Home - Software Design, Testing & Engineering

As a speaker and a User Group leader, I often get asked "Where do I start learning .NET?". My answer is always "Start with the Troelsen book from Apress". This has been true for previous versions of the framework, and after reading the latest edition covering .NET 4, it still holds true.

Andrew takes you on the path that covers what the line of business software developer needs to know about the capabilities of .NET. The book begins with pertinent background information on the evolution of .NET, the Common Type System (CTS), the Common Language Runtime (CLR), and tools like ILDASM and Red-Gate's Reflector. Although not the most exiting reading if you are eager to start writing code, it is important for .NET developers to understand these concepts and tools.

Chapter 2 discusses the various tools (including Notepad++) that can be used to develop in C#. The majority of the readers will be using Visual Studio, but it's good to know (and call out) that you do not have to purchase anything to write C# applications!

Parts 2 and 3 take a deep dive into the C# language itself and along the way explains the pillars of Object Oriented Programming (OOP) and how to implement them in C# and .NET. This is extremely useful to the reader who does not have OOP experience, but is also useful to those coming from another OO language to learn the specifics in C#.

Andrew does a great job explaining the more advanced topics like Generics, Lambdas, Language Integrated Query (LINQ), Multi-Threading, and (recent additions to the framework) the Dynamic Language Runtime and Parallel Programming.

A chapter on Windows Workflow Foundation and Windows Communication Foundation provide a nice intro to those topics, three chapters on ADO.NET (including the new release of the Entity Framework), and whole sections devoted to Windows Presentation Foundation (used for Windows development) and ASP.NET (used web application development) are the core pieces required for standard line of business development.

I have two disappointments with the book, the first is that the ADO.NET chapters include samples for binding data to Windows Forms (WinForms) and not Windows Presentation Foundation. I firmly believe the future of Windows Client development is WPF (not WinForms), and Andrew echoes this by focusing on WPF in the rest of the text. In fact, WinForms is relegated to an Appendix.

My other disappointment is that the new ASP.NET MVC framework isn't discussed as an alternative to ASP.NET WebForms. There are plenty of books out there on MVC, but what I have really liked about these books is that they have presented all of the relevant options and left it up to the reader to decide which direction.

In summary, this book is massive (weighing in at over 1500 pages), and is still the single place to start learning .NET and C#. I have always used his books on the language to learn all the options available as a developer (and get a decent understanding of those topics), then picked up books that do a deep dive into the specifics (like Matthew McDonald's Pro WPF in C# 2010: Windows Presentation Foundation in .NET 4).

Wow, this book is over 1500 pages and practically covers every possible topic that is covered in the online MSDN, but only 10x better.

There arent many books that can be the "only" .NET book in your library, except this one. Every existing and new topic that is in the newest version of .NET 4.0 is covered.

This 5th edition continues this trend and it is obvious that a huge amount of work went into keeping this book up to date. Where advances in the framework or language allow. Many aspects of the latest language editions are given enough coverage as to be useful without overbearing the overall time. In addition the author provides a good explanation as to the background for some of the new language features

Troelsen covers just about everything you'd want to see in a book of this type, going into as much detail as he can on just about everything (he does gloss over some of the deprecated features, so those maintaining or porting legacy software may want to keep a copy of one of the older editions on hand as well). His chapters on the newer technologies to be found in .NET 4.0, such as Windows Presentation Foundation and Windows Communication Foundation, are especially impressive (and welcome), and are worth the price of admission alone.

I guarantee that if you read this book all the way through and take your time to understand its content (which is totally painless) you will have a quality foundation. It's true you can buy other books with more indepth content but these books will simply be more specialized and so cover a narrower subject framework.

The author gives a presentation of C# and then moves on to describing the features of the .NET framework from ADO.NET to ASP.NET.

ASP.NET and ADO.NET are given several strong chapters (including an excellent introduction to LINQ), and WCF and WF each get a good introductory chapter; WPF gets good (but admittedly not-comprehensive) coverage starting at XAML, proceeding to working with WPF Controls and ending at 2D graphics, resources and themes. Of course, Pro C# 2010 really shines in presenting the new C# .NET 4.0 additions, why they are there, and when to use them.

This is as close to a "bible" version of .NET as you can get. Buy it and you wont be dissapointed.

