Learn to Program with Visual Basic 6

The problem with a lot of computer programming books is that they assume too much. Learn to Program with Visual Basic 6 assumes almost nothing. It then builds upon that modest base until readers have a very solid--and fairly deep--knowledge of computer programming. If you want to learn from the ground up how to make computers do things with Visual Basic, this is the best book for you. Even if you'd like to learn another language, you'll gain a lot by absorbing the background information in Learn to Program with Visual Basic 6.

This book presents itself as an account of a college course, taught by Smiley, in which the students developed a program that allows the customers of a china shop to get price quotes on different table settings. As they work toward delivering the program to the merchant, Smiley's students learn all about figuring out product requirements, designing software, and the many technical details that define Windows programming in general. After quite a bit of planning, Smiley details the mechanics of writing code in Visual Basic 6 (a limited copy of which appears on the book's companion CD-ROM), which eventually enables his students to deliver a working program to the shopkeeper.

Smiley's classroom-style presentation--complete with Aristotelian dialog--means you need to read this book from cover to cover and work through the procedures sequentially at least once. After that, you'll be ready to experiment independently and read more specialized Visual Basic books. --David Wall