A very disappointing book but for an even more disappointing reason - it had GREAT potential. I rate it so poorly because I have no choice. This guy obviously had NO EDITOR. There are so many inaccuracies in this book that it will make your head swim. All of the sample code is in VB.NET, except one example which is inexplicably in C# (with no notification of such). It seems that every 5 or so pages has a typo or a mistake in the code. It will say that the code does one thing but it doesn't. I mean, it's close but not quite correct. For example, one example is of how to do a basic loop. It says that the user enters the starting point and the loop is set to exit when the counter counts up from the user's starting point to the number 10. When the counter reaches 10, it will exit the loop and display the counter as a result. So what do you think it would display? 10 of course. He says, it will display the user's original entry PLUS 10. WRONG. Again, close, but WRONG.

I give the book 2* for one simple reason. It had GREAT potential. His writing style is perfect for a begining developer. The content is presented in a clear and logical flow to get you from "Hello World!" to binding controls with data from a database. It really is extremely well structured for that target reader. Unfortunately, the lack of proper editing makes it completely useless to the beginner because they would be confused the first time the code doesn't give the results that are expected.

How do I know all of this? How did I catch these errors? I'm an ASP classic developer who is no longer a full-time developer. I'm just now moving to get my arms around .NET. So 90% of what he was saying, I knew. I've even done a couple of sites in ASP.NET but I had to feel my way around in the dark as I built them. In short, the book was below my skill level due to my past experience. I read the book for two reasons: 1. to give myself a good foundation/"ground up" knowledge base upon which to build my future .NET experience and 2. because I'm looking for a beginner level book to get one of my IT staff up to speed as an entry-level ASP.NET developer. I'll still give him the book because as I read the text, I corrected every error I found. He'll be fine with it now.

Let's just say that there are way too many of my marks in that book - that are NOT marks in a good way (as in...I learned something, make a note!). Too bad this one was so shoddy that it likely won't get a second edition that's been cleaned up. ( )