Book review - "Pro C# 2010 and the .NET 4 Platform", by Andrew Troelsen ISBN: 978-1-4302-2549-2 - Published 2010 by Apress
Hello, this is my book review for "Pro C# 2010 and the .NET 4 Platform.
Over the years, I have programmed in a wide variety of languages including C, C++,C#, VB.NET, Visual Basic, Java, Cobol, Pascal, Assembler etc.. For those of us programmers who use Microsoft .NET framework, it has been increasingly apparent to me that C# is positioned to be the dominant language in the .NET framework, at least for the foreseeable future. With that in mind, I think C# is the way to go at this point of time, if you program with Microsoft .NET framework technologies. This is readily apparent because most of the latest documentation and samples I have seen are written in C#, In some cases, you will see both languages (C# and VB.NET) with samples provided, but if only one language sample is provided, usually it is in C#.
I have always believed that computer programming is not "memorizing language syntax", because new languages and compilers are always on the horizon. It is more important to understand computer programming principles like object oriented programming and design, how variable scoping works, deployment issues etc., how to effectively analyze, test and debug solutions to given problems, algorithms etc... In general, knowing all the features of a given framework (whether it be .net framework, PHP or java based or what have you) is most important, because then you know about the feature and can implement a solution to solve your problem).
That being said, it is always important to read programming language documentation so you can get a solid understanding of the available features of a given language. This is where a book like "Pro C# 2010 and the .NET 4 platform" becomes invaluable.
This book is jam-packed full of information and totals about 1,700 pages!
The 1st part of the book deals with specific details about C# and shows concise, to the point examples of what the author is describing in the C# programming language. From the basics such as data types, variable scoping, iterators, language syntax, methods, constructors, the use of the static keyword to object oriented concepts (inheritance, polymorphism, encapsulation). C# topics related to the .net framework such as garbage collection, exception handling, interfaces, generics, delegates, lambda expressions, events, anonymous methods,operator overloading are covered later on in the book as well. There are well over 500 pages that go into great detail about the programming language features built into C#. After that nice detailed look at the C# programming language, we get into more .net specific ideas that are necessary for the programmer to effectively make use of C# along with .NET FRAMEWORK version 4.0.
Concepts like .net assemblies (compiled units of work, similar in concept to a DLL, but with some major differences) and more advanced topics related to .net assemblies are detailed in its own chapter.
Reflection is covered also, which is a way of determining the attributes (including method names etc.) of your programming code at runtime.
.NET framework concepts such as the CLR (common language runtime, threading, parallel programming, asynchronous calls) are also covered in a nice level of detail.
Later sections of the book go into more specific ways of how to solve common programming problems with the C# language. For example, how to deal with I/O (streams, serialization) , how to connect to databases with ADO.NET, using newer technologies such as LINQ (language integrated query, a way of querying collections of data in a standard language constructs).
It then goes on to deal with WCF (soa architecture concepts), WF (windows workflow foundation), WPF (rich user desktop interfaces (check out the Zune software, which is WPF)).
Later chapters deal with the venerable ASP.NET platform, which is widely used for building websites such as e-commerce sites or business websites.
CONCLUSION: I do like this book immensely, it is a great addition to any programmers library, what I most like about the book is its treatment of the C# language itself, which is mostly what I was after in this book, I wanted to read more about all the nuts and bolts of the C# language, which evolves as each new version of the .net framework is released to production. While I have studied many C# programming books in the past, this is the first one I have gotten that deals with the new .net framework 4.0 (released around June 2010 timeframe). This could easily be a textbook in a C#/object oriented programming class, which is a compliment to its versatility and level of detail. No book can cover all the topics completely, for example, while the coverage of asp.net is quite extensive, I have read asp.net books that cover well into 1,000 pages alone. It does a good job like I said with those wanting to just become more proficient at learning the C# programming language in general.
One notable omission is the lack of much content about Silverlight, which is related to WPF, but more targeted to web based interfaces. I thought, why all this stuff about WPF, without hardly any content about Silverlight? However, with the book 1,700 pages + long, I can certainly understand that not everything under the sun is covered. Really, the title of the book is "Pro C# 2010 and the .NET 4 Platform" and it does cover just about everything about C# and using .NET FRAMEWORK 4.0, that an advanced programmer would need to know.
I do recommend this book and respect the enormous amount of work and time that the author put into creating it.

This is an excellent book to use to learn all the features of C# 4.0. Beginners will find easy to understand descriptions of various topics and more experienced readers can use at as an excellent reference. Even advanced programmers have a lot to learn because of all the new .NET 4.0 and C# 4.0 features.

