Beginning ASP.NET 3.5 in VB 2008: From Novice to Professional

by Matthew MacDonald

This book will follow the proven pattern of its previous .NET 2.0 and .NET 1.1 editions, teaching novice users how to use ASP.NET by gradually building their knowledge of the technology up in a pyramidal fashion chapter by chapter. Comprehensively revised for both ASP.NET 3.5 and the new VB 9.0 language this book presents the easiest path to ASP.NET 3.5 mastery. This is one of the first books introducing novices to this important new technology area, and is written specifically in their coding language of preference. The book is written by a proven and award winning .NET author that has been following the technology release cycle since its inception.

956 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Matthew MacDonald is a science and technology writer with well over a dozen books to his name. He's particularly known for his books about building websites, which include a do-it-from-scratch tutorial (Creating a Website: The Missing Manual), a look at cutting-edge HTML5 (HTML5: The Missing Manual), and a WordPress primer (WordPress: The Missing Manual). He's also written a series of books about programming on and off the Web with .NET, teaches programming at Ryerson University, and is a three-time Microsoft MVP.

Reviews

[NJ Wong · Rating 5 out of 5]

Do not be deceived by the "Beginning" in the title. This is actually an EXCELLENTLY written book for professional/expert programmers, but who may not be familiar with ASP.NET.

In fact, I would go on to say that this book is not a BEGINNERS book at all. Some other book about programming in general may be more suitable for beginners who may want to learn how to program in ASP.NET.

Instead, this book is very well written on how to conceptualise and design an enterprise-type web site using ASP.NET, VB, and databases. It discusses what are best practices, what pitfalls to avoid, and tips and tricks of web application masters. Astonishingly useful.

In the market, there are many books on teaching you about VB and ASP.NET. However, many a time, these read a lot like Microsoft manuals (or manuals that Microsoft ought to have written). There are very few books that teaches you the essentials of building a professional web site, using databases, which is about 99% of all the good web sites out there. To build a professional web site, it is totally unnecessary to use 100% of the Microsoft arsenal that is provided in ASP.NET. The 80/20 rule usually applies. Thus, many a time, you can get a very good web application up simply by using 20% of the tools at your disposal, provided you know how to use that 20% well.

This book teaches you what is that useful 20%, and teaches it well.

Highly recommended.

I borrowed this book from the library, and liked it so much that I was intending to buy it from Amazon. However, I read from Amazon that Matthew MacDonald has a revised version, "Beginning ASP.NET 4.0 in VB2010", to be released in July 2010. As I am now moving towards Visual Studio 2010, I will buy the new book instead (hoping that the excellent material in the ASP.NET 3.5 edition gets migrated to the new ASP.NET 4.0 edition smoothly).