[.ca] Visual Basic for Testers (ISBN 1893115534)

Solid,easy to grasp, straight to the point - VB book:
This book is long overdue for too long QA resources have been limited by others and themsleves to not look under the bonnet, so to speak or have payed for inflexible third party tools to do a simple job. I have developed entire smart'newbie' QA technical teams that just couldn't believe how easy it was to use code to test an application. It also adds to there skill set, gets them to really think 'how' best to test the application from a code point of view and even improves their test cases. Mary Sweeney's book "Visual Basic for Testers" is the starting point for any Manager who wants to do the same and give his/her team that extra weapon for finding issues.

Review:
I have been managing large Automated group of testers for several years now and this is the book I make sure any new novice members of the team read. We have even produced a 'summary' of the book as a reference guide for those just entering the industry within the team. It doesn't go into great depth but it's a solid starting point for anyone who wonders how could I do this better. I have also found when interviewing candidates and I happen to mention this book in passing, that a blank expression indicates this person just hasn't been through enough testing wars to hire. Try you the next time you're interviewing someone - you'll be pleasently surprised.

Good Book for Testers:
This book is exactly what the title says: an introduction to Visual Basic for testers. It succeeds wonderfully at that. It is not a book about testing. If you already know VB and want to know how to test your application, there are a few chapters near the end that you will find useful but this book is not really intended for you.

Annoying:
This book is really a primer on Visual Basic for someone who has never programmed before. Testing is just an afterthought. If you're a developer trying to improve processes through testing this book is not for you. If you're a software tester who knows absolutely nothing about programming, nice to meet you, I didn't know you existed, take a look at this book.

.Net backlash?:
I've had several college-level courses now in Testing and this is the only book we used that actually had anything to do with testing and programming. This is an absolute essential text for a college curriculum in testing. I checked out several curricula and found that most of them use it. I wonder about those that don't. In our course we also explored the use of .Net for testing and in my opinion it's a lot easier, more clear and way less expensive to use the techniques in this book. If you're trying to learn it on your own, this is still a good book. It's got exercises and examples. My wife's been a tester for many years but didn't do programming and she loved it. She said it gave her a lot of ideas. Maybe if you've already been an automated tester and/or developer for many years, this book isn't going to help, since it has a lot of basics. But if you are trying to learn, where else would you go? I liked the way you could just sit down and read it from cover to cover. It's unpretentious and doesn't talk down to us. It does expect you already know testing terminology and basics, but before you read this, you should.