T. Butler said
I finished the entire book. I did every exercise, some of them twice. It took months. Here's what I think.
The book isn't ideal for those who are completely new to programming. It devotes relatively little time explaining loops and other decisional structures. This book is better for someone with at least modest programming experience.
The book has a horrendous number of errors. The spelling errors alone are quite remarkable. Even though I have a later edition, it is riddled with mistakes. For instance, on the top of page 509, we are informed that "It's unusal for one of the..." , and on page 560, we are asked to participate in an "exrecise solution." The code you are supposed to use is equally horrific. This means that you have no confidence in the code, and that you can't be sure if you've erred, or the book's authors have erred. Programming is devastatingly difficult to learn, and the poor editing makes this process even more excruciating than it has to be. I doubt very much that the people who raved about this book actually did the exercises. The errata seems to be incomplete towards the end of the book.
That isn't to say that I hated the book. In fairness, I was really only an amateur programmer before buying this book. Now I am a competent programmer. That is because the book is logically laid out and emphasizes real, actual programming. (There are exceptions: the book introduces delegates using a delegate constructor that takes a method name as a parameter, without explaining what it is doing. (p.501) This is disorienting and confusing. ) But generally, you will learn to write real code from this book, if you are willing to devote many hours of time, many of which will be spent productively, some of which will be spent checking the author's mistakes and combing through errata.
Also, the book teaches you to use correct programming strategies--or `best practices'--as they are referred to in the industry. Stick with this book, endure the errors, and you will be a pretty decent programmer at the end. Don't give up: the 2nd half of the book goes much more quickly than the first half.
Owing to the irresponsible editing, I can't give this book more than 2 stars. But it may just be the best C# book available, a sad reflection on the industry. You might try Murach's C# 2008, I have worked through their book on Visual Basic and found it much simpler and better edited than the Head First C# book. But it will probably not teach you sophisticated programming like the Head First C# book that is the subject of this review.
Other Head First Books are wonderful. The Head First HTML/CSS book is fantastic, and helped me get into programming. And O'Reilly is generally in the top tier of technical publishers. This book is an exception. The book is not cheap, and for this amount of money, the authors could have tested the code and spellchecked their work.
M. Torres said
I'm an asp.net web developer. I also work extensively with MS SQL. Before reading this book I thought I had some decent c# skills. Boy was I wrong. This book revealed a lot of holes in my programming. Let me explain why.
I had previously read a lot of reference type of books on C#. The kind of books that just explain things over and over. I hadn't read any books that really challenged me to figure things out on my own. This book is much different. Its a challenging, example and test driven approach that will have you writing very elegant object oriented code.
Don't be fooled by all the silly pictures, this is not a kids book. Some of the test and quizzes were difficult and really make you think. Granted if you're a CS Major and have been programming for years this book isn't for you. But if you're just the average joe (or jane) wanting to learn c# this book is definitely a great choice.
Waleed Albalooshi said
I really enjoyed reading this book. The authors did a great job making learning C# fun. I have read several books on C# ranging from beginner to intermediate, though many were excellent, none provided entertaining examples and labs to work on.
Carmen D. Mariscal said
The author's dedication to teaching comes through clearly in this book. The exercises are well thought out. By the time you complete the exercises you feel like you have truly learned the subject matter. The bubbles approach makes it a lot of fun to read and serve to drive home each point very clearly. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in starting to write c# code right away.
B. Stanton said
Considerable effort was made to try to make the material "fun" using what amounts to doodles and various cute graphics devices. Sadly, this creative effort was not accompanied by clear didactic style. I read several chapters of the book and decided I needed another book because the chaotic and disorganized approach was actually more confusing than instructive. Any introductory work must be meticulous about not using concepts and terms that have not been previously defined; it should start out simple and build. Seems obvious, yet many books violate this simple rule, and this book is rife with examples. It is also completely unacceptable to have errors in the practice code that won't actually run when executed. It wastes the reader's time and energy. Look elsewhere.
Comments