At first glance I thought this was yet another teach yourself Visual Basic book. On further examination I discovered that it goes beyond this and attempts to cover the whole development lifecycle.

It includes discussions on requirements gathering, Visual Basic development, coding standards and practices, UI design, databases, debugging, testing techniques and software distribution. Covering such a large area does mean that all topics are not covered in depth. In addition there is a CD containing example code.

I found it difficult to determine whom this book was aimed at. The blurb on the back cover says suitable for intermediate and advanced Visual Basic programmers, but the book devotes a quarter of its pages to basic programming techniques. Yet the final sections of the book tackle the complex areas of multi-threading and in/out of process components. As a result I believe this book would be best suited to a programmer who has dabbled in Visual Basic and now wishes to progress to learning about the full capabilities of the product. Or maybe a programmer moving from another language to Visual Basic.

It is an easy to read and well laid out book, giving a good overview of the whole Visual Basic development lifecycle. As an experienced Visual Basic developer I found nothing new or of real interest, but I am sure it would be useful to a Visual Basic beginner.