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Summary: A real gem of a book
Review: After a very long time I have come across a book that is really fabulous. Most of the programming books are too bulky and they waste all the pages in explaining only the documentation rather than the architecture. Most of this documentaion can be obtained on the web. This book explains the principles and the architecture behind all the commonly used .net concepts. I highly recommend this book. However, do not buy this book if you are planning to learn .net and have never used it before. This book caters to programmers who have had at least some programming experience in .net previously.
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Summary: Excellent, as usual
Review: As is customary with O'Reilly, this book is excelent. Obscure areas of .NET such as synchronization domains and contexts are explained very clearly.
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Summary: Finally a book that doesn't re-hash MSDN documentation
Review: Being an early adopter of .NET, I found it very difficult to find any realy good .NET books (they all just re-hashed what I already read in MSDN). Finally I found a book that added new insights into .NET and covered the essential topics not covered elsewhere. My recommendation to any serious .NET developer: #1. Read the .NET documentation provided by Microsoft, such as the Class library reference documents.
#2. Read 'Programming .NET Components' by Juval Lowy.
#3. Continue to study both.
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Summary: The best book I have read about .NET components
Review: Book clearly written with professional insight, is very usefull for me.
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Summary: A Must-Have For Every .NET Developer
Review: Excellent book with terrific coverage of the most important aspects of developing reusable components in .NET with both C# and VB.NET. Overall, one of the best .NET books I have read, and I've read a great number of them. I give it 4 stars because I wish some of the chapters went deeper. In particular, I felt the sidebar on LCE in the Events chapters was insufficient -- I've also read Lowy's "COM and .NET Component Services" book from O'Reilly, and between the two, I still don't feel that LCE and asynchronous events are covered sufficiently. I also wish that the context-bound object topic in the book expanded more on the subject, as most of the same material was presented in Lowy's MSDN article from Mar 03.
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Summary: Excellent programming resource
Review: Fabulous book that digs into useful, but not widely talked about .NET functionality. It is really a "best-practices" book by a highly respected figure in the development community. I am only half way through the book and will have to read it a couple more times due to the amount of valuable information contained therein. His writing style is clear and concise.
I highly recommend this book to any serious .NET developer.
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Summary: Buy it you will not be sorry
Review: I am working with .NET over 2 years and I still learned a lot.
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Summary: Poorly Written Garbage
Review: I found this book to be an extreme sleeper. I fell asleep five minutes into the first chapter. The C# Cookbook had the EXACT information and was 1000X clearer. Anyone looking for the information in this book, check out the C# 2003 Cookbook. Juval is the worst author of technical books I have ever come in contact with. I have also had the joy of meeting Juval in person. His arrogance was worse than his ability to write. Stay clear of this one unless you suffer from insomnia.
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Summary: .NET Component Programming in a nutshell
Review: I have been a consultant for years (almost decades) now. It's always been surprising to see how folks struggled to implement COM. I think the reason was there lack of understanding Component Oriented Programming but mostly how MS implemented COM. To save yourself the frustration, I thought you needed to know what happens at compile time and what at runtime. How the interface id are implemented, the SCM, ..... Most folks got COM on there resume and don't even understand the concept of an interface. A good book can change all of that, it can make you the guru playing golf on weekends while the other "pleps" sit in the office praying for that miracle compilation that will free them from dll hell. Although .Net components makes life easier, there is still room for the guru and the plep:) This book is one of those that create gurus out of pleps. It's not just like most tech books where authors hastily gathered information to write on a subject. Juval knows his subject and he knows what's best for the reader to know. The book is well organized, systematic and compact (422+ pages). Where needed, the author always presides with an excellent background. I have read a lot of tech books in my life, and this one stands out.
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Summary: Worth every cent!
Review: I have been developing software for 20+ years and am very particular about programming books. This book is my premier C# reference. Juval Lowy covers the topic thoroughly and offers best practices and many well written useful classes.
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