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Beginning Microsoft Visual C# 2008 1st Edition

3.5 out of 5 stars 31 ratings

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The book is aimed at novice programmers who wish to learn programming with C# and the .NET framework. The book starts with absolute programming basics. It then moves into Web and Windows programming, data access (databases and XML), and more advanced technologies such as graphics programming with GDI+ and basic networking. The book is divided into sections including:
  • The C# Language: Basic language skills using console application. Content moves from the absolute basics to fairly involved OOP skills.
  • Windows Vista Programming: Using basic Windows applications, reinforcing earlier OOP and debugging skills.
  • Web Programming: Putting together basic Web applications, highlighting differences between Web and Windows programming.
  • Data Access: Accessing all kinds of data sources from Web and Windows applications, including SQL usage, XML, file system data, and Web Services.
  • Additional Techniques: "The fun stuff", including Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Workflow, Windows Communication Foundation, GDI+, networking, Windows Services, and so on.

The book makes complicated subjects seem easy to learn, and it inspires readers to investigate areas further on their own by providing references to additional material, and exercise questions that require significant effort and personal research to complete.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Karli Watson is a freelance IT specialist, author, and developer. He is also a technical consultant for 3form Ltd. (www.3form.net) and Boost.net (www.boost.net), and an associate technologist with Content Master (www.contentmaster.com). For the most part, he immerses himself in .NET (in particular, C#) and has written numerous books in the field. He specializes in communicating complex ideas in a way that is accessible to anyone with a passion to learn, and spends much of his time playing with new technology to find new things to teach people.
During those rare times when he isn’t doing the above, Karli is probably wishing he were hurtling down a mountain on a snowboard or possibly trying to get his novel published. Either way, you’ll know him by his brightly colored clothes.

Christian Nagel is a software architect, trainer, and consultant, and an associate of Thinktecture (www.thinktecture.com), offering training and coaching based on Microsoft .NET technologies. His achievements in the developer community have earned him a position as Microsoft Regional Director and MVP for ASP.NET. He enjoys an excellent reputation as an author of several .NET books, such as Professional C#, Pro .NET Network Programming, and Enterprise Services with the .NET Frameworks, and he speaks regularly at international industry conferences.
Christian has more than 15 years of experience as a developer and software architect. He started his computing career on PDP 11 and VAX/VMS, covering a variety of languages and platforms. Since 2000, he has been working with .NET and C#, developing and architecting distributed solutions. He can be reached at www.christiannagel.com.

Jacob Hammer Pedersen is a systems developer at Fujitsu Service, Denmark. He’s been programming the PC since the early 1990s using various languages, including Pascal, Visual Basic, C/C++, and C#. Jacob has co-authored a number of .NET books and works with a wide variety of Microsoft technologies, ranging from SQL Server to Office extensibility. A Danish citizen, he works and lives in Aarhus, Denmark.

Jon D. Reid is the director of systems engineering at Indigo Biosystems, Inc. (www.indigobio.com), an independent software vendor for the life sciences, where he develops in C# for the Microsoft environment. He has co-authored many .NET books, including Beginning Visual C# 2005, Beginning C# Databases: From Novice to Professional, Pro Visual Studio .NET, ADO.NET Programmer’s Reference, and Professional SQL Server 2000 XML.

Morgan Skinner started programming at school in 1980 and has been hooked on computing ever since. He now works for Microsoft as an application development consultant where he helps customers with their architecture, design, coding, and testing. He’s been working with .NET since the PDC release in 2000, and has authored several MSDN articles and co-authored a couple of books on .NET. In his spare time he relaxes by fighting weeds on his allotment. You can reach Morgan at www.morganskinner.com.

Eric White is an independent software consultant with more than 20 years of experience in building management information systems and accounting systems. When he isn’t hunched over a screen programming in C#, he is most likely to be found with an ice axe in hand, climbing some mountain.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Wrox
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ May 5, 2008
  • Edition ‏ : ‎ 1st
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 1344 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 047019135X
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0470191354
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 3.82 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.4 x 1.7 x 9.2 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.5 out of 5 stars 31 ratings

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Top reviews from the United States

  • Reviewed in the United States on December 7, 2008
    I'm teaching myself C# from scratch, with no relevant programing experience. I bought this book as a companion to Microsoft Visual C# 2008 Step by Step. I read it a couple chapters behind the Microsoft book and find that its explanations of the material flesh out the concepts introduced int the Microsoft book. It's been a perfect combination for me. A wish list item would be for a PDF version of the book. I find it easier to have the book up on one screen while having Visual Studio up on another.

