Professional .NET Framework 2.0 (Programmer to Programmer) (Paperback)

~ (Author) "The Microsoft Windows platform has evolved substantially over time..." (more)
Key Phrases: Further Reading, Visual Studio, Microsoft Press (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

• Offering authoritative, field-proven advice from a Microsoft insider, this book teaches the underlying commonalities that developers can use regardless of their language choice or development tools
• Extensive use of examples and working code provides developers with practical and authoritative coverage of the CLR (common language runtime) and APIs, the building blocks that make it possible to write in any choice of language
• Primary topics discussed include generics, MSIL (Microsoft Intermediate Language)-based framework libraries, advanced framework libraries, distributed development foundations, and more
• Version 2.0 is the version that provides the foundation for Visual Studio 2005

From the Back Cover

As the .NET Framework and Common Language Runtime (CLR) continue to mature in terms of platform adoption, robustness, reliability, and feature richness, developers have an increasing need to understand the foundation on top of which all managed code runs. This book looks at the underlying platform commonalities that all developers can use, regardless of language choice or development tools. This includes languages such as C#, Visual Basic, C++/CLI, and others.

You'll begin with an in-depth look at CLR fundamentals. From there, you'll review first the Base Class Libraries (BCL) and then the more advanced Framework libraries that are commonly used in most managed applications. With an abundance of working code examples and unique depth of coverage, this book will quickly get you up to speed on what the .NET Framework and CLR 2.0 have to offer.

What you will learn from this book

• Details of the CLR's architecture, including garbage collection, exceptions, just-in-time compilation, and the Common Type System
• How assemblies work and options for deployment, from executables to shared to private libraries
• Specific portions of the BCL, as well as advanced Framework libraries such as the new transaction libraries
• Advanced services of the CLR, such as the secure programming model and forms of isolation and concurrency
• How the CLR's rich metadata is used for dynamic programming and runtime code-generation

Who this book is for

This book is for developers experienced either with the Microsoft (.NET 1.x, Win32, or COM) or Java platforms who want to understand and program with the .NET Framework and CLR.

Wrox Professional guides are planned and written by working programmers to meet the real-world needs of programmers, developers, and IT professionals. Focused and relevant, they address the issues technology professionals face every day. They provide examples, practical solutions, and expert education in new technologies, all designed to help programmers do a better job.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 624 pages
• Publisher: Wrox (April 10, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0764571354
• ISBN-13: 978-0764571350
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.4 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #542,974 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Valuable and Recommended Authoritative Source of Dotnet info, August 6, 2006

By	Steve Bailey "Steve" (U.S.) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Took me a while to finally review this after receiving this book several months ago, but I felt it definitely necessary to leave my opinion. Joe Duffy strikes a good balance between writing an organized source of solid NET 2.0 reference material, and just simply talking to you as an expert programmer who is sitting in the next cubicle from you.

And instead of trying to stay overly structured (covering a specific subject and nothing else in each chapter like I've seen a lot in computer books), he will sometimes mention a feature of the CLR that has its own chapter later, but that you should look make sure to combine with the current topic for great results.

Joe hit that perfect target of not too many examples, but supplying enough of them. It seemed like in every instance that
I started to get a little ansy and wanted to an example of his dotnet development instruction, there it was, a perfect code example to show me the way, and not too much of it.

Duffy goes out of the way to inform you as to what CLR functionality is especially useful, and compares a particular API feature with the way another language (such as C++/Stl or Java) implements it.

It's very evident that the author is actively using dotnet (even moreso, he is also a Program Manager on the CLR Team), because he will be sure to tell you that something is very useful
(like he said about anonymous delegates), or that something is powerful (the new 2.0 Generics or Contraints. ).
It's just pure programmer to programmer value.

And he'll be sure to alert you as to how to minimize any potential gotcha's when running 1.x apps under 2.0 by telling
you what compatibility switches to use, and he mentions an important one related to exceptions
(by the way, great coverage of exceptions).

It's a very thorough treatment of 2.0. Covers all of the important topics and more, of the DotNet framework.

It would be useless to continue with more here in this review, because it's a given that you need to have all of the quality books concerning a particular language or framework if you plan on mastering it, so no more need to be said.

12 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another book on the Framework... But quite good!, April 23, 2006

By	octopus47 - See all my reviews

I was hesitant to buy another book on the CLR and .NET Framework (I've already read a bunch of the others), but wanted to find out what is new in 2.0. I was encouraged when I opened the book and found out the author works at Microsoft on the CLR team. I read it instead of just using it for reference and was really pleased with the style and contents.

The book is very detail-oriented and covers the most important aspects of the runtime and libraries. It goes into some topics that are carried over from 1.0 and 1.1 when necessary to keep the reader up to speed, so if you're expecting 2.0-only content, you might be surprised. But if you're a .NET developer of any experience level or a Java developer who wants to program on .NET, this book is an invaluable resource, both for reading and referencing later on.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars I thought this book is mediocre., October 12, 2007

By	N. Guner "worker" (New York, NY) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I bought it based on reviews I've seen on this page and after reading it cover to cover, felt extremely disappointed. I just can't understand why anyone would rate it so highly.
For starters, there are plenty of typos and grammatical mistakes. Apparently, the author does not believe in using commas, making it very difficult to decipher what he wants to say. But that is just a minor annoyance compared to other misgivings.
Throughout the whole book the author will use concepts from topics he had not yet discussed saying he will cover them later. He does attempt to cover them later but by then the meaning of the previous discussion is lost. He provides only cursory explanation of complex topics yet goes into gory detail on topics that are obvious to most people. For example, he devotes a huge section of one chapter to explaining sting member methods that are obvious to most from IntelliSense. There are very few examples. I was able to complete this book only because I had previously read Richter's "CLR via C#". I did learn a few things, just not sure if my time was well spent reading the whole book.