Rating: 
Summary: Good Intro to C#
Review: This is a book that is focused on C# and maintains an iron-grip on its objective. I have read some of the other posters comments and I think the greatest objection has been for the lack of dotNET information.I would recommend this book to those new to C#. I came from mainly a Java/C background and I found this book useful to pick up the syntaxes. It is not meant for giving the more extreme dotNET programming tips. I am not sure if this book is suitable to beginners in programming. Please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions.
Rating: 
Summary: Not good
Review: When I purchased this book I had little knowledge of C#. After reading the book and building all of the samples, I discovered that my lack of knowledge was something I had in common with the text. A bold statement, so let me explain. Teaching effectively requires a deep understanding of the material, so what is important is emphasized at the expense of the trivial. In this book, everything is given equal importance, so the important material is lost in the trivial. The text is frequently written "out of order", that is, statements are made, and then a later statement includes something you needed to understand the previous one. This is evident in the line by line code samples, where the author frequently describes line 3 of the code, and then says "but before we do that, we need to do line 2". This is confusing and not helpful. While on the subject of the code samples, the samples frequently include a lot of useless code that just confuses the point. I ended up stripping the samples to the basics myself, and in virtually every case I ended up with a 50% or more reduction in lines of code, and a much clearer sample. Even worse, the samples could be done in much better ways, so in addition to being confusing they teach bad usage of the language. The main problem with the samples is that many of them are taken directly from the SDK. The SDK samples are not designed to teach programming, they are designed to demonstrate how to solve a specific problem. This makes them inappropriate for teaching a language. The ones on ADO, for example, contain complex table joins, which are SQL constructs and have nothing to do with ADO or C#. The reflection API samples includes one where it writes IL directly, certainly not something that most programmers are going to do. And the text never explains the IL that is written. I own dozens of O'Reilly books, and most are excellent. Unfortunately this one and UML In A Nutshell are the exceptions.
Rating: 
Summary: Poorly done
Review: This book fails because:
1. Its too short and doesn't cover the meat of .NET programming.
2. Is too complex for beginners.
3. Isn't advanced enough for _real_ programmers (see point 1). I can't believe O'Reilly put out such a book, especially since C# is a very important topic.
Rating:
Summary: Best book even seen!!!
Review: This is my third book in C#.
I shouldn't have read those.
This book is REALLY enough!! It is a pity I cannot give 6 stars (out of 5).
Rating:
Summary: Nearly Perfect
Review: This book is nearly perfect. It introduces every aspect of the C# language in the first part, then provides a brief overview of the types of applications you might create in the second part, and finally ends with a thorough overview of the CLR in the third part. No other tutorial I've read offers nearly as much coverage of the most important aspects, not only of C# as a language, but of building meaningful applications with C#. The coverage of ASP.NET, WebForms and ADO.NET is, of course, superficial; Liberty's goal is just to familiarize you with these topics. He has a full book on ASP.NET for example, and with any luck he'll have books on WebForms and ADO.NET too one day. The coverage of the CLR is first rate. He covers advanced topics here, such as reflection and threading, but his focus is on the most important things you might like to do (opening streams, creating asynchronous applications, dealing with remoting, and so forth). The book is very well written, and he supports the book on his web site with source code, a FAQ, a full errata and so forth. I highly recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: I can't believe some people give this book 5 stars
Review: This book skims over C# in too few pages and tries to cover too much. The coverage of the C# is adequate at best, and it doesn't cover the most important aspect of C#: programming for .NET. Also, this book is lousy for beginners, but also isn't really useful for advanced programmers either because it skims over everything. I expected far more from O'Reilly. I think they might be losing their touch. Certainly, their .NET books are poor.
Rating:
Summary: Clear, Complete, Excellent
Review: This book begins with a complete introduction to the C# language, with special tips for C++, VB6 and Java programmers. The writing is excellent, to the point, humerous but not silly, no wasted words but plenty of examples. Part 2 of the book introduces the major types of applications you might build with C#, with a good introduction to ASP.NET, web forms, web services and also to ADO.NET. It is in part 3 that this book stands out from all the rest, with a thorough explanation of many aspects of the CLR and the Framework Class Library, including lucid and very well written explanations of Assemblies, versioning, attributes, reflection, marshaling, threading, synchronization mechanisms, streams, async i/o, and com interop. Each of these topics can be a book in itself, but this book, Programming C#, provides enough introduction to make you productive and to lay the foundation for further reading. I've not seen a better introduction to C#, and Liberty has a gift for making technical material crystal clear.
Rating:
Summary: Not enough depth
Review: This book isn't simple enough for beginners, neither is it advanced enough for real programmers. I recommend you check out "Mastering Visual C# .NET" from Sybex instead: it is a much better book.
Rating:
Summary: K&R of C#
Review: In many respects this is like the Kernighan & Ritchie "C Programming Language" for C#. In my opinion, that is a great compliment. This book covers a large area of ground and does it with good descriptions and code. No need for a twenty pound tome when this book does it nicely (which is typical of O'Reilly books). A wealth of detail, including screen-shots, that will get you over many hurdles for starters. There is more advanced information as well. If you are doing C#, this is the first book you should buy.
Rating:
Summary: Painful
Review: This one tries to cover too much with too little and fails -surprise surprise. It tries to teach you C#, .NET fundamentals,
ASP.NET, ADO.NET, and Win Forms, then fails to properly elucidate any of them. Several of the chapters suffer from very uneven flow and/or lack of cohesion. All of the good programming books I've read use at least a three step approach: explanation of concept, then one or more examples that use the concept, then explanation of the examples. A number of the chapters in this obfuscated creation either deviate completely from that proven formula by skipping a step, or the explanations, examples, and concepts are so remotely disjointed that the process of learning becomes unnecessarily painful. The whole thing is badly designed and badly thought out. Covering so many different.NET topics in one book was a bad idea to begin with anyway, and this book proves it. I really have to question whether the reviewers who gave this 5 stars ever read past the first few chapters! BTW, I also have Mr. Liberty's ASP.NET book, and he has done a much better job there than in this one.
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