I am trying to learn to build a system using VB. I have taken an Intro to Programming course back in college which used VB, which was rather basic. I would like to learn VB well and build a good system for the longterm. Please recommend some good-great VB books. Thanks.
I would suggest using C#, instead of VB. One book that I like is http://www.amazon.com/Beginning-3-0...r_1_14?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1268700979&sr=1-14 . I think you will find these day that VB is similar to C# , But I think you will find more help on the internet with C# than VB. Stay away from VB 6.0. Good luck and have fun learning.
One thing to keep in mind, is that VB (VB.NET) is a very different language from VBA (the macro language that MS-Excel uses). So when you are searching for information on "VB", keep in mind which particular type of "VB" you are interested in. If you want to write stand-alone apps, then you need to learn VB.NET (and like the previous poster said, you are better-off learning C# instead), if you want to write macros to run in Excel using the DDE interface to connect to your broker than you need to look into VBA.
This is an uninformed statement. Stand-alone apps can be built using VB6 or VB.NET. VB6 is not further developped anymore by MSFT. Anyway it is an extremely fast development platform, easy to learn, very good debugging aids and incredibly much support can be found in the net. VB.NET is the successor to VB6. The language has some advantages but taken together it makes many things way to complicated. Often simple things need much more code or are even impossible to do that were easy in VB6. C# is more or less standard in the industry. But look at other things that are standard - they are certainly not always the best / most suitable.
Bays, I suggest : Learn Excel for finance from gummy stuff (http://www.financialwebring.org/gummystuff/), start off with some concept from there which you like, and learn VB as a part of fiddling with that concept. I think you will find that more useful than just learning VB by itself. Learn-by-doing. As for the exact book to use : just search on Amazon for "VB and Excel" and read the book reviews and go with that. VB.NET etc are "better", yes, but are they for you? You have to decide for yourself.