Beginning Microsoft Visual C# 2008 (Wrox Beginning Guides) [Paperback]

Karli Watson (Author), Christian Nagel (Author), Jacob Hammer Pedersen (Author), Jon D. Reid (Author), Morgan Skinner (Author), Eric White (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 047019135X | ISBN-13: 978-0470191354 | Publication Date: May 5, 2008 | Edition: 1

The book is aimed at novice programmers who wish to learn programming with C# and the .NET framework. The book starts with absolute programming basics. It then moves into Web and Windows programming, data access (databases and XML), and more advanced technologies such as graphics programming with GDI+ and basic networking. The book is divided into sections including:

• The C# Language: Basic language skills using console application. Content moves from the absolute basics to fairly involved OOP skills.
• Windows Vista Programming: Using basic Windows applications, reinforcing earlier OOP and debugging skills.
• Web Programming: Putting together basic Web applications, highlighting differences between Web and Windows programming.
• Data Access: Accessing all kinds of data sources from Web and Windows applications, including SQL usage, XML, file system data, and Web Services.
• Additional Techniques: "The fun stuff", including Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Workflow, Windows Communication Foundation, GDI+, networking, Windows Services, and so on.

The book makes complicated subjects seem easy to learn, and it inspires readers to investigate areas further on their own by providing references to additional material, and exercise questions that require significant effort and personal research to complete.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Karli Watson is a freelance IT specialist, author, and developer. He is also a technical consultant for 3form Ltd. (www.3form.net) and Boost.net (www.boost.net), and an associate technologist with Content Master (www.contentmaster.com). For the most part, he immerses himself in .NET (in particular, C#) and has written numerous books in the field. He specializes in communicating complex ideas in a way that is accessible to anyone with a passion to learn, and spends much of his time playing with new technology to find new things to teach people.
During those rare times when he isn’t doing the above, Karli is probably wishing he were hurtling down a mountain on a snowboard or possibly trying to get his novel published. Either way, you’ll know him by his brightly colored clothes.

Christian Nagel is a software architect, trainer, and consultant, and an associate of Thinktecture (www.thinktecture.com), offering training and coaching based on Microsoft .NET technologies. His achievements in the developer community have earned him a position as Microsoft Regional Director and MVP for ASP.NET. He enjoys an excellent reputation as an author of several .NET books, such as Professional C#, Pro .NET Network Programming, and Enterprise Services with the .NET Frameworks, and he speaks regularly at international industry conferences.
Christian has more than 15 years of experience as a developer and software architect. He started his computing career on PDP 11 and VAX/VMS, covering a variety of languages and platforms. Since 2000, he has been working with .NET and C#, developing and architecting distributed solutions. He can be reached at www.christiannagel.com.

Jacob Hammer Pedersen is a systems developer at Fujitsu Service, Denmark. He’s been programming the PC since the early 1990s using various languages, including Pascal, Visual Basic, C/C++, and C#. Jacob has co-authored a number of .NET books and works with a wide variety of Microsoft technologies, ranging from SQL Server to Office extensibility. A Danish citizen, he works and lives in Aarhus, Denmark.

Jon D. Reid is the director of systems engineering at Indigo Biosystems, Inc. (www.indigobio.com), an independent software vendor for the life sciences, where he develops in C# for the Microsoft environment. He has co-authored many .NET books, including Beginning Visual C# 2005, Beginning C# Databases: From Novice to Professional, Pro Visual Studio .NET, ADO.NET Programmer’s Reference, and Professional SQL Server 2000 XML.

Morgan Skinner started programming at school in 1980 and has been hooked on computing ever since. He now works for Microsoft as an application development consultant where he helps customers with their architecture, design, coding, and testing. He’s been working with .NET since the PDC release in 2000, and has authored several MSDN articles and co-authored a couple of books on .NET. In his spare time he relaxes by fighting weeds on his allotment. You can reach Morgan at www.morganskinner.com.

Eric White is an independent software consultant with more than 20 years of experience in building management information systems and accounting systems. When he isn’t hunched over a screen programming in C#, he is most likely to be found with an ice axe in hand, climbing some mountain.

Product Details

• Paperback: 1344 pages
• Publisher: Wrox; 1 edition (May 5, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 047019135X
• ISBN-13: 978-0470191354
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.4 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #125,761 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #81 in Books > Computers & Technology > Programming > Languages & Tools > C#

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars No Visual in this book--and not much code either, October 23, 2009

By 

ARO (Bethany Beach) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Beginning Microsoft Visual C# 2008 (Wrox Beginning Guides) (Paperback)

I am a veteran programmer who decided to get back into it after 5+ years absence from the field. Since it had been a while and my former experience was in other languages and this book got good reviews, I bought it.

