Good books about .NET and C#?

[Ahti Legonkov]

Hello!

I am a software developer with 5+ years of C++ experience and VB
experience since version 1.0 until 6.0. I would like to learn more
about C# and .NET framework. I have some VB.NET, C++/CLI and C#
experience. So far the books I have come accross start with basics
like "writing loops" and "how to use IDE" and stuff like that. I
don't care about books like that. Is there any books that don't
assume the reader is complete beginner? Something that would go in
depth about the language? And something about common idioms and
programming styles of C#? Is there a FAQ of this newsgroup? Any
suggestions?

Thanks,
Ahti Legonkov

 

[Vipul Patel]

Professional C# (Simon Robinson: Wrox)

would be good. You can skim thru the earlier chapters as you already know
the fundamentals.

 

[Esmail Bonakarian]

Hi Ahti,


You may want to take a look at some of Jesse Liberty's books, check
amazon or the o'reily site for more info. I too came to C#/.NET with
some previous programming experience and found his books quite nice.

Cheers,
Esmail

 

[Jon Skeet [C# MVP]]

I am a software developer with 5+ years of C++ experience and VB
experience since version 1.0 until 6.0. I would like to learn more
about C# and .NET framework. I have some VB.NET, C++/CLI and C#
experience. So far the books I have come accross start with basics
like "writing loops" and "how to use IDE" and stuff like that. I
don't care about books like that. Is there any books that don't
assume the reader is complete beginner? Something that would go in
depth about the language? And something about common idioms and
programming styles of C#? Is there a FAQ of this newsgroup? Any
suggestions?

A couple of FAQs:
http://www.pobox.com/~skeet/csharp/faq
http://blogs.msdn.com/csharpfaq/

 

[Christoph Nahr]

I don't want to retype all my reviews...
http://www.kynosarges.de/DevBooks.html#Net2Books
http://www.kynosarges.de/DevBooks.html#Net1Books

You absolutely need Jeff Richter's "Applied Microsoft .NET Framework
Programming"; however, there's a new edition coming out shortly that
covers .NET 2.0 so you might want to wait for that.

For C# 2.0 specifically, "A Programmer’s Introduction to C# 2.0" by
Gunnerson & Wienholt is decent, but has numerous minor errors.

 

[Nick Hounsome]

Hello!

I am a software developer with 5+ years of C++ experience and VB
experience since version 1.0 until 6.0. I would like to learn more
about C# and .NET framework. I have some VB.NET, C++/CLI and C#
experience. So far the books I have come accross start with basics
like "writing loops" and "how to use IDE" and stuff like that. I
don't care about books like that. Is there any books that don't
assume the reader is complete beginner? Something that would go in
depth about the language? And something about common idioms and
programming styles of C#? Is there a FAQ of this newsgroup? Any
suggestions?

Thanks,
Ahti Legonkov

I find that any book that claims to be about C# will be too basic as they
all try to cover both the language and the entire framework,ADO.NET,ASP.NET
and advanced fly-fishing.

You are better of getting a book that covers a specific area such as forms
programming, ASP.NET or ADO.NET using C#. These will usually provide enough
C# info for someone with your background and the examples will be real world
rather than artificial.

I found "Windows Forms Programming in C#" by Chris Sells to be most useful
when learning since in the course of describing how to do stuff with forms
he delves into attributes,XML,ADO,remoting,reflection and many more areas.

 

[Guest]

Hi Ahti,
I would personally recommend that you read "Pro C# 2005 and the .Net 2.0
Platform" by Andrew Troelsen. This book covers most important areas of C#
covering from language fundanentals (not wasting time on what is a for loop
kind of thing) but the important keywords for C# then he moves on to .net
assemblies, databases, gui programming, threading plus a lot more. as well
he covers most of the new topics for the 2.0 release of .Net.

The writing style is very fluent and he seems to be able to find all of the
interesting parts of each section of the language to talk about in more
detail. definitely worth a read.

Hope that helps
Mark Dawson
http://www.markdawson.org

 

[Guest]

I was just about to reply to Ahti with the same suggestion. So instead of
duplicating your suggestion, let me just say that I concur with it. It's a
great book.

Oh, and if you get it soon, APress has a free e-book download of the book as
well.

 

[Jon Skeet [C# MVP]]

I find that any book that claims to be about C# will be too basic as they
all try to cover both the language and the entire framework,ADO.NET,ASP.NET
and advanced fly-fishing.

<snip>

You're right that this is a problem. I haven't found many books which
are really about *just* C#.

There's one I *will* be recommending when it comes out, but I'm not
sure I'm allowed to do so just yet. Sorry about how this appears - I'm
well aware it doesn't put me in a good light - but I wanted to give you
hope of a good book in the future, partly so that you might remind me
every so often that I'm going to make the recommendation

(Oh and no - I didn't write it, just reviewed bits.)

 

[Esmail Bonakarian]

There's one I *will* be recommending when it comes out, but I'm not
sure I'm allowed to do so just yet. Sorry about how this appears - I'm
well aware it doesn't put me in a good light - but I wanted to give you
hope of a good book in the future,

Hi Jon,

can you give us an idea (ballpark is ok) when this book might
be published?

thanks,
Esmail

 

[Jon Skeet [C# MVP]]

can you give us an idea (ballpark is ok) when this book might
be published?

I'll check with the publisher and get back to you.

 

[csharpnb]

Hi Ahti,

I am with Mark and Dale on "Pro C# 2005 and the .Net 2.0 Platform" by Andrew
Troelsen.
Coming from Java, and C before it, I myself was looking for a book meeting
your description. I spent about 3 weeks reading reviews on the web and
visiting pretty much every single bookstore with tech books in my area. I
decided then to get Troelsen's book and I am very glad I did. It assumes
some previous general programming experience. The author goes through
assuming you'll work on VS2005 but assures you that every code sample in the
book can be worked without IDE. I recommend this book as a programmer's
start to C# and .NET, but I suspect one, inluding myself, would need to get
separate books and/or read advanced articles on the web focusing more deeply
on individual aspects of the platform.

Hope this helps.

 

[Esmail Bonakarian]

I'll check with the publisher and get back to you.

cool, thanks!

esmail

 

[Guest]

http://www.books-download.com/

 

[Jon Skeet [C# MVP]]

I'll check with the publisher and get back to you.

I've checked, and I'm allowed to advertise

I haven't read *all* of it, but what I *have* read of "Essential C#" by
Mark Michaelis is great. It's a heavily C# book rather than a .NET
framework book, only really tackling the framework for things like
reflection and threading, which is fine IMO.

It should be published in June/July. ISBN: 0321150775

 

[Esmail Bonakarian]

I've checked, and I'm allowed to advertise

I haven't read *all* of it, but what I *have* read of "Essential C#" by
Mark Michaelis is great. It's a heavily C# book rather than a .NET
framework book, only really tackling the framework for things like
reflection and threading, which is fine IMO.

It should be published in June/July. ISBN: 0321150775

thanks Jon, appreciate the info.

For others interested, amazon has a page for it already which
popped up readily when I searched based on ISBN.

cheers,

Esmail