[Serge]

These books are all great. I just want to add one more to this collection. If you ever wanted to use VB as an Object Oriented language, then I would recomend Doing Objects in Visual Basic by Deborah Kurata.

[Serge]

Deborah Kurata also has a web site:

Here's the link

[Paul282]

Thanks, I'll take a look at it.

Paul