Customer Reviews

Beginning C# 3.0: An Introduction to Object Oriented Programming (Wrox Beginning Guides)

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I've read several of Dr. Purdum's books in the past and have always found them informative and enjoyable to read. Beginning C# 3.0, An introduction to Object Oriented Programming (Wrox) is one of his best book yet. As he asks in the introduction, there are dozens of C# texts out there, so why should you pick this one? His answer is that, while most of the other texts were written by extremely capable programmers, few of the authors have never stood in front of several hundred students looking for examples that teach the material yet are easy to understand and remember. Several of the key strengths of this book are the examples and the way Dr. Purdum anticipates the reader's questions.

For example, in covering the OOP concept of encapsulation in Chapter 2, he discusses why programmers hide the data properties of an object inside the object. He states: "You hide them for the same reason that kings used to hide their daughters in the castle tower...to keep other people from messing around with them." Later on, when discussing the difference between public and private access specifiers, he points out that using the public access specifier is like locking the princess in the castle tower and then passing out her room key to all the knights of the realm. I don't know about you, but this is easier for me to remember this than some dry explanation that one often reads on encapsulation.

Another strength is the way he anticipates rough spots for the student. One of the most difficult concepts for beginning programmers is the difference between value types and reference types. Dr. Purdum uses a simple explanation of what a symbol table is to discuss l-values and r-values. He then introduces a concept he developed called Bucket Analogy which uses the symbol table concepts to explain the difference between the two classes of data. Even experienced programmers will appreciate this example and how it truly makes the differences clear. He uses a job interview to explain what objects are as well as cookie cutters to explain instantiation. The book does reflect his 25 years of teaching experience.

The material covered is what you'd expect for an introductory text. He also covers relatively new topics like Generics and LINQ. The database chapter even has a fairly complete DBMS. However, the entire theme is to teach OOP and good coding techniques. For example, he'll write a code example that works but then calls it an example of RDC (Really Dumb Code). He then rewrites the code and explains why it is a better solution, especially when writing for a commercial environment. His objective is to teach you good OOP techniques using C# as the vehicle to learn those techniques. His experience owning a software company for 17 years shows through while doing this.

If you want to get a solid introduction to OOP and C#, choosing this book is one of the best choices you can make.

To be honest, I am a french IT engineer and english is not my native language so I sincerely apologize if I make mistakes while writing this review.
Despite this fact, I found that this book was amazing.
It explains clearly from scratch how to write serious programs using difficult concepts of object oriented programming.
This book is the perfect balance between theory and practice in order to understand perfectly OOP and C# language.
I have read dozens of IT books in my professional life but I need to admit that this book is a must.
Any beginning programmer who follow seriously each step of this book will be able to understand and use OOP and C#.
This book is from my opinion an excellent book for everybody : Beginners as experienced programmers who want to learn C#.
I need to congratulate Mr.Purdum for this masterpiece and I hope he will write another book which will go on building on the strong foundation of this book.
For example a real business software application described step by step would be a great asset for the whole C# community of programmers.
Anyway this book is really a must.

I will keep this short and sweet. The book is great at explaining things from a beginners standpoint. Lots of metaphors and imagery to help with visualizing what you are doing. I did not give this book 5 stars due to the large amount of errata in the code. It's one thing for a seasoned programmer to figure out, but not for the beginner reading this book. Some errata can be found on the Wrox homepage, but they do not have all of the errors.

Overall, great book. Just be willing to invest the time to figure out the errors.

Dr. Purdum brings it home like nobody else does. He is an educator and he knows how to get you to understand the concepts of programming. He uses real world examples to connect your mind to information he is teaching. Now I can honestly say, I get it. Thank you Dr. Purdum.

I picked this up to help give myself a more diverse skill set at work (software test). Within two months I was writing some pretty useful tools for myself and others. The book is outstanding for anyone new to OOP, like myself. There's the occasional typo here and there, but nothing that stepping through the code to see what's going on doesn't remedy. The author's sense of humor is a bit cheesy, but it helps to smooth out the transitions into some of the more daunting concepts. The frequent use of metaphors for the more complicated concepts was very much appreciated.

The only con I can give is that the examples become increasingly more complicated, compounding most of the book's concepts while often introducing several new ones at once. While this is somewhat expected, I would have liked to see a few additional, simple, examples as new concepts were being introduced (Chapter 12 immediately comes to mind...introducing generics, recursion, and interfaces in one example).

The Wrox website is a great source of info (code samples, forums, etc). I stumbled upon the forums for this particular book one afternoon and found that the author was personally answering nearly every question that was posted. That said, if Dr. Purdum wrote an intermediate C# book, I would snatch it up immediately.

All I can say is thank you Dr. Purdum. This book is refreshing in the way that programming C# is taught.

Buy this book if you want a clear, engaging way of learning OOP and C#

This is the only programming book that I have ever read from cover to cover.

C# is in my opinion the best programming language to learn for a beginner because it's C based but made easy due both to the language and to Visual Studio. Purdum's book gives an excellent tutorial in C#, along with a good introduction to programming practice.

At the end of this book you will have a good basic programming foundation, and be able to write some pretty useful programs.

The code errors detract a bit - the second edition should be 5 stars.

This book is a great place to start for both C# and Object Oriented Programming (OOP). I've been working steadily through the book using C# 2008 Express Edition (free from Microsoft, shockingly), and other than some errors that you'll have to work through (just apply your brain), you'll do well. I've tried other publishers books on programming and they all left me asleep. This one is outstanding. Just make sure you do the exercises at the end of each chapter and then try stuff on your own.

One other point: If you go to the Wrox Publishing programmer forums ([...]), Dr. Purdam (the author) actually answers questions about his book and C# programming. I find that truly amazing.

Fantastic. I just completed reading this book and going through the exercises. I was already creating programs by the second chapter. Dr. Purdum has a very easy to follow, informative, and charasmatic way of getting the material across to the reader. This book explains how to do things and more importantly why. My company recently switched from only using T-SQL Stored Procedures to now creating C# programs to do the same functions. This book immensely helped, and has put me ahead of my peers. Highly recommended and you won't regret reading through this book! I just wish Dr Purdum wrote more on C# than just this book.

This was the textbook for a C# class in my college. I withdrew from the class after two weeks for reasons other than the textbook, mainly the instructor. Anyway, this is a good textbook for learning C#, but while the material is explained thoroughly and well, for me it was tedious, since I have several years of programming experience already and have already finished several other software classes recently. The author explains everything as if you don't have any previous software experience; so if you are already familiar with other languages, this book is probably not for you. I don't have another book to recommend in its place, but you should probably look elsewhere.

If you are new to software, it is probably a good fit for you.