Customer Reviews

Annotated C# Standard

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This book is definitely not for the everyday 8-5 developer, this is for people who like to know the philosophy behind the tools they use every day, it's really great to get the original insight of the people who worked on the language, the reasons behind why things were designed the way they are

I originally bought a different annotated standard which is painful to read at times. This one on the other hand is a pleasure to read and you'll find yourself doing just that - reading it like a novel. Hope the next version is out soon.

Standards can be a pretty dry read but Jagger, Perry and Sestoft have managed to make this a fascinating read. This book is chock full of tidbits and interesting insights that reveal why C# and the C# 2.0 standard is the way it is.

Every C# programmer should have this on their shelf.

Disclaimer: I'm one of the annotators in the book, so have a natural bias.

If you care about understanding the code you're writing, you should care about language specifications. When code doesn't behave as you expect it to, the quick way of handling the situation is to experiment until it does what you want - but it's far better to consult a book to find out *why* the original code failed. What better reference could you possibly hope for than the language specification?

Unfortunately, specifications are typically difficult to read. Where tutorials can be vague and woolly, specifications are meant to handle every possible situation, or at least explicitly state which aspects of behaviour are unspecified. Furthermore, they rarely contain the motivation behind various decisions - and it's understanding that motivation which can help you to learn to work hand-in-hand with a language instead of fighting against it.

The C# Annotated Standard is a rare gem - a reliable standard which allows the authors to express reasons, pitfalls, anecdotes, errors, and other little nuggets of wisdom.

I can't wait for the C# 3 edition :)