Customer Reviews

C# How to Program

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

I had been looking for a C# book which also took care of teaching to exploit all the benefits of the .Net framework. I had stumbled with some books that were too inclined to either the language itself or the .net framework, but this book keeps a good balance between these two topics.

I purchased Professional C# from Wrox, but I saw too many typos in the text and even worse in the code!, so I went ahead and returned it later. I decided to spend some time at the bookstore comparing books and after much deliberation this one won me. I think it was a little bit expensive but it was worth it since it includes clear explanations, visual representation of what the samples do and how they work and best of all, it covers may topics I was interested in like XML, SOAP, Web Services, ASP.NET, etc.

I even liked the two color schema (red and black) in which it is printed.

Deitel books have been getting better and better with each new release. The later editions of "Java How To Program" were a vast improvement over the early editions of the book. Taking that experience, Deitel published this, their first C# book, in December 2001. The result is a mix of good and not so good. The overall approach to the topic is the standard Deitel method of covering topics in-depth with plenty of code samples. Anyone familiar with their C++ or Java books will recognize the Deitel formula immediately. In this case, the book suffers a little from being a first edition. The book covers all the main topics of the C# language, explains how to use Visual Studio, gives a primer on object oriented programming, and touches upon some advanced topics such as ADO, ASP, and web services. The book does have a feel of being rushed, however. Some of the examples seem either overly contrived or unnecessarily confusing. In some cases the explanations of the code are incomplete. For some reason, Deitel chose to print this book using only black and red instead of the multi-color print used in their Java books. Overall, this book is one of the better introductory C# books. It covers a much wider array of topics than many of the other C# books available and in general it covers them reasonably well. The CD does not include a student or demo copy of Visual Studio.

Superb. This book shows how it should be done. It covers just about everthing you need to know about C# - web services, XML, database access - it's all here in one book.

The many examples illustrate the concepts very well, and I particularly like the useful tips, 'common programming errors' and 'good programming practice' advice.

Surprisingly, the material is also accessible to people new to programming. There's sufficient introductory material (which experienced programmers can skip over) to allow program novices to start programming with C# - no need to start with Basic in a DOS window!

I have a few other books on C#, but this is easily the best.

The book started out nicely, explaining things step-by-step. Then around chapter 6 it starts throwing out pages of code with little explanation. I had liked the way it referenced visual studio to the code. Around chapter 6 it references visual studio sparingly and I found it hard to create the programs using visual studio cause they left out steps. The book has lots of good tips on commenting code, I felt they should apply it to commenting the text material better.

This is an excellent book, as are all the Dietel & Dietel books. The authors have consistently written excellent texts. The Snippets called: "Software and Engineering Observation" and "Common Programming Error" are invaluable references in of themselves!

Contrary to what some say about this book, this book is not for the beginners. Yes, it does cover lot of basic concepts, but they are tuned for those who already have a fundamental understanding of C#, Java, or C++ (all related to C). What separates this book from others is its practice problems. The best way to learn programming is to practice, and this book provides enough practice problems to really enhance one's understanding of C#. Highly recommmended for intermediate level C# developers.

As a university instructor, I used this book until it was replaced. I would absolutely NOT recommend this material. Students regularly complained over and over again about this text (the level of complaint far higher than with other textbooks). As for myself, I found the content to be very sloppy, the overall organization is terrible, there are serious omissions in places, and generally the book is shamelessly commercial (in one chapter, the actual examples are simply a list of other books, with prices, which Deitel publishes -- a pathetic attempt at marketing).

To the average person with little knowledge of this material, on the surface I’m sure this book will appear to be adequate. Under the surface, this book has significant problems.

What I’ve seen happen over and over again is, a student reads through a section of the material, but is still confused and doesn’t grasp important concepts. Unfortunately, the student simply blames him or herself for not understanding this material. But it’s not the fault of the student. It’s the fault of the book authors, who do not present the information in a clear and well organized manner.

The 5-star review is more for the Deitel publishing company than the book itself. That being said, I have been programming in C# for several weeks now, building complex custom applications, and I have yet to find a situation that the book did not either solve completely or get me started. It is an indespensable resource for learning and using C#.

But the true reason why anyone should buy this book (or any other Deitel book) is the level of service. Many people complain that Deitel books are expensive, and they are. They very often contain the same information as other books, so why would you pay more? Here is why...

After using their book for a while, I opened the companion CD to get some information from one of the Appendices that is not in the printed book, but only available on the CD. My CD was damaged and unusable. I sent an e-mail to Deitel's "catch-all" e-mail address (deitel@deitel.com), explaining my predicament. I was only half expecting to hear back from them, much less get a satisfactory resolution to my issue. Instead, I was contacted within the hour, just to let me know that they were handling my request, and I received another e-mail the next morning, letting me know that a replacement CD was already in the mail.

Finally, someone that appears to care about the consumers of their books past their checkbook.

I will be buying more Deitel books in the future.

I've been reading technical books for 25 years and this book was recommended to me by someone else - what a let down. First, way too verbose on every subject. I have never seen a book with so much miscellaneous and distracting stuff crammed into one page. The book is 1500 pages of which half don't need to be there. This might work in a class room, but a huge mistake for individual learning. They call there code samples live code, but I call it filling the pages. It's better to explain concepts with simple examples first, then build on them, and this book fails miserably. Many times, only a 2-3 paragraphs explains something, then it goes on for 10 pages dissecting samples. Then briefly concludes before whisking to the next long sample. It's quite the jumble. Also, open any page in this book and you will see 20 bold highlighting of keywords that is very distracting. Also, the pages are thin and have a glare that I find annoying.

The authors appear very knowledge and I'm sure they mean well, but the book is a labor of over analyzing. It's need to be merged with a "dummies" approach to make it more balanced.

I found the subject of basic classes poorly covered in only one brief chapter, and I still haven't found how to make arrays of classes. Also, the index seems to be weak.

However, the breadth of the book is nice if you need to study a few esoteric areas such at TCP/IP, and I have to admit that the chapter on data structures and collections seems to be superb. I would only buy the book for a few of the chapters, but if your trying to learn from the ground up, you will doubt your confidence to learn programming.

I have purchased a lot of programming books and even a computer based training package in the last few years. None of them covered the concepts of programming as well as this book. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is a novice programmer who wants to learn C# as well as a good foundation of programming skills.