Pro C# 2005 and the .NET 2.0 Platform (Expert's Voice) Review

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Pro C# 2005 and the .NET 2.0 Platform (Expert's Voice) ReviewIf you ask Andrew Troelsen that question, I bet he would guess "three pounds."
Overall, this is a pretty decent book on C# 2.0. As other reviews have said, it's not for beginners. With 4 years experience in C# .Net and Microsoft MCAD certification, I have found the technical level of the book to be right on the money for me. While much of the book (and C# 2.0) is the same as for .Net 1.1, the review has certainly not hurt me and has not been hard to read at all.
The examples are more correct than any technical book I can remember reading in a long time. And the code samples and downloads work! That almost never happens. Mr. Troelsen has done a great job in that regard.
From a content perspective, it is fairly thorough, touching on most of the new features of C# 2.0, but the level of coverage for the C# 2.0 specific features is at the same level as the 1.1 features.
One area that is very poorly covered is assemblies and assembly location. Mr. Troelsen spends 30 plus convoluted pages on the subject in Chapter 11 while Microsoft clearly describes the topic in 6 pages on their web site. If you don't know about assembly location in .Net before you read Chapter 11, you surely won't when you're finished. In fact, if you do know about assembly binding in .Net before you read it, you may not anymore when you finish reading Chapter 11.
Some key .Net version 2.0 features are not covered at all - for instance, there is no discussion at all of the BackgroundWorker class. This is a very useful new feature of .Net 2.0.
Because the book is not geared for beginners, it could have been better had Mr. Troelsen de-emphasized the 1.1 features slightly and used the recovered space for more emphasis on the 2.0 features. For instance, generics are only superficially covered.
So, technically, I think that four stars is a fair assessment of the book. Since Pro C# 2005 and the .NE 2.0 Platform is a technical book and not a novel, I rated it based on its technical merits, which is a good thing. Had I rated it on its readability, I would have given it 2 or 3 stars.
As one other reader said, the book is full of overly repeated phrases and misused words like factoid and deprecated. As my opening remarks eluded to, Mr. Troelsen, while being a master of C# and the .Net framework, is not a master of the segue. A little more plain-speak and a lot less Thesaurus would benefit the next version.
Way too many code samples start with something along the lines of "ponder the following" - 43 to be precise. Nearly 100 more are introduced with the phrase "as so:". How about using just "the following example" or "like this:"? Or telling the reader to "author the following code" when he means to enter or to input or to type the code. Mr. Troelsen already authored the code. If I claimed to author it, that would be plagiarism. Again, too much Thesaurus.
The grammatical faux pas that bugs me the most is "Do be aware" which occurs in various forms over 135 times in the book, or more than 5 times per chapter. I found about 5 places where the phrase seemed to be contextually appropriate. I suggest that he does this:
book = book.Replace("Do be aware", "");
In other words, just state the facts.
But he did mix it up some. At one point, he grabbed my attention with "Be very aware". Now, this must be an important fact (not factoid), right? Imagine my disappointment when I realized that the fact (not factoid) I was supposed to "be very aware" of was that whatever topic was being presented would probably never come up in the real world. So why, then, must I be "very" aware? Couldn't I be just sort of aware? Or better yet, why not skip the failed attempt at a segue and state the fact (not factoid) that the functionality was of minor significance?
One of the best reasons to buy this book is that, if you get the first printing of the third edition, you can pass a quick one-question test on APress' site and download an e-book in searchable PDF format. As you can tell from my review, the search feature works.
If you're a beginner looking to learn .Net, C#, or how to program, I would not suggest this book. If you're a practicing .Net developer with a background in C#, I would highly recommend the book until there are more technically comparable books that may be more readable available.
Pro C# 2005 and the .NET 2.0 Platform (Expert's Voice) Overview
C# 2005 changed the .NET 2.0 landscape. To name just a few improvements, C# now supports generics, partial types and nullable types when youre coding. And the framework boasts improved speed, data access, security, and scalability.

This book has been written to help you assimilate all this new information and realize its potential to make your coding life easier. It will keep you ahead of the curve. To make it easy for you to access this information, the book has been loosely grouped into five sections:

1. Introducing C# 2005 and the .NET 2.0 Platform explains the mechanics of .NET programming and the philosophy that lies behind it
2. The C# Programming Language outlines everything you need to know to start using C# 2005 quickly and efficiently. Object lifetimes, exception handling, genericsits all here
3. Programming with .NET Assemblies deals with one of the most important aspects of .NET programming: reusing code. This book shows you how to capture your code in reuseable external assemblies that you can call upon throughout your applications
4. Programming with the .NET Libraries guides you through them. Of course youre not expected to write every function yourself. The .NET Framework provides a vast array of .NET Libraries containing functionality that allows you to do everything from opening a file-stream to rendering graphical data to the screen
5. Web Applications and XML Web Services concludes the book by taking you away from console-based C# applications and investigating the myriad possibilities that become available when you blend C# 2005 with ASP.NET 2.0 to launch your applications onto the Internet


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