Customer Reviews

Introducing .NET 4.0: With Visual Studio 2010 (Expert's Voice in .NET)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

When you buy a new television and are luxuriating in it's opulence, it's extra crisp display and hi-fidelity sound, do you read the entire owners manual or do you just read the parts of the owners for the things that are basically new on this model of TV? You already know how to work the television as they are fundamentally all the same but this new model that you've bought may have a built in wireless connection, or options on the sound to change from Stereo to Dolby etc. There is no need to read the entire manual, only the bits that are new to this make and model.

Over the years that I have been a Microsoft .Net programmer I have read literally hundreds of books that are basically re-hashes of previous titles, updated to include what's new in the latest Framework release. For example, when .Net 3.5 was released, I read numerous books that were basically the .Net 3.0 books that were simply updated and expanded to include the new features of .Net 3.5. Whilst this can be a good thing, you have a single reference manual incorporating all you need to know in one place, sometimes you just want a book that only covers the changes in the frameworks. Just place the extra chapters in a separate book. Rather than reading about classes and technologies that you already know, just give me what's new. That is exactly what Introducing .Net 4.0 With Visual Studio 2010 is, for the most part. The book is based on the Beta version of .Net 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010 so some things may change by the time of actual release, however those changes are likely to be quite minor.

After a very brief introductory chapter Introducing .Net 4.0 delves straight in with what's been changed, added etc. to Visual Studio 2010. After all, this will (in all likely) be the tool you will use to take advantage of what follows in this book. From there we're off to a couple of chapters detailing changes to in the actual languages (this book is mainly geared towards the C# developer although the author does point out differences in VB.Net as well) and the underlying Common Language Runtime environment. Alex Mackey provides numerous examples liberally sprinkled around the chapters when introducing the new features to show you how they work and how to take advantage of them.

One thing that rather surprised me about this book is that Alex Mackey covers all the bases. It's not just a book for Windows Client developers or Asp.Net developers etc. He has included what's new in the .Net framework for all the technologies even including Silverlight. As an added bonus, the last chapter of the book covers the new Windows Azure framework. Whilst strictly speaking this isn't really part of .Net 4.0, there are tools built into Visual Studio 2010 to help take advantage of the new Azure framework and so it does fit in nicely with the purview of the book.

The book has a nice flowing feel to it and is surprisingly easy to read. Some technical books read more like an SA or university thesis whereas this one reads more like a novel. Packed with information regarding only the new additions and changes to the .Net Framework and Visual Studio.

If you are looking for a book teaching you how to program using Microsoft .Net technologies, then this isn't for you. If you are looking for an all-in-one reference manual on .Net 4.0 then again this book isn't for you. However if you are already a Microsoft .Net programmer and are looking for a book that details only what is new and changed in the upcoming .Net 4.0 framework, give yourself a head start with what's coming around the corner, then this book is for you and comes recommended.

Alex Mackey does a very fine job of giving a very high level overview of the massive amount of changes being introduced with .Net 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010. The first several chapters discuss some of the "core" changes to the framework and IDE. These chapters felt very forced and rushed. Most of the sections were too short to be provide much information but long enough that they left you with the impression that you should have gotten more out of them. I will credit the author that he gave great additional references at the end of every chapter for further reading. That's not to say it was all bad. The sections in Chapter 3 on MEF, Named and Optional Parameters, the VB.NET changes, and Variance were great.

For me the book started to shine after Chapter 5 when the author started tackling some of the specific technologies. In particular Chapter 8 on the Entity Framework was excellent. He did a great job leading into the next chapter about WCF Data Services and bridging the topics together (and with Chapter 7 on WCF).

One chapter that I think is out of place is Chapter 14 - Silverlight Introduction. The author justifies its inclusion in the book because Silverlight released after Visual Studio 2008, but it really does not fall in with .Net 4.0 or Visual Studio 2010. I can't help but to feel that the book real-estate could have been better utilized by delving deeper into some of the other new technologies and the reader left to brush up the basics of Silverlight.

The book is fairly well structured. The only complaint I have about how the book is laid out is that the author occassionally referred to REST and RESTful services starting with Chapter 7 on WCF, but never actually explains it until the last chapter on Azure. The table of contents even lists a section on REST in Chapter 7, but that chapter only mentions it in passing (may it is an issue with my print). Be mindful that I encountered quite a few spelling and grammar errors as well.

With this book you'll get a pretty comprehensive outline of the changes in Microsoft's latest iteration of the .Net Framework and Visual Studio IDE. All that major new or significantly updated technologies get at least some attention. Don't read this book if you aren't already familiar with developing in prior versions.

This book is a smorgasbord of .NET 4.0 goodies. This book does an excellent job of pulling all the new features in .NET 4.0 into one place. It covers the topics in enough detail that you leave the topic understanding what it is about and in many cases with references to find out more.

I am currently working as the SME on some of the Microsoft Learning tracks for Visual Studio 2010, so I have had to dig deep into Visual Studio 2010. I wish I would have had this book at the beginning of the project. I have not found anything missing as far as new features go.

Below is the table of contents from the book.

Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Visual Studio IDE and MEF
Chapter 3: Language and Dynamic Changes
Chapter 4: CLR and BCL Changes
Chapter 5: Parallelization and Threading Enhancements
Chapter 6: Windows Workflow Foundation 4
Chapter 7: Windows Communication Foundation
Chapter 8: Entity Framework
Chapter 9: WCF Data Services
Chapter 10: ASPNET
Chapter 11: Microsoft AJAX Library
Chapter 12: jQuery
Chapter 13: ASPNET MVC
Chapter 14: Silverlight Introduction
Chapter 15: WPF 4.0 and Silverlight 3.0
Chapter 16: Windows Azure

The biggest ding to this book is the typos. Holy smokes, editors should not drink on the job. I won't ding the book the book for that.

