|
Microsoft Visual C# .NET Step by Step
 |
Author: John Sharp, Jon Jagger
List Price: $39.99
Our Price: Click to see the latest and low price
ISBN: 0735612897
Publisher: Microsoft Press (23 January, 2002)
Edition: Paperback
Sales Rank: 87,149
Average Customer Rating: 3.52 out of 5
|
Customer ReviewsRating: 1 out of 5
Put me to sleep
I'm a professional programmer, but I had a hard time reading this book because it's so boring. It reads like product documentation. My biggest complaint, after getting halfway through it, is that the author will spend one sentence describing something at the start of a chapter, and then immediately dive into a case example, without finishing the explanation on what it is. Chapter 15 reads, "An indexer is a smart array in exactly the same way that a property is a smart field. In other words, the syntax that you use for an indexer is exactly the same as the syntax you use for an array. Let's work through an example..." and thus ends the description of indexers. The rest of the chapter is on how to use them. Not what they are or why on Earth I would want to use them. I found myself repeatedly skipping whole pages on the assumption of, Well, when I need to know how to use an this incomprehensible topic as presented in this book, I guess I'll just have to look it up later in MSDN. Why do I care about whether VB, C++, or Java programmers will be able to adopt their way of thinking to C#? Why do I care if a Java programmer understands whether one or more keywords are gone? Is C# a derivative of Java or Visual Basic? Zilch real-world examples that put anything in this book into proper context and usability. Starts off with complex topics and doesn't let up. Doesn't walk the reader "step by step" through anything. Found myself daydreaming a lot, having to backtrack. I kept thinking, "Who's your base class, and what does he do?" I'm being silly, but honestly, this book is a chore to read. Ugh. I kicked a field goal with it after I finished reading it. Just to point out that I don't hold a grudge against the authors or MSPress, the VB.NET Step By Step book was excellent, and it really did start with simple topics and grew in complexity from one chapter to the next. I recommend that book as a supplement. As a replacement for this, I recommend "C# Programming for the Absolute Beginner". It doesn't read like online help the way this book does, and it's written for programmers who are new to C#, but with prior experience with another language (so it's neither insulting nor presumptuous).
Rating: 5 out of 5
Excellent Book
Very easy to follow and understand. Great step by step examples from C# to XML, XML Schemas, ASP.NET, and some introductions to ADO.Net. I Liked this book. It works great hand in hand with Wrox "Beginning ASP.Net with C#" which also covers all these ideas as well.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Best of Five Books on C# and Visual Studio
I hated to see it end. Thankfully, the extra exercises on the CD gave me more great practice that made me feel I finally could write good software in Visual Studio. Each lesson covered a useful technique or feature from Windows forms, ADO.NET, even customizing DataGrids, to ASP.NET and web services. The code was clear, useful, well explained, and it worked! I found almost no erratta and didn't realized the authors were in the UK until I had finished (great editing, no idomatic expressions). I look forward to another book by Sharp and Jagger. I like the way they write and learned more from them than all four other books I have on the subject. I had no unanswered questions and was never bored. Any repetition was good practice on things you need to know cold and use, like filling a DataSet from a SqlDataAdapter or try/catch and MessageBox.Show(). Things weren't over-simplified. I believe they had me practicing good coding technique throughout, even tier separation, unlike many other books. Covering ASP.Net Forms right after Windows Forms made it easier to understand and remember the differences. First, learn the basics of C# from a reference volume (I particularly liked Petzoldt's emphasis on SCOPE) then get this book to dive into Visual Studio and learn while doing it step by step. All major features of Visual Studio .NET Pro are used and code well explained (except maybe delegates but they take volumes to explain). I expect to refer back to this book when I get stuck building my own projects. These authors raise the bar for all the others. Six stars would be more appropriate.
Similar Products
· Microsoft Visual Basic .NET Step by Step
· Inside C#, Second Edition
· Microsoft Visual C# .NET (Core Reference)
· OOP with Microsoft Visual Basic .NET and Microsoft Visual C# .NET Step by Step
· Microsoft Visual C# .NET Language Reference
|
