Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 24
 Excellent Guidebook January 4, 2005
recombinant
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
Granted, it probably helps if you're migrating from another language (like I was - from VB), but it's an excellent text which gives you plenty of background & extra information, then takes you into step-by-step exercises to reinforce what you just read. This methodology really worked for me, and I highly recommend this book. Initially, I was concerned that it was going to be literally just step-by-step instructions on how to use C# and Visual Studio .NET, but the information between the exercises, plus additional notes and best practices really helped me out with learning the language and some potential gotchas.
Great book for learning C# March 15, 2005
Juan Torres Reveron (Birmingham, Alabama USA)
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
This book is a great introduction to the C# language. The only drawback is that you need Visual Studio.NET to be able to complete the exercises; but then again, C# is an invention of Microsoft si it is understandable.
Some reviewers have expressed concern for it not being for beginners. Be aware that the object oriented model of programming has been an integral part of every language since the invention of C++ in the 1980's. If you are interested in non-OOP languages you can try C. If you like to understand a little more about OOP before starting this book grab Beggining C# Objects as an intro both to the language and the method.
good first book on visual c# May 29, 2005
steve (toronto, canada)
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
I've been using Visual C++ 6.0 at work for the past few years and was looking for something to help me with transitioning to C# and .NET. I settled on the 2003 version of this book and was not disappointed. The title says it all really - it's a concise and tutorial-like introduction to C# programming using Visual Studio.NET. The book is very well organized with "how-to" summaries at the end of each chapter, and numerous notes/hints throughout that list the sometimes subtle differences between C++/Java and C#.
This was my first step-by-step book and I liked how the exercises were presented. In the early chapters, you are typically asked to open an existing project and make code or design modifications that demonstrate the topic at hand. This approach helps to speed things along and I didn't feel at any time that I was bogged down on any one chapter or exercise for too long. Before each exercise, I made a point of reviewing all of the application code first, including the forms code generated by Visual Studio. For example, as early as Chapter 2, I could see more or less how GUI event handlers are registered, even though I hadn't yet reached the section on WinForms or delegates.
One suggestion I do have for the authors in any future editions is to talk more about configuring your PC before doing any ADO.NET or ASP.NET programming, e.g., how to troubleshoot when things aren't working. Even though I had MSDE and IIS installed properly, I initially had problems creating the Northwind sample database, and also with creating new ASP projects in Visual Studio (VS needs to be able to connect to your IIS server first before it can create/open ASP projects). The book didn't help me much here (neither did Visual Studio's cryptic error messages) and I had to dig around on MSDN and CodeGuru to get things working.
With regards to content, there are a couple of noteworthy items. The chapter on value and reference types does a very good job of explaining concepts such as "boxing" using diagrams and sample code. The diagrams show you exactly what are the contents of stack versus heap memory as each line of sample code is executed. Another section I liked was the sample exercise in the chapter on inheritance, which simulated a source file parser using the Visitor design pattern. The authors could have explained the program better though, by using class diagrams possibly.
Overall I am quite pleased with this book and the outcome of having gone through all of the exercises. Now it's time for me to look for something more advanced on topics such as threading, .NET remoting, GDI+, ...
Great way to learn C# with useful examples July 8, 2005
Test Guy (Boston, MA)
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
This is by far one of the best programming books I have ever bought. The authors explain the C# concepts very well and walk you through examples that not only teach the language concepts but also give you useful programming tips that you will need. For example, the chapter on using Methods gives you an example of the method that shows you how to read input from a console.
That said, this is not a beginners programming book. You really need some knowledge of object oriented programming and it helps to be familliar with the Microsoft IDE (either VC++ or VB). If you have some experience with those then this is a great book to learn C#. Also I find the Microsoft Press "Step By Step" book much easier to follow then their other reference books.
The best C# book for visual Studio April 23, 2004
NetDeveloper (Houston, Texas)
29 out of 42 found this review helpful
Note to Amazon staff:Please take down the review by:
Reviewer: alleyrat001 from Watervliet, NY United States
March 6, 2004 "alleyrat" is obviously talking about a different book for C++ not c#. You must clear up with him which text he is referring to but it is obvious that none of the page references even remotely match. This erroneous low score is dragging down the overall review rating. I liked the book so much that I took it upon myself to help right this wrong. PERFECT FOR BEGINNERS! I bought about a dozen C# books from a store that does close-outs. For a few dollars I stocked a full C# reference library with all the major titles. I may not be an expert but if there is a C# text I have read at least parts of it. Even though it is not a reference text and they do not go into some fancier stuff in too much detail, the way the authors explain and properly use the power of Visual Studio is so good that I wind up using this book more than any other. I may dig more for speciific examples in other ref. books or on the net(who doesn't) but if I want to get the solid explanation I start here. You cannot write productively .net code without VS! when you see a book that says in the the Intro that you can whip out your ole' Notepad and go just keep going... Those are the geeks that will keep you going in circles with cryptic explanations of a term that include three or more new never previously defined terms. Ole' Notepad is like a flight instructor coming to class and saying: "You can fly from Houston to Seattle and you can also walk so class, put on your walking shoes and bon voyage!" "But sir, what about flying?" "Well we'll get into that when you walk back from Seattle." So if you do not want to walk( or crawl) with .net you have to start with the Visual Studio IDE right off the bat and this book does just that best. Even though I had a whole shelf of other books already I had to pay full price for this one and it was worth every penny. Cudos!
Showing reviews 1-5 of 24
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