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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Everything you need to get your feet wet with Visual C#..., November 12, 2006
This review is from: Sams Teach Yourself Visual C# 2005 in 24 Hours, Complete Starter Kit (Paperback)
The "in 24 Hours" series breaks down subject matter into 24 chapters that should take you around an hour to complete. If this style is one that appeals to you, and if you're looking to figure out Visual C# 2005, then you're in luck with Sams Teach Yourself Visual C# 2005 in 24 Hours, Complete Starter Kit by James Foxall.
Contents:
Part 1 - The Visual C# Environment: Jumping in with Both Feet - A Visual C# 2005 Programming Tour; Navigating Visual C# 2005; Understanding Objects and Collections; Understanding Events
Part 2 - Building a User Interface: Building Forms - The Basics; Building Forms - Advanced Techniques; Working with Traditional Controls; Using Advanced Controls; Adding Menus and Toolbars to Forms
Part 3 - Making Things Happen - Programming: Creating and Calling Methods; Using Constants, Data Types, Variables, and Arrays; Performing Arithmetic, String Manipulation, and Date/Time Adjustments; Making Decisions in Visual C# Code; Looping for Efficiency; Debugging Your Code; Designing Objects Using Classes; Interacting with Users; Working with Graphics
Part 4 - Working with Data: Performing File Operations; Working with Text Files and the Registry; Working with a Database; Controlling Other Applications Using Automation
Part 5 - Developing Solutions and Beyond: Deploying Applications; The 10000 Foot View
Index
A nice thing about this book is it's a complete learning solution. The CD in the back has the Express Edition of Visual C# 2005 on it, so the purchase of this book gives you the complete environment you need to get started. Looking at the contents, you can see that the primary emphasis in the beginning is creating the graphical elements of the interface. Most of the "programming" consists of filling in dialog and property boxes to make the interface behave as desired. You have to get into Part 3 before you learn how to actually code the C# language. For someone brand new to programming, this is probably a decent idea. Get the person doing and creating something quickly, even through it many not do much of anything in an overall context. As an experienced developer, I kept wondering "but what does the language look like and how does it work?" Personally, I would have preferred the material to be in reverse order, but I'm possibly not the intended audience for this particular style and approach.
Even with that minor nit, I still think the material is solid. If I knew someone who was computer-savvy but hadn't done much programming, I'd have no hesitation to suggest this title if their desire was to learn Visual C#.
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Gets you going in no time, December 3, 2006
This review is from: Sams Teach Yourself Visual C# 2005 in 24 Hours, Complete Starter Kit (Paperback)
Foxall takes what you need, takes out what you don't and packs it all in this book. You won't become an expert in C# in 24-hours, but you will certainly know you way around the language and the development environment by reading this book. From there, you can either learn by doing or pick up a more advanced book and go from there.
The author takes the GUI development road and teaches you by example. A frame here, a timer there, event handling, some C# programming and you got yourself a handy little application that gives you a flavor of what it means to use Visual C#. If you have no previous programming experience, or you are simply interested in C#, this is the text you want to pick up and finish in a weekend. I have used Java for a number of years, so the transition to C# was much easier for me.
This book specially focuses on the Development Environment and such things as how you go about setting up a project or how you debug your application using the built-in debugging facility. Microsoft Visual Studio has improved greatly in the recent years, but that also means that it has gotten more complicated to use over the years. Foxall breaks down the "barrier to use" and walks the readers thru how things are setup and configured. The book is also accompanied with MS Visual C# Express Edition, which is a watered down version of Visual Studio but it has everything you need to get started with the development environment.
Author delves into some more advanced features of the .Net framework towards the end of the book and talks about how everything fits together. This is a great "next step" for those of you who will go on to do use C# for more advanced projects.
All and all, this is one great beginner book. There are plenty of examples and tips throughout the book that will benefit anyone who is interested in the C# language or the .Net development environment as a whole.
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14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
mostly about GUI building in Visual C#, May 31, 2006
This review is from: Sams Teach Yourself Visual C# 2005 in 24 Hours, Complete Starter Kit (Paperback)
Foxall gives one of the latest in Sam's Teach Yourself series. Where each chapter is considered do-able in one hour, and there are 24 chapters. A gimmick that perhaps is a little confining on both the author and the reader. The author has to pigeonhole sufficient material into a chapter to meet this constraint. While if the reader takes too long to assimilate a chapter, she might wonder about her abilities.
Anyhow, I recommend that you ignore this one chapter-one hour formalism. Just read the chapters as you would any other text on Visual C#. The book's pedagogy is heavily directed towards GUI building in that language. That is clearly the book's strength. The programs tend to be event-driven. Where you might hook up a listener to a widget, and then code actions into it, for when an appropriate event happens in the widget.
The book does teach about pure computational aspects. Like about using variables, arrays and conditional logic. Plus about the intrinsic ideas in object oriented programming. But these appear in the second half of the book. After the UI discussions. The computational explanations are relatively sparse. Little indepth is done with these.
Also, the chapter on OO is the most important in the book. The OO concepts are absolutely crucial and you need to get these down thoroughly. Here especially is where the one hour per chapter idea is deleterious. Spend as much time as you need on this chapter. It is this that will be the foundations of any complex coding that you will later do. Not the UI details.
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