5 comments about C# 2.0: Practical Guide for Programmers (The Practical Guides).

1. "C# 2.0 - Practical Guide for Programmers", by Michel de Champlain and Brian Patrick is a rather serious affair, aimed at experienced programmers seeking to move to C#. It covers the C# language, the .NET framework and object-oriented programming. All pretty scary stuff for new programmers, but working programmers will find its unfussy presentation very refreshing. The book also covers some advanced topics: C#'s type system, generic types (new in C# 2.0), threaded programming, and reflection. The appendices contain (rather oddly) the full C# syntax in an EBNF grammar and (more usefully) details of C#'s XML documentation tags. What's more, the whole book weighs in at a lean 251 pages (just 575 grams), making it ideal to carry around in a bag without causing bodily harm. Perfect as a no-nonsense introduction to C#; perfect as an ongoing reference.



2. A must-buy! Warmly recommended for whoever wants a quick and clear vision of the language without missing the subtleties and the good practices!
   
   --
   
   This reference book presents the language in a concise and effective way. The contents are expressed in an interesting manner and short examples are used to illustrate the concepts (moreover many of the examples evolve along the chapters in order to keep the reader's attention on the subjects presented).
   
   The authors' industrial and academic experience is sensible. The good and bad habits of the language are denoted and explained when necessary, even a few notes for the programmers who care about the performance of their code.
   
   As opposed to many works, the examples not only present the language's syntax but also cleverly show us the "object-oriented" way of doing things: a clear advantage. This book has a very effective index and short targeted exercises are present at the end of the chapters.
   
   It's hard to say bad things about that masterpiece. If only one embarrassing point exists, it's that when we start reading it, we become so addicted to the language itself and the way it is presented that it is hard not to read it cover-to-cover. And I'm not mentioning the risk of finding C# way more "sexy" than our own favorite language!
   
   In conclusion: excellent book, a lot of contents explained in a few pages and well structured, easy to find rapidly what we look for. I would like more authors to be demonstrating such conciseness and caring for the effectiveness of the reading. Well done!



3. I own a lot of books on C#. When I say this, literally I'm talking around 7 or more books. By far, this is the best if you want to learn the C# language ground up, especially OOP.
   
   I was at the bookstore on day, opened this book, and after reading 2 pages, I could tell this was a must have. Since then, I've used this book every day at work for a public .com website which serves millions of users. There are so many times I've had one of those "Oh, so that's really what that meant", that this book has paid itself time and time again. You think to yourself as you look at MSDN, what the hell did all that jargon really mean that Microsoft just babbled about in the C# core language? You then read this book and can finally stop pounding your head against the wall when trying to learn OOP. I wasn't born a genius as many of us aren't ;)...lets all be honest, you know how much you bang your head every day on the simple stuff, even as an advanced programmer...don't lie.
   
   So, with that, this book is an absolute must for any programmer, even the most advanced. I have never seen a book so compact that has blown me away and really made me understand the language like this one.
   
   Do not miss this one, if you need to brush up or get up to speed with C# quickly due to the nature of your job... or even forget the minor details as an advanced programmer sometimes; this is a must have in your arsenal.



4. i can't see anything practical in this book! also the "2.0" bit is quite far fetched, as there is hardly any good info on C#2.0 features.



5. I'm afraid that I have to agree with the reviewers that gave the book only one or two stars. I think the size of the book is misleading. I found that I had to continually get further explanations and examples from the internet. So even though the book is thin, if you printed out all of the supplementary explanations and examples and added them to the size of the book, the book would be much thicker. I have to agree that using BNF in a book of limited size would not be the method that I would have picked. (Eventhough I have used lex, yacc, flex, and bison and done some compiler writing.) Unfortunately I would also not recommend the book as a reference. Instead if I wanted a thin reference I would use something like "C# Precisely", second edition by Peter Sestoft and Henrik Hansen. However, I have worked with people who would like this book, which is why I am giving it two stars instead of one star. But I don't think the above mentioned people would be in the majority.

