newbie programmer here. Im learning from a book called starting with Visual Basic by Kris Jamsa the guy doesnt know what he's doing the explanations are ok he gives practice programms to make but doesnt tell you what exactly they are supposed to do in the end and the real kicker is, his code is WRONG i managed to get lesson 3 to compile and im pretty sure it doesnt work. So can anyone reccomend a decent book or prefferably text file(s) on how to program with visual basic

visual basic in 21 days by sams publishing

Are all the sams publishing books good?

I felt really happy when I got thru VB in 21 days by sams but when I read this other VB book I found IT had skipped so much stuff so now I'm not sure wether or not to read that one for C++.
are they more genral books

most of Sam's books are nice, i think their just for a general sketch of items.

I learned to program in VB from looking at source code at http://www.pscode.com and then asking questions in IRC about what I didn't understand. I found that's the best and most fun way to learn because you aren't forcing yourself to do pointless examples and so on, you're doing work you want to in order to finish the program you are working on.

well looking at the source codes of things is all well and good but did you have some other kind of programming expirence first, this is my first language and i need to know the basics of the stuff first

ya so? Visual Basic was my first language. Wanna know how I started? There's this sample game that comes with it called "Lucky Seven". I took that game and figured out what the code does and means (vb is very english-like so you should be able to figure it out) then changed it up so that it was better. Anything that you don't understand can be looked up in the MSDN library. As a newcomer, it takes some time - but I found it a lot more rewarding - and fun - than tutorials.

However, this learning style isn't for everyone. Some people actually need to learn things step-by-step. Some people can't teach themselves and require somebody to teach them. So do what works best for you.

(I read your post again). You were describing all the reasons why I DON'T use tutorials. And for sure, by examining code of programs that compile properly - you know the code works.

i downloaded Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0 from Kazaa and my MSDN library isnt there for some reason. I hadn't noticed the game either but i didnt look for it, so ill give that a try

heh, it was like 4 years ago that I started learning VB. I had used a free Visual Basic 4 Working Model which had come with several sample programs which were refered to in the tutorials that I had tried to follow but only learned that isn't the way for me. Lucky Seven may no longer exist for all I know - I was just making a point.

The MSDN library is frickin huge and you wouldn't want to download it. heh. Instead, I use http://msdn.microsoft.com for my questions.

This is the link I saved into my favorites folder:
http://search.microsoft.com/advanced_search.asp?qu=&siteid=us/dev

excellent, well i didnt mean to sound like an idiot, but when i got my first error i clicked more info or help or something along those lines and it said i should try reinstalling the MSDN librarycause it was there

visual basic 4 came with some mini lessons in the help file i believe. i assume this would hold true for all versions. if you haven't checked those out maybe you should. they're not in depth at all, but for anyone beggining they might be somewhat of a help

BackSlash

The way I learned VB was from a book called "Visual Basic 6 For Dummies" And it was great. It came with tons of sample programs, I think there was 1-4 programs per chapter. And of course you were told how to make those programs yourself, It was a good book that tought me a lot about vb when I didn't know anything about it.

I personaly would recommend getting an ASP book, which will teach you the two in one kind of way, its unbelievable how close ASP scripts actually come to writing proper VB Apps.

Then I suggest you hang around places like planet source code ( pscode.com ) and get some sample apps there, just make something simple and then get different code from different people and youll pick up the basics within a couple of weeks. Some words of encouragment would be that VB is amazingly simple to code, I was amazed at how easy it is to actually code VB once you get past the basics youll soon find that its possible to do a lot of things in a very short amount of time, hence its a RAD language (Rapid Application Developement).

Well thats my suggestion as the way I started was like what I wrote up there.

And on top of that you have what I would say is a fairly good team of frequent developers that can help you out here on the board.

Heh well there goes my advice!

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