Customer Reviews

Pro C# 2005 and the .NET 2.0 Platform (Expert's Voice)

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you ask Andrew Troelsen that question, I bet he would guess "three pounds."

Overall, this is a pretty decent book on C# 2.0. As other reviews have said, it's not for beginners. With 4 years experience in C# .Net and Microsoft MCAD certification, I have found the technical level of the book to be right on the money for me. While much of the book (and C# 2.0) is the same as for .Net 1.1, the review has certainly not hurt me and has not been hard to read at all.

The examples are more correct than any technical book I can remember reading in a long time. And the code samples and downloads work! That almost never happens. Mr. Troelsen has done a great job in that regard.

From a content perspective, it is fairly thorough, touching on most of the new features of C# 2.0, but the level of coverage for the C# 2.0 specific features is at the same level as the 1.1 features.

One area that is very poorly covered is assemblies and assembly location. Mr. Troelsen spends 30 plus convoluted pages on the subject in Chapter 11 while Microsoft clearly describes the topic in 6 pages on their web site. If you don't know about assembly location in .Net before you read Chapter 11, you surely won't when you're finished. In fact, if you do know about assembly binding in .Net before you read it, you may not anymore when you finish reading Chapter 11.

Some key .Net version 2.0 features are not covered at all - for instance, there is no discussion at all of the BackgroundWorker class. This is a very useful new feature of .Net 2.0.

Because the book is not geared for beginners, it could have been better had Mr. Troelsen de-emphasized the 1.1 features slightly and used the recovered space for more emphasis on the 2.0 features. For instance, generics are only superficially covered.

So, technically, I think that four stars is a fair assessment of the book. Since Pro C# 2005 and the .NE 2.0 Platform is a technical book and not a novel, I rated it based on its technical merits, which is a good thing. Had I rated it on its readability, I would have given it 2 or 3 stars.

As one other reader said, the book is full of overly repeated phrases and misused words like factoid and deprecated. As my opening remarks eluded to, Mr. Troelsen, while being a master of C# and the .Net framework, is not a master of the segue. A little more plain-speak and a lot less Thesaurus would benefit the next version.

Way too many code samples start with something along the lines of "ponder the following" - 43 to be precise. Nearly 100 more are introduced with the phrase "as so:". How about using just "the following example" or "like this:"? Or telling the reader to "author the following code" when he means to enter or to input or to type the code. Mr. Troelsen already authored the code. If I claimed to author it, that would be plagiarism. Again, too much Thesaurus.

The grammatical faux pas that bugs me the most is "Do be aware" which occurs in various forms over 135 times in the book, or more than 5 times per chapter. I found about 5 places where the phrase seemed to be contextually appropriate. I suggest that he does this:

book = book.Replace("Do be aware", "");

In other words, just state the facts.

But he did mix it up some. At one point, he grabbed my attention with "Be very aware". Now, this must be an important fact (not factoid), right? Imagine my disappointment when I realized that the fact (not factoid) I was supposed to "be very aware" of was that whatever topic was being presented would probably never come up in the real world. So why, then, must I be "very" aware? Couldn't I be just sort of aware? Or better yet, why not skip the failed attempt at a segue and state the fact (not factoid) that the functionality was of minor significance?

One of the best reasons to buy this book is that, if you get the first printing of the third edition, you can pass a quick one-question test on APress' site and download an e-book in searchable PDF format. As you can tell from my review, the search feature works.

If you're a beginner looking to learn .Net, C#, or how to program, I would not suggest this book. If you're a practicing .Net developer with a background in C#, I would highly recommend the book until there are more technically comparable books that may be more readable available.

Pro C# 2005 and the .Net 2.0 Platform is a great book that covers the basics such as ASP.NET and ADO.NET but also covers topics that are usually forgotten such as Type Reflection and CIL. The depth of topics gives a great overall understanding of the intricacies of the .Net platform.

