Technical 23 Jul 2004 09:05 pm
C# - Tips and Techniques
C# - Tips and Techniques
Charles Wright
I picked up this book looking for an introduction to C# directed at people who already know how to program. What I really wanted was something like “C# for C programmers”, but I couldn’t find anything like it. You see, I don’t need to be told about what is an object, how to do a “for” loop, what is the difference between “while() {}” and “do {} while()”, and so on; what I want is to know what makes C# different from the languages I already know. In this sense, I was not disappointed.
Truth be told, this book is more like “C# for VB (or VC++) programmers”, but there is enough in it to be learned from by a standard C programmer who never used Visual Studio. However, it is a very uneven book; some parts are very good, while other are repetitive and full of typos. There are several examples of inconsistent capitalization throughout the book (variable and/or function names printed differently in different paragraphs); nothing too serious, but just enough to be annoying. Also, the last few chapters are nothing more than rote demonstrations of how to do so-and-so using Visual Studio .NET. In fact, I skipped most of the last three chapters because I couldn’t stand being told where to click anymore.
The structure of the book leaves something to be desired, as well; the order of the chapters seems almost random. You will see new features of the language being used in examples with no explanation whatsoever, and a few chapters later you will read about them. You will read about “advanced features of C#” before reading about “foreach”. And so on.
It is not a terrible book, anyway, but you will need to “filter” what information is in it to separate it from the clutter of step-by-step instructions, repeated info and missing data. It is not, also, a C# reference: you will find no detailed description of any classes in this book. You will find, though, lots of pointers to the MSDN documentation that comes with Visual Studio. Used correctly, it may be a reasonably good book, especially if it is the only one around; it’s probably better than “Visual Studio for dummies”, anyway.
