Beginning C# 2008: From Novice to Professional (Books for Professionals by Professionals) [Paperback]

Christian Gross (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1430210338 | ISBN-13: 978-1430210337 | Publication Date: September 16, 2008 | Edition: 2nd ed.

Updated to the brand new SQL Server 2008 release from Microsoft this year, this book allows new programmers to enter the large and vibrant development community of .NET 3.5 who are eager for new techniques and ideas. The latest version, .NET 3.5, was released in November 2007 with its sister products, SQL Server 2008 and the ADO.NET Entity Framework releasing in summer 2008, also included in this new edition.

Beginning C# 2008, Second Edition, is an expansion and update of Apress’s existing Beginning C# 2008 book, written by the same author in the same focused style. It aims to teach novice programmers everything they need to know in order to use the new .NET 3.5 Framework to their best advantage.

We are also taking this opportunity to revise the book’s content in light of reader feedback to ensure it is tailored to the ever changing needs of the novice developer community.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Christian Gross is a consultant with vast experience in the client/server world. He has consulted for Microsoft on DNA solutions, and he has held consulting positions with Daimler Benz, Microsoft, NatWest, and other major corporations. Gross was a contributor to Professional Active Server Pages, Professional SQL Server 6.5 Administration, Professional NT Internet Information Server Administration, and Programming Microsoft Windows 2000 Unleashed. He is the author of A Programmer's Introduction to Windows DNA

Product Details

• Paperback: 512 pages
• Publisher: Apress; 2nd ed. edition (September 16, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1430210338
• ISBN-13: 978-1430210337
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,250,965 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

What to say? How about "I get a kick out of Dilbert and more often than not can relate to Dilbert." Does that make me a tech nerd? Sure, but I also like to do other things like visual arts and paint pictures in a surrealist style. As much of a tech nut I am I like my art done in a traditional manner.

With respect to tech, my education is Mechanical Engineering specializing in robotics, parallel computing, and industrial automation. There actually was a time when I could calculate the trajectory of a five axis robot, sigh! I have always been fond of writing software and in grade 10 wrote my first major program that was to become an ISAM database using Waterloo Basic on a Commodore Pet! My main computing interests lie in Software Engineering and the Internet.

I blog at http://ablog.apress.com and http://www.devspace.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Virtually Unreadable, May 1, 2010

By 

Nicholas W. Reich (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Beginning C# 2008: From Novice to Professional (Books for Professionals by Professionals) (Paperback)

I wanted to learn C#, so I went to a bookstore and this was the only beginning C# book they had, so I bought it. Complete mistake. I found this book to be very difficult to follow and often poorly thought out. I struggled my way through the first two chapters and felt that I had missed a whole lot of really key information. Reading and rereading whole sections failed to help me really understand what the author was getting at. Further, his analogies were generally hard to follow. They were often long and drawn out, but forgot to explicitly tie the concepts in the analogy to the programming concepts at hand.

Since my only programming experience was with VBA, I decided that maybe this was the wrong beginning book for me and sought out another book. Reading something else, everything became clear immediately. I learned quickly, without much rereading, and in no time had surpassed where I had gotten through this book. So now that I had a better grasp of C#, I decided to go back to this book ad try going through the next chapter, chapter 3 (whose contents I had learned in the other book). I had to reread a lot still, as the authors instructions were generally vague, but now I was moving through the chapter. Then, wham! I hit a brick wall in understanding what was going on. The author wanted to add some code to the example in the chapter to remove a bug, but for the life of me, I could not figure out WHERE he wanted me to put it in the code (or even which of 3 code files in the example to put it in).

At this point, I just plain gave up. I couldn't continue on, as the rest of the chapter was based on implementing this code (and then a replacement for it, again no idea where to add it). Clearly the problem was not me (or you if you have the misfortune of trying the book), but the horrible writing in this book (the second edition of this book no less!). I liked the idea of the practical coding projects which taught the material in this book, but following them was next to impossible. There seemed so much really valuable advice on writing and organizing good code and thinking like a successful developer, but it was often so muddled, I doubt that anyone but the author or perhaps someone already completely familiar with the topic and not needing the advice would be able to understand it.

I wanted to give this book 2 starts because there feels like there is a lot of valuable advice put forth in this book and some might find its coding examples useful additions to another text. However, the sheer difficulty of reading this book and figuring out what the author is getting at makes it impenetrable and not worth going through for anyone. Since the fundamental flaw of this book is poor writing, I would advise avoiding any other book written by Christian Gross (unless reviews of newer books suggest that he has made great strides in this area). Further, that two editions of this book were published and it is still a wreck leads me to severely doubt the publisher's (Apress) quality filter and while I would not out of hand dismiss their books, never again will I buy one without reading extensive reviews.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Simply Awful, May 13, 2010

By 

Will Young - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Beginning C# 2008: From Novice to Professional (Books for Professionals by Professionals) (Paperback)

I've never read a book that was so unsure of its identity. It's not a beginners book despite touching on several rather trivial concepts like how to download and install an IDE. But that's not the worst part, topics are rarely covered in their entirety and often leave you confused and in need of supplemental materiel. Additionally, the examples are full of nuance and mostly unimaginative and uninteresting.

This is one of the worst programming books I have ever read and I would not recommend regardless of skill level.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Please read other reviews, November 13, 2008

By 

Perry Forman - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Beginning C# 2008: From Novice to Professional (Books for Professionals by Professionals) (Paperback)

Please read other reviews for this authors training guides before purchasing. I promise you that if you buy this book with the intent of learning basic programming skills, you will be rather upset by the time you get not even a quarter of the way thru this book.