Microsoft Visual C# 2005 Step by Step

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Microsoft Visual C# 2005 Step by Step

With the release of the long awaited Visual Studio 2005came a flood of marketing by Microsoft and its partners on the unprecedentedlevels of productivity gained as a direct result of using this latest incarnationof Microsoft s premier development environment. The awareness raised by thiseffort will no doubt bring to the Visual Studio IDE nascent programmers seekinga faster, easier way to get things done. It will also provide an opportunityfor those Visual Basic developers who have been saying to themselves for thepast few years they would learn C# when the .NET 2.0 Framework was official. Well,it s official.

Microsoft Visual C#2005 Step by Step is ideally suited for individuals seeking to learn object-orientedprogramming using C#, as well as those VB ers who are ready to take the plungeinto the syntactically different C# domain. The book assumes a baseline of somerudimentary understanding of application development, but even this requirementisn t entirely necessary. Starting with the obligatory Hello, World outputvia both a console and Windows environment, the book gently ramps up to cover suchsyntax basics as variable declarations, decision statements, and errorhandling. Part II teaches OOP concepts with the creation and management ofclasses, enumerations, structures, arrays, inheritance, and garbage collection.Part III puts this fresh knowledge to work by creating components, usingindexers, delegation, generics, and operator overloading. Part IV is all aboutbuilding Windows Forms-based applications. Part V covers databases, and thelast part of the book teaches how to construct Web applications and servicesvia ASP.NET.

Each chapter concludes with a much appreciated quickreference review of the key facets that were taught. It would have been anextra nice touch to have the most important of these summarized on a laminatedtear-out card or a PDF print out of such from the enclosed CD-ROM, but thechapter summaries are well received, nonetheless. Also lacking was aninstallation option for the .NET 2.0 Framework SDK or a Visual Studio demo, butthis is understandable, given the book s release prior to the final release ofthe SDK and shipping VS product. This disappointing omission is amplified bythe fact that less than 10 megabytes of data (consisting primarily of the setupprogram that installs the code samples on the target computer) actually resideon the CD. At that rate, I would have preferred to download the file fromMicrosoft Press Web site, skip the CD, and put that savings toward loweringthe book s cover price. Potential readers should also be aware that this bookabout Visual C# isn t so much about Visualas it is about C#. Visual Studio 2005makes a few cameo appearances, but this book spotlights the C# language, notthe VS IDE that hosts it. As such, readers seeking to learn C# and all there isto know about living within the Visual Studio environment will need to purchaseadditional books to learn about this topic.

This Step by Stepbook is author John Sharp s third revision of this introduction to the C#programming language. Consequently, first time readers will benefit from arefined 3.0 version that already was on solid ground with the first tworeleases. This iterative refinement has brought a cleaner presentation whileincluding excellent descriptions of the new features found in the C# language. Infact, Mr. Sharp s explanation on generics is one of the clearest, easiest tounderstand explanations I ve read. His Note and Tip boxes found throughoutthe book are extremely helpful and provide practical experience pointers forboth new and intermediate developers.

Overall, I recommend this book to any aspiring programmersseeking to learn the latest incarnation of C#, as well as those VB developersready to take the plunge to find out why hard-core Microsoft developers writetheir programs using the C# programming language.

Mike Riley

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Title: Microsoft Visual C# 2005 Step by Step

Author: JohnSharp

Publisher:Microsoft Press

ISBN:0-7356-2129-2

Book Web Site: http://www.microsoft.com/MSPress/books/7655.asp

Price: US$39.99

Page Count: 592