I've read computer books for programmers for at least 12 years. Lhokta is probably the best organized computer book author I've ever read. Wrox always uses presentation style and format to produce excellent books, and Lhotka's writing style is perfect for introducing concepts in an organized way to begginners and people who don't want the first 6 or 7 chapters of a business-oriented VB book to be filled with elementary stuff. Therefore, they complement each other. However, Lhotka seems to be an OOP purist, and by structuring the material the way he does, you get a sense of concept overload, particularly on the first six chapters which deal with the basics of n-tiered architectures, (D)COM itself, and business object analysis. I sense he wants to discipline the reader into not following sloppy coding habits, about which VB is quite forgiving. The examples are excellent, and the respective chapters are compact: if you want to develop, say, an IIS application, all details for structuring it as well as developing an app interface are right there. Very rarely do you have to go back and forth. (That can't really be said about the first four introductory chapters, but he'll go over each concept mentioned in passing later on... so that you don't get lost in a quagmire...)
This is a very good book for an intermediate VB programmer, as well as a good reference for advanced ones.
