The extensive changes to the language and the introduction of the .NET platform make a reference guide to the Visual Basic language more essential than ever. At the same time, they make it easy to delineate this book's subject matter. This is a book that focuses on the language elements of Visual Basic .NET? on its statements, functions, procedures, directives, and objects (notably the Err and Collection objects).
There are literally hundreds of books lining the shelves on how to program using Visual Basic, and they will no doubt be joined by a flood of books on how to program in VB .NET. The majority of these books assume that you're a complete novice and slowly introduce you to such concepts as variables, arrays, and looping structures.
This is a different kind of book, however. It is a detailed, professional reference to the VB .NET language?a reference that you can turn to if you want to jog your memory about a particular language element or a particular parameter. You're also looking for a reference that you can turn to when you're having difficulty programming and need to review the rules for using a particular language element, or when you want to check that there isn't some "gotcha" you've overlooked that is associated with a particular language element.