Customer Reviews

Professional C# 2005 (Wrox Professional Guides)

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

PROS: I liked the book, and learned a lot from it. It is both a very broad and deep view of C# and .NET, covering more than most other books. It has good explanations of things like delegates, properties, indexers, and differences between C# and java, C++ and other languages. The section on ADO (SQL Database classes) is especially good, tho it goes pretty fast. This is a professional book, not for beginning programmers, but especially good if you know java or C++ already (I know both, so it helped even more).

Between this book and the Microsoft web site, I now have a firm understanding of the basics of C#, and a start in learning a good chunk of .NET. Much more to do on learning .NET, of course.

CONS: The problem with the book was a lack of quality control -- many more errors in the code snippets and some detailed explanations than there should have been -- all someone has to do is copy them into a program and try compiling them, and verify it at least compiles! Some were corrected in the downloadable code, but still a lot that weren't (I got tired of submitting errata reports). There were even some simple speling errors (sic) that a simple spell checker could have caught! Jeez guys, come on!

I was forced to go to the Microsoft web site and get accurate data on many occasions. Lost confidence in Wrox.

I got the impression that much of the data had started in one of the other C# books, got edited, and now there are holes, references to code and items that don't exist, etc. More a fault of the editors than the original authors.

Wrox -- put some pressure on your quality control people! These aren't romance novels, people like us actually read these things and USE THEM!!!

What a great book. Since Amazon doesn't list the book's table of contents, and you're probably wanting more information about what's in it before you buy, here's the table of contents from my copy of the book:

Part I: The C# Language.

Chapter 1: .NET Architecture.

Chapter 2: C# Basics.

Chapter 3: Objects and Types.

Chapter 4: Inheritance.

Chapter 5: Operators and Casts.

Chapter 6: Delegates and Events.

Chapter 7: Memory Management and Pointers.

Chapter 8: Strings and Regular Expressions.

Chapter 9: Collections.

Chapter 10: Generics.

Chapter 11: Reflection.

Chapter 12: Errors and Exceptions.

Chapter 13: Threading.

Part II: The .NET Environment.

Chapter 14: Visual Studio 2005.

Chapter 15: Assemblies.

Chapter 16: .NET Security.

Chapter 17: Localization.

Chapter 18: Deployment.

Part III: Data.

Chapter 19: Data Access with .NET.

Chapter 20: .NET Programming with SQL Server 2005.

Chapter 21: Manipulating XML.

Chapter 22: Working with Active Directory.

Part IV: Windows Applications.

Chapter 23: Windows Forms.

Chapter 24: Viewing .NET Data.

Chapter 25: Graphics with GDI+.

Part V: Web Applications.

Chapter 26: ASP.NET Pages.

Chapter 27: ASP.NET Development.

Part VI: Communication.

Chapter 28: Web Services.

Chapter 29: .NET Remoting.

Chapter 30: Enterprise Services.

Chapter 31: Message Queuing.

Chapter 32: Future of Distributed Programming.

Part VII: Interop.

Chapter 33: COM Interoperability.

Part VIII: Windows Base Services.

Chapter 34: Manipulating Files and the Registry.

Chapter 35: Accessing the Internet.

Chapter 36: Windows Services.

Part IX: Appendices (Web Site Only).

Appendix A: Principles of Object-Oriented Programming.

Appendix B: C# for Visual Basic 6 Developers.

Appendix C: C# for Java Developers.

Appendix D: C# for C++ Developers.

Index.


I hope that helps.

I have the 2nd edition of this book for .NET 1.0 and recently got this recent new edition focused on .NET 2.0. My big comment after reviewing this book is that C# 2.0 is dang cool! I love the new features and really am anxious to apply generics now into my applications. I give this book a big thumbs up in getting me up to speed in C# 2.0. It is a BIG book - 1540 pages and is heavy enough to leave dents in your legs. The authors do a good job of explaining C# from start to finish. There is also a tremendous amount of what I will label as 'tips and tricks' throughout. Here's my big reasons to get this book:

* It's big and covers so much from the C# world in an `applied' manner
* It covers all the core C# items and then expands out to areas that are less covered in other books - such as working with Active Directory or GDI+
* Covers working with SQL Server 2005 quite nicely
* Even covers futures such as working with WCF

Basically if you are a developer in the C# world of .NET - then this is something you would want next to your keyboard.

This book is a decent introduction to the C# language, in a very slow, very hold-your-hand sort of way. The later chapters on using C# in .NET applications aren't terribly useful because they follow the same overly simplified style of explanation and ultimately run out of space for advanced features.

I usually don't criticize writing styles, but certain grammatical constructs are overused in this book and began to grate on me. If I had this in electronic form, I'd love to see how many times the phrase, "The idea is that," appears in this book. I even saw, "The thing is that," which should never appear in writing. If your sentence begins with "The [generic noun] is that," you can generally omit this entire phrase.

Our team decided to use this book as our primer to begin the daunting task of a total rewrite of our quality and regulatory metrics software using C#. We chose this particular book because of the manner in which it allows developers, well-versed in other languages, to hit the ground running with C#. The chapters are very well laid out and the content is a perfect match. Some on our team have been in the industry for nearly 20 years and made comments on how much they have enjoyed the book. Obviously we are in the "child" stages of the development cycle, but this book has enabled us to kick the design phase up a few gears. So all in all, in our opinion, this book is a must have!

I am a long time believer in Wrox. Just like the publisher said, their books are written for programmer by programmer. There are not that many chit-chats in Wrox's book, just to-the-point programmer's talk. This book certainly reflects that principle.

However, I find it super difficult to follow the book content while studying the example source codes.

There are merely any cross references of the code snippet in the book to the example source code supplied. (It will be a great help if the book can point out something such as this following snippet is from example code xxxx).

Most of the example codes are poorly written. They are presented with a few .cs files instead of a decently organized solution/project file. This makes studying the inner logic a lot more difficult since I have to re-make them into solution/project files so I can use the VS.2005 IDE to debug the program in order to understand better.

I am sorry to say that this book is a bit of an disappointment.

I hope they will improve in their next edition.

As far as i've read (only read about 80 pages in the middle of the book)...
It's a massive reference about every aspect of .Net.
Everything is is handled, like windows forms and asp.net but also generics, windows services,...

It's a good guide if you search some information about all different area's in .Net. I think the book doesn't go in depth all the way, but they try to cover every aspect.

I'm still happy i bought it...

Check also their website [...], all sourcecode is available for download.

I bought this book to upgrade my .NET 1.1 skills to .NET 2.0. So my focus was more on the new features of .NET 2.0. While I do agree with most of fellow reviewers that the book covers most .NET 2.0 topics I am disappointed at its handling of generics in chapter 10.

In the code examples of chapter 10 generics are combined with anonymous delegates (see pages 281 and 283). This takes the focus away from the subject being discussed and does not promote professional software development practices which usually encourage simple and readable code. I would like to see this chapter re-written.

This book is an excelent resource for C# development. It is a must have. I have already purchased this book 4 times. Everytime I get a copy someone borrows it and never returns it. I totally understand why they would want to keep this book for themselves. It is well written and easy to understand. This book provides a great overview of the language. I typically find the information I was looking for when I open this book.

This book doesn't go deep into detail, but it's not supposed to. If you want to thoroughly grasp subtle nuances and details of c#, this is not your book. However, I do recommend it for a quick overview of the technologies.

PS: You should be an experienced developer to read this book. I do like the way it doesn't state the obvious & leave it up to your experience to guide you. And as always, w/multi author Wrox books, it's entertaining to see if you can "spot" the writer by their style.