Pro C 2005 and the NET 2 0 Platform Third Edition




Aimed at the reader with some previous programming experience, C# and the .NET Platform provides an enjoyable and well-paced tutorial for learning C# and Microsoft’s new .NET Framework. This well-written guide is all you need to get onboard with the latest in Windows development.

Today, there are a growing number of titles available for C#. This text strikes an excellent balance between a basic language tutorial with an authoritative presentation of what’s new and better in .NET with coverage of the some of the inner details of the platform, including deployment. The author’s patient writing style is never dull or overly technical, which will mean this book is a good choice for a wide range of readers approaching C# from a variety of languages including C++, Java, and Visual Basic.

At certain points, the author looks at “intermediate language” (IL) bytecodes that underlie the C# language. This is particularly informative in chapters that look at assemblies and deployment. As a tour of the basics of the C# language, this book distinguishes itself with short, effective examples (many of which use a set of classes modeling cars). Coverage of programming Windows Forms is really good, as is the chapter on getting the older COM and .NET components to interoperate. The focus of this book is mostly on traditional client-side development, though it does cover the latest in Web development with sections on basic ASP.NET and Web services, which round out the book.

The author does a good job at explaining how .NET works while bringing readers of different abilities up to speed with C#. Experts will appreciate the detail on class design, COM, and Web services, while beginners will be able to follow the author’s well-organized tour of the basics. In all, this combination of strengths makes C# and the .NET Platform an attractive choice in the growing list of titles on Microsoft’s latest programming language. –Richard Dragan

Topics covered:

  • Introduction to the .NET platform
  • Common Language Runtime (CLR)
  • The Common Type Specification (CTS)
  • The Common Language Specifications (CLS)
  • Assemblies
  • Basics of C# classes
  • Constructors
  • Flow control and iteration
  • Arrays and strings
  • Boxing and unboxing
  • Object-oriented programming in C# (encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism explained)
  • Exception handling
  • Garbage collection
  • Implementing the ICloneable and IComparable interfaces
  • Introduction to .NET collections (including custom collections)
  • Custom indexers, delegates, and events explained
  • XML-based documentation
  • In-depth guide to .NET assemblies (including shared assemblies)
  • Versioning techniques for side-by-side deployment
  • Multithreading and synchronization
  • Type reflection and attributes
  • Windows Forms tutorial (design options, survey of components, menus and other UI widgets)
  • Programming the Windows registry
  • GDI+ graphics tutorial (including fonts, brushes, images, and using .NET resources)
  • Input and output (directories, files, and streams)
  • COM, COM+, and .NET interoperability
  • Tutorial to ADO.NET for database programming (including DataSets and XML basics)
  • Introduction to ASP and ASP.NET programming for Web development
  • Web services basics (including SOAP, WSDL, and the Discovery Service Protocol, DISCO)

User Ratings and Reviews

4 Stars Great book in advanced topics
This book is a good guide for someone who is looking for overall information on C# advanced topics and who wants to get advanced knowledge of C#.

5 Stars Do your own examples
A few people criticised simple examples that go with the book.

Do your own examples for each chapter and that will teach you anything. Just reading the book and understanding it is not enough.

I believe that a good programming book is the one that:

1. presents it all

2. presents it as simply as possible.

This book does it all.

5 Stars For serious .NET Developers
This book should seriously exist in your shelf if you consider yourself a .NET programmer. The book explains the nitty-gritty of the C# language and consuming the .NET framework using C#. The chapter on delegates and events is thorough but I do have to admit that the chapter on Threading (Chapter 14) is somewhat lacking, but I’m guessing that Apress probably has a book for that (no points taken, Threading is another subject matter worthy of serious study). So why this book? If you really need to know what delegates are, if you need to know about generics or anonymous functions, this is the book to have. It makes a solid crash course for .NET 1.1 developers understandable while at the same time it lends itself to be a solid reference material.

3 Stars Comprehensive, But a Little Frustrating
On the whole, I’ve been very happy with this book — it covers a great deal of ground. But it doesn’t really teach — at best, it glosses.

Of course, this might just be the nature of trying to cover such a vast technological landscape in a single book, but then again, I’ve read many a tech book of just this length, and come away with a much deeper understanding of things than I feel like I this one offers.

The chapter on interfaces, events and delegates is a particularly frustrating one: the author writes extensively about each of these concepts, and provides working examples of each, in various flavors, but never explains *why* anyone might prefer to use one of these paradigms over, say, regular ol’ vanilla method invocation. Sure, all these things work, but why might someone use one approach over another? Which one, or ones, are more preferable in practice? On the whole, these kinds of whys don’t really get treated; we get the concepts, a few examples, and we move on, without much explanation beyond the how-tos.

If you’ve picked up this particular book, you’ve probably got some experience under your belt. While it’s a good book and I’m glad I have it (and would recommend it), if you’re thinking of picking it up, be prepared to deal with a fair amount of frustration at what’s missing.

5 Stars Excellent Book!
I see that to-date 3 reviewers have awarded 1/5. Huh?

I have a collection of at least 20 .NET related books. If I lost any of these I probably wouldn’t replace them, with the exception of this book. I use the MSDN library mainly as a reference, but when I can’t find what I’m looking for, amazingly, I always seem to find it in Andrew Troelsen’s faithful book! Many thanks Andrew!

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