Author: Jesse Liberty & Donald Xie Publisher: O’Reilly Pages: 607 ISBN: 978-0596527433 Aimed at: .NET programmers Rating: 3 Pros: Updated version of a long-standing title Cons: Suffers from progressive updating Reviewed by: Ian Elliot
For any book to reach a fifth edition you have to assume it must be doing something right. This is a comparatively slim account of everything C# up to version 3.0. It is divided into four sections C# language, C# and data, Programming with C# and the CLR and .NET framework.
The first section is a fairly standard account of the language. It doesn’t give you any deep insights and the examples introducing coding ideas are on the long side.
The section on C# and data is basically included because the topics are topical - Linq and XML with a short concluding chapter on ADO .NET. The third section deals with ASP.NET, WPF and forms applications and doesn’t go deep enough.
The final section picks up core C# again with short accounts of threading, P/Invoke, using COM and so on. Overall you get the impression that what has been included and what has been left out has been decided on the basis of something other than a logical development.
If you skim the book’s contents you will also notice the large number of listing and output pages which take space that could otherwise be used for a discussion of deeper ideas, principles and practices. Indeed the book rarely strays from the standard account found in the documentation and adds nothing much to it. This, and the fact that it isn’t a particularly coherent account of C# as a language, strongly suggests that a complete revision is needed for the next edition.
<Reviewed in VSJ>
Author: Jesse Liberty & Donald Xie
Publisher: O’Reilly
Price: £38.50
Pages: 607
ISBN: 978-0596527433
Aimed at: .NET programmers
Rating:L
Pros: Updated version of a long-standing title
Cons: Suffers from progressive updating
Reviewed by: Ian Elliot
For any book to reach a fifth edition you have to assume it must be doing something right. This is a comparatively slim account of everything C# up to version 3.0. It is divided into four sections C# language, C# and data, Programming with C# and the CLR and .NET framework. The first section is a fairly standard account of the language. It doesn’t give you any deep insights and the examples introducing coding ideas are on the long side. The section on C# and data is basically included because the topics are topical, Linq and XML with a short concluding chapter on ADO .NET. The third section deals with ASP.NET, WPF and forms applications and doesn’t go deep enough. The final section picks up core C# again with short accounts of threading, P/Invoke, using COM and so on. Overall you get the impression that what has been included and what has been left out has been decided on the basis of something other than a logical development. If you skim the book’s contents you will also notice the large number of listing and output pages which take space that could otherwise be used for a discussion of deeper ideas, principles and practices. Indeed the book rarely strays from the standard account found in the documentation and adds nothing much to it. This, and the fact that it isn’t a particularly coherent account of C# as a language, strongly suggests that a complete revision is needed for the next edition.