CLR Via C#

This is a good book, considering it is primarily a reference/internals book. Those are notoriously hard to write and also be easily consumed. A bit dry at times, but for the most part is readable. The book also has minimal errors and is logically structured. A couple of observations: 1. An experienced developer will benefit more from the content that someone with less experience or someone that is new to .NET. This book covers a lot of fundamentals, but you will learn more if you have time writing code in C#/.NET 2.0. 2. The factual content is quite useful, and most other books don't even come close to this. In addition to the facts, Jeff injects some of his opinion. An experienced developer will recognize these segments as opinion and reconcile that with the realities of their own work environment. For example, Jeff prefers using the formal CLR syntax for primitive types over the C# shorthand (e.g., "Int32" instead of "int"). This of course is a matter of preference, and will most likely be determined by the coding styles and practices at your workplace. Jeff also does not like Properties, and wishes that Microsoft had not included them as part of the framework. Again, an experienced developer will probably not read this and immediately stop using properties. It is not inconceivable however, that an inexperienced developer may read it and develop a bias against properties, something that may not be advisable.

The only thing I can add to the other reviews is the perspective of a professional developer and mentor for over 10 years with a library large enough to start my own book store. The is THE book that every .NET developer needs to own and STUDY. It will help keep you out of trouble and help you create better product. You will learn important things you will not learn elsewhere and find yourself referring to it again and again. Fortunately, you'll find this a very pleasurable experience as Richter is a terrific and entertaining technical writer.

At the heart of Microsoft .NET is the CLR. .NET development is primarily about directing the CLR. But how can you do that if you don't really know what the CLR is or what it can do? Most .NET programming books are language centric. The capabilities of the CLR are implied based on the description of the language. Jeffery Richter's book is CLR centric. It describes what the CLR can do and how it does it. C# is used to provide practical examples of how to direct the CLR. The book clearly and efficiently presents vital information that you'd spends days trying to discover by either pouring over MSDN or writing test applications. Highlights include: * how source code is converted to IL, stored, managed, and executed * a description of the code metadata available at run time and how it is used * how data is classified, organized, and managed * a description of the members that make up a class (fields, methods, etc.) * how to handle exceptions * how garbage collection works * how reflection works * how to write multi-threaded applications Throughout the book there are many warnings about pitfalls and gotchas. The execution efficiency of different approaches is explained for many situations. I urge any .NET developer who doesn't really understand the CLR to read this book.

If you're this kind of .NET developer who understood that the more you know about the CLR the better your code will be, this book is a MUST-READ. You'll find information available nowhere else at almost every page. I really enjoyed the numerous digressions about reasons why MS engineers designed the CLR and the Framework the way it is. For example you'll find answers to tricky questions such as: Why the C# compiler uses a callvirt IL instruction (and not a call IL instruction) when calling a non-virtual instance method? What are the rare cases when you should consider using the Explicit Interface Method Implementation? (EIMI) How the underlying processor architecture and volatile memory access are related in the CLR sphere? How .NET framework classes with many events such as System.Windows.Forms.Control are designed to save memory at runtime? And many many many more. I also liked the fact that J.Richter is one of the very few who has enough knowledge on the subject to criticize some design choices made by MS. Often some alternatives for future .NET releases are proposed. Clearly, if you are a beginner this is not the first .NET book you should read. But if your goal is to become a.NET expert, then know that you'll end up by reading this book.

I read a lot of technical books, usually 30 or more a year. You'll find none better written than this, in fact, it should be the how to manuscript for all technical writers. You get in depth discussions that are just right and lots of "I always wonder why it was done that way" type of information. In short you know a lot more about NET when you finish this book AND be able to put it to good use!