2 comments about C++ (Teach Yourself Books) (Teach Yourself).

1. If you're fresh in C++ - this book is for you : it's easy and sharp but if you've got at least basic skills in C++ - save your money - skip this book .



2. I found this to be easily the best out of a handful of "beginners" C++ books that I bought. It cuts right to the point and unlike those big doorstop books this one keeps the reader progressing quickly.

   It covers the basics (variables, functions etc.) very clearly and includes a lot of detail about pointers and OOP also in a very well organised manner.

   There is a big chapter covering the standard library functions which I keep flicking back to as I write my own programs, even though I pretty much finished the book a while ago.

   The only bad thing I can think is that if you already know a bit about programming then the first couple of chapters might not be useful. But its worth it for the later stuff on pointers etc.

   Overall a great buy!

4 comments about Applied C# in Financial Markets (The Wiley Finance Series).

1. I unfortunately bought this book when there were no reviews. The book offers a VERY basic overview of c#. It offers virtually no insight into the advantages of c# in the financial industry. The only reason this book has anything todo with finance is that a few examples are very basic options conepts (ie a black scholes calculator). To top it off - the syntax has quite a number of errors. One is better off buying an o'reilly book for the c# and searching google for a few examples of c# use in finance.



2. Highly Disappointing!
   
   From the author's experience mentioned in biography, I had high expectations from "Applied C# in financial markets", none of them was fulfilled by the superficial text which left me wondering why would Wiley ever added it in its financial books portfolio.
   
   As the statement of purpose mentions "This book is designed to help experienced programmers into the C# language. It covers all the relevant concepts from a finance viewpoint." none of this I found to be true. This book is certainly not intended for experienced programmers as "Creating a new project in Visual Studio.Net" and "what is an assembly" are not advance programming topics. If you are looking for credit risk prediction algorithm implementations, Monte Carlo Method, Bayesian inference, artificial neural networks in finance or anything of this genre, this book doesn't cover it. It barely discusses Black - Scholes Option Pricing Models and Implicit finite difference models.
   
   If you are considering it a C# tutorial book, it is not! You may find few interesting examples in chapters of object oriented programming, XML and Trading Exception management but its not worth buying a over priced ($79.99) book when you can find various good tutorials in the market covering a whole lot more than this. I'd recommend to read Joshi's "The Concepts and Practice of Mathematical Finance (Mathematics, Finance and Risk)" C++ Design Patterns and Derivatives Pricing (Mathematics, Finance and Risk) and Microsoft Press's "Microsoft® Visual C#™ .NET Step by Step".



3. I haven't posted a review in a few years. But, this book drove me to it. To echo the comments of the last few reviewers, this book is neither a good introduction into C# or in applying C# in a financial programming context. Compare this book at 138 pages to another Wiley book, Modelling Derivatives in C++, which comes in at approximately 800 pages. How did Wiley let this book, Applied C# in Financial Markets, into publication??? Total waste of time and about the only thing that can be called applied C# in financial markets in this book is the title. As far as the one 5-star this rating this book got, I have to ask if that reviewer is friends with the author.



4. I completely agree with the previous reviewers.
   
   Here is what I found:
   
   1. Writing is extremely simplistic to the point of annoyance. I cannot shake off the impression that this is the first thing the author ever wrote in his life. Which is strange: if you are a programmer, you write documentation, if you work in finance, you write proposals and such. Does the author even have a job of any relevance?
   
   2. The first chapter "What is .NET and how does C# fit in?" is exactly one page long including the title. Yes, my friends, this is exactly how much you should to know about .NET and C#'s place in it.
   
   3. In the second chapter the author writes and I quote: "Prefix is when i++ returns the value of i and then increments itself by one, whereas the postfix operator ++i adds one to i and then returns the value." This is not a typo, there is a table and some examples where the author further propagates on us his confusion about what a prefix and what a postfix operators are. I stopped reading the book after this.
   
