Professional C#

Rating:
Summary: keeps up with latest C#
Review: C# is still a relatively new language. But here Wiley/Wrox is already on the third iteration of this book! Very up to date, with the latest C# capabilities. Just as importantly, the book has extensive coverage of how C# integrates into .NET. Specifically including how to make Microsoft Windows Forms, and how to make dynamic web pages by combining C# with ASP.NET's components. Also of interest to some of you will be the sections showing how to use C# to connect to a SQL engine, like Microsoft's SQL Server.

In fact, one key message of the book is that C# derives a lot of its value from being tied into .NET and its associated family of packages. The book has over a thousand pages of details, but this take home idea concisely conveys much of the authors' intent.

As the side note, the C# Collections include what Microsoft calls Dictionaries. As the authors explain, this is a data structure that is more generally known as a hash table or map. [Cf. Knuth's "Art of Computer Programming", vol 3.] Yes, there is a .NET class called Hashtable. But you might think that in the interests of conforming with a straightforward industry usage, Microsoft might have dropped "Dictionaries".


Rating:
Summary: An excellent book
Review: I am an experienced C/C++ programmer, and I'm moderately familiar with writing windows applications in Visual C++ 6.0, having developed a few simple dialog-based apps in the past. Given this background, Professional C# is an excellent introduction to using the .NET framework and developing windows applications in C#. Unlike some other C# books, it doesn't waste much time with the very basics of programming, it gets right to the point and covers the C# language itself with a good balance of detail and speed, offering useful comparisons between C# and other languages such as VB and C++. That said, I wouldn't recommend this book for beginning programmers.

I originally thought that C# was "just a new type of C++", but once you try to learn the fundamentals of C# you realize that C# by itself is actually a just small part of the learning process. Rather, C# is intimately tied to microsoft's .NET framework, and learning the overall concepts of .NET is the real challenge. This book covers a LOT of material since C# and .NET encompass a surprisingly large set of concepts. Overall, I am somewhat amazed and very impressed at how much detailed and well-written information is crammed into this book.

A huge weakness of this book is the incredible number of errors, which range from simple typos, to repeated words, to more serious omissions and coding errors. Don't take my word for it -- if you look at the errata page on the Wrox Press website, there are currently 200 publisher-confirmed clarifications and errors listed for this book! (This number is probably an underestimate, IMO.) It also took me by surprise that the appendices are not included in the book, but are available as PDFs on the website. At first I thought the missing appendices were the biggest error yet, but apparently this was done on purpose. This becomes even more confusing because this results in ~200 skipped pages in the book, it jumps from page 1135 to 1307, and yet there are many index items that point to pages in that range (these are italicized). Overall, the missing pages cheapen the book and seem more like a publishing blunder rather than something that was planned from the start.

Apparently this book is available in downloadable form for ~$30 (?) as a PDF, I wonder if some/all of the errors have been corrected and the appendices are included in the electronic version.

Rating:
Summary: Don't buy this version!
Review: I have the 2nd version of this book. And I checked the 3rd version difference with its previoud version. Mostly re-organized the contents into new chapters, very few new content added. No descriptions on what's new in updated version. Worst of all, I checked the book in Borders: it has no appendices at all! The last chapter is chapter 32, ends at 10XX page, and there should be 4 appendices after it, then comes the Index at page 13XX. To my surprise, the publishing house just cut the appendices pages so the book jumps from 10XX to 13XX, the Index!

So, don't buy this version.

Rating:
Summary: Check Table of Contents
Review: In the table of contents it states that the appendices are at www.wrox.com. Perhaps it can be clearer, but that's where you can find them. As one of the authors on this book I can say that several chapters were completely re-written but most were updated to stay in line with Visual Studio .NET 2003 and the 1.1 version of the framework. The 2nd edition is based on version 1 of the framework.