|
Bottom
line: Good reference for C# program syntax, and structure and as rudimentary
reference, but you would definitely need more (either from online doc, or
other books in the series) to make up for the topics that this book leaves
out.
|
|
This
book is aimed at the experienced programmer who is already well versed in
another language (C, C++, or Java are most closely related) and wants a
reference on commonly used objects in the .NET framework. It is not meant as a C# tutorial, which is
made clear on the cover and back of the book, as well as in the "Who is
this book for?" section of the introduction. My review included a cover to cover read through of the book,
although this is not the recommended use of this book. It should be used as it's title indicates
"Programmer's Reference."
That is, it should be sitting in arms reach of your workstation whilst
you are coding and I think you'd get
the best day to day use of it that way.
The book is 28 chapters, and
the first 20 are short and cover the C# language itself. The
last 8 cover: .NET class roadmap; System classes, Collections, I/O,
Reflection, Text manipulation, Regular expressions, and Threading. There is one appendix on keywords, and one
on Naming Conventions. The book is 555 pages and includes a very complete 30 page index which I referred to
frequently to look up concepts covered previously in the text.
What I like about the book: 1.
it is that is extremely concise. 2.
There are many fully functional short programs that demonstrate one or two objects, and the syntax to use
them. These can be used as examples
in larger applications that developers can use 3. It is very well organized
with a condensed quick ref. table of contents on the inside cover, and more
detailed contents a few pages in.
What I didn't like was that it skipped large sections of the Framework
class library. This is not
necessarily bad, however, since it's aim is to cover frequently used, not
all, classes, and it did give references to other books (published by Wrox of
course) that contain the lacking information.
I downloaded the code examples
from the Wrox website and the handful that I compiled and executed ran
without a hitch.
|