Best Kept Secrets in .NET [Paperback]

Deborah Kurata (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 13, 2004

Whether you are a new or experienced .NET programmer, this book offers data management methods that you might frequently miss in the rush to complete projects on time. Author Deborah Kurata writes a handy, complete guide to lead you through hidden features and tricks buried within Visual Studio.

The book focuses on daily code management, rather than deep .NET framework discussions. Kurata concentrates on efficiencies, presentation, controls, data management methods, and day-to-day code snags. So if you’ve developed inefficient habits or have been fighting the development environment, you will, mercifully, save hours in the team development cycle by putting the book's tips into practice.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Deborah Kurata is co-founder of InStep Technologies Inc., a professional consulting firm that focuses on turning business vision into reality, using Microsoft .NET technologies. Kurata writes for MSDN, and has authored several books, including Doing Objects in Microsoft Visual Basic 6 (Que, # 1562765779), and Doing Web Development: Client-Side Techniques (Apress, # 1893115879). Kurata is a well-known speaker at conferences like VSLive, and among local user groups. She is a member of the International .NET Association (INETA) Speaker’s Bureau, and has over fifteen years of experience designing and developing applications. Her current focus: .NET architecture, object-oriented design and development, and best practices for .NET development.

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Apress; 1 edition (September 13, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590594266
• ISBN-13: 978-1590594261
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,026,784 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars No exactly a collection of .NET "secrets", but good writing, October 8, 2004

By 

Jason A. Salas (Dededo, Guam Guam) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Best Kept Secrets in .NET (Paperback)

Although I'm giving this book high marks for thoroughness of content, I did feel slightly dejected after expecting it, based on its title, to be a cornucopia of gems of little-known facts that .NET developers of varying levels could use. And while it certainly contains a lot of good remarks about how to work faster and/or more efficiently with have better performing code, it's not exactly a collection of "secrets".

I'm a somewhat experienced programmer, and a lot of what I read I found to be best practices that most introductory books on a variety of subjects will feature. The book's magic is that the tips are consolidated to within a single bound title, relieving the reader of needing to buy and read multiple titles to acquire such knowledge.

The book's finer points are evident in the many code samples being featured in both Visual Basic .NET and C#, and the book's succinct nature. Author Deborah Kurata doesn't spend hours poring over concepts; she just gets right to the point and lets you know how you can use a certain trick in your .NET programming. On that point, there's also a nice discussion of using regular expressions and operator overloading, and a good preview of refactoring in Visual Studio 2005 (at the time of this writing still in early beta).

However, I was disappointed in the fact that there wasn't a chapter on such secrets for web development with ASP.NET, and leans heavily towards those programming for Windows Forms (there are faint mentions of using web.config for web projects, but that's about it). This makes the book more applicable to desktop developers, and unfairly denies the browser crowd of using this book for their work.

Still, I came away with a couple of morsels that I'll take with me, such as the ability to use VB .NET's IsNumeric function in C# by referencing Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll. As with most APress titles, it's made the stand the test of time, with heavy paper and sturdy binding, so it's great as a desktop reference.

Overall it makes for a nice, quick read - priced pretty decently.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Average Read for Beginers and Mid-level Dev, June 28, 2005

By 

Adnan Masood (Monrovia, CA, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Best Kept Secrets in .NET (Paperback)

Like other reviewers have pointed out, "Best Kept Secrets in .NET" is a bit misleading title. From a developer's jargon, it would mean internals of assembly binding redirection or uncharted waters of machine.config etc however, this book is more about shortcuts and development techniques from an IDE perspective. "Literally" speaking, its a cross between Visual Studio Hacks and Code to Developer.

Apart from its name, it's generally a good book for beginers and average book for mid-level devs and skim through for seniors in case they won't know how to store code snippets in toolbox. I liked the improving unit testing and defensive development sections along with much ADO and hidden tricks in VS.NET. The Apress roadmap explains the intended audience and its a good match but generally, I'd recommend Coder to Developer for this particular genre of IDE/Process learning.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not quite secrets, but interesting anyway, October 12, 2004

By 

Jack D. Herrington "engineer and author" (Silicon Valley, CA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Best Kept Secrets in .NET (Paperback)

There is a lot of interesting information in this book, that cuts across the range of .NET developers. It starts with tips about how to modify and use your Visual Studio environment, and ends with tips on the code in a data access layer. And at a mere two hundred pages the coverage is never in-depth. It's fragments of information, presented as secrets, from all over the .NET world.

The book is well written, and the graphics are used effectively. What is there is done well. But you need to make sure that there is enough that will be helpful to you in there before you buy. I definitely recommend reading the index and checking it out in person before you buy.