With this book, you can learn the skills of a professional programmer in just 692 pages. Because of its self-paced approach in the first 7 chapters, you can do that whether you're new to Visual Basic.NET or you're upgranding from Visual Basic 6. From that point on, you're ready for rapid progress as you learn how to develop sophisticated GUIs, how to use the .NET classes for a wide variety of purposes, how to work with XML, how to develop database appplications with ADO.NET, and how to develop web applications with ASP.NET. To insure success, this book includes 18 complete business applications so you can see how the forms, controls, and code of Visual Basic applications work together. Applications like these should be a standard part of all programming books. BUT NO OTHER VB BOOK DOES THIS.