C#: The Complete Reference (Osborne Complete Reference Series)

Rating:
Summary: The Complete Reference C#
Review: Herb Schildt is my favorite programming book author. I like this explanations and his method of evolving the subject he is teaching. The C# complete reference, 2002 has several errors that have perplexed me for hours causing me visit the osborne.com web site.

At the site, I found no listing for this book, but Schildts' other great books are listed.
It appears Osborne has given up on this book! Why don't they list the book and why do they not have an erratum on this book?

Schildt is a great author but Osborne is not a good publisher! If you can, wait for his new C# book.


Rating:
Summary: Excellent coverage of the language syntax and classes
Review: I have been programming since I was 15 (3 years now) but up until this book it had been QBasic and Visual Basic. C# was my first delve into the world of a real programming language.

Having studies Software Design and Development at high school (7th in the state in the HSC w00t...) I knew quite a lot about the theory behind Object Oriented Programming: Encapsulation, Inheritance and Polymorphism and could describe in psuedocode a complete program but lacked any knowledge of a programming language in which I could implement my ideas and algorithms that were floating around.

So I wanted a book that didnt harp on about the principles of OOP but was about reserved words, syntax and supporting classes. I found the ideal book in C# the Complete Reference. The overview of OOP priciples was brief and to the point, allowing the book to concentrate on the practical implementation (for readers who have no idea about OOP possibly C# the Beginners Guide would be preferable as a slower paced read). I flew through this book in a week and a half and felt that a blistering pace was kept up by Herb Schildt, at no time did I feel that the book was overdoing examples, with new concepts and syntax appearing all the time.

The examples in this book are excellent - I hand coded them all and every one compiles first time(unlike some other books I read that involve a bit of debugging). The examples are straight to the point, not only introducing the new idea but consolidating previously learnt work into the example.

The coverage of all topics was supurb, especially the book's treatment of classes, inheritance, operator overloading and exception handling. If I had any criticism it is that the sections on Attributes and Delegates were a bit brief, and could have done with some more explanation and examples, and the chapter on working with Collections (chapter 22) was a bit disjointed, introducing all the interfaces that are inherited and methods used by the various collections before actually telling you what these collections were - I advise reading this chapter in reverse.

Not only the language was convered (as I have seen in some other books) but some of the common classes included in the .NET framework are discussed. The System Namespace is explored - going into detail about System.Math and all the data types (like System.Int) and the many methods supported by them.
There is a valuable section on strings and formatting, going into great depth about the string as an object and the methods it supports. The System.Threading and System.Web namespaces are also discussed in depth (including code to build a webcrawler). However, as Herb Schildt acknowledges there are many other classes not examined here, but gives a good introduction nonetheless.

The book concludes with three practicle examples of C# - implementing Components, creating a basic Windows form and most interestingly a recursive descent expression parser.

I recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn C#, and learn it fast. However I also recommend readers of this book have some previous programming experience (my Visual Basic experience was usefull for understanding some concepts) or an understanding of programming theory. This book isnt for someone who has never coded before, but beginners with only a month or so of programming in another language behind them will find this book easy to read.

This book has inspired me to purchase Java 2 The Complete Reference and C++ the Complete Reference by Herb Schildt, as he is the best author I have read (and since reading this I have read several other programming books, mainly on C# - and none have come close to Herb yet).

So what are you waiting for! Buy it now!

Deon Poncini

Rating:
Summary: "Complete" is misleading
Review: The title "Complete" Reference is misleading, because the book is definitely not complete. Schild does his usual good job of explaining C# syntax and construction; in this respect, this book is one of the better ones. However, his almost parenthetical discussion of actually building applications - which is what most C#.net programmers want to do - is woefully inadequate. There are a number of C# idioms which are very useful to know and understand in the building of C# applications, and Schild doesn't even attempt to cover them.
If you want a book to learn C# syntax, this is it. If you want a book which will teach you how to build applications, definitely look elsewhere!

