Professional C# (2nd Edition)

Rating:
Summary: TRULY PROFESSIONAL
Review: This edition of "Professional C#" did live upto my expectation. The book is truly professional. It not only looked into the affairs of C#, but went ahead with complementary analyses of both .NET Framework and interoperability.
Apart from providing comprehensible details on the core C# subject, another strong point of this book lies in its problem solving approach.
Simon Robinson and his co-authors paid attention to the art of diagnosis and remedy. Almost all the code recipes for programming problems were laid out. Thus, by heeding these recipe explanations, C# programmers (or developers) would be in better position to judge accurately, and deliver efficient output.
Also worth noting, is how this book detailed the vital roles components like XML, ASP.NET, and ADO.NET play in C# programming. Every aspect of this book highlighted quality and practicality. However, anybody who is new to C# programming may be frustrated by its advanced approach to issues. Hence, I must state that this book was designed for advanced programmers. Beginners and intermediate learners should act wisely, and look for something with a mild outlook.

Rating:
Summary: Perfect tutorial&reference for experienced programmers
Review: This is a big and heavy book (I just love this kind), and it covers more apects of C# than any other book on the market. No matter what you want to do with C#, you'll find something useful in this book.

I learned C# from the first edition of this book, and bought the second edition to use for reference. If you have some Visual Basic, C++ or Java background, this is the best book you can find to learn C# (you should also have the basic concepts of OOP programming, although there is an appendix that focuses solely on that subject). After you have learned C#, this is the best book to keep on your desk when you get into trouble and MSDN can't help too much.

If you're new to .NET, the first chapter ("C# and the .NET Arhictecture") will be really enlightening. Chapters 2,3,4 (C# Basics, Object-Oriented C# and Advanced C# topics) cover all you need to know about C# syntax and basics. The book also contains valuable material and plenty of code examples about Windows Forms, ADO.NET, ASP.NET, XML, File and Registry Operations, Working with Active Directory, Web Services and .NET remoting, COM Interoperability, COM+, GDI+ and so on. It doesn't try to cover exaustively each of those subjects, but it's enough to get you started.

Have fun with this big red book. This is definitely one of my favourite programming books, and the price is so low compared to the amount of quality information it has inside.

Rating:
Summary: WASTE OF MONEY & TIME
Review: THIS IS A COMPLETE WASTE OF MONEY & TIME .
AND THERE IS NO MUCH DIFFERANCE B/W FIRST & SECOND EDITION.
ANY WAY BOTH EDITION ARE NOT GOOD.

Rating:
Summary: In the perfect Wrox style
Review: This is D-Book! After reading Troelsen I perfected some concepts with this 2nd edition.
No time wasted on long intros: this book is for who wants to go on more depth. One statement for all, at the beginning of chapter 3: "We will assume that you're already familiar with the principles of OOP, such as inheritance and polymorphism, so that we can focus largely on how C# implements them.". Exactly what I wanted to hear...
It doesn't happen too often (to me) that I can read a book at a pace of 200 pages per day.
Great section on security.
Diggin it....

Rating:
Summary: The worst book on C#
Review: This is the worst book on C#. Lots of mistakes in the programs and the text. Also, there is a huge amount of overlap between all the different author's chapters, none of whom seem to really know anything beyond the most simple aspects of C#.

Buy a different book.

Rating:
Summary: Worst book on C#
Review: Worst book on C# currently available. I had so many problems with syntax errors in the examples. Don't waste your money on this book.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Source for Learning C# and the .NET Framework
Review: Wrox comes through with another great book! I was looking for something that would help me learn Windows GUI for an independent studies course and so I leaned on my past experiences with Wrox Books (Beginning/Professional Active Server Pages 3.0, Beginning PHP4, Beginning ASP Databases, Beginning XML, Beginning JavaScript), which had always been a good experience to say the least. If you want to learn a language for programming in the .NET environment then this is the book for you.

However, I do suggest some background experience with programming or understanding the concepts behind programming languages. Even though this book does provide excellent explanations of the topics, I think I understood concepts more easily because I've had two years of programming in C++ under my belt. Not that you need to be an experienced programmer! However, it would be good to know a little something beforehand. Otherwise, I suggest checking out the Beginning C# book which might be a little better suited for non-programmers looking to break into the realm of programming. C# really is a lot easier to understand as a starting language than C++ because Microsoft put in a lot of effort into making the language easy to use without having to know all the perplexing C routines for programming in the Win32 API.

