22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Best Delta Book on C# 2.0 Out There, November 13, 2005
This review is from: Visual C# 2005: A Developer's Notebook (Paperback)
So, You are a seasoned C# 1.x developer very much looking forward to learn the lean mean C# 2.0, great. But as much as you want to learn the language enhancements, you despise the fact that any book you pick seems to start teaching you the old things over and over again; all the features you already knew (or should know); the for loop, the if statement and therefore you'd have to skip several hundred pages to get to learn a new feature...that is painful.
Like you, I was looking for a book which will teach me delta, i.e. the differences and enhancements to the new language and not the features which I already know as a C# developer for several years. Written with this upgrade-only concept in mind, seasoned author Jesse Liberty's "Visual C# 2005" came to the rescue. As series creator Bret McLaughlin says "People don't have time (or the income) to read through 600 page books, often learning 200 things of which only about 4 apply to their current job."
I found this to be a very true statement. From very begining, this book is targeted towards explaining generics, iterators, anonymous methods, partial types, static classes,, nullable types, limiting access to properties, delegate covariance, contra-variance, enumerators etc; things you'd want to learn as these are new to C# 2.0. Next chapter talks about IDE enhancements (not necessarily a language feature but it helps), visualizers, refactoring and debugging tools provided with Visual studio.NET 2005. It gets better from here; Web apps, data driven forms, asynchronous tasks, one click deployment...you name it. In a little over 200 pages, it is a concise upgrade guide to C# 2.0 and Visual Studio.NET 2005 enhancements to support this update.
Developer's notebook also talks about security controls, personalization, authentication, master pages, themes and other ASP.NET enhancements you'd find ubiquitous in all ASP.NET 2.0 books, without the fluff. I made myself sound almost like the marketing person for O'Reilly but the truth is, I found this book really exciting. As Bret further said "the often-frantic scribbling and notes that a true-blue alpha geek mentally makes when working with a new language, API or project. It's the no-nonsense code that solves problems....". See it for yourself; download the source from http://www.libertyassociates.com/pages/Books.htm and check out the code samples and labs.
I've also just attended Juval Lowy's workshop on Visual C# 2.0 in DevConnections 2005 conference held in Las Vegas. Along with conference notes handout, I used Developer's Notebook as a follow up reference. Example labs like CreateATypeSafeList, GenericEnumeration, ImplementingGenericInterfaces were simillar to those among the demos performed. Also, the author, Jesse Liberty is a Microsoft .NET MVP and author of Programming C#, Programming VB 2005, Programming ASP.NET, Programming .Net Windows Applications and various other books which explains why the book is so cohesive and contemporary.
Like any other book, it has some short comings too. For instance the level of detail at certain topics but the link section covers references if you are interested in learning more about a specific subject. I think this comes hand to hand with being to-the-point and concise.
If you are not an existing C# developer or want to learn old language features over again, this book is NOT for you. However, if you want to adapt to the new awesome features of C# 2.0 without further ado, there is only one thing to do, add to cart.
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22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent Primer for C# 2.0, May 4, 2005
This review is from: Visual C# 2005: A Developer's Notebook (Paperback)
For those of you who have been programming in C# since its release a few years ago, you recognize an update for the language was becoming overdue. Microsoft has delivered by Visual C# 2005 which will be released with the upcoming Visual Studio 2005. In "Visual C# 2005 - A Developer's Notebook" the author has done a wonderful job of taking you through the new features of the language and showing you "what you need to know to get it done" about this new release.
Before you purchase this book, realize it is not a C# primer nor beginner's guide. This book was written for those who already are familiar and use C#. A lot of what the author goes into will make no sense unless you already have a firm understanding of the language and are familiar with its constructs.
For those of you who are familiar with the language, you are in for a terrific reference guide to the new features. The author has taken each new feature, such as Accessing Objects in the Global Namespace, and tells you how you do it programatically (with source code), explains what you just did, and gives an explanation about other uses or "gotchas" that might result by using this feature. To conclude, he gives a reference to another source so that if you want to learn more, or go farther in-depth, you can easily find out more -- most often by pointing back to the MSDN developer library.
Often, when there is a point the author wishes to bring you attention to, he uses the sidebar to draw your attention. A quick blurb about a special syntax or argument that could shed a lot of light on some of the new concepts.
Overall, a great companion to the upcoming Visual Studio 2005 C# release. If you are an experienced C# programmer and want to know what is ahead -- this would be well worth adding to your bookshelf.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting collection of C# nuggets and wisdom, June 25, 2005
This review is from: Visual C# 2005: A Developer's Notebook (Paperback)
I like the format of this book. The writing is clear and is certainly at a level that is appropriate for intermediate or advanced users. The problem that I have with the book is the same on I have with most of the notebook books. They are great collections of random things. But how does that fit in with a programmers workflow when they are looking for solutions. Sure, it's excellent reading the first time through to get some advanced concepts down. But what about the reference value later?
That being said. There is some very cool stuff in this book. A lot of helpful information on XML, advanced forms issues, and advanced ASP.NET stuff. So have a look through the table of contents and see if there is anything that catches your eye, and buy on that basis.
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