Customer Reviews

Pro .NET 2.0 Code and Design Standards in C# (Expert's Voice in .NET)

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

 

 

Mark Horner takes on the ambitious project of telling us how to standardize code, design, and patterns in "Pro .NET 2.0 Code and Design Standards in C#" published by Apress. A what, where, why and how format for each topic promised the reasoning and justification for the standard practices. I had high expectations for a clear explanation of a proposed standard for designing and developing applications in C#. This book misses the mark and left me wondering what standard was being proposed.

As I read through the book, I kept wondering why the material I had just read was included in the book. For example, in a book about C# standards the author discusses Visual Basic naming conventions, and even demonstrates the use of a leading underscore for a variable name with Visual Basic code. The author makes confusing claims such as "...there is always an option to accept a .NET standard, which rules against using case sensitivity (e.g. in C# language)." The syntax of basic language structures is covered, such as an if statement, including the optional else clause.

The what, where, why and how format of each topic is followed by an acknowledgement of the practice. Apparently believing the first acknowledgement isn't enough, a List of Standards is included in the back of the book where the acknowledgements are repeated.

The purpose of the book seems to be mentioning as many topics as possible, whether or not they have anything to do with standards. For instance, the author felt the need to include the first 128 ASCII characters and parentheses in the glossary but not tell you their purpose. The entire entry for parentheses is
() Parentheses.

Compare that to the much more enlightening
` Single quote - not a comment ("//" or "/*...*/").

The weight given topics seems strange as well, with the if statement getting about the same coverage as service oriented architecture, about two pages each. Based on the title, I expected to see a standard developed. What a surprise. At the end of the day what we are left with is not a standard at all, but just acknowledgements that various things exist.

Maybe I've just had my expectations set too high by the excellent "Framework Design Guidelines" by Krzysztof Cwalina and Brad Abrams, but Horner's book is a big disappointment. Save your money.

If you are looking for guide on how to really leverage the power of design patterns and standards using C# 2.0 this is not the book. This book is simply a vague rehash of other books and sources such as MSDN KB. In the body of the book the author even points you to the resources that he read to write this book. The author is extremely verbose, and often repeats himself using his What, Where, Why, and How descriptions.

The design patterns and standards revealed have little to do with .NET 2.0. There are 235 pages total consisting of 12 chapters. The first 9 chapters have nothing to do with .NET or C# 2.0. Chapter 8 is a brief overview of the XML commenting system in Visual Studio--like most all chapters it does not provide you with any useful information.

The first 9 chapters only concern standards and pratices in an enterprise environment. The standards presented can pertain to any environment and offer nothing specific towards the .NET way, etc.

When you finally start seeing some source code it is extremely frustrating. There is no meat to it. Every example is constructed from some abstract concept of what real-world applications are and is expressed as a console application in which each class implements a method that returns a simple string. This is the type of class structure you will be learning (seriously!):

public class SomeFactory {
public string MakeSomething() {
return "I made a widget...";
}
}

If you are an experienced developer you will find the whole thing extremely frustrating. Each pattern chapter is only a few pages in length (including source) and provides only the one abstract console app as a sample. BTW, I hope you like Model T cars because every example makes use or reference to the Model T.

If you are like me then you are looking for some real-world and practical solutions, however, there is nothing in this book of substance to offer a professional coder. The only audience I can recommend this book to would be the new C# developer that is expecting to soon be working in an enterprise/large team environment and needs to understand the very basics of what they might encounter.

Yep, this is a cool book. It really offers a ".NET Design & Development framework" that covers stuff from A-Z. It covers .NET from code to architecture through the various aspects of development, design and documentation policies. It is surprising just how much territory is covered, as mentioned by other reviewers. I really like the discussion on the hard to handle aspects of .NET, like when to favor abstract classes over interfaces, or when not to use inheritance and favor containment. I also found the content on design patterns to be refreshenly presented: precise and intuitive. More seriously interesting books like these, please! ;)

What I like about this book is the range of topics (from C# code notation to enterprise architecture) and the way that it is written (as a "C# community" book). There is a lot of stuff that I already know or took for granted, and heaps I did not appreciate, as a lead developer. I can see the book playing a useful role in motivating my team to code and design consistently across projects, without me having to show them all the time. What I would of liked to of seen is a section on UML - it would save me buying an UML book! ;)

At long last someone has tried to catalog best practices for .NET developers and architects. While, I have only just got the book, it is one of a few that has ever excited me. What sold me on the book was the easy "What, Why, Where and How" format and the range of technical coverage. The part of the book on design patterns is worth the price of the book alone - the author removes the pretentiousness surrounding design patterns and makes them so easy to follow.

I can't think of an audience for this book. It's a terse refresher course on a bunch of different architecture books. It feels like the Cliff notes version of the Design Patterns book smashed together with the Cliff notes of Code Complete. You really have to understand the topics before you read this book. You will not learn them here.

I can't imagine who I would recommend this book to.

I got this book hoping that it would help me with my work....enforcing some new standards...and some good practices. Sparing a few chapters...this book is a total waste of money. I could have got all the stuff from the FxCop itself.
By and large...a bit too simple. Maybe if one is a starter to programming, and is into the "do it the standardized way" attitude....maybe this book "could" help....else..dont even bother.
-Sash