The book starts out by explaining the philosophy of .NET and how it is structured. Then it gives a brief overview of how to use Visual Studio 2010 and some of the new features of the IDE. It then covers an introduction to C# including types and programming constructs, exception handling, object oriented programming, generics and the lifetime of a .NET object. Next there are a few chapters which cover some of the advanced features of C# such as anonymous types, extension methods, pointer types, LINQ, lambdas, reflection, and also working with assemblies, processes and app domains. There is also an entire chapter on the new dynamic language runtime feature of .NET 4 which allows developers to easily call out to code written in dynamic languages on the .NET platform and also COM interop code.

A very important section is the introduction to Task Parallel Library (TPL) and multithreaded programming. TPL is a very good library which abstracts away a lot of the complexity of building multithreaded programs and makes a developers' job a lot easier. As hardware manufacturers add more and more cores to the processor, the only way to speed up your programs is to make them multithreaded.

This book contains three chapters on ADO.NET including how to connect to databases, querying databases and also working with the Entity framework. Another important and useful chapter is on the Windows Communication Foundation, which is used for building connected and service oriented applications.

There are also two parts on building user facing applications. One covers WPF (five chapters) and desktop development and another covers building web sites with ASP.NET. I've personally been using WPF for over a year and I think it is far superior to Windows Forms. WPF is growing in popularity and even the Windows Forms topic has been pushed into the appendix in this book.

What I really like about this book is that it covers pretty much every topic on .NET 4 and you can find any tool you need to build your applications. Therefore it makes an excellent reference book for when you need to lookup how to use some specific API. The only downside is that it can't cover everything in depth, but you can always find resources for some particular API.

This is a review for the Pro C# 2010 and the .NET 4 Platform, Fifth Edition by
Andrew W. Troelsen.

I did an extensive research before choosing this book, online in Amazon and physically at several bookstores. I also considered Wrox's Professional C# 4 and .NET 4, Wrox's Beginning Visual C# 2010, Murach's C# 2010, Microsoft's Visual C# 2010 Step by Step, and Deitel's C# 2010 for Programmers. While choosing a book really depends on each individual preference and learning style, I found that this particular book was better organized than the rest. The author guides you through a solid foundation of the core language before throwing the advanced topics such as delegates, interfaces, events, extension methods, lambdas and generics among many others. I noticed in the other books that these advanced topics were either thrown in too early or they were interspersed everywhere, making it more difficult -in my opinion- to really grasp the relevant core knowledge.

I consider myself a hobbyist and not a professional developer, and while the Pro title suggests that it's geared toward a professional audience, I found out that people like me can also take full advantage of the content of this book. It just requires more attention and trying not to skip the core C# material in the first two parts of this book. Having some programming experience does help, but the most important requirement is the desire to get under the hood of the .NET architecture using C# language as the tool.

I compare Andrew Troelsens's writing style to Stephen Prata's, the author of the exceptional C++ Primer Plus, in that he likes to go beyond explaining the obvious, bringing additional alternatives and ideas on the language use.

By the end of chapter 8 (out of the 34), I felt confident enough to start looking into other topics outside the scope of the book, such as XNA development, which really was what brought me to learn C# in the first place. Not that I put this book aside completely, but it was being used more as a reference. As a hobbyist, I can probably take some liberties in my language learning that maybe a professional developer can not, so I'm not necessarily suggesting anyone to follow what I did.

Pro C# 2010 and the .NET 4 Platform gives a very thorough treatment of the C# language and the .NET 4 framework. I highly recommend it as an essential part of your programming library.

For an additional fee and proof of purchase (in the form of an answer to random question about the hard copy book), you can obtain the PDF version at the Apress web site. You don't have to buy the hard copy book exclusively from Apress in order to take advantage of this physically relieving offer.

I like the treatment this book has on several topics. It has good depth, no gripe there. What this book is lacking is some serious editorial work. For one, it is full of repetitive conjugation errors like using past participles in place of present tense. These errors were present in the 2008 version of the book and are still present in the 2010 version. Seems like nobody gave it the TLC needed to clean this out and rather relied on an automated system which repeats the same errors over and over.

Additionally, on the chapters I read, often the examples, although interesting, couldn't be followed exactly to get something going, because nobody took the time to make sure they worked. In fact in an example that did not make sense I had to go to the 2008 edition to understand how things were working, because somebody decided to arbitrarily chop the example in the 2010 edition.