   .NET and C# are pretty exciting developments for the Windows platform. More and more job descriptions for quantitative positions in finance require people to know C#. It is said to see that Wiley has chosen an ignorant hack to cover this important topic.

4 comments about .NET for Java Developers: Migrating to C#.

1. After being a Java developer for some time now, I had heard much about C# but did not know where to start other than reading through 1000's of lines of Microsoft documentation.
   This book has been an absolute goldmine! The working examples and the clear concise descriptions and explanations of the differences between the two languages have made my move to C# quite easy.
   Moving from Java to C# is more than just syntax. This book explains the details of the CLR and J2EE so that you will know the strengths and weaknesses of each.
   If you work in a financial institution or other industry that insists on Java and you are curious about C# this is definitely the right book to purchase.



2. This book helped me move into the C# realm very quickly and get upto speed in no time.
   If you are coming from a full-fledged java development environment, this can be used as a reference aswell in your initial efforts to get the things done. Also, the examples provided are on par with books like "Core Java".
   Two thumbsup to the authors for this initiative.



3. The title of this book is ".NET for Java Developers", with the subtitle "Migrating to C#". These should have been swapped. The bulk of the book is devoted to explaining C#, with an emphasis to comparing it to java. Out of the 24 chapters, only a few really deal with .NET. Why such a misnomer? Perhaps the authors felt that the title suggested a topic that was underserved by other books, whereas there are already several books on C# for java developers. (Like "From Java to C#" by Mok, also published by Addison-Wesley.)

   Now as to the actual subject, the authors DO cover it well. Java and C# are like Spanish and Portuguese. If you know one and not the other, it will still be recognisable. The structure of class files and the syntax are broadly the same. Certainly, you won't have any difficulty with the concepts.

   A key difference though is the ability to use pointers. Java does not permit this in its standard formulation. (Though through JNI you can effectively manipulate pointers.) C# lets you use pointers through its "unsafe" keyword. The book only devotes 2 pages to this. Very cursory. It points out that bugs in pointer arithmetic are responsible for a lot of C and C++ breakages, and pointer manipulation is often exploited by worms and viruses. Given the ongoing propagation of these on Microsoft platforms, and that .NET/C# is run on those platforms, and that Bill Gates himself says Microsoft is putting more emphasis on fighting them, a more extensive explanation would have been merited for the benefit of non-Microsoft developers. Related to this is an explanation of when it is ok to use pointers (Eg. for higher performance if you have special hardware.) But there is no treatment of this at all. Pity.




4. I am a Java programmer by profession and have been recently tinkering with C#. Since, I was told that C# is very easy to pick up for Java programmers, I started converting one of my Java projects to C# and hit a roadblock when I spend quite a lot of time debugging one particular issue. Turns out that in C#
   methods are not polymorphic by default, whereas in Java they are.

   BIG DIFFERENCE! I had to rethink the way I had designed my class hierarchy and the access modifiers on my methods.

   I later glanced at chapter 5 of this just to see if the authors talk about this, and I was impressed by the coverage. If only I had read this chapter before I had started converting my program.

   I have since then, become less adventurous and am reading more about threads, IO and reflection in C#. A lot of it is very different from Java.

   I am glad I have this book. Its a good reference for me to know
   what mistakes I am not supposed to make...

2 comments about ASP.NET 1.1 Solutions Toolkit.

1. The many authors have gathered a potentially useful array of components, designed for ASP.NET 1.1. The uses are manifold. If you are still new to ASP, the coding of the components gives many extended examples for you to learn from.
   
   More to the point, you might already be writing in ASP for your website. Thus you might want to see if any of these prebuilt components might save you some development time. The authors have tried to make components that will likely often be required in a website. Like a file uploader or RSS reader.
   
