C# 2.0: Practical Guide for Programmers

Paperback: 272 pages
Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann; illustrated edition edition (March 8, 2005)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0121674517
ISBN-13: 978-0121674519
Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.5 x 0.8 inches







"Great book for any C# developer! It describes the basic programming language with EBNF notation and provides a number of practical programming tips and best practices on program design that enable you to utilize the C# language features effectively." -Adarsh Khare, Software Design Engineer, Microsoft "C# 2.0: A Practical Guide provides an amazing breadth of information in a compact and efficient format, with clear and concise writing and useful code examples. It cuts right to the core of what you need to know, covering every aspect of the C# language, an introduction to the .NET API, and an overview of pertinent object-oriented concepts. This book tops my recommendation list for any developer learning C#." -David Makofske, Principal Consultant/Architect, Akamai Technologies "This book is essential for programmers who are considering system development using C#. The two authors have masterfully created a programming guide that is current, complete, and useful immediately. The writing style is crisp, concise, and engaging. This book is a valuable addition to a C# programmer's library." -Edward L. Lamie, PhD, Director of Educational Services, Express Logic, Inc. "At last, a programming language book that provides complete coverage with a top-down approach and clear, simple examples! Another welcome feature of this book is that it is concise, in the tradition of classics such as Kernighan and Ritchie. The new book by De Champlain and Patrick is the best introduction to C# that I've seen so far." -Peter Grogono, Professor and Associate Chair of Computer Science, Concordia University "The book covers the basic and the advanced features of a relatively new and well established programming language, C#. A truly Object Oriented style is used throughout the book in a consistent manner. C# and Object Oriented concepts are well illustrated through simple and concise examples to hold the reader's attention. A very well-written book." -Ferhat Khendek, PhD, Research Chair in Telecommunications Software Engineering, Concordia University

This type of notation is fine for online reference or even the printed language "manual" (The C# Programming Language by Hejlsberg, et. al.), but not this type of book.

Also, the book description states, "* Provides a carefully focused explanation of every aspect of the C# language, including entire chapters on the unified type system, advanced types, collections, generics, reflection and attributes." In chapter 8, Collections and Generics, out of 20 total pages for the chapter there are only 3 1/2 pages devoted to generics, with 1 of those pages comprised of the skeleton listing of 2 BoundedQueue class definitions, one with generics based syntax and one without (i.e. replace all occurrences of int with &ltT>). By the way, Hejlsberg's book gives a _much_ better introduction/overview to the v2.0 language than this book...it is dense reading and has a very "formal" style, but you will get much more from it than this piece.

To summarize, this book tries to be the "jack-of-all-trades" and ends up being the "master-of-none". Excerpted from the preface, "Finally, all principal features of the C# programming language are covered..." While this may be true in principal it lacks almost all forms of substance and detail. It completely sacrifices quality in favor of page count. If you are looking for a book to give you a 10,000-foot overview of the v1.0 language and a 500,000-foot overview of the v2.0 features and are prepared to decode the text while you read (i.e. translate EBNF -> English) then this book is worth 2-stars; but, when you are done reading this book be ready to turn around and buy another book which actually shows you how to use the language with more concrete explanations and better examples. If you are looking to really learn the language and be proficient with it in the real-world do not waste your time with this "overview"... look elsewhere.

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