In summary, this book although good, requires much more attention from the reader to get something out of it than other C# books like the Albahari ones.

With this book Troelsen and APress take the anyone with any degree of knowledge in the C# language and how it can be used to create applications from the launching pad through the asteroid belt and clear into the next galaxy.

I've got a good deal of experience with C# and the .NET Platform, and have been slow to adopt the new framework for lack of specific, resourceful information on the variances between the versions. Though numerous resources exist, none existed prior to this reference that covered *everything* in which I had interest. This text takes that approach - from the simple or sublime all the way to the practical and real-world implementations - from the perspective of a .NET generalist. Rather than focus on the problems web or desktop developers face, this text covers all angles and concentrates on the differences in the versions, why they matter, and how to best make use of the new feature set.

A few highlights:

Parallel LINQ (PLINQ): This is an area about which there's little information on the web that clarifies in a simple manner and contrasting the approach to normal LINQ usage that I've found that are truly clear and practical. This text cleared it up for me in under an hour! The examples used to explain PLINQ finally clarified how I'd make use of it and why I'd even want to try.

Anonymous and Dynamic Types and Methods: The text uses clear examples of how the dynamic keyword, new to C# 4.0, can help (and hurt!) your development paradigm. Troelsen's practical style gives the nebulous idea of the DLR more realistic clarity.

Troelsen is also honest and opinionated in the text, speaking from the point of view of a developer, and offers up his own insight into various techniques. One in particular was his view on partial methods and how usage of the idea should be carefully thought out and managed. He also provides more depth and real-world examples of the use of Generics than I've seen in previous texts that historically provide the "woo-hoo you can make a generic list" example and then move on without really showing how powerful Generics can be when used properly.

From these linguistic features, Troelsen covers more specific areas of the .NET Framework like Workflow, WCF, and gives some great insight into some of the new features of each and in the WPF GUI framework.

I highly recommend this text if you're planning on upgrading your current skill set from a previous .NET release to the new 4.0 release. Likewise, if you're a new developer to .NET, this text could easily become your armrest, as you'll be looking to it for guidance for years to come.

This review applies only to the Kindle version. If you are going to read this book like you would a novel and never use it as a reference, then you may be happy with the Kindle version. If you purchase this as a reference book, it is totally unusable. First and most importantly, the index does not provide any means of navigating to the indexed item. You could try to use the search feature, but then you'll get a lot of hits and usually not what you're looking for. In addition, the code snippets in the text are unreadable because of size even though the book text is fine. I couldn't find a way to increase the size of the snippet. I'm using the Kindle for PC 2.

As many reviewers have commented, Pro C# 2010 and the .NET4 Platform is one of the best books to get you started on the .NET 4 platform. At over 1500 pages, this book is massive but very educational and well worth the money. The authors' writing style is easy to read and the code examples provided really helped.

The book is separated into 7 parts that increase in depth and detail.

If you are totally new to .NET, I would recommend you start on Part 1. It first goes over what the book calls, "The Philosophy of .Net." It follows with Chapter2, which covers building in the IDE. In other words, it lays the groundwork that is needed for the remaining chapters to expound on.

Part 2 goes over type conversions, equality operators, arrays, enums, structure, encapsulation, inheritance, polymorphism and almost ends with Chapter 7 on exception handling. Before part 2 ends, the authors' throw in Chapter 8, which covers the Object lifetime cycle.

In part 3, which is comprised of Chapters 9 - 13, the authors explain interfaces and its uses, generics, overloading, and linq to objects.

I skipped part 4 as it was a little too deep for me, but I ended up part 6, "Building Desktop User Interfaces with WPF." I ended here because I am working on a project that uses WPF and this book helped me advance in the project.

Typically, I am weary about thick and heavy books as they usually contain a lot of what I call "wasted words" material. However, this book really was the opposite. It really delivered.

