.NET Development for Java Programmers [ILLUSTRATED] (Paperback)

by Paul Gibbons (Author)
Key Phrases: web services, class library, web application, Visual Studio, Windows Application, Computer Management (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
<p>Java developers have adapted to a world in which everything is an object, resources are reclaimed by a garbage collector, and multiple inheritance is replaced by interfaces. All of these things have prepared developers to thrive in Microsoft's new .NET environment using C#. </p>

<p>Despite similarities between Java and C#, complex differences still lurk. This book will walk you through both language and library differences, to help you develop enterprise applications requiring mastery. You will then be able to build applications that communicate with databases and include network components, web pages, and many other features. </p>

<p>Ordinarily, Java developers rely on Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) to provide these libraries, and C# developers rely on the .NET Framework. At first glance, there seems little similarity between the two, but author Paul Gibbons shows how a Java developer's J2EE skills transfer smoothly when tackling the .NET Framework. </p>

<p>Early chapters highlight C#'s differences from Java, and discuss differences between the .NET CLR and JVM. Subsequent chapters cover various technologies in which J2EE development translates into .NET enterprise development. These middle chapters also explain .NET technologies that Java developers can begin using immediately. The final chapter examines migration of existing Java applications to C#, and the available tools and techniques. By the end of <i>.NET Development for Java Programmers</i>, a professional Java developer will be able to tackle a real software project in .NET, using C#.</p>

About the Author
Paul Gibbons works as a consultant for Volt Technical Resources. He has used many programming languages in more than 25 years of software development, but his current favorite is C#. Originally from Yorkshire, England, he now lives in Washington State with his wife and three children. In his spare time, he enjoys gardening and bird watching.

Product Details

• Paperback: 386 pages
• Publisher: Apress; illustrated edition edition (July 15, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590590384
• ISBN-13: 978-1590590386
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,000,595 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Fair - Missed important topics, August 12, 2003

By	ashwani (Dallas, TX) - See all my reviews

Was delighted to open the book up. The author does not treat you like a complete novice and assume certain level of automatic understanding from the readers. I was able to cover the quick introduction to the common features in the C# language. Rest of the chapters have a lot of example scenarios in it so helped me with getting my arms around day-to-day problems quickly.

However, some of the areas I had hoped the book would help me:
1. There is no treatment on file systems. In Java, there is a strong support for reading/writing file systems, but the book totally bypassed this.

2. Delegates - This is new concept in .NET and I had hoped the autor would explain this topic in more detail in the early chapters, and especially since the Event management is heavily based on the delegates concept.

Overall, a good and useful book for quick induction into .NET world.

3.0 out of 5 stars Fair - Missed important topics, August 12, 2003

By	ashwani (Dallas, TX) - See all my reviews

Was delighted to open the book up. The author does not treat you like a complete novice and assume certain level of automatic understanding from the readers. I was able to cover the quick introduction to the common features in the C# language. Rest of the chapters have a lot of example scenarios in it so helped me with getting my arms around day-to-day problems quickly.

However, some of the areas I had hoped the book would help me:
1. There is no treatment on file systems. In Java, there is a strong support for reading/writing file systems, but the book totally bypassed this.

2. Delegates - This is new concept in .NET and I had hoped the autor would explain this topic in more detail in the early chapters, and especially since the Event management is heavily based on the delegates concept.

Overall, a good and useful book for quick induction into .NET world.

2.0 out of 5 stars Sometimes difficult to understand and too much Visual Studio, February 3, 2003

By	Erich Pawlik (Bad Homburg) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The book provides an overview of .NET-programming using C# as the programming language. The author assumes that the reader is familiar with the Java language and J2EE. When introducing a .NET aspect, he explains the differences.

The book starts with a 50-page description of the differences between C# and Java. The author touches on most aspects of C##, but his analysis is not comprehensive and I don't understand the rationale behind his selection of topics. He spends two pages and quite a lot of code to explain how override the true and false operators, but he barely touches topics such as creating and destroying objects or basic things like literals, operators, ... He is also struggling to explain the innovative aspects of C#. Understanding his explanation of the events and delegates is quite a challenge. And although he uses attributes in his chapters about XML and Web services, he doesn't explain the concept at all. I also feel that the author should have written something about streams (another concept he uses without explaining it), collections and regular expressions.

After completing his C# introduction, the author starts to write about Winforms, ASP.NET and ADO.NET. IMHO, he wastes too much space with Visual studio screenshots and with descriptions how to click your way through Visual Studio. Visual Studio is not the only way to develop .NET applications. At least, there is the Mono project and Microsoft own freeware Webmatrix (for ASP.NET/ ADO.NET applications). In addition, Visual Studio does a good job to hide at least some aspects of the underlying technology: But the author obviously thinks that showing how to use Visual Studio is sufficient to expose the inner workings of a .NET aspect. In his description of ASP.NET, the author mentions some analogies to servlets and JSP, but fails to explain them. An example: "Server controls have more in common with JSP taglibs but are more complex to develop than user controls, as they support the roundtrip." That's all about the analogy, the author continues with some Visual Studio clicking. The more complex the concepts are, the more difficulties the author has to explain analogies between Java and .NET concepts.

The description of the other topics (multithreading, networking, remoting, XML, COM+ components, message queueing, directory services, packaging of applications, Windows services, calling ummanaged code) is in a similar shape. There are some gems in a pile of difficult to digest explanations, code examples and screen shots.

IMHO, this book isn't a good .NET introduction. And it needs more work to be a real timesaver for a developer moving from Java to .NET.