.NET Gotchas [Paperback]

Venkat Subramaniam (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2005 | ISBN-10: 0596009097 | ISBN-13: 978-0596009090 | Edition: 1

Like most complex tasks, .NET programming is fraught with potential costly, and time-consuming hazards. The millions of Microsoft developers worldwide who create applications for the .NET platform can attest to that. Thankfully there's now a book that shows you how to avoid such costly and time-consuming mistakes. It's called .NET Gotchas.

The ultimate guide for efficient, pain-free coding, .NET Gotchas from O'Reilly contains 75 common .NET programming pitfalls--and advice on how to work around them. It will help you steer away from those mistakes that cause application performance problems, or so taint code that it just doesn't work right.

The book is organized into nine chapters, each focusing on those features and constructs of the .NET platform that consistently baffle developers. Within each chapter are several "gotchas," with detailed examples, discussions, and guidelines for avoiding them. No doubt about it, when applied, these concise presentations of best practices will help you lead a more productive, stress-free existence.

What's more, because code examples are written in both VB.NET and C#, .NET Gotchas is of interest to more than 75 percent of the growing numbers of .NET programmers. So if you're a .NET developer who's mired in the trenches and yearning for a better way, this book is most definitely for you.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Dr. Venkat Subramaniam ([e-mail]) is the founder of Agile Developer, Inc. (a software training, mentoring and development firm), and a co-founder of DuraSoft. Working with .NET since its Beta 2 pre-release, he's used the platform extensively on commercial projects for his clients. Venkat offers several courses on developing applications using .NET, and has trained and mentored more than 3,000 software developers in the US and Europe. A frequent speaker at software development conferences, he is also an adjunct professor for the practice of computer science at University of Houston, and teaches at Rice University's School for Continuing Studies. Venkat holds a BS in Computer Engineering, an MS in Electrical Engineering, and PhD in Computer Science. He is recipient of the 2004 UH Computer Science Department Teaching Excellence award.

Product Details

• Paperback: 394 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1 edition (May 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596009097
• ISBN-13: 978-0596009090
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,119,532 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Dr. Venkat Subramaniam, founder of Agile Developer, Inc., has trained and mentored thousands of software developers in the US, Canada, Europe, and Asia. Venkat helps his clients effectively apply and succeed with agile practices on their software projects. He is a frequent invited speaker at international software conferences and user groups. He's author of .NET Gotchas (O'Reilly), coauthor of the 2007 Jolt Productivity award-winning book Practices of an Agile Developer (Pragmatic Bookshelf),
and author of Programming Groovy (Pragmatic Bookshelf).

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Experience Talking :), June 8, 2005

By 

Puneet P. Sarda "Enjoy Life!!" (Houston, Texas, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: .NET Gotchas (Paperback)

If I had just two words to describe this book they would be "Experience Talking". Read this only if you have played with .net for a year or more. You will recount how you were stuck in an issue and spent anything from hours to days figuring out whats the right way to do it. And now it is out there for you in this book.

The Highs:

--> The author gets to the point from the word go instead of talking about whats .net etc.... Hence for the advanced reader, its a delight.

--> The gotchas are explained keeping in mind how Design Principles might get violated by the programmer and what can be done to avoid.

--> The examples are both in C# and VB.NET which makes it appealing for programmers from both the communities.

--> The author has gone to low level details like MSIL generated code to explain the reason behind a gotcha which clarifies things very well.

The Lows:

--> A few typos in the code (I found two glithces) but the errors will be evident to the observant reader.

Strongly recommended for anyone who believes in learning from other peoples mistakes :)

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars You Have Several Better Choices, November 1, 2005

By 

J Hollingsworth (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: .NET Gotchas (Paperback)

The real question about this book is, "What is the point?" I purchased this book based on early reviews. I encourage you not not make my mistake; you should take a look at the contents first. I believe you will quickly decide you have several better book choices from Amazon. The book is a collection of essentially unrelated code snippets in C# and VB.NET, which describe how not to write code. Everything in the book is well-known and available in the C# / VB.NET online documentation. If you are specifically interested in programming mistakes then this book may be of interest to you. But if you are looking for practical coding techniques you should look somewhere else.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Watch out for that pitfall!, June 5, 2005

By 

Robert L. Stinnett (Boonville, MO) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: .NET Gotchas (Paperback)

Most C# and VB.Net programmers know there are many quirks and unforseen results that hide within the .NET Framework. Sometimes we think we know how something should behave, and will spend hours trying to make it work -- all the while, the actual behavior was working correctly, it was our assumptions that were incorrect.

In this book, the author takes you through 75 of the most common quirks, gotchas and pitfalls that even the most experienced .NET programmer sometimes will get stuck up on. This is not a book about errors within .NET, rather one that shows you the more common differences between perceived and expected results.

The book is organized into sections covering different areas of the framework -- from the CLR itself, to garbage collection, to the Visual Studio environment, and beyond. One of the more helpful parts about the book is the author in many places will illustrate code snippets with "gotcha" or incorrect code, and then have a sample of the correct way to code a given item to get back the intended results. In addition, a wrap-up at the end of each gotcha puts the entire thing into a nutshell-quote to make it (hopefully) easy to remember and apply.

To wrap it all up, the author also includes a pretty comprehensive appendix to direct to you to web sites, online discussion groups and FAQ's to find out more information about the particular quirk or gotcha.

All in all, one of those books you won't just purchase and sit down and read for the heck of it. Rather, one of the books you purchase and yank off the shelf when you find yourself doing some .NET programming and find yourself scratching your head trying to avoid a pitfall.