C# in a Nutshell

When I need to learn a language, the last thing I want is a book that tries to teach it to me. Their teaching jut gets in the way of my learning.This book serves my needs ideally. It is a reference, not a tutorial. It covers the whole language and most or all of the standard API, in a book of modest length. Of course, that sacrifices detail. Fine. When I need information, I'll look here to find out what system facility does my job, then use the system help for details. This book really is the index that the help system lacks.This goes on the shelf next to Flanagan's "Java in a Nutshell." I have no higher praise for a language book.

If you have picked this book to learn C# because you don't have much time, most likely you will find that it's a hard nut to crack. In my view, it's a handy reference book for intermediate C# progrmmers who want to review key features of the C# language, essential programming concepts using the NET framework classes and the details of any of the 700 .NET Framework Classes in 21 important namespaces without using MSDN online libaray. If you often find yourself printing topics from Visual Studio NET Online Help and read them on weekends, then this book is for you. Section I (chapter 1- 4) summarizes key concepts of the C# language, illustrated with succinct code. Section II (Chapter 5 to 19) covers programming using the Framework Class Library, such as String, Collections, Streams and I/O, Serialization, Assemblies, Reflection, Custom Attributes, Garbage Collection, Threading and Interop. I felt that each topic discussion is a little too brief and many important topics mentioned in the overview section of the book are not discussed at all, such as graphics, data access with ADO.NET, Remoting, Window Forms, Web Application, globalization, Configuration. In section III, some useful .NET Framework SDK tools are covered, which is very helpful. The last section is detailed listing of the most important core types/classes of the .NET framework. I like the UML diagrams illustrating class hierarchy and relationships. Personally I would like to see some code samples under important types. The book is 832 pages thick, I hope the future edition will add the missing topics mentioned above and more code, making it a 1,000 page reference book. -- Reviewed by Timothy D.

I have other nutshell books and find them to be the most used books on my bookshelf. This book is no exception. You should get this one even if you have other C# books.

As usual, O'Reilly delivered an excellent "in a nutshell" book for a C# programmer. Many complain that some of the namespace were left out, like ADO.NET ones. All I have to say is that only the major things were covered and that is the most exciting thing about the book itself - it doesn't carry any unneccessary information at all. 20% of the book covers the C# features, includin data handling, data types, inheritance, delegates etc. Another 20% tell us about some advanced C# tecniques. The rest of the book is completely devoted to the classes that belong to the major namespaces.It's a comprehensive on-hand guide to every C# programmer out there! (Another O'Reilly book - "Programming C#" by Jessy Libery would be useful as well.)

Of course it omits a few major namespaces (i.e., System.Web for ASP.NET Web Services) however this book is an *excellent* C# language reference and tons of details on the major namespaces (as the O'Reilly publisher already commented on above).I have 6 books on .NET and C# programming. My background is 10+ years of C language (and very minimal COM exposure). This is one of *the* books to purchase.-Ken