    I would recommend this book to any true beginner - like myself.
    One person found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on October 1, 2011
    The book was written by six authors, and it shows. Some chapters are models of clarity, and some are almost impossible to comprehend because of the contorted sentences. How some programmers can write such elegant code and so mess up sentence syntax amazes me. The editors at WROX need a good dope slap over releasing this book without cleaning up some of the chapters.

    But it isn't just the poor writing. There is considerable obtuse thinking in how the writing should have been structured. The title of the book contains the word "Beginning". That should tell the authors that the readers will be beginners, and so you go from low level examples to high level generalization, not vice versa. If a person can read the MSDN library and understand it, then this book is unnecessary. So why start with MSDN level definitions and FINALLY give an actual example at the end of a discussion?? That is bass ackwards for beginners and horribly frustrating for them. And it is an insult to professionals. Start with a simple example, and progressively build to the general case. This should have been obvious. But it wasn't. Some chapters are almost an attempt to make simple concepts difficult. Had I not known JavaScript before picking up this book, I'd have thought C# was just too difficult. But, with the background I had, I was able to see that the concepts are not that difficult nor dissimilar; it is just bass ackwards writing in this book that makes it so painful.

    I have restricted my comments to the quality of the writing and how the material is presented. Others have reviewed the general thoroughness of the book sufficiently.
  • Reviewed in the United States on May 7, 2009
    It's nice book. All examples there are really basic and written step by step. It's good for a beginner.

    ---------------------------
    Well, after read the entire book, I have to say it is a nice book, but also have problems. No 5 stars, 4 or 3 stars could be appropriate for this book.
    One person found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on December 12, 2011
    This was a required book for a college course. This book IS not for begginers and very difficult to follow. I think it was written as a reference book and not as a study guide. I guess when I am a pro at C#, I may use it as a reference but then again, I would probably not use it even then. Look for the altrantives. This is not a user friendly book by any means. Also, the only reason I gave it two stars is because it was rather cheap, around $20 when compared to other college books. So, it was not a total loss.
  • Reviewed in the United States on February 11, 2015
    good book, same as describe
  • Reviewed in the United States on October 24, 2009
    I am a veteran programmer who decided to get back into it after 5+ years absence from the field. Since it had been a while and my former experience was in other languages and this book got good reviews, I bought it.

    Big mistake. There are several big problems with this book:

    1: The exercises are too short and too unrelated to give any feel of creating anything that is like an actual program. Many of the examples are just skeleton code that do nothing. This means that if at first you don't get it you probably never will because you can't see it working. It is much better to build a series of mini-applications that actually process information so a beginner in a language can learn by building something that will actually work (then see how the parts in it work). Then the concepts that are obscure to begin with become clearer as they are employed. In this book the "try it" sections are more typing exercise than anything else, and these are incredibly short. The authors' reliance on DoSomething() and Console.WriteLine() is both monotonous and uninformative. To really see what code can do, you have to actually make it do something other than the same nonsense over and over. It is best if the exercises actually have you figure out how to accomplish something with the code rather than just typing empty syntax.

    2: The authors totally ignore the user interface as a part of the program. Real programmers do NOT make programs based on lines of straight text to and from the console. Besides the fact that it is deadly boring, this approach is also too simplistic to teach any sense of what a full application entails. Particularly in Visual Studio, it is important to consider the interface as part of the context of the application. Making the interfaces also gives a programmer the same stimulation that the programmer will need to provide for future end-users. Visual Studio and Visual Studio Express provide very easy access to those interfaces. Not using the interfaces really short-changes the would-be programmers.

