Advanced Microsoft Visual Basic (Mps)

I finally bought this book about a week ago and since then I have found it to be genuine. That's about it really. What it says it will do it does. It is obviously NOT written by professional writers (although there's nothing wrong with the writing) but by programmers using the tool that I personally earn a living using myself.

Every professional VB6 developer doing difficult stuff should read this book.


If you think you don't need any more books on VB   January 12, 1999
Rafat Sarosh (RENTON, WA USA)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful

I thought I don't need any more book on VB .. then I found this book and started browsing .. there are enough small pearls hidden here and there which makes this book worth buying.

You should better know VB before buying this book .. must for all professional developers.


if you think you know VB, Read this.   April 9, 2000
Roy Osherove
6 out of 10 found this review helpful

If you think you have learned VB for all it's worth, Take a browse through some of this book's fascinating chapters (especially the first one) for a glimpse of VB techniqes like youve never thought of before. Even though i am an MCP in VB (70-176 & 70-175) and have been programming for a while in it, I could still find very good tips about everything, starting from Error handling techniqes such as "Error handling as transaction processing" or "Smart data types -Smarties". The writing is pretty funny at times, but is to the point.It DOES assume you know VB and and Object Oriented basics, and have been writing small-medium sized software for a while before reading it. There is a very nice chapter about the principles of programming for the WINDOWS CE interface which was illuminating.

This is something i keep for reference on my shelf in our company offices and every once in a while i would remember a good solution to something were working on and look it up .

The 1st chapter alone is worth the price of admission, and has changed the way i program drastically, giving me power tips and advanced techniqes no programmer should go without.

Stuff like "How to trace call stacks after compilation" and the "ERL" function have really made my day. "How to use assertions" is one of the better guides to program code that tests itself.

Cool information about extended use of API and subclassing, plus some of the undocumented functions of VB and a few undocumented API functions as well.

(p.s If you don't know what ERL means, it returns the line No. of an error and is undocumented..except this book)

In short, Buy it.


TMS does it again and again - many thanks!   November 10, 1998
0 out of 1 found this review helpful

A simple must for all professional developers - I've had the book three days and cannot put it down although I've had to as my head will surely explode - it's already started to expand (and my daily rate with it too!).

The best chapters are for me (so far) are:

On Error GoTo Hell, Taking Care of Business, Minutiae, VB's Guide to Dating (a Y2K MUST read), Starting with the Bases Loaded, Databases are for Dorks, Accessibility in VB.

Nicely written and researched and written by some very well informed people.

Thanks again.


Fabulous information for VB Pros   March 17, 1999
1 out of 3 found this review helpful

This book has plenty of tips, tricks and valuable information to push limits of VB. Although it is not intended for all levels of programming, those with more experience will be thrill with the kind of information that we can extract from that book.

Not everyone agree with the content of this book. If you have any good judgement, you will use it and discard whatever you don't feel confortable or disagree with. Then you'll have a very, very good source of advanced programming for Visual Basic.