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Summary: Quickly Becoming the Bible for .NET Developers
Review: I'll simply echo what most reviewers and discussion lists state about Jeff's book: it has become the defacto Bible for this emerging technology, for all .NET developers and software engineers worth their salt.Of the thousands of current .NET titles (many which were rushed to print to meet the demand for bootstrapping developer's knowledge of a hot new technology), this is by far the most informative, accurate, consise, and useful. It's written with a high level of detail and an obvious deep understanding of the framework, yet his delivery of the materiel is highly readable and understandable. His insights into how the FCL (Foundation Class Libraries) in the .NET Framework work are insightful, informative, and clear; reading this book will most definitely shape your coding practices and object designs to make more effective use of the framework as the MS designers intended. Not to write a cliche, but if you could only buy one book on the .NET technologies, buy this one. You'll read it once to get an overview understanding, and refer to it forever as a reference.
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Summary: Helps refines advanced development
Review: Events, delegates, interfaces, attributes, CLR and other framework aspects are arguably components that most "beginners" may not be comfortable with but are at the core to doing "non-visual" .NET development. For most code writing activities, this book may not be the reference you would use everyday. However, if you have never used events, delegates or thought about the impact of interfaces versus native class interfaces, or the impact of garbage collection on runtime performance, then this book will help you "apply" those core .NET concerns either from a design perspective or during refactoring. Further, a good foundational set of best practices can be found here, implied or otherwise and often intermixed with the technical discourse. I can almost guarantee that a certain type of developer won't make it through this book and will be all the more sorry for it. In short, this book successfuly guides the developer seeking to advance to a more sophisticated level of implementation and fully earns the title "Applied .NET Programming".
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Summary: MUST READ for .NET GURUs
Review: Jeff really shows off his experience with consulting for and working with the .NET framework team in this book. This is one of the very best .NET books and will remain as such for the lifetime of the technology. It covers the internals of .NET, critical to a solid foundation of knowledge for a technical leader in .NET. As such, it's not a "getting started guide". There are dozens of those on the market, but few "must haves" like this one.
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Summary: Picks up where the others leave off
Review: This book is an absolute necessity for anyone serious about writing programs targeting the .NET Framework. The author delves far deeper into the inner workings of this new platform then any I've encountered so far. It is not intended to be a tutorial, especially for a particular programming language. Instead, it's an in depth discussion on how the basic framework classes operate internally and how best to manipulate them efficiently and expertly. Virtually all the examples are in the C# language, but this does not prevent VB.NET and Managed C++ users from following the material. In fact, he does point out when the different languages utilize the framework differently and/or how these languages map into the framework. Chapters 2 & 3 did require my reading them more than once. The material is complicated and dense, but he covers it with great clarity and expertise. Just expect to return to it several times. He covers a lot of ground in great detail in these chapters on assemblies and the various strategies available for deploying programs and components. Also, the chapters on manipulating text and the garbage collection facilities are the best and the most detailed I've encountered. Many lights will go off in your mind as you're reading this book. I highly recommend this book to anyone AFTER learning the syntax of their chosen .NET language.
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Summary: A Must Read for .NET Programmers
Review: Jeffrey Ricther has written a very thorough yet readable book describing Microsoft's .NET Framework from both 3,000 feet and, at the same time, 1 millimeter. His direct interaction with the Microsoft team that developed .NET has proven to be a competitive edge that other .NET books currently on the market lack. If you're serious about .NET programming in any language, this is a book you need to buy and read multiple times.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book
Review: Covers .NET framework architecture in well written chapters and code. Very good for developers who are new to .NET world.
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Summary: Bravo. This is how it should be done.
Review: This book is a wonderful peek under the hood of many of the parts of the .NET framework and IL. If you are like me and easily overwhelmed by all you need to know to code at the next level in .NET and get confused by some of the parts. Look no further. This books breaks down all of the code and provides excellent insite overall all in C#. Mr. Richter should be giving classes on technical education writing to the many guys out there that have published lackluster .Net books. This book should not be the first .Net book you read but it should definitely be in the first three.
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Summary: Applied Where?
Review: Does "applied" in this case means applied in real-world usage, or does it means "applied study" in the framework plumbing. Unfortunately for some, this book really refers to the later - the study of .NET framework inner core. This book mostly focuses on the plumbing of .NET framework and how it works. But unless you are interested in how the framework is doing thing behind the scenes, you may yourself very difficult to carry on reading to the end. Though I really hope you get to second last chapter "The Garbage Collector" first before it gets to the book. Believe it or not, this chapter is actually the best in the book :) For those who must see inside the black-box before diving into .NET then you are in for a treat. The in-depth coverage of the framework is quite extensive. The sections on string and garbage collector are jewels, and you probably won't find them elsewhere. This is the reason why I had read the book twice, actually, almost twice..one and a half to be honest. Just could not bare myself to decipher some of the author writing the second time around. Overall, I think the book could have been better written, and which is why it lost one star.
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Summary: The book to read before you get serious with .Net
Review: Read this book. I had done some C# coding even before I read it, but in hindsight I realize how little I knew until I read Richter's book. It tells you how the CLR works, how to use its constructs, and avoid common but subtle mistakes. This book goes into some of the important details of the CLR and how they are exposed through C#. Examples include how the garbage collector works, intricacies of non-deterministic finalization, reflection, boxing/unboxing, using interfaces, etc. Jeffrey Richter emphasizes the subtle points and provides C# code that really helps you understand what is going on. The title, however, is misleading - the book is more conceptual than applied. It won't show you how to use the .Net libraries, write web services, GUI, or whatever "applied" stuff you may be dealing with. Well-paced for somebody familiar with C++ or Java. Unlike other books, there are no brain-dead code examples or drills on what OO programming is etc. If you are a decent programmer, you can get up to speed with .Net fast using this book.
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Summary: Richter getting by on rep alone
Review: This book is in no way "the bible of .NET" as one reviewer stated. In fact, the book doesn't even live up to it's title of being an applied book for programming .net applications. It's simply a hodgepodge of internals of the .net runtime with a heavy slant towards c# (did the author really just want to write a c# book) with nothing at all to contribute to people actually developing day-to-day apps. This is your typical situation of the emporer has no clothes so I'm certain that my review will not impact anyone's buying decision, but trust me. Buy this at your own peril as the book will NOT make you a better .net programmer!
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