Learning C#

Are you a programmer or novice programmer with little or no object-oriented programming experience? If you are, then this book is for you! Authors Jesse Liberty and Brian MacDonald, have done an outstanding job of writing a second edition of a primer on the C# 2005 language specifically, and object-oriented software development in general. Liberty and Brian MacDonald, begin by introducing you to the C# language and the .NET platform. Then, the authors provide a guided tour of Visual Studio 2005--the tool you will use to build all the applications in the book. Next, they introduce the basic syntax and structure of the C# language, including the intrinsic types, variables, statements, and expressions. The authors then describe some of the symbols that cause C# to take action, such as assigning a value to a variable and arithmetically operating on values. They continue by showing you how to create programs that branch based on conditions that may change while the program is running. Then, the authors explain the principles behind object-oriented programming, including encapsulation, specialization and polymorphism. Next, they introduce the key concepts of programmer-defined types and instances of those types. The authors then delve into the specific programming instructions you'll write to define the behavior of objects. They continue by introducing the debugger integrated into the visual Studio 2005 Integrated Development Environment. They also introduce the array, an indexed collection of objects that are all the same type. Then the authors explore two of the key concepts behind object-oriented programming, inheritance and polymorphism, and demonstrate how you might implement them in your code. Next, they explain how to add standard operators to the types you define. The authors explain how you can define a set of behaviors that any number of classes might implement. Then, they explain generics and show you how generics are used to create type-safe and efficient collections. Next, the authors discuss the manipulation of strings of characters, the C# string class, and regular expression syntax. The authors then explain how to handle errors and abnormal conditions that may arise in relation to your programs through the use of exceptions. They continue by discussing how to write code to respond to programming occurrence like mouse clicks, key strokes, and other events, through the use of delegates and the event keyword. Then, the authors show you how to bring all of these skills to bear to create a Windows application. Finally, they show you how to apply the same skills to building a web application. This most excellent book focuses on the fundamentals of the C# programming language, both syntactical and semantic. More importantly, after mastering these concepts, you should be ready to move on to a more advanced programming guide that will help you create large-scale web and Windows applications.

Let me just start out by saying how impressed I was with this book. This is an excellent introduction to not only C# and the .NET framework, but it's an excellent introduction to object-oriented design. I found this book to be an excellent way for beginning programmers to easily enter the world of .NET. The book begins with an very brief introduction to C# and C# fundamentals. Again, this discussion is geared for the novice to intermediate programmer, so there's nothing too scary here. The Visual Studio IDE is discussed and a quick tutorial into the various menus and options available in the IDE is presented. After these introductory chapters, the authors dive right in to operators (like + and /), but also more complicated operations like modulus. The authors then proceed to discuss virtually everything you need to know to create a sophisticated program. The book has been updated to incorporate information about the latest .NET release (version 2.0), with a discussion on Generics. In typical O'Reilly fashion, tips, tricks, and things to watch out for are clearly identified in the text. But this book goes a step beyond and includes a quiz at the end of each chapter. This quiz covers the major points of the chapter and includes the correct answers at the end of the book. I thought this was an excellent step in helping programmers new to C# (or even .NET) an excellent way to test their skills and comprehension. I absolutely love this book. It's a great introduction to C# and .NET, it's easy to follow, and it's easy to test your comprehension. If you're looking for a great book for the beginning to intermediate developer, I would highly recommend this one.

There seems to be some confusion about this book, with some reviews denegrating the book because it is too elementary.This book is designed for the beginning programmer, or the programmer with little or no object oriented experience. As such, it does not attack the more advanced topics I cover in "programming C#" (also by O'Reilly). If you are looking for a comprehensive introduction to the language for an intermediate to advanced programmer, this is not the book for you, but if you are looking for a gentle introduction to .NET and C# in particular and object oriented programming in general, I hope you will take a look at this book.Thank you.

I just finished reading this book and I think it is a good starting point for learning the language. Some of the other reviews say "it didn't cover this" and "it didn't cover that", but I think the book accomplishes the task. It teaches a beginner the basics of the language. It's not going to teach everything about programming in C#, it just starts you on the path. I thought it was very readable and the author explains concepts very well. This book was so interesting that I want to learn more about the language. The next book I read will definitely be "Programming C#" by the same author. If you are a seasoned programmer and want to learn advanced topics, this is not the book for you. If you are new to programming and want a good start, I highly recommend this book.

I cruised through the first seven chapters, but I got bogged down in the eighth. So I went to the author's Delphi forum and posted a couple of questions. Received four answers promptly, two by JL himself. And he even apologized (!) for being less than perfect.Yeah, the book is intelligent, well organized, entertaining, blah blah...but who cares? With this kind of support from the author, you are just about guaranteed success.