Rating:
Summary: Perhaps not his best, but still a very good book on C#.
Review: There exists many types of books on most programming languages. Reference Guides, How To's, Beginners Books, Advanced Books, and those that tie into specifics like Science and Engineering, Video Games or perhaps Databases. Herbert Schildt usually writes How To and Reference Guides. He's an acknowledged master in the world of object-oriented programming (OOP) and a frequent author because of his down to earth communication style. An earlier book "C++ From the Ground Up" is a legend in itself. It was one of the few books you could learn C++ from without ever having learned the C language.

This book suffers a little from the beginners syndrome. While its intention is to start from the beginning, unfortunately, that usually means, something will be left out. Unless you want to read 3000 pages, most books have trouble covering the scope of a well-developed computer language. As other reviewers have said, this does lack some things that should be included about C#. That said, it's written in Schildts trademark literary style. Like most of his works seems to speak directly to you rather than talk above or around the reader.

I do understand that Schildt has another book on C# coming soon if its not our already and that may pick up the detail this book has missed. One of the nice things about this like most of Schildt's books is that it is not written like a dissertation. Too many programming books start out sounding very good and then after 50-60 pages the author "treats" us to 200 pages of annotated code. I've never been able to learn much about reading code. It's better at least for me to learn what the language can do and write my own code. Small examples are ok to get the syntax right, but reading a large program looses my attention.

If you were unsure, you'd like Schildt's style check out the first chapter or two from "C++ From the Ground Up" at the local bookstore (they may have this one too). Then come back here and buy at a discount.

Rating:
Summary: Perhaps not his best, but still a very good book on C#.
Review: There exists many types of books on most programming languages. Reference Guides, How To's, Beginners Books, Advanced Books, and those that tie into specifics like Science and Engineering, Video Games or perhaps Databases. Herbert Schildt usually writes How To and Reference Guides. He's an acknowledged master in the world of object-oriented programming (OOP) and a frequent author because of his down to earth communication style. An earlier book "C++ From the Ground Up" is a legend in itself. It was one of the few books you could learn C++ from without ever having learned the C language.

This book suffers a little from the beginners syndrome. While its intention is to start from the beginning, unfortunately, that usually means, something will be left out. Unless you want to read 3000 pages, most books have trouble covering the scope of a well-developed computer language. As other reviewers have said, this does lack some things that should be included about C#. That said, it's written in Schildts trademark literary style. Like most of his works seems to speak directly to you rather than talk above or around the reader.

I do understand that Schildt has another book on C# coming soon if its not our already and that may pick up the detail this book has missed. One of the nice things about this like most of Schildt's books is that it is not written like a dissertation. Too many programming books start out sounding very good and then after 50-60 pages the author "treats" us to 200 pages of annotated code. I've never been able to learn much about reading code. It's better at least for me to learn what the language can do and write my own code. Small examples are ok to get the syntax right, but reading a large program looses my attention.

If you were unsure, you'd like Schildt's style check out the first chapter or two from "C++ From the Ground Up" at the local bookstore (they may have this one too). Then come back here and buy at a discount.

Rating:
Summary: A detailed description of C#
Review: This is an excellent -- repeat excellent -- book on C#. That's not surprising since its written by legendary author Herbert Schildt. (Just about anyone who has been arround programming for the past 20 years probably has two or more Schildt books!) It provides an incredibly detailed description of the C# language and the .NET Framework libraries. Schildt carefully describes each feature, keyword, and attribute of C#, and shows how to apply them. He even shows how C# compares to and differs from Java and C++. This is clearly a book from an author who knows his stuff.

Rating:
Summary: Average at best
Review: Unfortunately, Herb seems to have written this book with another language in mind, perhaps Java, C? I say this because his explanations of topics seem so generic that you'd forget your even reading about .net. That's not good. I've read several other C# books that do a much better job of pulling me into the .net world. Also, Schildt apparently made a blatant decision to not code accoring to the recommended MS standards of camel and pascal case. This is very annoying. Other books even take the time to tell you exactly what these standards are. Herb does not. I get the feeling he just recycled some material from past books and rushed this out the door. If he even wrote any of this book at all, who knows. Look elsewhere folks.