Customer Reviews

Microsoft® Visual C#® 2005 Step by Step (Step by Step (Microsoft))

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is an excellent resource for learning C#/.NET. It covers the basics of the language and then eventually heads into more advanced topics such as ADO.NET, ASP.NET, etc. Like with any book, the more you know coming in, the more you can take advantage of it, but I would say that even someone new to programming can get a lot out of this book.

Good Stuff:
1) Each topic in parts 1-4 is covered in a step by step fashion with plenty of examples to help you learn by doing.
2) Excellent summary for each chapter highlighting key points in a tabular format including mini code examples. This is by far one of the best way of doing a summary in a programming book I've seen.
3) You can do 99% of the examples with MS Visual C# Express Edition which is free. So you don't need to go out and buy Visual Studio 2005.
4) The books is broken up into 6 parts and this organization is well thought out. Parts 1-4 pretty much cover the language, Part 4 covers how to use Windows Forms with C#, Part 5 covers how to use ADO.NET with C# and finally Part 6 covers ASP.net.
5) Good topic coverage for a beginner book.

Stuff that could have been done better:
1) My primary frustration with this book is the many typographical errors. The errata list is bigger than what I would like to see and it wasn't even exhaustive. I found many errors not on the errata and even though I submitted them, I got no response. Make sure you print out the errata and keep it with u while u read.
2) There is no coverage of how to use C# with XML, nor is there coverage on File I/O, streams etc. It would have been good to have chapters on these topics. I think they're more important that covering ASP.NET.
3) Part 5 (ADO.NET) is not that good. The way that ADO.NET is explained is not as step by step as the previous 4 parts. The order in which things are done does not lend well to explaining the concepts. For ex: the first thing the author does is have you run a command line SQL script to modify a pre-existing database. Some more basic parts of ADO.NET such as how to create a database from scratch in Visual Studio are not covered at all. You would think that this is what would be done first. The chapters on ADO.NET could have been written in a much better way, preferably one that assumes little to no prior knowledge of a database. Nonetheless, to have ADO.NET coverage at all in a book at this level is good.
4)Part 6 covers ASP.NET. There are four chapters on this topic which quite qood considering this is not an ASP.NET book. Don't expect to get a good understanding of ASP.NET however, as ASP.NET cannot be understood well in such brevity.

Bottom Line:
I recommend adding this book to your arsenal if you plan on learning C#. It covers the language in adequate detail in a step by step fashion. [...]

I'm a long time developer with even a Microsoft Visual Basic .NET exam successfully completed but I wanted to transition over to C#. In preparing for the VB.NET exam I had some decidedly mixed experiences with the Microsoft Step By Step books - so much so that I tended to avoid them. I have a number of good books on C# but I was actually able to look at this before I purchased it here on Amazon. I am about halfway through the book and will tell you that I am very impressed. The material starts easily and ramps up fast to where I feel I am into the substance of the material and its not over my head. The book appears to cover the full range of material that I think I need to be able to move over into Visual Studio 2005 to begin developing my own personal commercial web site. Why a non-programmer would ever get into C# .NET programming is beyond me but for anybody else with any kind of programming background and who wants to go into C# and the .NET development environment I highly recommend this book.

Overall I really liked this book. Though, I've found that in learning C# -- you'll require an assortment of reference and guidance books to successfully complete your journey. Mr Sharp does a great job in the early sections of the book and his step-by-step examples are also good.

The section on indexers was extremely disappointing as the examples were very, very abstract. Also weak, the delegates/events section was extremely brief. I'm happy that I've read the book, but it alone will not prepare you to writing robust production level code. Overall I really liked this book, but for upper level C# concepts you will need to look elsewhere.

I am a C++ coder doing white box QA testing, after reading about C# thought it might prove useful in developing QA Tools for testing backend processes, got this book on a whim and it has proved to be very useful, well written, and very good examples, although I have a OOP background I found the chapters on OOP could be helpful for the beginner as well as us "know it alls," and would recommend this to my colleges and friends.

This was a good book, but I thought they introduced some complex concepts too early in the book. (Overloaded operators come immediately to mind.) Each concept is covered well, but it isn't really step by step. If you already know C#, then this will get you up to speed on the new material quickly, but for a C# beginner, there are better books.

This is one of the best start up books for people that are new to C#, Visual Studio 2005 and the .Net Frameworks, and/or are coming from a VB 6 background, with little or no experience with true object oriented programming concepts.

All the C# fundementals are covered, in a clear and easy to understand presentation.

Basic object oriented concepts are presented in an early chapter with simple examples, and then are later expanded upon with more detailed examples showing the real power of inheritance, encapsulation, polymorphism, and interfaces.

The book also includes useful introductions to the Visual Studio 2005 IDE, Winforms, ASP.Net, ADO.Net, and Web Services, with accompanying labs for each.

Perhaps this book scores it's highest points with it's simplified discussion of delegates and events, a topic which is unfortunately usually made needlessly obtuse by most C# books.

I wish I could have started with a great beginners book like this when I entered the .Net world back in 2002.

I'd recommend this book to anybody new to C# and object oriented programming. After finishing this book, add to your object oriented skill set with the indespensible 'Head First Design Patterns' and you'll have a solid foundation for advancing to the next level of C# and .Net programming.

This book elaborate every step in details. You seldom find a book which explains in detail and yet for beginner. this is the reason i rate 5.

anyway, for those developers who have some experience in c# and wish to look for more advance topic. this is not the book for you.

I'm on Chapter 17 of this book (only 11 to go!) and have felt compelled to let other potential readers know what an excellent book this is. Each chapter is well organized and incremental in its approach. The exercises are relevant and purely optional. The book has been organized so that it flows smoothly even if you skip over the practice sections within each chapter. Another aspect of this book that appeals to me is that it presents a number of different ways of achieving the same result and suggesting why one coding strategy might be more clear or efficient than another.

Most of the examples are straightforward, although there are times when the author chooses a code sample that is unnecessarily confusing and obfuscates the purpose of the lesson. But a careful read and re-read of these is all that is required. Another comment I would make is that in his code samples, he places variable declarations at the botttom of the class rather than at the top. As such, when you start reading a class example, be sure to jump to the bottom first so that you know where certain variables come from.

I had previously programmed as a hobby in Borland Delphi but had no knowledge of C#. I have been impressed with John Sharp's book and would buy it again. After making it thru the 1st ten chapters I feel like I have a good grasp of C# basics and have been able to make good progress on a C# project for mutual fund analysis. With the wealth of C# info available on the internet I debated the need for a book. However I found this book with it's clear and comprehensive style to be invaluable and a real time saver in learning the C# language.

This book is informative, and easy to read. The file examples are excellent ways learn from a "hands on appraoch." The first three chapters are built for new programmers, the next three for inexperienced C or C++ programmers, the next four for programmers transitioning from C, C++, or Java, and the rest is for finer details. I am an exprienced, professional C and C++ programmer. Without this book some of the concepts for C# "unsafe" code and other concepts would have been difficult to grasp.