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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
2 and a half stars for C# readers, December 18, 2003
There are some good things in this book but overall it is unimpressive - in my opinion of course.It starts off well by describing how to setup the IDE and the device, including a unique description of how to target unsupported devices. It then goes on to the mandatory introduction to the .NETcf, including detailed information on the JIT compilers and the CLR. Chapter 3 is all about the GUI, with consideration of Pocket PC and Windows CE devices. Most info is available online and in the help, but it is well presented. Chapter 4 on threading is disappointing. It incorrectly states that there are only a few threads maintained by the ThreadPool; it does not even mention the Threading.Timer, ManualResetEvent and AutoResetEvent classes. The examples provided are unrealistic and serve only for demonstrating the syntax; the same comment applies to all examples throughout the book. Chapter 5 briefly overviews connectivity with TCP, UDP, HTTP and IR. As with other areas of the book, there is a lot of breadth but no depth. How can a discussion on programming sockets ignore asynchronous communication? The following 2 chapters are about ADO.NET and Sqlce; nothing spectacular here, but no real omissions either. These are followed by 4 chapters on XML. XML in relation to the dataset and the whole XML namespace are pretty well covered here. Interoping with native code is essential to any .NETcf developer, given the compactness of the framework. Chapter 12 attempts to cover that and it generally provides a good introduction to it. However, there is no mention of the dumpbin utility or the extern keyword or a short description on writing an eVC dll. A serious chapter on the topic would have covered these, as well as the technique of subclassing .NET controls with the MessageWindow (which itself is not described at all). Finally, the authors describe how to use unsafe C# for marshalling deep/nested structures, whereas there is an alternative safe way of achieving the same result (which also means it can be used from VB.NET). Chapter 13 on Reflection is good. I have to say, though, that when describing a technology it is useful to tell the reader where the benefit is, as well as mention scenarios of particular interest. So, for example, when talking about reflection, the authors could have explained how to use it to compensate for the lack of the Enum.Parse method. The same principle applies to other areas of the book. I cannot criticise the contents of chapter 14 on cryptography, because the topic is mostly left untouched by other .NETcf sources. Chapter 15 on performance is great. I would be urging you to get access to this chapter one way or another, were it not for a recent excellent article on MSDN covering the same topic very well. Chapter 16 on deployment is good, and the final chapter on the smartphone will not tell you much (5-6 pages long) but it will tell you more than any other printed source will (at the moment). <VB rant>
Examples are in both VB and C#. I applaud publishers who do this rather than release two books with language being the only difference, or even worst focus on one language only. However, when this approach is followed, every effort should be made for the examples to be identical except for the syntax. This cannot be said for this book, where a poor translation of the C# examples into VB was attempted. Suffice to say that some of that code will not even compile, and the code that does clearly has Option Strict turned off. Every effort has been made to keep the layout of the VB code different to the C# one; the authors think arrays in VB.NET start at 1, that the only way to get the type of a class is to instantiate one first, that escape characters are needed in VB strings, that arrays or objects cannot be created on the same line, that integers cannot be declared inline to a for loop, that UInt32s can be used in VB and so on and so forth. Hence 2.5 stars for C# readers and only 2 for VB.NET readers.
</VB rant>
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by Baijian Yang
by Mike Snell
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