Customer Reviews

Essential Guide To Managed Extensions For C++

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If you are a programmer using C++ to develop .NET Framework applications, or developing .NET Framework applications that must interoperate with legacy code (Win32, C++, COM), this book is a must-have.

Managed C++ gives programmers the low-level tools necessary to provide a finer-grained control over how .NET assemblies are built (vs. languages such as C#.NET or VB.NET. The only other method that provides even more control is to write directly in MSIL and use the MSIL compiler to generate assemblies.).

Essential Guide provides the following things that make it a must-have:

1. It provides a concise reference of the managed extensions and examples on how they are used to create .NET applications. It's much faster to look up concepts and see the examples in this book than it is to search through the .NET Framework SDK for the same information, and the explanations are much better.

2. It provides detailed explanations and examples on how Managed C++ (MC++) is different from Standard (Unmanaged) C++ (UMC++). There are some significant differences when writing MC++ code, and issues faced when mixing MC++ with UMC++ code.

3. It provides the best descriptions and examples of .NET Interoperability that I've found to date.

4. It gives guidelines on when and where to use MC++ and when and where to stick to UMC++.

5. The examples are very good. Each one can be built and run as a complete application. Each one tries to cover only the concept that is being introduced and discussed.

6. It provides a much lower-level explanation of how the CLR works, particularly in the area of interoperability, than the typical .NET programming guide.

What does Essential Guide not do?

1. It doesn't attempt to teach readers about .NET. Even though the first half of the book is under a section called Basics, it really assumes the reader is already familiar with the concepts and constructs of .NET. "Basics" is understood to mean how the basic structure of the .NET Framework maps to C++.

2. It doesn't attempt to teach readers about the Base and Framework Class Libraries (BCL and FCL). Only the classes and interfaces required to explain the MC++ concepts are discussed. (Some of the C# programming books would be a good place to learn about the class libraries.)

3. It does not cover Visual Studio at all - actually it's mentioned once on page 7 as a good way to debug multi-language applications.

4. It does not cover any C++ language changes that occurred from VC6, other than as side references if a new language feature is relevant to the discussion.

This book is what you are looking for if you are considering MC++.
Personally I use MC++ to create wrappers around processor-optimized libraries available for C/C++. Then I use them from C# and VB.NET.
Some reviewers say the book doesn't add much to the MSDN docs. However, this book is a lot more readable and I think it's worth it.
One more thing, the book is written by developers for developers. I really enjoyed that, the authors go straight to the point assuming you are not a dummy.

"Essential Guide to Managed Extensions for C++" is required reading for any C++ programmer who wants to learn about writing C++ for .Net. What this book covers is virtually everything that a C++ programmer will need to write code using Managed Extensions for C++ (MC++). The first section is an excellent tutorial of the various features of MC++. This sections starts with a brief overview of the .Net framework. It continues with an introduction to MC++ with a very good low-level description of how managed classes differ from native classes. The remainder of this section contains the best explanation of managed extensions that you are likely to find. Topics are discussed in terms that make sense for C++ programmers. For example, delegates are discussed in terms of function pointers which they replace. The code samples are designed to give a clear explanation of the topic being discussed. The second part covers interoperability issues between managed and native code. For performance reasons C++ developers will sometimes need to mix code types so the explanation of how to avoid performance degradation when mixing managed and native code will be very useful. This section also includes descriptions of how to mix COM and .NET components and how to write wrapper classes for native code. For the C++ developer worried that C# is "the" .NET language, the authors show that MC++ is an important part of the .NET world and provide the information that C++ programmers need to develop for .NET.

At first sight, the book may seem just a compilation of managed extension for C++ specs from MSDN. However, having read the book, I can say it provides valuable insights into managed extensions and even contains some tricks exploiting knowledge of mapping managed extensions into CLR.

This is the book about general-purpose software development with MC++ (C++ with managed extension). It will not tell you how to write .NET windowing or data access code, but it describes general principles and ideas helping write better code for .NET with MC++.

The book starts with simple MC++ constructs and finishes with mastering managed/native interop questions. Throughout the book, MC++ elements are compared with standard C++ equivalents. I don't think it was necessary, because the book is intended for skilled C++ developers who can easily see parallels themselves. However, knowing some differences was very important and interesting for me. Still in some places the author tends to advertise MC++ using some (unfair in my opinion) comparisons between standard C++ and MC++.

One shouldn't expect to know everything about MC++ after reading the book. A lot of experimentation is required to fully understand the power of MC++ over other languages targeting .NET. I think that the author could do a better job describing some effective techniques (available in the public domain, see [web page name]for example) that would have made the book a more exciting reading.

I recommend this book as a first step on the way of exploration MC++ capabilities.

I've been doing a reasonable amount of MC++ recently and I started with this book. I've found it concise and to the point. As a previous reviewer said, "the authors go straight to the point assuming you are not a dummy". The book is in two parts, the first covers the fundamentals of writing applications/components in MC++. The second part covers interoperability. I found myself referencing both parts frequently...

This book does not contain any more than the managed extensions specification document that ships with Visual Studio.net. It covers the most straight forward concepts with most straight forward and trivial examples.
I would have liked to see tougher topics covered like how to do callbacks from managed to unmanaged C++. Also more samples on interop between C#, MC++ and native C++.

Clear, well written and well organized. Seems thorough. Written by members of the compiler team at Microsoft who know what they're talking about. This is far superior to the MS Press book on the same subject.