Andrew Troelson is a great and knowledgeable writer, and when learning c# 2.0, I made more use of his first edition based on the .net beta edition than the other more up to date books that I had. For better or worse, C# 4.0 is a huge language to learn. Personally, I prefer a more hands on approach to learning a language, with interesting and useful examples (Remember Coriolis Books?). Most of the ideas here are conveyed using console apps, which eventually bore you during a 1500 page reading. His depth insights into the workings of C# are definitely better than most authors, and as a reference book it's excellent. If you want to learn C# 4.0 from scratch though, you will have to supply yourself with your own examples to make what you learn "stick" with you. I originally gave this book only 4 stars, due to the lack of good "hands on" examples. I am rereading the book now (Yes it is that good.), and have come to the conclusion that it is indeed a masterpiece. His explanations are excellent, even quotable. .Net is so huge a subject that it would be impossible in one book to give such rich explanation *and* include rigorous program examples. I recommend buying a companion book that concentrates on practical solutions. I'd *definitely* recommend "Ben Watson's C# 4.0 How-To" to put you in the fast lane, or perhaps "Visual C# 2010 Recipes", also quite good, with more examples.

The statement "THE EXPERT'S VOICE

Wow, this is really a fantastic resource. In a very easy-to-read style, Andrew Troelsen covers all aspects of .NET, starting even with the theory behind its creation. I found that to be really informative. I still consider myself a .NET newbie, with only a couple of years of experience, and this book really took me up to the next level.

This is a very large book, with the first half covering C# specifically and the second covering other aspects of the .NET framework such as ASP.NET, ADO.NET, and WPF programming. It's even got a chapter on Entity Framework that I felt was better than another entire book I had devoted to the topic. This may be the only .NET book you need, as it covers all current aspects of the framework (except Silverlight). And even though it is C# specific, it does acknowledge the existence of other languages and doesn't pretend C# is superior, even though it is ;)

My highest recommendation.

Two gripes for the publisher ...
1) Give us a hardback option, c'mon, man, this thing is huge.
2) I'm irritated that a .pdf is no longer included with the hard copy, at least make it a reasonable pair purchase.

The author goes about explaining the matter in a methodical way and is a master in explaining the complex material in a simple fashion.
Highly recommended for anybody who is beyond the beginners level and wants to get the most out of .Net.

The book is everything it purports to be. More a reference than a teaching book. Makes a great reference companion to other tutorial-style books.

Andrew Troelsen's Pro C# 2010 and the .NET 4 Platform is a required desktop companion for any serious .NET developer. If however, you pick up this book thinking you can use it like any other textbook, you will be disappointed. The premise is that the reader has a good understanding of .NET programming in general, and C# specifically. If on the other hand you are looking for a complete explanation of the rich enhancements made to .NET and C#, you will be thrilled.

Andrew's treatment of API new details is excellent and includes:
* The Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR)
* The Task Parallel Library
* The ADO.NET Entity framework
* Expanded coverage of WPF

Any computer science student or working professional will benefit greatly by incorporating Andrew's exhaustive coverage of the new .NET 4 and C# 2010.

Firstly, it has over 1700 pages and weighs 2.7 kg (6 lbs) so if you do not have strong upper limbs and plan to carry this book around, you may want to consider eBook version.

I think this is a very good book for people who know quite some about C# to refresh their knowledge and a fairly good book for experienced .Net programmers to catch up with the fast evolving framework by getting introduction to the parts they have no experience in or update of new features of the parts they have used.

I would like to regard the book as the combination of two independent books: 1) Pro C# 2010; 2) .Net 4 Platform.

The first three parts on C# are very good for experienced C# programmers to get a solid update of all the new features of C# such as the dynamic type. Compared with .Net Framework, C# has a very limited number of new features though they are very important and useful ones. These three parts have over 400 pages and are filled with useful sample code. I think it is adequate for beginners to learn C# though I am not in a good position to make such judgment. I used The C# Programming Language authored by the architects of C# when I started learning C# years ago and I still think it is the best C# book for those who have solid foundation of Java and C++.

Considering there are many books on each part of .Net (e.g. WPF, WCF, MVC, etc.), one may ask: how useful can a book on the entire framework be? Firstly, it is obviously impossible to learn programming every part of the framework by reading just one book. If one wants to get some idea about all the components of .Net, he can go to many online sources to obtain that. I admire the author for daring to write a book on such a large framework. I think the author does a good job to cover most of the .Net components with limited space in Part 4 to Part 7. It may be more appropriate to title this book Pro C# 2010 and Introduction to the .NET 4 Platform because the amount of information is adequate only for introduction (WPF covered by 5 chapters may be an exception). The introduction is unfortunately not even. WPF gets 5 chapters, ASP.Net gets 3 with MVC mentioned by one paragraph, WCF gets 1 chapter and Silverlight gets 1 page.

Overall, it is a worthy read.

