C# Bible

Rating:
Summary: Good bang for the buck
Review: First of all, let me state that this is not my first C# book. So I can't offer the perspective of someone who is new to the language and wants to learn it from this book. My objective for buying this book was to expand my C# library with a book covering some advanced features of the language.

Simply stated, this is a good book filled with useful information that comes at a very reasonable price. I don't think it's a "comprehensive" reference to C# (what book is?) and it doesn't go into great depth on any one topic. But it does offer a very broad cross-section of the language.

Since I've purchased the book I've found myself opening it to find out information that is not clearly explained in the MSDN library and not mentioned at all in other books. And the majority of the time, that information was covered in this book in a simple, succinct manner. For example, very few books out there cover asynchronous I/O in C#, but C# Bible devotes 6 pages to the topic - with sample code.

For the price, this book is a worthwhile addition to your C# library.

Rating:
Summary: Good bang for the buck
Review: First of all, let me state that this is not my first C# book. So I can't offer the perspective of someone who is new to the language and wants to learn it from this book. My objective for buying this book was to expand my C# library with a book covering some advanced features of the language.

Simply stated, this is a good book filled with useful information that comes at a very reasonable price. I don't think it's a "comprehensive" reference to C# (what book is?) and it doesn't go into great depth on any one topic. But it does offer a very broad cross-section of the language.

Since I've purchased the book I've found myself opening it to find out information that is not clearly explained in the MSDN library and not mentioned at all in other books. And the majority of the time, that information was covered in this book in a simple, succinct manner. For example, very few books out there cover asynchronous I/O in C#, but C# Bible devotes 6 pages to the topic - with sample code.

For the price, this book is a worthwhile addition to your C# library.

Rating:
Summary: Decent, but not all I expected
Review: I praised this book on a Mircosoft newsgroup... But the more I read this the less I like it. I wanted to share some thoughts here. After comparing this book to a few others on C#, I feel this has one a more comprehensive table of contents. You get a full 9 pages on XML commenting while others give a paragraph or two. There are some cool chapters such as "Building Mobile Applications", "Working with COM", "Working with COM+ Services" and ".NET Remoting". These are topics that my 1600 page VB.NET book (Francesco Balena, Microsoft Press) didn't cover.

However, there are a lot of typos, a lot of fluff, explanations are sometimes very poor, and organization is pretty bad.

It hasn't been very thoroughly proofread. Take this for example: "Abstract classes are also, by definition, virtual methods..." Still not sure how a class can be a method. There are a lot more like this, but re-reading the paragraph you can generally figure out what they're talking about.

By fluff, I mean that they do things like give an example of operator overloading for each and every unary operators (come on, do I need an example for unary plus AND unary minus?) Or how to cause about 6 different exceptions (OutOfMemory, StackOverflow, NullReference, etc) and how to catch each one. It's a good way to pad the page count, that's about all.

The overall organization of the book doesn't make it a very good read, either. It really skips around a lot. For example, talking about overloading members and virtual members BEFORE talking about classes seems like a poor choice to me if you're really aiming to help novice programmer.

It claims to be written for novice and experienced developer alike, but I'm not sure it makes a great first book on .NET. Although, if you are a veteran programmer, you'll fly through the first 11 chapters since they are written more so for the novice.

If you already know VB.NET and want to transition to C# (like I'm doing) then this book will get you up and running with all of the important things. However, the WROX books have gotten some good reviews on newsgroups, so I might give those a try instead.

Rating:
Summary: Decent, but not all I expected
Review: I praised this book on a Mircosoft newsgroup... But the more I read this the less I like it. I wanted to share some thoughts here. After comparing this book to a few others on C#, I feel this has one a more comprehensive table of contents. You get a full 9 pages on XML commenting while others give a paragraph or two. There are some cool chapters such as "Building Mobile Applications", "Working with COM", "Working with COM+ Services" and ".NET Remoting". These are topics that my 1600 page VB.NET book (Francesco Balena, Microsoft Press) didn't cover.

However, there are a lot of typos, a lot of fluff, explanations are sometimes very poor, and organization is pretty bad.

It hasn't been very thoroughly proofread. Take this for example: "Abstract classes are also, by definition, virtual methods..." Still not sure how a class can be a method. There are a lot more like this, but re-reading the paragraph you can generally figure out what they're talking about.

By fluff, I mean that they do things like give an example of operator overloading for each and every unary operators (come on, do I need an example for unary plus AND unary minus?) Or how to cause about 6 different exceptions (OutOfMemory, StackOverflow, NullReference, etc) and how to catch each one. It's a good way to pad the page count, that's about all.

