Customer Reviews

Sams Teach Yourself C# Web Programming in 21 Days

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

 

 

Before there was ASP.NET, there was ASP. This book is clearly a "Teach Yourself ASP" book that has had the ".NET" moniker added to the title. All the code examples show embedded code withing ASP pages rather than the newer (and clearly superior) "code behind" model of Microsoft's Visual Studio product. I am most disappointed that there are no explanations of how to use the Visual Studio environment to build the web pages. The authors seem to be of the "I've got notepad to enter my code and that's all I need" school of programming. To be honest, the title did not say anything about Visual Studio, so I guess the joke's on me.

I'm half-way thru (p250) so far, and very impressed.
I have experience with traditional Active Server Pages, but I wanted to learn how to build websites using the Microsoft.NET technologies.
This book lays down concepts in a sensible order, one on top of another, the way I like it. The example programs actually work fine with .NET Release Candidate. The book contains just the right mix of info on ASP Web Forms, ADO.NET, XML, and related issues to give me that overall comfort level I needed to be productive.
With this as a starting point, I feel much more comfortable learning the advanced details of these various technologies.
Also worth noting: the author Aitken was kind enough to respond promptly when I asked for a link to the source code. I wish the Sams people would get around to updating the website with that information. Maybe they are overwhelmed with site updates or something.
I highly recommend this as a hands-on, self-study book for programmers building web apps using C#. If you prefer VB.Net, there are other books out there.

:-) This book actually took me nearly forty (40) whole days to read! O.K. Poor humour aside, I'd recommend this book for several reasons...

Firstly - and this is the most important one - when you invest the time to read ~600 pages of book you need to be sure that the time is being well spent. I purchased this book to get a heads-up on the constructs of the C# language having come from a VB background. I wasn't disappointed -

THIS BOOK WILL TEACH YOU C#!

I learnt quite a lot of stuff about *languages* that I simply did not think that I had the time to learn just by reading this book. For example, the author takes the time to teach you about polymorphism and inheritance and also the simple things such as reuse and how to lay out your code modules.

The author - Bradley L. Jones - obviously has a very strong command of languages and that comes through by reading this book. He shows you those little language *tricks* that you only get from someone who knows, and obviously enjoys, programming.

IN SHORT
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This book is obviously aimed at someone either new to programming or somebody looking for an introduction to the C# language and I would heartily recommend it for that purpose. If you're serious about .NET, and you enjoy programming, take the time to read this book - I couldn't do it in 21 days, but, I'm glad I did it :-)

The review titled "Heavy on ASP, light on Visual Studio" is misleading. I almost returned this book after reading the review. It is misleading and incorrect. Early in this book the authors discuss Visual Studio.NET and the "code behind" feature integrated within the IDE. This book is actually pretty good and discusses setup and how to get started in the world of .NET Web programming. It does not cover many details of the C# language, but if you're an experienced programmer, you shouldn't have any trouble picking up the syntax. Keep in mind that Visual Studio.NET offers comprehensive help with detailed and hierarchical views with it's integrated help. You can view the explorer on the right side, or hit F1 to view the help. It's similar to the MSDN of old with Visual Studio. Do not concern yourself with the fact that this book is a little older, as Microsoft has not updated the Visual Studio.NET IDE, except for one service pack to date. This book was written using the 2nd beta of the IDE, and so only a few things have changed in the IDE. Not a huge concern.

This book will not teach you C#, there are better books for that. However it is probably the quickest intro to ASP.NET with C# as the programming language on the market today. However it will not teach you everything you need to know to make real world applications, but it will get you started (at least it got me started). True the Visual Studio 7.0 is quite complex and I would have liked to know more about the user interface, but there is enough in the book to get you going. PS the code is available for download (some reviews say its not).
Only negative point is that the application examples are kind of boring :-(

In the book, authors promised that source code and update will be available from Sams Publishing Website and listed the URL. But there is no download link in the page of this book. Repeated E-mails met only deef ears. If the authors don't care about the accuracy of this simple information, Do you think they will care about the technical accuracy of the content?

The authors has not spend enough time to write the book in a manner so that the readers can get the feel of the subject. It absolutly not going for new "code behind" technology. If you want to study ASP it is a so so book but if you are planning to take advantage of ASP.net and C# look else where. Authors could have made project examples in visual studio.net and gave us instead of single file format. In short it doesn't teach you C# or .Net or ASP.net.

The book's writing skills and organization is good. But unfortunately, I cannot get any electric source code from anywhere. The book was definitely written before the Microsoft Visual Studio .NET release. Without electric source code, you have to type in all of the code to find out if the code works or not. At first, I consider to use the book as text book in my class, but I have to choose another one which have electric code source even I like this book better. I hope the author can provide electric code in the future; I 'd like to use it for my next class if I can get the updating electric code for this book.