The Microsoft .NET platform has matured with version 4, bridging the gap of platform-independent development with Mono, the open-source implementation of .NET. Thanks to the improvements added to Visual Basic (VB), as well as to Microsoft’s choice to select it as one of the programming languages inside the .NET platform, Visual Basic 2010 has the strength to compete with powerful computer languages such as C++, C#, and Java.

This book is about Visual Basic 2010. Troelsen and Agarwal are experienced with the Microsoft .NET platform, and have created a reliable guide for developers who wish to learn how to develop software applications using all of the features bundled in the .NET 4 platform. They use various points to explain .NET 4 platform features: LINQ, assemblies, Ado, multithreading, and Windows Presentation Foundation. In addition, they provide VB 2010 code samples to illustrate how to achieve these points.

In the first chapter, the authors use VB 2010 to introduce the .NET platform concepts, showing through examples the different aspects of the .NET platform. Chapters 2 to 12 thoroughly discuss the different concepts related to VB 2010. Chapters 2 through 4 cover data structures: linked lists (chapter 2), stacks (chapter 3), and queues (chapter 4). Chapters 5 through 10 cover the object-oriented programming paradigms: encapsulation (chapter 5), inheritance and polymorphism (chapter 6), exceptions handling (chapter 7), object lifetime (chapter 8), interfaces (chapter 9), and generics (chapter 10). Chapters 11 and 12 introduce the new features introduced to the VB language: delegates and lambdas. The remaining chapters cover in detail the .NET features and how to use them inside VB 2010.

All of the chapters are well written. The authors start by describing the concept, and then, using clear examples, take the reader into a hands-on lab. All code in this book is available online, and the chosen topics related to these files are interesting.

It is difficult to find any faults with this book. It is an excellent reference for anyone interested in thoroughly learning all of the features and aspects of the .NET platform using VB 2010. I strongly recommend this valuable book.