Rating:
Summary: Hodgepodge put together by too many authors
Review: Wrox was slammed by the user groups for these books with ten authors. They've gotten smarter: now they only put one photograph on the cover. But that misses the point; the book is still more a collection of essays by different writers than a book.

There are parts of this book that are fairly good, but overall it does not cover the material coherently, and it is 25-50% bigger than it should be for the material covered.

There are better choices elsewhere. I just posted a review for the O'Reilly book, which I think is a much better choice.

Rating:
Summary: Good Enough
Review:     Among the programming books that I have read, I have noticed that there tend to be two specific types: tutorials and references. Tutorials are step-by-step books (Deitel comes to mind) which progress from beginning to end comprehensively. References are simply books that you can look something up if needs be. With Professional C#, Wrox has managed to combine the two genres into a very workable format.

    A note to those who would opt for this book: There is a Beginning C# book by Wrox that would be more suited to those who have little background in programming. As for Professional, the only requirements that seem to be needed are a sound understanding of general programming practices. From there, the book explains itself. It helps by relating C# concepts to their Java, C++, and Visual Basic counterparts, so those with experience in those three fields will find this book a much easier text to read.

    Now on to the actual content of the book, all 1200-plus pages of it! The book starts out with a fairly in-depth analysis and explanation of what the .NET Framework is and why you should care at all. Through the next four chapters, the concepts, syntax, and Base Classes are introduced. This is where I believe the 'tutorial' part of the book comes in. Reading these chapters in order would be a wise thing to do, in my opinion as a somewhat-but-not-totally-experienced programmer. Each topic flows nicely into the next and provides easy and understandable reading, chock-full of examples and code-snippets. As I mentioned before, many of these topics are related back to Java, C++, and VB, making concepts easier to grasp.

    Once you have finished reading through those five chapters, the book in its entirety turns into a 'reference' book. There isn't any specific order you should read through. You can simply pick a topic and read up on it. Wrox offers a myriad of topics throughout the 23 chapters in the book including a tutorial of the Visual Studio .NET environment, working with C# on ASP.NET pages, other web services, graphics, remoting, security, and many more. The scope of the book is definitely large as Wrox attempts to cram in as much C# and .NET knowledge as is humanly possible.

    So is this book sufficient for programmers looking to get started with C#? Most definitely. This book is excellent as either a tutorial or a reference and covers nearly every topic you could imagine. However, it also has its problems.

    The main problem I have with this book is simply the fact that it has no class index. There is no place to just 'look up' what classes have what methods and properties and the such. In addition, when new classes are introduced throughout the text, many of the methods are given, but their signatures are not! The first example that comes to mind is the String class section in Chapter 5: The book lists a few of the methods of the String class (not all of them, however), but all they give are the names of the methods. How am I supposed to use these methods if I don't know how they work? Many of them are seemingly intuitive, and you can find all the information through Microsoft's MSDN, but many programmers these days want a book they can reference when they have a problem. The way that it is set up, this book would fail miserably at the task.

    Another problem is that the examples tend to be a little 'shallow'. The code snippets are definitely useful, but only after studying them for a few minutes to see exactly what is going on. The context of the examples could definitely be a lot better.

    Finally, just a minor little problem: There tends to be a more-than-necessary number of spelling and syntactical errors, the former more than the latter. While this isn't a huge problem, I encountered so many spelling and grammatical errors that I honestly believe that running it through Word's spell and grammar checkers probably would have alleviated many of the problems. The syntax errors are few and far between, but they are still evident. With a book that is over 1200 pages in size with as many authors as this has, it is definitely acceptable to have these kinds of mistakes. But I still believe it could have been edited a bit more thoroughly.

    Despite its few faux pas, the book as a whole is an excellent resource that any and every C# programmer should have. Even without full class and method signatures, using the book as a reference is easy to do and should be done. It covers many topics in-depth that other C# books have failed to mention, especially when it comes to web services and programming. Professional C# 2nd Edition is certainly on my recommended list.