I own the past 2 editions of this book (Pro C# 3.5 and 2.0) and have always kept this around as a reference. It taught me alot of what I know today about the .NET Framework and it's always helpful to get started in the different parts (ASP, WPF, WCF, etc). I prefer having a book like this around rather than relying on a Google search to get started in some technology because I always can refer to some chapter to get started and to get an understanding of something. Then later I'll supplement what I've learned with a Google search for more in-depth examples.

This book will serve great for anyone who is already an experienced programmer but needs to know about .NET concepts and how things are done in .NET. I had a friend purchase this book (an assembler and VB6 programmer) to get started in .NET and he cannot live without this book as well as a point of reference.

Would highly recommended to anyone as a starter into .NET who you don't need to explain what a 'for' loop is.

I have the previous version of this book and I was looking forward to getting the updated version. This is a must have tome for any C# .NET developer. It is an impressive body of work that weighs in over 1000 pages. It is incomprehensible how someone can undertake a book project this large. I guess I consider myself a somewhat experienced C# developer, but far from guru stage. So I always lean something if I pick this book up for ten minutes. Other subjects like LINQ, CIL,threading, and ADO.NET are also covered, but depth might leave you wanting more.

Keep this beast nearby. You won't regret it!

This book is so vast it's incredible to think that there's only one author. Every conceivable aspect of C# is covered. Explanations are very clear, the book is never confusing and its layout it excellent, progressing from core basics to more advanced topics. Another reviewer called this the C# bible and I think thats a very apt description. Quite simply the best technical book I've read on any topic.

Trolsen's writing is great, the editing is great, the concepts great, communication is clear, complete and conscise. However, for experienced Programmers about 70% of the material is elementary. I wanted this specifically to pick up new concepts but didn't buy it because his prior book had almost all of the same content, the book weighs a lot and has a zillion pages. I don't know about you, but I don't like big books... It's time to break this book into two or three books. It's time that Trolsen breaks out more advanced stuff as well because he's such a great writer.

I purchased this book because I wanted to learn C# and .NET(I have programmed in Java, C, C++, PHP and some functional languages) and so far I can say that it is easy to follow, I highly recommend it for people with software development experience and new to .net, or for people already experienced in .net.

The book covers in great detail a lot of features of the .net platform and C# so it can be your reference guide (1700 pages).

After having read several books on C# I can say that this is... without a doubt... THE definitive guide on C# and the .NET platform. If you can only own one book on the subject make sure that this is it.

This book starts of simple enough for a beginner, explaining even the most basic concepts of OOP, history of .NET, etc. But the author also makes sure to at least touch on just about every C# topic you can think of, often delving quite deeply.

I've bought dozens of programming books on subjects from PHP to Python to C#... and this book towers above the others in regards to it's content. There is so much crammed into its binding that you'll find yourself learning just as much on your second read through.

I always have ONE book that I carry with me at all times... and this will be that book for quite some time.

With over 1,700 pages, this book represents a huge investment of time over the years by the author. The book covers significant amount of C# language features such as core constructs, class types, exception handling, object lifetime, interface, and lambdas. The book also built upon previous versions of this book with great updates--LINQ, WPF, Web controls, etc. This is a great reference book for programmers to look up code samples and read more in detail about C# and .NET 4 platform. Highly recommended.

I'm enjoying reading this book! It handles all the subjects about C# I wanted to know more about. The examples are also very clear and comprehensible!

A real recommendation!

Micclo

I am an advanced Java programmer,
I found this book as a fast way to learn csharp in depth.
The main concepts are well covered, without wasting time in the basic ones like loops, arrays... which are explained quickly.

As an experienced programmer who wanted to brush up on some concepts and learn what's been added for .NET 4, this has been extremely useful.

The author uses two many words to explain even a simple concept. Often whole paragraphs, pages even several pages are pointless and after reading them you realize you learned nothing. Succinct writing is not easy but I feel he hasn't even given it a try.

On top of that he further complicates concepts. So you end up with a simple idea which he tries to explain in multiple pages and he's further complicated it.

There are too few diagrams! I agree this is not geometry but when explaining concepts of memory it's useful. I wouldn't recommend this book. I would recommend **C# 4.0 in a Nutshell** - much better.

This is by far the best of six five-star rated C# books and three more on .NET & VisualStudio that I've found.

It has a great index (though there are entries for mere mentions of a term in example code).

I've used it to research many fine points and found it to be VERY complete. It is massive, but I've found pages of information on topics that aren't even mentioned, or receive only few words of passing attention, in the other books.