    3: The book is totally lacking appendices or other reference areas with a brief, concise summary of language features and syntax--or expanded information. This should be a vital part of a beginning book on any language. Want to review the syntax for a specific declaration? Trying to figure out the best approach for looping through a series of tasks or data? Normally one would go to the chart of program control structures at the end of the book to review the syntax for clues. Not with this book. Such a chart exists nowhere in it. Your only option would be to reread entire relevant chapters.

    4: When you finally get to user interfaces, they are presented as something that is totally different from the programming techniques you learned in the earlier chapters. The various form features are introduced, along with their properties, but there is pretty much a complete disconnect from the programming that should be happening behind the forms. Working on interface as an integral part of the program instead of something different would make a much better approach.

    I will not finish this book and do not recommend it to anyone who actually wants to learn to write code that actually does anything or interacts with users in a meaningful way.
    25 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on December 13, 2014
    I wouldn't read it page for page, but a great reference to have around.

Top reviews from other countries

  • Rick
    5.0 out of 5 stars Better than some.
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 1, 2013
    As a C# virgin, I purchased three C# books and this one. I found, was rather much better at explaning stuff that any "dummy" series.
    The reviewer is a 60 year old Electronics Engtineer experienced in Assembler programming of PIC micros; 6502 and 6809 processors from the UK101/Superboard II, to ADE (BBC) to MPLAB (PC)

    If you want ONE book on C#, this would be a good start BUT you should consider a few more as each will have its strong and weak points. Unfortunately, you will have to wade through the reviews to extract the gems from the dross.
    This was my THIRD purchase and I wish it had been my first.

    For me, I just wanted to start writing in C# (windows and Console apps). SQL and the more complex subjects like STRUCT I will deal with when I need to.
    This book is more Console app based but you can't write a windows app without knowing the basic rules for C# and this book tries to help. You have to do some of the work yourself.
    Expect no help to drive VS2012 which is not intitive BUT you can muddle through. Single Stepping code and setting up watch windows to variables, when I discovered they were there... Fabulous.

    Beware of any review suggesting the purchaser was an flea infested alcoholic but after smelling the screen on which any book was displayed became a top programer at NASA because these reviews exist as do the fools who believe them (and the guys who write them).

    THIS book taught me some, cleared up a LOT and seems to have been written by guys who don't take themselves or their subject too seriously and so, makes the stuff more readable than simply dry data pumping.
    I reach for this book first and sometimes look for a second opinion from my other less thumbed tomes which is right and proper.
    Worth the cash ?. Certainly. This book works for me.
  • Ramesh
    3.0 out of 5 stars get into C# more deeply
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 6, 2019
    It is a heavy read but hoping it becomes easier later!
  • M. Sykes
    4.0 out of 5 stars Very good book
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 25, 2010
    This book was very good at explaining C# from the beginning. Better written towards the beginning of the book rather than the end, but overall a good book.
  • Mr. Gregory A. Martinez
    2.0 out of 5 stars Overbloated, overcomplicated examples badly explained.
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 11, 2010
    I bought this book as I have been a VB Programmer for over 15 years. I've just been on a c#.net conversion course and needed to solidify what I had learnt.

    I have found that the examples used in the book are way too complicated and bloated
    (I'm especially thinking of the card suit program). I was constantly having to go to the web to find simpler examples, which made me understand what was being explained in the book).

    On the positive side I think that the book is quite well written, although they could have used slightly less jargon(this is supposed to be a beginner's book).

    I only bought this book because of the positive reviews it had received so far. I really don't think that it should be aimed at beginners. If it is then maybe the authors should have tried it out on some 'beginners' first. It could do with A LOT of simplification.
    I would give it 2.5 stars if I could.
  • Alan Sharp
    5.0 out of 5 stars Great Reference Material
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 3, 2009
    I used this book alongside the Pro Visual C# 2008 all through the final year of my degree and it was an amazing reference book, I never read it cover to cover so I cant say how useful it may be for a complete beginner wishing to learn the language but for someone like myself who just wants to lookup specific information its really amazing.

    If you want something more portable and less intimidating get C# in a Nutshell by O'Reilly but if you want a fairly substantial reference this is the book for you, once you move onto more advanced projects however the Pro Visual C# is a worthwhile investment.