The two best chapters in the book are the ones on Generics and the CIL. This is because Troelsen takes a very complicated subject matter and breaks it down into understandable language. When explaining Generics he discusses an in-depth discussion of why they are useful(alleviates unboxing/boxing). He also gives the CIL code that shows exactly what is happening underneath the hood which helps understand the fundamentals.

I also liked how Troelsen tried to present material using best practices, sometimes left out in many books. For example, in the chapter that discusses data access, he goes through an example of creating factories which allows you to be database independent. Meaning you can connect to a SQL Server database, Oracle database etc., by just changing the configuration file. This code is very useful to understand and I think it runs in parallel with .Net Data Access Application blocks.

This 3rd edition is a great reference for those who already have had some exposure to C# and .NET. When you're encountering some aspect of the .NET framework for the first time, this is the type of book you can go to first before jumping into MSDN.

In each chapter, the author does a good job of explaining architecture and how things work from first principles. When documenting a framework class for the first time, a description of the important members is typically shown in a neat table. The example code throughout the text is easy to follow and I found I could read the book from end to end without downloading the source code. I like the author's approach of showing you how to do things by hand, or using the command-line tools first, before showing how to do it in VS 2005. This helps me to understand what is happening behind the scenes.

Of course, no single volume can tell you everything you need to know about .NET. What's important though is that this book gives you a good foundation before you look at more detailed texts on specific .NET areas. For example, I really liked the chapters on reflection, ADO.NET and ASP.NET. Good overview of architecture and the main features.

Others have commented on the writing style and I would have to say that overuse of some phrases such as "Do understand ..." did catch my attention, but unfortunately in the same way that an exclamation point at the end of the sentence would have as well.

I ordered the book online and for some reason, a couple of the pages were damaged. I didn't notice it until I had almost finished reading it. On one page, there was a quarter-sized hole in the middle of the page. On another page, a square inch of text was completely blanked out. Luckily, the book came with an option to download the PDF version.

I agree with some of the other reviewers. This book is an excellent overview of .NET in general, as well as 2.0 specifics. It is really a crash-course of many different topics, from C# 2.0 language fundamentals to multi-threading and remoting. Because of the broad scope, it is not too detailed on any one topic, and you will need other books or resources to get down to the nitty gritty. But this book will get you started in the right direction, and the writing style is clear and makes for an enjoyable read.

I also bought "Core C# and .NET" by Stephen C. Perry, as Mr. Perry's book does cover a couple areas that Mr. Troelsen's book does not make a single mention of. However, "Pro C#" was still worth every penny. The combination of the two books makes a power-house reference set that no intermediate-level C#.NET programmer should be without.

Overall, this book is a good, wide-ranging text on C# and the .NET 2.0 platform. However, it can be a little long-winded and hard to read.

The book is divided into five sections: Introducing C# and the .NET Platform, The C# Programming Language, Programming with .NET Assemblies, Programming with the .NET Libraries, and Web Applications and XML Web Services. Given the range of the book, it is clear that not every topic in .NET 2.0/C#, but what is there is a very good representation of the most fundamental parts of the platform. After reading the book, you will not know everything in the platform, but you should have a good idea to where in the MSDN documentation to look to find what you need.

Part 1 is some fluff about the .NET platform and the tools you can use to do .NET development. Part 2 is a good exposition of the C# language covering object-oriented programming, exception handling, collections, delegates, and generics. Part 3 on assemblies is so-so since much of the same material is treated much more succinctly in MSDN, though the chapters on processes and multithreading are good. Part 4 is a good quick run through some of the fundamental classes in the .NET libraries. Given the massive size of the .NET libraries, you can't expect to find everything here, but you will get a good lay of the land so you can find what you need. Part 5 treats web development, and the information again is a reference on the fundamentals of a huge development space. As I don't do web development, I can't really comment on how good it is.