It is organized into significant tutorial sections, but the text, examples, and index (Did I mention that it has a GREAT index?) make it excellent as a reference book, as well.

This is a massive 700-page book. Although a new programmer would find this useful, it's sheer size would likely be intimidating and one wouldn't likely proceed sequentially through it in tutorial-fashion more than a hundred pages or so. However, for almost any topic that is new to you, turn to the appropriate section and you will find a great tutorial with lots of examples and side-notes. The examples are short and to the point -- it's not filled with pages of code listings as many books are.

My background is over 45 years of professional embedded and distributed software development in almost as many languages (including 20 years with Smalltalk, C++, Java, and Python), but only three months in C#, .NET, and VisualStudio. This book has been a welcome addition to my library, and is usually right at my elbow.

I am slowly going through this book as it appears it is assumed that the reader has more knowledge than what I have and so there was quite a bit I had to figure out on my own. To that end, I have made quite a bit of notes in MS Word 2010 format that I can email to you if you are interested. Such as information on ildasm.exe (page 33) and the getting the bat file to work on page 76.

And of course, if you have notes you have made going through this book, I'd appreciate you sharing them with me.

Overall, I am learning quite a bit, so I would recommend the book - but only if you already understand a lot of the material or are willing to really sit down and READ it thoroughly. Sure, you can just download the source code and open your IDE to those - however, you will benefit much better if you USE the source code to write your own.

David JR
Stockbridge, GA
dadamsjr@live.com

This is the absolute book to get for learning C#. If you are an absolute beginner, I would not go with Apress's Beginning Visual C#, but with Dietel's C# 2010 for Programmers.

This book is an amazing C# book. Easy to read if you have any programming background, right amount of repetition without over doing it and extremely knowledgeable author.

I'd previously read the C# .NET 2.0 version of this book, which was an exceptional, quality book. This book contiues in that tradition. I'm impressed by all the new content and the authors explanation of some of the new features in .NET 4. They could've slapped the 4.0 moniker on it and updated a few chapters, they didn't and it makes this book all the more worthwhile. It will take a while to get through, but you'll find that it's well worth the time. As with the 2.0 version, the writing style is first class! Very readable, very enjoyable and well organized. A great book for any C# dev and some great coverage of the .NET framework.

I simply love Apress books! This book covers almost everything, it is very easy to follow and very well explained.
I don't care the fact that the author doesn't cover asp.net in depth since I bought Pro asp.net 4 in c# 2010. This book is totally worth the money, it is a must!

I am writing this review as a Java developer with limited experience in C# and the .NET Platform, who was given this book to enhance my C# and .NET knowledge.
The size of the book (about 1700 pages) was a little intimidating and my first thought was to just skip the parts I do not find interesting or I will most likely not need in the immediate future, but I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the whole book contained relevant and useful information that I could not miss. Maybe a more experienced C# developer would have found some parts elementary and could be skipped, but as I am still new to this, it wasn't my case.
I think the author's writing is clear and concise and the author did a good job explaining the complex material in a simple, easy to understand fashion.
As a Java developer diving into C# and .NET, what I found really useful were concepts like .NET assemblies and CLR(Common Language Runtime) which were covered in quite detail and explained in a way someone new to the concepts could understand. Also, the later sections that show more specific ways to solve common programming problems like how to deal with I/O, how to connect to databases with ADO.NET or using newer technologies like LINQ were really useful and presented in a great way.
As a beginner in C# and .NET, I would have found useful some more examples here and there, but all things considered, I found this book very helpful, it is a great addition to a programmer's library and I would recommend it to anyone looking to improve their C# and .NET skills.

A collegue in our JUG Cluj-Napoca (Cristina Nistor)

When I purchased this book based on the review of others on the book, I have no regret whatsoever.
Never had dull moment. I my opinion this is best material on the subject and I will recommend this
material for any serious minded developer. Excellent write up and presentation.

It's Impossible to write an exhaustive book about c# but this book is the most complete compendium i've ever seen.
Very good.

This is one of the best books on C#. I rarely buy another edition of the same book, but I owned the previous edition and was thoroughly impressed. In this edition the author added almost 400 pages of new content, but they made it into a paperback. This makes absolutely no sense. The book is extremely hard to handle and is uncomfortable to read. They should have either left it in a hardcover or split it into two separate volumes (ex. Core Java 2 by Cay Horstmann). The third edition also had come with a PDF version for the first few months of release. It would have been nice to have one for this version considering the flimsy cover. For these reasons, I had to rate this book three stars, else I would have given it five stars. Hopefully the next version will be back to hardcover.

