Customer Reviews

Programming C# (2nd Edition)

5 star:		(121)
4 star:		(33)
3 star:		(21)
2 star:		(13)
1 star:		(21)

 

 

Direct and Intuitive...these are my two words to describe this book. Jesse has exceeded an already high O'Reilly standard with this offering.

I have a basic web background (HTML, XML, JavaScript, CSS, Graphics) and was looking for the one (hopefully) book to help me catch on to C# and the many advanced object oriented concepts that come along with it.

Jesse knows exactly what the object oriented newbie is going to ask, and lets you know exactly what is happening. He knows what will confuse you (me), and clarifies IMMEDIATELY. Having this kind of foresight makes it possible to read this book cover to cover without jumping back to re-learn something that was explained poorly in the first place. The layout in this book is top-shelf.

As C# is completely dependent on the .NET Base Class Libraries, any text on the matter is incomplete without examples of and references to Windows and Web Forms. This book covers Windows Forms, Web forms, Web Services and ADO.NET. (The ADO.NET section is OUTSTANDING)

(If you are ever in doubt about an O'Reilly book, they have the table of contents listed for every item at their site)

I have yet to find a more efficient and easy to read text. Every time I think O'Reilly can't do any better, they come up with something like this.

Your money is well spent here.

This is a great book for learning C#. The first part is an excellent tutorial in the language, just right for experienced C, C++ and Java programmers and for advanced VB6 programmers.

The second part introduces how to use the language to create .net programs. This is a bit superficial, but his goal was only to provide an introduction, and it is a very good introduction. For more detail on really building advanced applications you will need an additional book (like his book on ASP.NET).

The third part of Programming C# goes into advanced topics you won't easily find elsewhere, with excellent coverage of (for example) threading, remoting, reflection, streams and so forth.

Liberty writes well, his examples are terrific, and he makes complex material easily understandable. Further, he supports his book on his web site where he provides not only source code but a discussion center where you can ask questions.

I highly recommend this excellent tutorial.

When I purchased this book I had little knowledge of C#. After reading the book and building all of the samples, I discovered that my lack of knowledge was something I had in common with the text. A bold statement, so let me explain.

Teaching effectively requires a deep understanding of the material, so what is important is emphasized at the expense of the trivial. In this book, everything is given equal importance, so the important material is lost in the trivial.

The text is frequently written "out of order", that is, statements are made, and then a later statement includes something you needed to understand the previous one. This is evident in the line by line code samples, where the author frequently describes line 3 of the code, and then says "but before we do that, we need to do line 2". This is confusing and not helpful.

While on the subject of the code samples, the samples frequently include a lot of useless code that just confuses the point. I ended up stripping the samples to the basics myself, and in virtually every case I ended up with a 50% or more reduction in lines of code, and a much clearer sample. Even worse, the samples could be done in much better ways, so in addition to being confusing they teach bad usage of the language.

The main problem with the samples is that many of them are taken directly from the SDK. The SDK samples are not designed to teach programming, they are designed to demonstrate how to solve a specific problem. This makes them inappropriate for teaching a language. The ones on ADO, for example, contain complex table joins, which are SQL constructs and have nothing to do with ADO or C#. The reflection API samples includes one where it writes IL directly, certainly not something that most programmers are going to do. And the text never explains the IL that is written.

I own dozens of O'Reilly books, and most are excellent. Unfortunately this one and UML In A Nutshell are the exceptions.

As with most other O'Reilly titles, "Programming C#" functions as both a good read and an in-depth work of top quality information.

Programming C# gives an in-depth first look into the C# language that, according to Microsoft, is going to be a very important part of it's .Net strategy, and thus the future of software development. The first part of the book introduces all important concepts that can be found in the C# language. Syntax and object oriented design principles behind the language are explained. (and really, with it's garbage collection, type safety etc. etc. it is almost a 100% Java copy). Part II focusses on some common programming areas where C# is supposed to become big: web-applications, (relational) database handling, and next-generation Windows applications. Special attention is given to topics like ASP.net and ADO. Maybe this chapter could have included some more real-world examples, but as it is it's still quite a realistic look at these areas for C# usage. The last part introduces you to C# and it's hooks to the rest of .Net. This again is a typical example of why you should spend some money on a book by O'reilly and not run out and buy the first "Jumbo 4000 pages .Net Resource Kit" you encounter in a local bookshop from Microsoft Press. You'll get non-bloated information on C#, without all the marketing blah blah Microsoft is surrounding it's new puppy-language with these days. Basic object-oriented principles should be familiar to the reader, since these are not really explained. (but of course, we don't even want that, since we already know all about that, don't we?)

Currently this is without a doubt the best C# book on the market. If now only Bruce Eckel could start with a Thinking in C#...

Yesterday I bit the bullet and installed VisualStudio.NET beta 2. Bringing up the IDE, I thought, "I guess its time to finally buy a C# book." Inside C# (Archer) reads very well, but it is more of an over view than an in depth treatment. Professional C# (Wrox authors) seems to cover *a lot* of ground, but because of its breadth, depth is not uniform. C# and the .NET Platform (Troelsen) seems exceptionally good, and has been my leading choice.