Big mistake. There are several big problems with this book:

1: The exercises are too short and too unrelated to give any feel of creating anything that is like an actual program. Many of the examples are just skeleton code that do nothing. This means that if at first you don't get it you probably never will because you can't see it working. It is much better to build a series of mini-applications that actually process information so a beginner in a language can learn by building something that will actually work (then see how the parts in it work). Then the concepts that are obscure to begin with become clearer as they are employed. In this book the "try it" sections are more typing exercise than anything else, and these are incredibly short. The authors' reliance on DoSomething() and Console.WriteLine() is both monotonous and uninformative. To really see what code can do, you have to actually make it do something other than the same nonsense over and over. It is best if the exercises actually have you figure out how to accomplish something with the code rather than just typing empty syntax.

2: The authors totally ignore the user interface as a part of the program. Real programmers do NOT make programs based on lines of straight text to and from the console. Besides the fact that it is deadly boring, this approach is also too simplistic to teach any sense of what a full application entails. Particularly in Visual Studio, it is important to consider the interface as part of the context of the application. Making the interfaces also gives a programmer the same stimulation that the programmer will need to provide for future end-users. Visual Studio and Visual Studio Express provide very easy access to those interfaces. Not using the interfaces really short-changes the would-be programmers.

3: The book is totally lacking appendices or other reference areas with a brief, concise summary of language features and syntax--or expanded information. This should be a vital part of a beginning book on any language. Want to review the syntax for a specific declaration? Trying to figure out the best approach for looping through a series of tasks or data? Normally one would go to the chart of program control structures at the end of the book to review the syntax for clues. Not with this book. Such a chart exists nowhere in it. Your only option would be to reread entire relevant chapters.

4: When you finally get to user interfaces, they are presented as something that is totally different from the programming techniques you learned in the earlier chapters. The various form features are introduced, along with their properties, but there is pretty much a complete disconnect from the programming that should be happening behind the forms. Working on interface as an integral part of the program instead of something different would make a much better approach.

I will not finish this book and do not recommend it to anyone who actually wants to learn to write code that actually does anything or interacts with users in a meaningful way.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Well Above Average, August 21, 2008

By 

EmbeddedFlyer (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Beginning Microsoft Visual C# 2008 (Wrox Beginning Guides) (Paperback)

As far as 1300 page programming books go, this one is well above average. It covers both Visual Studio 2008 and the free Visual C# 2008 Express Edition using Express for most of the examples. C sharp is a great language if you've done any C, C++ or object oriented programming before. One can argue even if you have zero programming experience it's still the best overall language to learn. It's elegant, powerful, works for desktop apps, mobile apps, server apps and is multi-platform. C# is one of those rare things that Microsoft did well.

There's something here for everyone including C# language basics, object oriented programming theory, introduction to UML, Windows programming, web programming, databases, etc. It starts with an intro to C# in 7 chapters before introducing Object Oriented programming which is a different approach than many books. You can download the code at wrox.com.

THE GOOD: The authors manage to keep it readable and concise at the same time. There's not a lot of extra anecdotes and filler like you'll find in many beginning programming books. Most every sentence conveys something useful without being excessively dry. I haven't found many mistakes which seem all too common these days in similar books.

THE BAD: The authors sometimes mention concepts they haven't explained or even introduced yet. Often they point out when they're doing so (i.e. "don't worry about xxxx we'll explain later") but in many instances the reader is left wondering if he missed something earlier in the book only to find the answer in the next chapter. A total programming novice might find this book a bit intimidating as the authors do sometimes assume significant knowledge on behalf of the reader. For example the Object Oriented chapters dive right into UML and other confusing topics with little hand holding. But, personally, I think they did a good job of trying to include lots of useful information versus spending lots of pages on things that most readers will already know.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good book for a beginner, July 26, 2008

By 

Tommy Kapone (Columbus, OH) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Beginning Microsoft Visual C# 2008 (Wrox Beginning Guides) (Paperback)

Let me start of by saying that C# was the very first foray into real programming for me. I've had experience with (X)HTML, Javascript, and bash scripts. After reading online about which language(s) to start with, I finally decided on C#.

After perusing the many books that Amazon has I found this book and decided to give it a whirl. I'm up to the chapters concerning Object Oriented Programming now and I feel I can say that this guide provides a good starting point for a real beginner. Each chapter provides an in depth look at each topic and isn't too hard to understand. All of the examples in the book have step-by-step analysis of the code and what it does. It even discusses in the first chapters how to get the tools (for free) to work in Visual C# and compile it (Microsoft Visual C# Express 2008). I'm also impressed with the breadth of topics covered in the later chapters. I can't say I'll use them all but it's nice to know I have access to that information if I need it.

The only quibble I have with this book is it's lack of code in response to the exercises at the end of each chapter. Granted most of the examples in the chapter would give you the knowledge necessary to complete the exercises but sometimes it's nice to see how a professional would do it. Their website does however provide the code for download for the examples in the chapter, but you're left on your own as far as the end-of-chapter exercises.

All in all I'd give this book a go if you've had no programming experience but would like to develop that skill.