4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
A word of warning..., November 11, 2004
This review is from: Professional .NET for Java Developers Using C# (Paperback)
I bought this book on a whim, as it was bundled in a 2-for-1 offer along with the book I was actually interested in (whose title I don't currently recall). Having worked as a Java developer for a number of years, I had recently accepted a job as a C# developer, and thought that I'd buy a book to pick up the basics. In that context, and in accordance with the book's title, I was looking for the book to serve two main purposes - 1) To walk me through the basics of the C# language, pointing out the similarities and explaining the differences between the two languages. 2) To describe how functionality available through the (familiar) standard libraries in Java can be achieved through the (unfamiliar) .NET libraries using C#.
To satisfy the first purpose, I was hoping for some detailed chapters on the core language. Sadly, only 'Chapter 3: Language Syntax' covers this subject, and does so in a mere 47 pages. Of these few pages, I generally found that the discussions were targeted too much at a novice programmer, rather than someone who already has programming experience in a language that is very similar to C#. For example, the page and a half that covers Exceptions simply described what Exceptions are for and how they are used. I already know what they're for and how they're used - I'm a Java developer! It would have been more useful to concentrate on the minor syntax differences, the fact that all Exceptions are unchecked in C#, and that C# doesn't make a distinction between checked Exceptions, runtime Exceptions and Errors, as in Java. Perhaps as icing on the cake, a table of how some commonly used Exceptions in Java map to the commonly used Exceptions in C# (e.g. NullPointerException to NullReferenceException, IllegalArgumentException to ArgumentException or ArgumentNullException, IndexOutOfBoundsException to ArgumentOutOfRangeException) would have been nice. Alas there was none of this.
Multithreading is another key area of the languages that differs between C# and Java in a number if significant ways. It's such an important aspect of modern programming that most programming books tend to devote an entire chapter to it. Fair enough, for a language conversion book rather than an introductory programming book, I wouldn't expect an entire chapter devote to it. I would expect at least something on the subject, however. Sadly, this book contains nothing. Absolutely nothing! Nil! Nada! The keyword 'lock' doesn't even have an entry in the book's index.
I'd also like to mention at this point that although the authors only devoted 47 pages to the core language, they felt it necessary to devote the majority of a 32 page chapter to a discussion of how to use Visual Studio. Any developer worth their salt ought to know how to use an IDE (remember this book is targeted at 'professional' developers), so learning how to use Visual Studio should be relatively straightforward. Even if it's not, those pages wasted introducing Visual Studio would have been better spent covering some of the gaping holes in the book's coverage of its stated subject matter, rather than a cursory introduction to some of the features in Visual Studio that are better covered by its own online help documentation and tutorials.
Coming back to the second purpose - describing how functionality available through the standard Java libraries in Java can be achieved through the .NET libraries - I find that I cannot reasonably comment upon this in any great detail. True, there are the expected chapters devoted to data access (ADO.NET vs JDBC), ASP.NET and Windows Forms, and they might very well be of some use, judging from some of the other reviews. However, I was so disappointed with the poor content and lack of depth in the first few chapters of this book that I decided not to waste any further time with the rest of it. I found the other book that I bought along with this one to be an altogether better read. On the few occassions when I've looked back to this book as a reference source (I left the good book at home, so had to defer to using this one whilst at work), more often that not I've found that I've simply wasted my time with it, and moved on to find some other more useful reference source instead.
The bottom line is, don't waste your money - this is one of the few books that I've actually thrown in the bin (a couple of times, in fact, though each time I end up fishing it back out. Throwing books away just feels so wrong, even if the book does belong with the rest of the rubbish).
Chris (Cambridge, UK)
P.S. I'm sorry that I can't remember the name of the other book - it was actually quite good!
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Shortest path to .NET knowledge, January 1, 2003
This review is from: Professional .NET for Java Developers Using C# (Paperback)
This is Wrox at its best - working code explained well by working programmers. This book provides the easiest way for a Java programmer to learn the basics of C# and the .NET environment including ASP.NET and database access with ADO.NET. Using this book and freely available software (.NET Framework, SharpDevelop, Web Matrix and MSDE) you have a complete environment for learning .NET for less than $...- hard to beat.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Good quick read, December 1, 2002
This review is from: Professional .NET for Java Developers Using C# (Paperback)
I've been working with Java and JSP Pages for a few years but my company's looking more and more at .NET and I was told to look into it. I'd heard a lot about it's similarity with Java, and so this book seemed a natural starting point. I wasn't dissapointed. It quickly ran through the important parts of .NET and how they related to what I already knew in Java: C# instead of Java, ASP.NET instead of JSP, ADO.NET instead of JDBC, etc.
It was a quick book to work through (just 400 pages) but now I've finished it I'm writing my apps just as easily with .net as I can with Java - and there are some things like binding to data in web apps that are even easier to do. And I've been able to put together some .Net prototypes for my manager in just a few weeks.
If you're looking for a overview of .NET and don't want to wade through a lot of stuff you already know, you won't be dissapointed with this.
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