Today, though, I came across Programming C# (Liberty). From Liberty's other books, I know that he is a careful, thoughtful author, and that he is able to explain things well. His skill is clearly evident in this book. Programming C# goes into even more detail and depth than Troelsen's book. I also appreciate that Liberty puts C# and .NET in the context of other development tools, for such touchstones make the going easier. It is a welcoming book for many classes of readers. Reading various parts of Programming C#, it is clear Liberty has worked hard and effectively to craft an exceptional text. I'm grateful to have waited and to be able to begin my journey into this new programming model with such a helpful, pleasant guide.

My background is in C++ with some experience with Java and no experience with .NET. I didn't fully realize how similar C++ is to C# until I finished this book, and I think my money would have been better spent buying a book on .NET.

This book is 600 pages, but only the first half covers C#. The rest goes into using Visual Studio 2005 and various .NET classes, which applies equally well to any of the languages Microsoft supports. I didn't really learn anything new about C# that I hadn't already read in the various online tutorials. That's not a knock against the book - the information is all there - but if you know C++ and you're buying the book to learn C#, don't bother.

Instead I'd recommend:
1. Read an online tutorial or two on the difference between C++ and C#.
2. Download Visual C# 2005 Express Edition (free) and create some examples on your own. The IDE is very good at funneling you into using the right syntax.
3. Buy a book on .NET.

When I bought this book I was a beginning programmer setting out to learn C# and .NET. Liberty states in the book that beginners "may find some of it [the material in the book] tough going" but I took a chance and jumped out in the deep end and began reading it.

Even though this is an extremely well written book (that I now highly appreciate) Liberty was right. I only made it to the middle of chapter 4 before I realized that the pace was too fast.

Luckily I got hold of (and was rescued by) Michelsen's great book C# Primer Plus (on its nearly 1000 pages it teaches C#, OOP and programming basics from the very ground up). I found that the two books greatly supported each other because C# Primer Plus could fill in all my blanks while reading through Liberty's book. Moreover what C# Primer Plus was lacking in terms of .NET stuff (it doesn't touch ADO.NET, Windows Forms etc.) was presented by Programming C# in a now understandable and enjoyable form.

Programming C# is a work by a highly motivated writer in top form and can be enjoyed by anybody who makes sure that the basics are adequately covered.

I was attracted to this book because of prior good experiences with the OReilly series. What I expected was lean, mean, structured, complete, and accurate. What I got was light, fat, unstructured, incomplete, and sloppy.

An example paragraph:
"Classes and their instances (objects) do not exist in a vacuum but rather in a network of interdependencies and relationships, just as we, as social animals, live in a world of relationships and categories"

If it was just a few bad paragraphs of socio-biology, it would not matter. However the technical content of the book is written in the same sloppy fashion. Summaries are missing, important details are relegated to "oh - by the way's" hidden many pages after the topic.' Concepts are presented in random fashion. A little salt here, some pepper over there.

Instead of careful construction, what you have is "stream of conciousness" technical writing. Leave this to James Joyce. It has no place in a book on programming.

This book begins with a complete introduction to the C# language, with special tips for C++, VB6 and Java programmers. The writing is excellent, to the point, humerous but not silly, no wasted words but plenty of examples.

Part 2 of the book introduces the major types of applications you might build with C#, with a good introduction to ASP.NET, web forms, web services and also to ADO.NET.

It is in part 3 that this book stands out from all the rest, with a thorough explanation of many aspects of the CLR and the Framework Class Library, including lucid and very well written explanations of Assemblies, versioning, attributes, reflection, marshaling, threading, synchronization mechanisms, streams, async i/o, and com interop. Each of these topics can be a book in itself, but this book, Programming C#, provides enough introduction to make you productive and to lay the foundation for further reading.

I've not seen a better introduction to C#, and Liberty has a gift for making technical material crystal clear.

As you might gather from the title of my review, I'm a little hesitant to call this book an "introduction" without also qualifying it as a "review." It seems to be a little bit of both in that it discusses all of the basics of the C# language first (data types, methods, etc.) but the complexity quickly escalates into some fairly complicated sample code/programs. What had me a little confused was how, in the middle of explaining a very complicated section of code, Liberty stops to also explain some very elementary points about the language that you should know by this point -- unfortunately I don't have the book with me to give a real example, but just to help you understand what I mean, it's sort of like telling someone all the in-depth and complicated details of how a database program works, and then you suddenly stop and say "Oh by the way, when you refer to a method, you need to put the class name in front of it with the dot operator" (this is something that you can't possibly have missed if you've gotten as far as DB programming!) This made it hard for me to finally determine who exactly this book is written for.

In my opinion, it's a good intro (until you get to the more complicated sections later), but you might benefit from reading something else first. I hate to sound like a broken record, but Charles Petzold's Programming in the Key of C# is an excellent foundation from which to progress. Liberty's book is the second I read after Petzold, and I know Petzold's book helped me understand this one more than I probably would have. (Liberty also has Learning C#, which is much more of an intro, but I believe it contains a lot of the same information as the first few parts of this book).

Anyway, so why did I give it 5 stars then? Here are a few reasons:

- A nice introduction to all the basic C# elements
- A section on database programming
- A section on web programming
- A discussion of the new features found in C# 2.0
- A lot of advanced topics toward the end of the book (assemblies, attributes, threads, working with COM, etc.)

In short, it seems to have just about everything you'd want to know about C# (not exhaustively, of course) and I recommend it.