CLR via C#, Second Edition (Pro Developer) [Paperback]

Jeffrey Richter (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 22, 2006 | ISBN-10: 0735621632 | ISBN-13: 978-0735621633 | Edition: 2nd ed.

Dig deep and master the intricacies of the common language runtime (CLR) and the .NET Framework. Written by a highly regarded programming expert and consultant to the Microsoft .NET team, this guide is ideal for developers building any kind of application—including Microsoft ASP.NET, Windows Forms, Microsoft SQL Server, Web services, and console applications. You’ll get hands-on instruction and extensive code C# code samples to help you tackle the tough topics and develop high-performance applications.

Discover how to:

• Build, deploy, administer, and version applications, components, and shared assemblies
• Design types using constants, fields, constructors, methods, properties, and events
• Work effectively with the CLR’s special types including enumerators, arrays, and strings
• Declare, create, and use delegates to expose callback functions
• Define and employ re-usable algorithms with interfaces and generics
  
• Define, use, and detect custom attributes
• Use exception handling to build robust, reliable, and security-enhanced components
• Manage memory automatically with the garbage collector and work with native resources
• Apply CLR Hosting, AppDomains, assembly loading, and reflection to build dynamically extensible applications

PLUS—Get code samples on the Web

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

The author shares insights direct from the Microsoft .NET development team, his own real-world expertise, and hands-on code examples to illustrate how to most effectively use the CLR and the .NET Framework 2.0 for smart client, Web, and mobile applications

Key Book Benefits:

• Delivers a thorough grounding in .NET Framework architecture, the runtime environment, and other key topics

• Provides extensive code examples in Visual C#

• Features authoritative, pragmatic guidance on difficult development concepts such as generics and threading

About the Author

Jeffrey Richter is a cofounder of Wintellect (www.wintellect.com)-a training, debugging, and consulting firm dedicated to helping companies build better software faster. He is the author of the previous editions of this book, Windows via C/C++, and several other Windows-related programming books. Jeffrey has been consulting with the Microsoft .NET Framework team since October 1999.

Product Details

• Paperback: 736 pages
• Publisher: Microsoft Press; 2nd ed. edition (March 22, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0735621632
• ISBN-13: 978-0735621633
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 7.3 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (48 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #637,057 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

93 of 97 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If Microsoft .NET Was a Board Game, This Would be the Start Square, April 17, 2006

By 

David Douglass (Bloomingdale, NJ) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: CLR via C#, Second Edition (Pro Developer) (Paperback)

At the heart of Microsoft .NET is the CLR. .NET development is primarily about directing the CLR. But how can you do that if you don't really know what the CLR is or what it can do?

Most .NET programming books are language centric. The capabilities of the CLR are implied based on the description of the language. Jeffery Richter's book is CLR centric. It describes what the CLR can do and how it does it. C# is used to provide practical examples of how to direct the CLR.

The book clearly and efficiently presents vital information that you'd spends days trying to discover by either pouring over MSDN or writing test applications. Highlights include:

* how source code is converted to IL, stored, managed, and executed

* a description of the code metadata available at run time and how it is used

* how data is classified, organized, and managed

* a description of the members that make up a class (fields, methods, etc.)

* how to handle exceptions

* how garbage collection works

* how reflection works

* how to write multi-threaded applications

Throughout the book there are many warnings about pitfalls and gotchas. The execution efficiency of different approaches is explained for many situations.

I urge any .NET developer who doesn't really understand the CLR to read this book.

66 of 70 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must-read, April 3, 2006

By 

Patrick Smacchia - See all my reviews

This review is from: CLR via C#, Second Edition (Pro Developer) (Paperback)

If you're this kind of .NET developer who understood that the more you know about the CLR the better your code will be, this book is a MUST-READ. You'll find information available nowhere else at almost every page.

I really enjoyed the numerous digressions about reasons why MS engineers designed the CLR and the Framework the way it is. For example you'll find answers to tricky questions such as:

Why the C# compiler uses a callvirt IL instruction (and not a call IL instruction) when calling a non-virtual instance method?

What are the rare cases when you should consider using the Explicit Interface Method Implementation? (EIMI)

How the underlying processor architecture and volatile memory access are related in the CLR sphere?

How .NET framework classes with many events such as System.Windows.Forms.Control are designed to save memory at runtime?

And many many many more.

I also liked the fact that J.Richter is one of the very few who has enough knowledge on the subject to criticize some design choices made by MS. Often some alternatives for future .NET releases are proposed.

Clearly, if you are a beginner this is not the first .NET book you should read. But if your goal is to become a.NET expert, then know that you'll end up by reading this book.

27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good book with caveats, September 9, 2007

By 

G. Askew (Germantown, MD) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: CLR via C#, Second Edition (Pro Developer) (Paperback)

This is a good book, considering it is primarily a reference/internals book. Those are notoriously hard to write and also be easily consumed. A bit dry at times, but for the most part is readable. The book also has minimal errors and is logically structured.

A couple of observations:

1. An experienced developer will benefit more from the content that someone with less experience or someone that is new to .NET. This book covers a lot of fundamentals, but you will learn more if you have time writing code in C#/.NET 2.0.

2. The factual content is quite useful, and most other books don't even come close to this. In addition to the facts, Jeff injects some of his opinion. An experienced developer will recognize these segments as opinion and reconcile that with the realities of their own work environment.

For example, Jeff prefers using the formal CLR syntax for primitive types over the C# shorthand (e.g., "Int32" instead of "int"). This of course is a matter of preference, and will most likely be determined by the coding styles and practices at your workplace.

Jeff also does not like Properties, and wishes that Microsoft had not included them as part of the framework. Again, an experienced developer will probably not read this and immediately stop using properties. It is not inconceivable however, that an inexperienced developer may read it and develop a bias against properties, something that may not be advisable.