With its millions of users, Visual Basic is one of the most popular programming tools around. Real Visual Basic is a no-holds-barred tour of what works and what doesn't when VB takes on serious corporate development. VB developers or managers can improve the way they design and test code with this readable and often engaging book. The standout feature of this title is the pull-no-punches style regarding Visual Basic. (Among other provocative statements, the book argues that Visual Basic 6 isn't as stable as its precursor, VB5--something that you might have discovered on your own--and that using INI files to store user preferences is usually a better strategy than dealing with the complexities of the Windows Registry.) By acknowledging the strengths and weaknesses of VB, readers get a valuable real-world perspective on project development.
This book also delivers a nicely readable tour of today's iterative software project life cycle, and it has a lot to say about object design with VB, as well as testing and debugging, without a lot of the jargon that usually goes hand in hand with such material. The author believes in standards for coding in VB, and this book provides an excellent guide to naming and commenting styles. Of importance here is the perspective on the realities of project management. As the author points out, most projects today fail, but armed with the expertise provided in Real Visual Basic, VB developers or IS managers can improve their odds of success. --Richard Dragan
Topics covered: Design and coding tips for Visual Basic, myths about VB programming, Rapid Application Development (RAD), project life cycle types (brute force, waterfall, spiral, and hybrid), requirements gathering and use cases, documentation for end users and developers, analysis basics, estimating project size, metrics, COM fundamentals, user interface styles (modal and modeless forms, SDI, MDI, and Explorer-style applications), tips for form design and prototyping, object-oriented design primer (abstraction, encapsulation, polymorphism, and inheritance), object relationships, UML diagrams, database design basics, coding tips (naming conventions and comments), Visual Basic 6 (new features, strengths, and weaknesses), database programming guidelines, performance for multi-user databases, programming with the Windows Registry and .INI files, building ActiveX controls, debugging and error handling, quality assurance for VB, testing strategies, and deploying VB applications.
