First off, Gary Cornell and Jonathan Morrison show readers the syntax of Visual Basic .NET, although Programming VB.NET is not designed to teach syntax. Instead it's designed to teach, what is for all practical purposes, a totally new language. Trying to force Visual Basic .NET into the framework of older versions of VB is ultimately self-defeating — you can't take advantage of its power if you continue to think within an older paradigm. So, Cornell and Morrison include a complete treatment of object oriented programming in the context of the Visual Basic .NET language. Without a firm foundation here, it is impossible to take full advantage of the power of Visual Basic .NET.

Programming VB .NET covers the fundamentals of every technique that a professional VB .NET developer will need to master, including multithreading, a topic too often overlooked. (Note: This doesn’t mean that Cornell and Morrison cover all the possible or even the majority of the applications of Visual Basic .NET to the .NET platform. This would take a substantially larger book.) Programming VB .NET is about the techniques readers need to master, not the applications themselves. Realistic examples are given throughout — no toy code.