Books

This page lists and describes the books I have authored or co-authored, most recent first. Clicking the book's image hyperlinks to the book's record, on Amazon.com except for the first two books which are yet to be published. Two of the books have a help icon next to the title which when clicked will open to the book's support page (mostly errata).

Visual Basic 2005 Demystified is one of two books I just wrote, published Thanksgiving 2005. (I certainly gave thanks when I was finished). This book is about one of the programming languages in the upcoming Visual Studio 2005.  Being on Microsoft's official beta list enabled me to learn in advance about this new technology, which helps me keep our curriculum (and me) up to date. Since Visual Basic has been the programming language used in most of my books and many of my classes, it was interesting to have an advance look on the newest version, in which Visual Basic continues the trend started in Visual Basic .NET of becoming a true object-oriented programming language.

Visual C# 2005 Demystified is the other of the two books I just wrote, also published Thanksgiving 2005. This book is about another of the programming languages in the upcoming Visual Studio 2005. This is my first book on C#. My wife Devvie, who teaches C# (among other programming languages), was a big help to me in writing this book. There also was a synergy to writing Visual Basic 2005 Demystified and Visual C# 2005 Demystified at the same time, including using the same stale, recycled jokes in both books. Now my readers know how my students feel!

C++ Demystified was published in May 2004. As the table of contents reflects, it covers the material taught in CSIT 802 and most of CSIT 839. Indeed, my motivation for writing the book was to create an inexpensive (less than $20) supplement to the textbook in those classes, though of course the vast majority of its readers are outside of the college. Since many students ask, no, the picture on the lower right hand corner of the book cover is not me (unfortunately I'm not that good looking).

Visual Basic .NET A Beginner's Guide was a "day and date" book, published simultaneously with the release of Visual Studio .NET in February 2002. The good news of a "day and date" book is that Microsoft always kept me supplied with the latest and greatest (and not publicly available) beta so Devvie and I were able to upgrade our curriculum to .NET (e.g., CSIT 895) way ahead of most. The bad news of a "day and date" book is mucho stress since the book had to be finalized days after the release of final code and Microsoft is famous (or infamous) for changing important features at the last minute. Anyway, as the table of contents reflects, this book covers the basics of Visual Basic .NET, similar to the material taught in CSIT 808. Indeed, one motivation for the book was to help students who had learned Visual Basic under version 5 or 6 to transition to Visual Basic .NET.

I co-authored Debugging Visual Basic with David Jung in 2000. No, the creature on the cover is not an escapee from the main course offered by the LAVC Cafeteria (the food there is not that good), but rather symbolizes a bug, which you try to prevent or fix by the first word in the book's title, debugging. This was a fun book to write, and even though it concerned Version 6 of Visual Basic, many of the concepts apply to Visual Basic .NET as well.

Outlook 2000 Programming Bible (with David Jung) was written in 2000 (duh). This book certainly did not improve my outlook (pun intended). It was my first and last book for this particular publisher. It was a nightmare. The book's editor kept changing (probably due to insanity or suicide) and each new editor's requirements not only were different than the predecessor's but often were contradictory. It was like digging a hole, filling it up, digging the hole again; well, you get the idea. Anyway, while the subject of the book was interesting to me, and I learned a lot, this was one book I was glad to get in the rear view mirror of my life.

Visual Basic Annotated Archives (with David Jung) was published in 1999. This was my first book, and David and I still are very proud of it. It had excellent reviews, but unfortunately did not sell a lot of copies. In retrospect, the publisher felt the word "Archives" in the title (which they chose, not us) indicated a book that was old or out of date, not a good quality in a programming book. Unfortunately, marketing often is as important as substance. In any event, this book got me started.