Product Description

Get the hands-on, step-by-step guide to learning the latest enhancements in Microsoft Visual C# 2008. Visual C#, one of the tools in Microsoft Visual Studio® 2008, is a modern programming language designed to deliver a productive environment for creating business frameworks and reusable object-oriented components. Whether you’re a beginning programmer or new to the Visual C# programming language, you’ll learn how to use the fundamental features of Visual Studio 2008 and gain a basic understanding of the latest enhancement of the Visual C# language. You’ll work at your own pace through hands-on, learn-by-doing exercises, get started creating components and working Windows® applications, and build your knowledge as you start creating your first Visual C#–based applications. You’ll also explore how to create data management and Web-based applications. In each chapter, work through learn-by-doing exercises that demonstrate how, when, and why to use the many features of the Visual C# rapid application development environment. Includes a companion CD with code samples, data sets, and a fully searchable eBook. 

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10976 in Books
• Brand: Microsoft
• Published on: 2007-12-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 656 pages

Customer Reviews

Excellent Intro to C#
I tried to learn C# a couple of years ago from another book by a different author. However, having done VB6 for soooooo long I found that this other book assumed you had come from a C++ background and were familiar with that world - which I was not. Result=unhappiness.

This book is far better for us VB diehards! On the assumption that you are really using Vis Studio 2008 (which means all the examples will match what you see on screen) I would have no hesitation in recommending this book as both a conversion course from VB6 or C++ to C# and also a pretty good intro to programming in general.

The book's pace is gentle and logical, and I am now over halfway through it and have not come up against any of the step-changes in pace and assumption that so often mar other programmers books which purport to be for beginners.

As with so many aspects of book learning, I also find this learning easy, because the author seems to be on my wavelength, none of the relentless "humour" which gets so tedious and intrusive in other books (especially the "For Dummies" series), but nevertheless there is a lightness of tone in the writing here which I find just right.

The book is split into easily digestible chapters, which means you can slot in your learning around real-life, and of course the supplied CD contains the full text of the book and all the example programs. This means you can take your learning on the road, if you are lucky enough to have a laptop - i.e. you don't need to haul the fairly sizable dead-tree product around with you.

So, as a VB6 programmer of many years who is trying to get to grips with one of the .Net languages, I have found this book invaluable.

Beginner's reservations
Ok, so unlike the rest of these guys, I've tried to learn to program for a very long time and got nowhere ( and I did use previous versions of the Visual Basic step by step book). C sharp has more elegance than Visual Basic and I want to learn it from scratch with only a rudimentary idea of programming logic.

It's thorough- I give it that. The code is accurate (at least up to page 95 where I bombed out for the second time). Getting lost with uncompilable code which you can't quite work out how to debug is a newbie's nightmare. It would be a great text book/ beginners reference book.

But...it is so unutterably dull......You get given a program with a teensy bit to fill in. Write this line... write the next one.... write this line after that. It then tells you- this line does this, this line does this, then it does this. Had I not tried a slightly buggy course on the Home and Learn website which was far more inspirational, I would have just junked it in again.

So still looking for my perfect match. This will prove useful- when I've got a really thorough grasp of the basics and I want to iron out misconceptions and get a comprehensive list of options. Back on the shelf with it.

Great companion book
Firstly, ignore the above review of this book! Whoever wrote it posted it under the wrong book!

I'm a VB programmer who had to convert to either C# or Vb.net, and decided on C# as I liked the idea of everything being 'out in the open' as opposed to VB hiding some of the code. Because of the .net framework you can do exactly the same with both languages... but anyway thats another story! The main thing is I was a VB6 programmer moving to C#!

This book helped make that change fairly painless, with clear exercises and jargon-free explanations. That said, I wouldn't recomend this book for an absolute beginner to programming, as the pace picks up relatively speedily.

Also I sometimes found that I'd do the excercises, read the summary, finish the chapter and then be a bit confused as to what I had just done. Maybe this is because I have a rubbish attention span, but I found that to get a crystal clear idea of what the book was getting at I had to back it up with some internet research (there are some great tutorials out there that are much easier to understand than this book if you search the web a bit), but this book provided the foundations that, once put another way, made everything click into place.

As for the size of the thing... it's certainly hefty and well worth the money - less than £20 (at 666 pages thats 3p a page!) you could do much, much worse than buy this.

Overall - highly recomended.