Product Description

Essential .NET will enable developers to take advantage of the full power available to them in Microsoft .NET. It goes far beyond the features-based "how-to" books currently on the market to also explain the "why" behind C #, .NET, and the CLR. As with all of Don's books, it is packed with practical detail and expert advice. It promises to be the book developers will reach for first with questions about the CLR and .NET. In his new position at Microsoft Don is even better placed to evangelize for this book. He will be speaking everywhere, and will continue placing articles in MSDN, where he has already started excerpting this book. Since this book was first announced last fall, there has been a groundswell of interest in it. There will be a foreword from Jim Miller, the inventor of the CLR. Originally appeared in October 2001 catalog.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #558513 in Books
• Published on: 2002-11-13
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

From the Back Cover

"Don taught me stuff I didn't know about my own product! And I bet he'll teach you something, too."
—From the Foreword by James Miller, Lead Program Manager, Common Language Runtime, Microsoft Corporation

Essential .NET, Volume 1, provides everything developers need to take full advantage of the power of Microsoft .NET. This book describes, in depth, the glue of the .NET Framework: the Common Language Runtime (CLR). Box and Sells explain the inner workings of the CLR—the rationale behind its design, the problems it solves, and the role of type in CLR programming—and show readers how to build better applications using the .NET Framework while gaining a more complete understanding of how the CLR works.

The book is packed with the practical detail and expert advice only Don Box can provide. Topics covered include:

• CLR's evolution
• Assemblies in the .NET Framework
• The CLR type system
• Programming with type
• Objects and values
• Methods
• Explicit method invocation
• Application domains
• Security
• Interoperability

Essential .NET, Volume 1, is an authoritative guide to the Microsoft .NET Common Language Runtime.

Books in the Microsoft .NET Development Series are written and reviewed by the principal authorities and pioneering developers of the Microsoft .NET technologies, including the Microsoft .NET development team and DevelopMentor. Books in the Microsoft .NET Development Series focus on the design, architecture, and implementation of the Microsoft .NET initiative to empower developers and students everywhere with the knowledge they need to thrive in the Microsoft .NET revolution.

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About the Author

Don Box is a leading educator, recognized authority on the Component Object Model (COM), coauthor of the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) specification, and coiner of the term "COM is Love." He recently joined Microsoft as an architect in the Microsoft® .NET Developer and Platform Evangelism Group.

Earlier in his career, Box cofounded DevelopMentor Inc., a component software think tank aimed at educating developers on the use of the COM, Java, and XML. A popular public speaker, Box is known for engaging audiences around the world, combining deep technical insight with often outrageous stunts.

0201734117AB06132002

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Customer Reviews

Another pearl from the Master
Don Box's classic, Essential COM, laid clear the obscure and ambiguous COM runtime, and Effective COM (where Chris Sells also contributed) gave true practical knowledge - Don Box has once more delivered the goods. Chris Sells (co-author of the magnificent ATL Internals) also co-authored this one and between them they have raised the bar yet again.
Essential .Net not only provides great detail and insight into the underlying machinery, it very quickly provides the reader with absolute gems of information - in particular Type checking performance with isinst and castclass. It keeps on giving with wonderful explanations of metadata, messages as method calls, memory management and performance, security and permissions, and the list goes on. We all know that the CLR provides very rich services to the modern developer, we now know how, and at what cost. This is an invaluable resource.
Admittedly the assumption is made that the reader has some technical knowledge and ability in the .Net arena as not all concepts are spoon-fed, however the kind of information presented here is targetted to those who intend to maximise this knowledge and create better software - it is not for the raw beginner. Having said that, I would still recommend this to beginners and those new to .Net wherein this book shows people where their attention should be focussed and where they should reinforce their knowledge.
I couldn't put this one down when I first got it. Buy it now!

Just the bible for .NET and the CLR
This is simply the de-facto book if you need to know everything about the murky depths of how the CLR works. One thing this book is not is a wordy, overlong book for the easily distracted like the 'Headfirst' series. It's concise, technical and doesn't pull any punches when explaining the intricate details of the CLR. Do NOT read this book if you're expecting an easy introduction to .NET, DO read it if you are a fairly advanced .NET developer who needs to moce to the next level...

Wide of the mark
The person who reviewed this book before me has obviously never read a HeadFirst book to know what the benchmark is (notwithstanding the comments about being spoon-fed).

This book gives me the impression that Don Box, the author, just wrote down everything he know about the product off the top of his head, then sent it to the printers. He is the master of the abstract concept, leaving you yearning for the code examples, only to discover he has been discussing basic software concepts that have been around for 20 years.

The book is very wordy, woolly and obtuse throughout, although I suspect this has something to do with Microsoft's apparent desire to change the vocabulary of software engineering to use words they have copyrighted. The headings, section and sub-section titles are few and far between, and generally meaningless enough to make it difficult to use as a reference book too.

It's not complete rubbish - I don't doubt that the author knows his stuff - but there must be better .NET introductions about.