Recommended First book for writing scripts?

[pp]

What is the best starter book for basic script writing? Like VBScript for dummies? I want to start somewhere. Also what is the language to focus on. I see VBScript. VB.net VBS.net. Which is the main one used and what would be a self teaching book for basics? I did pickup a book today. VBScript in a nutshell. and Visual Basic.net for dummies. Did I waste my money there?

[electron]

I can't recommend any books as I hate reading books, but there are plenty of tutorials out there. What I would do is download some of the smaller scripts, and study how they were made, ask questions about the stuff you don't understand. Use devguru.com (or any other similar site) as your reference guide in case you forgot how a certain function works. I wrote a how-to a while ago on how to write a Homeseer script which will pull some information from the web, pretty simple and should get you going.

http://www.cocoontech.com/index.php?showtopic=46

[Rupp]

http://www.w3schools.com/vbscript/default.asp

[Tom Kern]

PP,

I have vb.NET in a nutshell here in front of me and it seems pretty good. Unless you won't open it, it wasn't a waste of money. There really is alot to learn when starting out and (I think) it helps to have a book to walk you through the basics.

[pp]

Thanks all, Very good info there. Electrons page bookmarked, Devguru.com. and 3 schools.com. So Is it safe to say VBscript is the focus for me? Or is VB.net and all the others a modified version of the same language?

[wz2p7j]

Also, VB script is quite similar to VB for applications included in the MS Office suite many people have on their computers. If you launch Excel for example, and then press alt-F11 you'll get into the VB editor. From there you can click on help and read the many good examples included with the package.

Chris

[pp]

Thanx!

[mfisher]

I have the 1st edition of this book and it's been a wonderful companion: VBScript (Wrox)

[Rupp]

Mark,
Wrox are the only books I buy. These are excellent.

[carletondm]

Can someone elaborate on the difference between VB Script and VB.NET ?

[Rupp]

carletondm,
It's "basically" the same as the difference between VBscript and VB. VB uses all of the VBscript object, methods, and procedures and offers more. VB allows variable type definitions where VBScript doesn't. Heck here is a good explination:
http://www.htmlgoodies.com/vbs-ref/part1.html

VB.net is simply VB ported to the .net runtime libraries with a few changes. I use few loosely because depending on your knowledge level it shouldn't be much of a change other than the editor.