Advise on learning Visual Basic

-Trek-

I am currently pursuing a long time dream of entering the world of software development and I am looking for some advise on good self learning books. I have chosen VB as my starting point and got my hands on Visual Studio 08 pro. The first book I tried was "Beginning Visual Basic 2008" by Wrox which after a few chapters has become as dry and interesting as a brick, as its a lot of "type this" and give an explanation after that is equivalent to string theory. After giving up on that I went with "VB 08 Step by Step" by Micheal Halvorson, this book turned out to be the better option to begin with as with was more reader friendly.
So what I am asking is what other books/guides would you recommend to continue with learning VB?

Any input appreciated,

Thanks in advance.

Will

Webmonkey

Are you sure you want to stay with VB?

If you want to enter the software world, you better off at least learning something like Java/C# or C and C++ if you are looking for a good challange.

BigAl81

Dont.

As previous poster, I would reccommend C# or Java, far more work in these areas. Tonnes of free online tutorials (google) or read book reviews on amazon for good books.

Go Team!

-Trek-

Thanks for the replies

Sorry in advance if this is a real noob question, but when you say C# or C++ is that still using Visual studio?

I only ask because I hate to think I really jumped head first down the wrong learning hole (In investing in VS08 that is).

Will

Webmonkey

Trekmad wrote: »

Thanks for the replies

Sorry in advance if this is a real noob question, but when you say C# or C++ is that still using Visual studio?

I only ask because I hate to think I really jumped head first down the wrong learning hole (In investing in VS08 that is).

Will

You can yes but to be honest you better off keeping clear of Visual Studio when begining or any IDE for that matter. Write the code in notepad and compile manually - better way of learning imo.

stevenmu

VB is fine to learn with, don't worry about that. What you really need to be doing is learning the principles of programming and they apply to VB in just the same way they apply to C#, Java, C++ etc.

-Trek-

Thanks for all the advice, after doing some research I think i will give C# a go as from what I have seen and read it looks more challenging and interesting than VB.

Will

Webmonkey

Trekmad wrote: »

Thanks for all the advice, after doing some research I think i will give C# a go as from what I have seen and read it looks more challenging and interesting than VB.

Will

Good, I'm only learning C# myself now too, after C, Java and C++. It's quick to pick up, so you should be ok going into Java from C#. Keep in mind what stevenmu said however, it's not the syntax that's the challange. It's learning how to approach and solve problems, becoming better with designing algorithms to solve these problems etc.

Good luck with it.

majestic0110

One book I cannot recommend enough if you are learning c# is :

HEAD FIRST C#

Truly an excellent book, that is both humorous and educational!

-Trek-

majestic0110 wrote: »

One book I cannot recommend enough if you are learning c# is :

HEAD FIRST C#

Truly an excellent book, that is both humorous and educational!

Funny you mentioned that, placed an order earlier today. Looks promising, hope it works out.

Will

none

I would recommend to start with Java due to 2 reasons: 1) It's the only mainstream language created from scratch so no legacy dependencies and only good and polished principles used; 2) it's the main programming language in the academic world nowadays so people find it best to teach most programming concepts. Moving to C# will be relatively easy then. I'm a big fan of VB (since BASIC to VB6) but thanks Microsoft it's a dud now.

muckwarrior

none wrote: »

It's the only mainstream language created from scratch so no legacy dependencies and only good and polished principles used;

Can you elaborate? Both C# and the .NET framework are much newer than Java.

none

muckwarrior wrote: »

Can you elaborate? Both C# and the .NET framework are much newer than Java.

They are both copies (and not ideal ones) of Sun's counterparts: Java and, well, Java (J2ME + J2SE + J2EE) The paradox is that before Sun was chasing MS (JSP after ASP, JFC after MFC, JDBC after ODBC) and then, all of a sudden, they became the leaders and MS started to chase/copy. :P

So yes, they are newer but they are based on Java's paradigm and nobody's denying it. With regard to Java, it's based only on Gosling's et al ideas Don't mention C/C++ here as it's not quite legit