The overall organization of the book doesn't make it a very good read, either. It really skips around a lot. For example, talking about overloading members and virtual members BEFORE talking about classes seems like a poor choice to me if you're really aiming to help novice programmer.

It claims to be written for novice and experienced developer alike, but I'm not sure it makes a great first book on .NET. Although, if you are a veteran programmer, you'll fly through the first 11 chapters since they are written more so for the novice.

If you already know VB.NET and want to transition to C# (like I'm doing) then this book will get you up and running with all of the important things. However, the WROX books have gotten some good reviews on newsgroups, so I might give those a try instead.

Rating:
Summary: A Good Read
Review: I'm new to C# and this is my first book on it, I've had some experience over the past several years in C/C++ but am new to C# and .net in general. This book is a good read, and the first several chapters give you a clear understanding of how to do tasks in C#. It doesn't spend a lot of time going over the basics that you should probably already have learned from other languages (controls, variables, etc.) but has gotten me up and running with C# in no time flat. I wouldn't say it's 100% comprehensive and I have purchased other book to accompany this one as I finish reading it, but it is definitely a good read for someone who has some knowledge of other C languages (some background in C++ OOP is definitely helpful, the author starts in talking about object oriented structures from the beginning and assumes that you know what he is talking about) will do fine with this book.

Rating:
Summary: A Major Disappointment
Review: The Bible series is one of my favorite series of technical books due to it's usual great presentation of the data and the sheer volume of information presented. I'm a very careful shopper and usually research the books I'm going to buy. However, due to the high quality of many of the other books in this series I purchased this one on faith. This turned out to be a big mistake as this book is poorly laid out, covers some topics to a depth that seems ridiculous and other topics are just barely touched. There are not nearly enough examples and the chapter on ADO.Net is woefully inadequate. The book works as a high level overview, but there are much better books out there that work even better as a high level overview. If you want a better book then look at Wrox's "Beginning Visual C#" ISBN: 0764543822 or Wrox's "Professional C#, Second Edition" ISBN: 0764543989.

Rating:
Summary: A Major Disappointment
Review: The Bible series is one of my favorite series of technical books due to it's usual great presentation of the data and the sheer volume of information presented. I'm a very careful shopper and usually research the books I'm going to buy. However, due to the high quality of many of the other books in this series I purchased this one on faith. This turned out to be a big mistake as this book is poorly laid out, covers some topics to a depth that seems ridiculous and other topics are just barely touched. There are not nearly enough examples and the chapter on ADO.Net is woefully inadequate. The book works as a high level overview, but there are much better books out there that work even better as a high level overview. If you want a better book then look at Wrox's "Beginning Visual C#" ISBN: 0764543822 or Wrox's "Professional C#, Second Edition" ISBN: 0764543989.

Rating:
Summary: Poorly Written, Full of Typos, But Better Than Most
Review: This books is poorly written. It tries to be a book for beginners, which is fine with me, but it then mentions complex topics in passing without elaboration. For instance, it talks briefly about structures. It assumes I know what/how/when to use structures vs. classes (until much, much later in the book). What's the difference between a structure and a class? It just assumes that I know. That may not be the best example, but it's one of MANY examples.

Another qualm I have with this book is it is too much "what" with very little "why". It pays very little attention to best practices. For example, it will tell you how to implement an interface, but what are the best ways to implement an interface. Granted this gets into more esoteric OO design concepts, but still, give me some ideas on HOW to do stuff, not just WHAT I can do. Most other programming books have more of this HOW kind of discussion.

Finally, there are the annoying typos. It clearly shows that this book was just thrown together. The quality just isn't there.

I can't recommend a specific alternative, but go with something that has better reviews.

***********************

OK - I'm revising my review as of 5/21/03. The above review still holds, BUT I have now read 2 other C# books, and to my utter astonishment, they are worse. So - this is the best book I have found yet, though it has some serious issues, as I mention above.

Rating:
Summary: You may buy, but look around first
Review: This is my 6th book on C#. I have hard core C++/Java back ground and use most of the programming languages. I got this book to use it as a dictionary or desk reference. The book I bought does not have a CD, and the site for bonus companion for sample code is missing. I was directed to Technical Support by the authors. Thanks. If you are my style, prefer to see in depth commenting or code discussion, then don't buy. Buy only you know and used these dll/namespace/keywords/interface/delegation/indexers, would be a quick guide for you. Goodies: codes looked simple ch 7,ch 16, ch 33.