   The only component I wonder about is the Chart. It lets you add pie charts and histograms of data from a SQL Server onto a webpage. Well coded. But surely there is by now a proprietary or free package for ASP that does this charting and far more elaborate graphics. It seems such an obvious need and the .NET platform is important enough that some company would have built such a package. Then again, your graphics needs may be straightforward enough to use Chart, or a simple modification thereof.



2. Book review: "ASP.NET 1.1 Solutions Toolkit"
   
   APress has done it again. I really enjoyed the theme and focus of this book, as it deals directly with custom control development and function-centric tools built with ASP.NET. The utilities presented are practical, timely, and those that any modern-day web programmer will need or has considered at some point.
   
   I'm didn't find the title to properly connote the content within, but it's certainly a great read.
   
   My favorite examples are the RSS Reader, Globalizable Page, and Reviewing Control, being new, up-to-date features most web sites need these days. And the Chart, Straw Poll and Search Engine examples show new takes on old standards. Many of the examples deal with pattern-based programming, which is helpful.
   
   The only two major detractions I think the book exhibits are the tight-knit binding to Visual Basic .NET for code examples and marriage to Visual Studio .NET.
   
   All in all, this is a great read that even experience ASP.NET devs should go through.

No comments about C# Program & Progress.

3 comments about Advanced C# Programming.

1. There is a rarely a case when I wonder why a book got published and this one meets that case. The content and examples are terrible and the order of the book does give any indication of advanced concepts in C#. This book tells me what advanced concepts in C# can do, but doesn't expound on here they are done. Terrible book and written for, well, I don't know who.



2. 
   
   First I think the title is a bit misleading. It is an intermediate level book. There is not enough room to cover anything reaaly advanced.
   
   The text is readable and seems to cover the salient points. There are quite a few inaccuracies, but there are in all books I have read. The author occasionally mentions completely unrelated topics, perhaps in an attempt to impress, but (when he strays into an area with which I am familiar) only manages to show his ignorance.
   
   The code is easy enough to understand but is very rambling with a few oddities. I think the author is trying to vaguely demonstrate other ideas (particuarly desing patterns) about which he is no expert. Instead, he should just concentrate on simple code that demonstrates the topic in question.
   
   That said, the author obviously knows a lot about programming many different areas of .NET. I found I learnt a lot by reading the book, looking at the code and then rewriting it to my standards.
   
   The worst thing about the book is that it comes with no CD, relying on you downloading the code from the Internet. The code from the Osborne web site is easy enough to download, but a couple of the chapters rely on code from Microsoft. I have tried many times to download the "Terrarium" application from www.gotdotnet.com to no avail. How hard would (and expensive) it be to put everything you need onto a CD?



3. If you want a dry reference to advanced C# topics, read the .NET SDK documentation from MSDN and perhaps the C# language specification. This book does not give you advanced topics per-se, it gives you the tools you need to learn the advanced topics. The author obviously enjoys developing software, a trait that unfortunately many in my industry (software development) have either forgotten or simply don't have.
   
   I learned to program when I was very young, using BASIC on a Commodore 128. From there, I learned Pascal, then C, then C++, then Java, and now I am spreading out into C#, Python, and C++/CLI. Throughout my 20-year journey of programming, one thing has remained the same - I love writing software. This book captures that same love of development and uses it to teach.
   
   If you want to be inspired to learn more about .NET and the C# language, this book is for you. If you need cookie-cutter code to cut-and-paste into one of your projects, this is definitely not the book for you. Mr. Kimmel is an excellent guide, and has definitely tapped into that "quality without a name" in this book.

1 comments about C# Programmer's Handbook.

1. I bought this book at the 60% table at Books-a-million, and still feel like I was over charged. It is hard to put into words how bad this books is. The fact that it can be purchased used, starting at $2.95 in Amazon Marketplace should be an indicator as to its value. The book provides very little information that is of any use. In fact after reading this book, I felt more confused about several of the topics addressed and had to pull out the ol' Dietel & Dietel "How to Program C#" to get my bearings. Trust me, this is one of the few books I have felt strongly enough to even write a review about. You will be doing yourself a huge favor to skip this one.

