Starting Out with Visual Basic 2008 (4th Edition) Review

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Starting Out with Visual Basic 2008 (4th Edition) ReviewI have mixed feelings about this book. I do like the clear writing style, the step by step tutorial approach which is at the right pace for a beginner, never too terse , never too boring. I can also easily see the author is an experienced teacher, and for patience and dedication he reminds me of the best in the field, like Ivor Horton. But I do think the general organization of the book, the "teaching plan" is horribly flawed.
I know VB has a long history of being used to let unskilled programmers mindlessly spit out little boring administrative programs that help your local gym owner to calculate your annual fee, but does it always be like that? I don;t think so, especially now that VB is no longer just a RAD program but a full featured programming language on the same level as C#.
Then why can't it be taught like any other decent programming language?
This book does a great job to teach the student how to produce decent windows forms without having as little knowledge as possible of what is actually going on. Believe or not, classes and objects are given a skimpy treatment in the last (yeah last) chapter of the book. For events, no mention whatsoever. Now, even if you really want to cover windows forms, how can the students understand what they are without knowing what objects and events are? They end up thinking that an instance variable is some kind of global variable since it can be seen by all methods in a class. And then you have to make gigantic efforts to make them understand what object oriented programming is all about. Also, since this title is about VB 2008 it shouldn't talk about windows form anyway, but WPF, and how about a little LINQ? Otherwise why do you need a new edition? (apart form having students shell more bucks having to buy a new edition of course..)
But more importantly, is the heart of programming about producing textboxes and dropdown lists? In a first course of programming I call this killing the passion for programming. Or growing code monkeys. Look at Francesco Balena's book on VB. A through coverage of the language, and hardly a windows form to be seen. Granted, Balena's book might be a bit too dense and not engaging enough for the total beginner, but at least its true to its mission. The ideal book would have the clarity and gentleness of Gaddis combined with the soundness and choice of material of Balena. So my advice to the author is on the next edition he will use his teaching talents to write a book that will challenge the beginner and show him the wonders of object oriented programming in a true, gentle but engaging introduction to computer science.Starting Out with Visual Basic 2008 (4th Edition) Overview

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