This is a book that'll take you in a tour around almost every thing in the .NET but you'll need to do further detailed investigations in the topics of your internist.

I haven't read but about 6 percent of the book but the comment that source code can be hard to read is true although I didn't pay that much attention to it because you can download it from the website. However, very often the resolution on illustrations truly sucks in the Kindle format and the notion that a picture is worth a 1000 words is under greatly under duress in the Kindle format. I suspect it might be worth more like a thousand questions. I think if you get anything from illustrations you might prefer the hard copy. I'll try to upload a copy of one of the images so you can see or in fact not see the problem.

Andrew does a good job of laying out the fundamentals of the .Net 4.0 platform within the context of the C# language. This book is a great resource for intermediate-level developers as well as those who have some experience with C#/.Net and who are looking to expand their knowledge of the topic. Andrew provides plenty of examples which demonstrate his points and allow the reader to practice each section. Overall, one of the best C# books I have used.

I found this book the most complete Guide to C# 4.0, and a very good starting point for many subjects in the .Net 4.0, Language is simple, and contain a very detailed information about C#. Also it answered many questions i had about C# 4.0.

To begin, I will say that I did not finish this book, however it wasn't because I didn't like the book. I was about 1,000 pages in when I decided to switch to Perl (C# just isn't a good language if you work in a Linux environment). This book covers a lot of content as you can see by its size (even more so once you see actually see it). The reason I give this book 3 stars is because I am not crazy about how this content is delivered. I just came from reading C++ Primer Plus (5th Edition) by Stephen Prata and the styles of these two books are very different. This is another big thing about this book, it is NOT targeted towards beginners. So if you are just starting out you will definitely want to pick something lighter so you can get a better grasp of the programming concepts. This book assumes that you have a lot of prior knowledge and not just about programming languages. I was pretty lost in the database chapters about ADO.NET because I have no studied relational databases. Learning C++ first, you also get a better appreciation for C# and what it does in the background for you. So for someone at an intermediate programming level I was able to understand everything, but it takes a lot more effort and sometimes requires re-reading a section several times. One big reason why I would take away a star or two is for the grammar, which is odd and distracts you from the content. This author loves the phrase "To be sure, " at the beginning of almost every sentence, and I am yet to understand what this means at all. Overall it just did not flow as smooth as my previous programming book. Another thing that I did NOT realize before buying it, is that there are NO practice exercises at the end of the chapters. I think doing is the best way to learn so reinforcing your knowledge at the end of a chapter is vital to retaining the information, so I did miss that part. This book WILL teach you C# and the .NET framework, and it moves at a fast pace. The content is there so if you try hard you will be able to learn. I wish I did have a chance to finish the book, as I really bought it for the GUI-based WPF lessons, but I am still able to write decent C# programs so no harm done. While I think the book could have been written better, it still does it's job and I do not regret buying it.

As a Java programmer, I was recommended this book for diving into the world of C# and .NET. When I saw the size of the book (think New York City Phone Book) I was a little intimidated, but the pages just fly by - very easy to read.

I am a big fan of Andrew Troelson's writing and had higher expectations for this version, but little disappointed to see some details left out for a book which is targeted for professionals, I expected more on the new .Net interfaces like IObservable and coverage about reactive frameworks, I know it is impossible to cover everything but these are some new concepts specifically in .Net 4.0 and should have been discussed

Overall I agree with most of the reviewers here on the book.

The largest design flaw I found in this book are the examples. Most are good but unfortunately they're all split up throughout the chapter. Sometimes they're so cut up into pieces that you can't find the originating code to make a complete program. This gets frustrating after a while because sometimes you have to start from the beginning of the chapter or last chapter to get the whole example!

The ordering is simple and effective. I like it.

This book is a must to have when you want to learn .NET 4 Platform

I am very pleased with the product, the paper quantity is high, the book is in an excellent condition. I really love what I got! And it's soooo heavy! :)

The transaction was clean. Absolutely no hassles. Book was in good condition and arrived within the time frame expected. The experience was good. I recommend this to anybody wanting to buy computer books online. Good job guys. Thanks for the effort.

I bought this book, sight unseen, on the basis of the quality of the previous version. I was not disappointed.