5 comments about .NET Enterprise Development in C#: From Design to Deployment.

1. I do personally like how this book has written. Yes, it does not concentrate a lot on "enterprise design" concepts, but gives you an idea how to structure your program internally to eliminate unnecessary coding, etc. And I do back up the authors idea to show all these concepts based on sample application. This is a book to help to real developers, but not to "enterprise development theoretics". Very usefull book, especially if you're going to deelop your very first "enterprise" application in C#.



2. This book should be called "an walkthrough of a .NET application".

   You cannot explain enterprise development by walking us through one application! They needed to explain why they have designed a component in a particular way, and possible alternatives for different scenarios.

   The books is basically a walkthrough of an application written by the authors. I was hoping for something along the lines of a discussion of designing an implementing enterprise applications.

   I think their data access mechanism is better than hard coding sql but I wouldn't use it in production. It is not a true object orientated persistence layer.

   However I rate this book 2 stars because their are some things that I gained from their example app. There are always things to learn from analyzing an application.




3. In spite of its small size, this book is surprisingly good. It is not all you will need to develop your "next big thing", but it points you in the right direction nevertheless.
   If you are about to develop your first big project (like me) and you need a relatively brief guide, this might be a book for you.
   And, contrary to what the other readers said about support, I didn't have any problems downloading the codes at all. In any case, I just downloaded the codes, so the previous problems encountered by other readers must have been addressed.



4. The Good: Great content. Focuses on high level design and implementation and leaves the nitty gritty details to a pre-coded object model. Geared more toward advanced enterprise developers who do not want to wade through boilerplate code.

   The Bad: A few typos and code example errors.

   The Ugly: Buyer Beware! Wrox seems to have abandoned this title. You cannot download any of the code samples, which makes the high level approach less appealing.




5. This is just a response to a previous post. The source code for this book is located at http://support.apress.com.

4 comments about Visual C# .NET Programming.

1. This is the book to buy if you want to learn C# and the .NET Framework. But, specific topics aside, it is just really a very good read about programming. I particularly have found useful the material on type conversion and regular expressions.

   I found some other things cool and lots of fun -- the "Guns, Germs, and Steel" OOP application simulating the life cycle of tribes, city states and nations, for example. (Let's hope we don't run into the "Borg Civilization" ).

   I also enjoyed the "Dinosaur" class examples, the demonstration of how to use map data from TerraServer, the MSMQ apps, and the material on web services as architecture.

   In addition to the good programming information, this is a lucid and literate book that uses quotations from Dickens, Thackeray, and others to make its points. Highly recommended!




2. Who ever heard of a programming book that demonstrates an application enabling users to set up and follow the fortunes of whole societies? A sort of SIM-CITY in miniature. Meanwhile Harold Davis enables you to master Microsoft's new C#.NET programming language with all of its object oriented features and its power in designing web applications.



3. Granted, the author states "this book is to teach you and OTHER EXPERIENCED PROGRAMMERS..." but he also states something along the lines of "no previous programming experience is absolutely necessary..." but in the first chapter about web services, he never says more than 2 sentences about what a web service really is. How is it different from an ASP.NET web application? I had to get the answer from the book "Introducing MS.NET." Also, the author assumes you have experience with VB, because he doesn't note when he uses VB-exclusive features (such as a Property Get statement) in C#. Not recommended for beginning programmers with no experience of VB.



4. As an experienced programmer new to c#, .net and even asp, I found Harold Davis' book to be very good and bringing me up to speed in a wide variety of areas. Don't expect to become an expert after reading this book, that's not the intent of this book. It gives clear, concise explanations and examples in a wide range of topics. I believe it makes an excellent introductory book to .net and c# for experienced programmers.