My main complaint about this book is that it could be perhaps 70% of its length without losing any information. The book is title "Pro C#" and yet simple topics like certain aspects of object-oriented programming and using generics seem to try to include something for the beginner, making the exposition drag on much longer than necessary for a "pro" to understand what is going on. As a pro with C++, Java and a couple of other languages, I found myself getting impatient with the exposition quite often. Fortunately, in the end you do get the information you need. The editing could be a bit better and some of the tortured locutions used by Mr. Troelsen need to be cut, but these are minor distractions.

Overall, you can't go wrong by getting this book and once you've digested it, you should have a very good foundation for doing .NET development.

First I would like to start off saying that this book is far from boring (as I have seen mentioned in other reviews). It's a book about programming! How exciting can it be anyway? This book really covers a LOT of material which starts off with an excellent overview of the .NET platform and the history that goes with it. I've had no problems with the style of writing in this book and the material is presented very clearly and in a well-organized manner. You can't expect a book covering all the information on the .NET platform and C# to be perfect and include everything you want it to include, however, this book is probably as close as a book could come.

I am a professional Java developer and am expanding my horizons towards C# and .NET and this book is the best I've seen out there. There are a lot of Microsoft Press books that are just plain horrible. The book has a few errors here and there, but nothing major. One can't possibly expect a book of such magnitude to not contain any errors. I seriously recommend this book for an experienced developer (especially Java). A beginner would probably have a bit of difficulty with this book because it is not intended for a beginner. For core C# and core .NET, this is the book to own.

I don't usually take the time to write reviews, but I felt compelled to do so in this case. I have been in development for over five years now, and like most, have purchased a library-worth of books for reference. I must say that this book is the most comprehensive and easy to read book in my collection. It covers all of the hardcore topics that every programmer needs to know in order be develop rock-solid apps. I used to buy MS branded books because you figure... hey they invented C#, they should be able to write the best books on the topic..... Well Microsoft, you would be best served to hire Troelsen and make him the head of your publishing department because this guy knows how to write books!

On the whole, I've been very happy with this book -- it covers a great deal of ground. But it doesn't really teach -- at best, it glosses.

Of course, this might just be the nature of trying to cover such a vast technological landscape in a single book, but then again, I've read many a tech book of just this length, and come away with a much deeper understanding of things than I feel like I this one offers.

The chapter on interfaces, events and delegates is a particularly frustrating one: the author writes extensively about each of these concepts, and provides working examples of each, in various flavors, but never explains *why* anyone might prefer to use one of these paradigms over, say, regular ol' vanilla method invocation. Sure, all these things work, but why might someone use one approach over another? Which one, or ones, are more preferable in practice? On the whole, these kinds of whys don't really get treated; we get the concepts, a few examples, and we move on, without much explanation beyond the how-tos.

If you've picked up this particular book, you've probably got some experience under your belt. While it's a good book and I'm glad I have it (and would recommend it), if you're thinking of picking it up, be prepared to deal with a fair amount of frustration at what's missing.

Ever read a good Petzold book?
This isnt like that at all.

All I can add is ditto to what someone else has said.
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I am very disappointed. While techically accurate and covering a large amount of topics, this book has been a pain to read even for a very interested and curious programmer like me. The writing style is annoying at best.
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The book is very difficult to follow it just does not flow and concentrates too much on things that mean little or nothing.

This 3rd edition is a great book for learning details on a wide range of C# and .NET topics. Troelsen is overly long with some examples and topic choice (web services and ASP.NET make up 130 pages of this "C#" book), but he's got great coverage of all the book's contents.

He clearly explains general concepts like delegates and remoting, but also dives into details on each topic. He walks readers through manually handling event/delegate multicasting, showing the details of how it's handled before moving on to the normal multicasting assignment ( event += handler ). This sort of coverage is great because it shows the important fundamentals.

Troelsen is also the first author to show why it's good to dive into intermediate language (CIL) from time to time. Other writers usually show only a snippet of IL, then ramble off with something akin to "Hey, isn't this neat?" Troelsen shows why looking at the CIL is actually helpful on occasions.

The book's back cover says it's targeted at experienced developers or graduate students, but the book does such a great job with fundamentals of each topic that it's useful for just about any developer regardless of experience.