said
OREILLY does wonderful jobs producing Nutshell books.
This is my 2nd book by Jesse (1st one is programming asp.net), and it still looks like another nutshell book to me.
Language basics are handled by the book easily, but it lacks sufficient explainations on some basic .net issues. I like chap 14 (Generics and Collections), it really taught me a lot about how .net framework handles various kind of lists and iterators. However, the thing is that these microsoft quirks are not easy to understand!! Interface inheritance, overriden functions and numerous other concepts. I spent quite a few hours on this single chapter!! For some technical details, it simple refers you to MSDN...
Overall, some parts of the book are good for beginner, while others are valuable to some intermediate level .Net coders.
Sometimes I really hate Microsoft, since it always packages some simple programming concepts up into its own, and give them some new names. This kind of work will simply trip you up!! Once you got the idea behind the scene, you will find it's just that simple!! Why the heck does microsoft have to make all these so convoluated??!!
4 Stars for this work (just)
said
I'm a recent Master's graduate, in Computer Science. Programming concepts certainly aren't new to me. I've done C++, VB, Java, JSP, SQL, etc, etc, and figured it was time to pick up C#. I didn't even get this book from Amazon, I picked it up at my local B&N, but I was so pleased with it I had to make a post here.
The Good For Beginners:
He starts off with easy concepts, each chapter is broken up just right. Just when you may start to fidget and wonder how you're going to remember all of it, the chapter will end with a summary, a set of questions, and exercises. And the exercises are done well. If you grasped the concepts you can do them, and they are not too complicated that you may fumble. Plus, the solution is in the back of the book.
The Good For The Experienced:
I may have personally been better off with C# Programming, which is the more advanced book, but I started off with this since it had been a while since I touched a C-styled language. I read through even the introductory chapters, rather than skipping through, and was surprised at what I picked up. I know all of the concepts discussed, but he also includes best practices, as well as very good explanations that make you understand even these simple concepts better.
In my classes, the focus was all on 'This is how you make the code do this', with only one class focused on 'This is how you *should* write your code for readability, updating, some standards, etc'. This really answered a lot of my questions in that department. I feel like a slightly more professional programmer just from paying attention to these bits.
Basically, I liked the format and writing style enough that O'Reilly books, those by Jesse Liberty in particular, are where I look first to learn something new.
said
This text is a good one for those new to C# and also for those who are familiar with C# but not fluent with it. I have read almost all of Mr. Liberty's books for varied languages at one time or another and he is a good teacher. Like most Authors, the concern with selling books is there. However, Mr. Liberty cares more than selling books. He seems to truely care about teaching people programming concepts. He seems to care if you "get it" while exploring some of the varied theorems, algorithms, and syntax rules. While this text is for novices and structured for newbies to C# and programming in general, it also touches on the more advanced areas of C#. While not exploring some of these areas for long periods of time, the book is good because it at least introduces a person to most concepts. No text is perfect and for a high level language such as C# there is no way possible for a person to include everything into a single text as the C# library is just far too large. However as far as the basic syntax for C# 3.0 this book pretty much covers everything a person needs to know. After a text such as this one a person could delve into a more advanced text in order to get practice at coding. The best way to get proficient in any language is to WRITE CODE WHILE you are learning a book. Practice, practice, and more practice. This book will teach you most of the basics you need to know. The rest is up to you. After this text a person would need to decide if they wanted to delve into web programming, desktop apps, etc. before getting an appropriate text for their chosen area.
Comments