Customer Reviews

Programming C# with Visual Studio .NET 2005

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I wish this book was around when I was first learning C#. There is so much to learn with .NET that everyone has to specialize, and to really learn your area well, you start by getting general knowledge about C# and .NET from a book, then go the online help, blogs, and newsgroups to learn your specific area. Given that, there's just no reason to try and wade through some 1400 page book -- this book is just the right size. It has a good and clear explanation of the language basics, as well as the best (in that it is both understandable and correct) explanation of delegates and events I have yet seen (very important since they are both essential to .NET programming, and also a bit hard to grasp at first.) It also gives a nice introduction to some advanced topics, and includes discussion of some of the neat features introduced in 2.0. If I could give 1/2 stars, I would take off half a star for the quality of the editing, but overall, this book is more than worth the price.

Jeffrey Suddeth explains C# clearly and concisely. It teaches basic C# syntax, C# containers (arrays & collections), delegates & events, exception handling, the Visual Studio IDE and environment, Windows Forms, GUIs, using XML from C#, multithreaded C# programming, and finally network programming.

Some of the latter topics in other books are presented in an overly complex way that can daunt even determined readers. What I liked about this book is that these topics were simple and easy to learn.

As both a programmer, and an instructor, I have to say I really appreciated this book. The material was presented with a great balance of explanation and examples. The examples were simple but based on real life topics (so the reader could easily imagine the true usefullness of the concept being illustrated.) And the author did a great job of introducing forward concepts (that is, bringing the reader a taste of more advanced topics in a way that is comprehensible to a bright beginner.) The editing errors mentioned by another reader were minor and did not interfere with understanding -- I have seen worse editing in technical books put out by major technical publishers. And I am pleased to say that all the examples I downloaded from the author's web site compiled and ran correctly (also were available in nice small files.)

If you have grown weary of books that promise to provide for you a positive, easy learning experience, only to fall miles short of that promise, this book is for you. Jeffery Suddeth provides clean, crisp, straight-forward examples from which you learn easily what hitherto you may have found virtually incomprehensible in other books. There is no wasted verbage, no overkill, no being talked down to. Only clear, concise, and easily-understandable information. If you want to truly learn C#, and not merely acquire a passing familiarity as well you might with so many other books out there, this is the book for you. Indeed, Jeffery Suddeth has you learning highly technical topics with greater ease than the much less technical, and therefore less usable, topics covered in books intended for base level readers.

I am grateful to Mr. Suddeth for making the learning of complex material not only easy, but actually enjoyable.

Jeffrey Suddeth did an awsome job on this book. Having programmed in C many years ago then moved on to VBA in MS Access, VB and VB.NET, this book was an excellent refresher to the C syntax which C# came from. Of course C# has all the object oriented features which make it even better. I would rate this book with the Kernigan & Ritchie book on C, which anyone who was learning C in the mid to late 80's used the K & R book as their "bible". Later on in the book Jeffrey gives some specifics of working with Visual Studio, Windows Forms, working with data, etc. An excellent book to learn C# by.

Problem: Someone came by and was willing to pay a rather large amount of money for a project but insisted on C#. Like the old joke, we know what we are, we just quibble about the price.

OK, so now I need to know C#, and I need to know it quickly. The solution to that problem (regardless of the language) is really simple - a trip to the bookstore.

I bought three different books on C#. I often do this, as just looking them over in the store may be misleading. I took all three, and started reading in each of them. I usually find that I then begin to concentrate my time on one of the books.

I started on this one last - visually it's kind of dull. On the other hand, by page 9 I was typing in a short program. By Golly, it worked. It didn't do much, just printed a line of text, but I had a program running. That way I was able to prove that the installation of the software was working, I could see a bit of the basic C# structure, and it printed something. There are really only four things that a program does I/O, logic, arithmetic, and data storage. In only a few minutes I had done at least a simple output.

This new book covers the latest version of C#, Visual Studio and the .NET framework. It took me about a week to go through the book, the next week I read the other two books and got some very good ideas just from from the fact that they worded things differently. When I got started on the gig, I could hold my own with the other C# programmers. And that's all you can possibly ask of a book.

This was not my first programming language. I've worked in at least a dozen languages over the years, maybe two dozen. I don't know if I would pick this book for the complete beginner unless it was for a class where the instructor could provide some additional direction.

On the other hand, when I was a complete beginner they handed me an assembly language programming book and told me to go read it (This was long, long ago when the world was still flat). This book is a hell of a lot easier than the way I started.

I have purchased a lot of computer books over the years but this one has been one of the best books I have come across. It is not 1200 pages, it has no cute pictures or colored pages at all for that matter. It is not trending to those who have an attention span of 10 seconds with all sorts of visual cues and boxes. It is a solid well thought out book on programming. It has the best sample programs that I remember coming across. It is concise, and informative covering all the major topics. While the title is about visual studio 2005, the book is about programming in C#. Visual studio comes in late in the book, as it should, as a tool to program with.

I am about 2/3 of the way through the book, and I have done this in one sitting. It has some rough areas, such as the section on delegates, which I found a bit difficult to understand, but I imagine that if I go over those sections again it will be clear.
Tomorrow I go through the section on Visual Studio 2005. I have been using the free Visual Studio 2008 from the microsoft web site. So I am interested to see what the VS section has to offer in the book.
5 stars for a thoroughly painless and readable exposition of the topic.

Coming from a strong classic VBScript background I've struggled with C# and the .NET platform. After reading through Jeffery's book, everything finally 'clicked' for me. I'd rate this book more for the beginner than anything else; if you're looking for advanced topics, look elsewhere.

The first half of the book has several walk-through's of basic C# syntax and moves into more intermediate walk-through's of working with Classes and an introduction into OO methodology. The second half of the book is focused on working within the Visual Studio IDE.

Overall the book has very clear examples; well written (so what if there are a few typos); and with a writing style that is easy to understand.

Definitely recommended if you are learning C#.

Even though Jeffery Suddeth says you can download the code examples, his internet site no longer exists(you are taken to a generic website), so you cannot download any code. I sent him a couple of emails, but he never responded to them. No exercises are provided. A mediocre book as far as I am concerned.