Customer Reviews

ASP.NET Weekend Crash Course (With CD-ROM)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

This book is truly a rare find. Technical books are often daunting to the beginner; occasionally frightful to the Intermediate. But this book takes instructional incompetence to a whole new level

I've read enough technical and programming books to know that a few errors are inevitable. I guess I have to cut Rob (the author) some slack. He wrote the book while ASP.NET was in Beta. ASP.NET is now in its first release and most of his more meaty examples, if they ever did work, do not work now.

As of this review date, the author has posted no *important* errata on his book's Web site. I have no doubt he knows how to program well, but writing may not be his bag. Stick to the day job, Rob.

Hungry Minds (the publisher) could have saved a few trees by making Mr. Standefer condense his re-caps to the important parts of code. Instead he will spend anywhere from 2-4 pages showing you the entire code listing from the previous chapter(s) (a quick way to get through a chapter). On the other hand, one nice feature about this book is that if you can't get the example to work in one chapter, you have the same example-with different errors-in the next chapter. It's nice that the errors differ from chapter to chapter, so you can find which lines are different and take your best stab at correcting them.

I have a bookshelf at home that holds all of the tech books I've completed. I feel I've wasted money if I buy a book and don't read it cover to cover. Before "ASP.NET Weekend Crash Course" there was only one book I EVER started that I just couldn't finish-now there are two. ...If you are a beginner, take a guide with you. If you are intermediate or advanced, you *may* be able to muddle through the errors, but why?

Aside from any errors not working, this book serves as a sort of technical specification. Far too much real estate is given to "How it was done in ASP", which leaves too little room for indoctrinating one on "How it is done in ASP.NET"

Granted, part of the complexity for a beginner will also lay in the fact that multiple languages, concepts and technologies are being presented at once. This is not the author's fault. That is the nature of .NET (and specifically ASP.NET).

The author never gives full attention (or enough working examples) to the technologies new to ASP.NET (such as Web Forms, Classes, Data Binding, XML, etc).

I have to agree, yet disagree with the customer below. While the book seems to be a re-write of the documentation (with additional fluff), I'd have to say that the documentation is a lot easier to follow (that may not be saying much for this book...

I really didn't have many complaints about the book during the first few chapters. In fact, I appreciated reviewing some of the history of the past technologies, even though I had used those technologies. I also didn't mind that the book doesn't discuss "Visual Studio .Net" since I already know how to use it. I forgave some of the small typos along the way. However, at about Session 20, everything really broke down.

Code was missing or just plain wrong from that point on. The listings on the CD were also incorrect or missing (Session 20 did not have a complete listing, instead referring the student to the CD-ROM. This was the first time I used the CD-ROM during the course ... and Session 20 was missing!). And where are the Web-based errata? If you go to [url] you are told to visit [url]. If there are errata there, they are well-hidden. Using online resources and those included with Visual Studio, I was able to come up with my own solutions to the problems presented. However, by the time I had finished the course, it was no longer a "Weekend Crash Course". To add insult to injury, the included testing software also has typos and grades the questions incorrectly.

In conclusion: There are a lot of good books out there now that are based upon the released version of ASP.NET. Use those. This book is already miserably, and painfully, out of date.

I bought this book with the aspirations of getting a somewhat steady foundation in ASP.Net. As a "classic ASP" developer I wanted to get a jumpstart on ASP.NET with a quick overview. Unfortunately, my hopes were trashed by this book. There are so many typographical errors in this book that it makes me wonder if anyone cared to proof this book. Some of the code samples (including one that involves File Uploading) do not work. On one .HTML file he forgets a double quote which causes the page not to function correctly. If that is not enough, once you debug the author's own work, the file still doesn't work! If you mistakenly bought this book, email me and I'll send you the correct code. If the author is reading this....get a real job.

P.S. I'm sorry that Amazon makes you select at least a 1 for the book, because it's lower than that.

This book is already miserably, and painfully, out of date upon purchase. Be prepared to read half of the book before the author addresses the topic of "Building Your First ASP.NET Page". At that point, I had so many questions while reading the first 145 pages that I was completely confused. All of this could have been avoided with simple examples at the very beginning of the book.

Furthermore, typos are in abundance, the grammar was unclear, look for repetitive source code, missing code or completely wrong code through out the entire book. For instance, the listings on the CD were also incorrect or missing (Session 20 did not have a complete listing, instead referring the student to the CD where Session 20 was non-existent).

Don't waste your money on this poorly written book, instead go to the ASP.net website and use their free tutorials to learn about ASP .NET.

After reading through the first 20 chapters, in which no programming occurred until Session 16, I finally gave up. When I hit the first source code error in a simple form validation program I chalked it up to a simple typo. In Session 20 I couldn't get their program to work at all, to say nothing of the source code not even appearing on the CD-ROM!

Whatever you do, DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY ON THIS BOOK!!!... As has been said before, if I could give it zero stars I would.

What a waste of paper. The run up to acutall coding is somewhat usefull, but once you start in, you just fall flat. The code from the first "application" doesn't work at all.

Use the money you would have spent here and get the Wrox book instead. At least they publish working code and maintain eratta.

Here is a prime example of the great service Amazon provides and what can happen when you do not use it. This book is horrible, and I have downloaded the April 9, 2002 code updates which still do not work. Had I a read the reviews at Amazon I would have saved myself some money and valuable time.

Before this I have purchased and enjoyed a few others of the Weekend Crash Course books - never again though!
There are typos, there are bad code examples, there is missing code examples, there are repeated paragraphs, there is lack of flow sometimes, there is lack of information (if you are doing some of this for the first time). I am sure that I have found close to a problem per page - and the book is about 300 pages!
I cannot believe how this book got out to the shelves and worse more I cannot believe an Amazon user like myself bought a book without reading the reviews first. If you are reading this, heed the warning of myself and the other reviewers - don't waste "your weekend" on this book.

It seemed to me that the author was basically going through documentation for ASP.NET and re-writing it for the book with a little more fluff.

It took literally half of the book before the author got into the topic of "Building Your First ASP.NET Page". I had so many questions while reading the first 145 pages, and many of them could have been answered with this simple example at the very beginning of the book.

Furthermore, typos are in abundance as well as erroneous source code examples. I'm the type of person who likes to reinforce what I'm learning by typing in the samples. Many of them worked, but some didn't. These are things a tech editor should have caught by simply cutting/pasting the code to verify it worked as advertised.

I am picking up some useful information which is why it got 2 stars instead of just 1. I liked some of the foundation that was layed down to explain things, but for a programmer it's maddening to go fully 1/2 of a book without a lick of code to try out.

One weekend to read the book, two weeks to find out the code on the CD is too buggy to even execute. I am amazed that such a horrible error could have even made it to press!
Knowing of this mistake now, and knowing the publisher (Wiley) is still selling it for full price even after they are aware of this error, lets me know who I am dealing with. In good faith, shouldn't they have a note on their book site?
I will never waste money on their books again.
Be smart, read the Amazon reviews before buying a book for its marketing!