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WHILE PURISTS ARGUE about the relative object-disorientation of Visual Basic 5, VB programmers are knuckling down to reap the benefits of classes and ActiveX. But the move to a class-based
architecture is a radical one that many VB programmers find bewildering. Deborah Kurata knows this, and she's made a name for herself by explaining it in the pages of Visual Basic Programmer's Journal. Now she
explains it all again in Doing Objects in Microsoft Visual Basic 5.0, an introduction to object-oriented techniques that focuses on the object-oriented features of Visual Basic 5. Kurata introduces
object-oriented analysis and design, and then (eventually) shows how these can be carried through to implementation using Visual Basic (from version 4 onwards). Her own methodology, confusingly named GUIDS
(GUID already means something else in COM/ActiveX), takes centre stage and is used to tackle a lengthy worked example in the second half of the book. Visual Basic classes are covered in three chapters (10, 11 and 12), but the book's information content is low and side-trips into such things as programming standards, configuration management and even state machines seem out of place. Kurata's frequent 'tech notes' are annoyingly shallow, and any book about programming that doesn't get into code for the first 200 pages just isn't trying hard enough.
As a painless object-orientation primer with a VB slant this overpriced tome will appeal to inexperienced programmers who are struggling with Visual Basic and trying to find a Better Way. Experienced
programers, however, will find nothing new here and will profit more (and spend less) by investing in a proper text, such as Grady Booch's seminal Object-Oriented Analysis and Design. |
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