Another ding is that although they talk about code samples, I cannot find any. They give you the database they used throughout the book, but I have found no use for it without the code to attach to it.

All in all I recommend this book to anyone interested in getting up to speed quickly with the new features in .NET 4.0. It is nice to have them all in one place. It is also nice to have them in a book that does not cover every feature. For example an ASP.NET 4.0 book will have every feature in the 4.0 release along with all the past releases.

The book is definitely worth the purchase.

This book has a good collection of new features in .NET 4 and Visual Studio 2010. The author has done substantial research from various sources to compile this book. If you are preparing a presentation for .NET 4 and Visual Studio 2010 new features, or just want to know about them, this is a book you can start with. This book serves as a broad introduction and overview, not a deep dive in a single topic. What I think the book can do a little better is its organization of chapters and materials. For example, chapter 10 covers such a wide diversified topics--web.config, IDE changes, code snippets, deployment, ViewState, meta-tags, URL routing, HTML encoding, auto start web applications, caching, resource monitoring, and charting. It could make sense to reorganize these topics into different chapters.

I am .Net Software developer and want to keep current with the latest technology so I can know what tools to use when facing a specific problem, but it's hard to follow so many different technologies in this field. I follow a lot of different blogs, but it's still hard to gain a big picture because the blogs touch a topic without too much background information. This book is targeted for the busy developers like me. The book doesn't dig into depth for a specific technology, but it gives a brief overview for each popular technology, specifically:
1. Visual Studio 2010 new features.
2. C# and VB new features in .Net 4.0
3. CLR new features.
4. Parallelization new features.
5. WF
6. WCF
7. Entity Framework
8. WCF Data services.
9. Asp.Net
10. Asp.Net Ajax.
11. JQuery
12. Asp.Net MVC
13. Silverlight and WPF
14. Windows Azure.

As I said, this book is about width, not depth, since each technology itself could easily make a full book .After reading this book, you gain a big picture on each technology, and then if you want to dig into a specific technology, you can pick up the books focusing on the specific technology.

Thanks, Alex Mackey. I opened to the first page and you already started answering the questions I've had in my mind today. Specifically, for me, information about what's new in .NET 4.0, ASP.NET MVC, Silverlight and WCF Data Services. Very timely information. It's funny that in the tech-book industry the time-frame for getting books to press is so short that it's almost like the re-birth of a need for newspapers or something. Extra, extra! Find out what Microsoft is up to today! :-) This is a good book, and I have very much enjoyed Alex's writing style. It's like having a friend there walking through this stuff together. Kudos.

Very good book, it assumes you've got some experience of VS2008 so it's probably not a book for beginners. It summarizes the huge amount of new stuff. Essentially, it's telling us what's there, what's new, giving us a high level overview without trying to give a detailed tutorial or exhaustive documentation on any particular feature.

It includes many short interviews with various experts on particular features and the author considers why particular features might be useful and what's worth spending time on.

So it's quick to read and very good value for time in understanding what's new and seeing what might be worth looking into in detail. The price is very reasonable too.

There are a couple of typos that are irrelevant to me - I am able to get the knowledge I'm after, so the book perfectly suits my needs.

My needs are an introduction to new features of .NET 4.0 and for that this book is very difficult to put down. You will have to use supplementary sources to get anything more than the basics, but you probably do that every time you are programming anyway - Bing/Google/Yahoo, MSDN, other books, ...

This book doesn't waste space with older features of .NET; it just focuses on the new items.

I haven't read the entire book ... and probably won't even though I'd like to; I bounce between topics/chapters and my priorities change all the time, primarily dictated by my job. This actually makes the book more useful to me.

I could get all this information online, but I'm not online all the time (I read on the subway or while waiting in lines) and sometimes I just prefer to read away from the computer where it's too easy to get distracted from a particular topic.

Great reference book.

If you've been busy working with VS 2008 and want to get an overview of changes and additions to VS 2010, this book is perfect! Very clear explanatory sections with light introductory projects, where appropriate, to help integrate the information.

Others reviews have covered the details and section chapters. I'll just add that Author is maintaining a web site you can link to from the Apress Book Details page or just try this - simpleisbest.co.uk/. Click the Book Tab and look for the "What's different about this book?" section. He details what he was trying to accomplish while writing the book, complete with an explanatory cartoon! In my opinion he nailed what he was trying to achieve.

To sum up, this is a great overview/introduction to .NET 4.0 technologies.

Visual Studio 2010 has just come out recently with .NET 4.0 and has some nice interesting new features in VS as well as .NET 4.0. This book covers all the new features in Visual Studio 2010 which includes new features in .NET 4.0.

The first several chapters discuss some of the "core" changes to the framework and IDE. These chapters felt very forced and rushed. There is lots of great information on cool new features like Silverlight 3.0 full IDE support, full jQuery support, better intellisense, MVC 2.0 full support, and much more.


Below is the table of contents from the book.

Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Visual Studio IDE and MEF
Chapter 3: Language and Dynamic Changes
Chapter 4: CLR and BCL Changes
Chapter 5: Parallelization and Threading Enhancements
Chapter 6: Windows Workflow Foundation 4
Chapter 7: Windows Communication Foundation
Chapter 8: Entity Framework
Chapter 9: WCF Data Services
Chapter 10: ASPNET
Chapter 11: Microsoft AJAX Library
Chapter 12: jQuery
Chapter 13: ASPNET MVC
Chapter 14: Silverlight Introduction
Chapter 15: WPF 4.0 and Silverlight 3.0
Chapter 16: Windows Azure

Its a great book for anybody wanting to know what is new in the latest version of Visual Studio or .NET. A great buy!