Programming Microsoft Visual C#: The Base Class Library

Most C# developers will have several different kinds of books. Books that introduce you to C#, some with advanced object compositions in C#, some that get into the nuts and bolts of C#/CLR, and others that are great reference books. Visual C# 2005 The Base Class Library stands as a great reference book. It won't cover all the system types (to cover all the system types in a single book is not even practical) but it will cover the fundamental types that you use more frequently. Like if you had to teach english to someone in the most efficient manner you would use the 300 hundred most commonly used words to start. This book is along those lines. I hope the book gets the recognition it deserves and the author continues to write books on future iterations of the framework and the expansion classes of the BCL. Many developers have Richter's CLR 2.0 book which is a good read for establishing some understanding of the mechanisms employed to execute your application. However, most developers will refer to those concepts notionally over coffee and lunch breaks. I think Balena's BCL book is a book more developers will refer to during their day to day programming tasks. As an aside, if the fact that the book's title refers to VS 2005 C# deters you from buying the book because you're looking for a glossy cover that says VS 2008 or C# version > 2.0... then actually this book would probably be even more suitable for you. Meaning, you're just starting out in .NET and haven't made compartmentalized the differences between all the versions. As the title says this book covers the BCL and will prove valuable even when new iterations of the framework are introduced.

Having sweated through thousands of pages of other C# books, I found Francesco Balena's eloquence as refreshing as a perfectly chilled Corona. It immediately tightened my loose grip on particulars such as string formatting, delegates, generics, regular expressions and interoperability. And it is the best discussion of the base classe I've ever seen. Be aware that this book does NOT intend to teach programming. However, if you're someone who can code in some OOP language, knows C# syntax, and seeks professional proficiency in this language, then in my opinion, there is no better book you could own.

This is THE book to own if you do any kind of C# programming. Its not oriented towards web controls, or winforms, etc... but explains everything from files/streams, assemblies, attributes, the object lifetime, and ESPECIALLY Generics. The generics chapter alone is worth the cost of the book. This is a TOTAL "look under the hood" of the C# BCL.

This is not a learn how to program in C# book. However, once you have at least some experience in programming with C#, this is the next book you should buy. The chapter on interfaces is worth the price all by itself. After reading it, I finally have a good idea of what interfaces are all about and the circumstances under which they should be used. As long as you keep in mind that it is not a beginners book, you will not be disappointed.

There are only a few authors who writes about Microsoft technologies whose book you can buy without reading reviews. Francesco Balena is one of them (yes, Jeffrey Richter is another one). Both of these authors write for a particular segment of developers - those who have some programming experience and have tried some things on their own or have read some beginner's book and is ready for the serious stuff. The style is lucid, but no stone is left unturned on the topic being discussed. Both of them (Balena and Richter) also give practical coding advices which we wont find in the usual programming books. The approach is very pragmatic without losing the spirit of good programming idioms. Well, I am diverging. The point is - you dont need to read any reviews to buy a Balena book - rush to the store and get it. They are all gems. Well, if you are still reading this and have not ordered it yet, it means you are interested in knowing a bit more about the book. This book is almost a C# port of his book Visual Basic 2005 book. The chapters go like this : 1. .NET Framework basic types - Balena speaks about the System.Object type, String types, Numeric types,DateTime type etc. 2. Object Lifetime - Memory management, Garbage collection etc. 3. Interfaces - Usage of common interfaces in .NET like IComparable, IDisposable etc. 4. Generics - Why we need Generics, how to write generic code and some advanced topics like support for Math operators. 5. Arrays and Collections - The different types of arrays, overview of System.Collections namespace as well as Generic collections. 6. Regular Expressions - This is an excellent tutorial of using regular expressions in .NET 7. Files, Directories and Streams - IO in .NET is a bit confusing, this chapter might help to clear things up. 8. Assemblies and Resources - Everything u need to know about assmeblies. 9. Reflection - Working with assemblies, modules, types - retrieving information about assembly at runtime and how to use that information. 10. Custom Attributes - how to create custom attributes, shows some scenarios for using custom attributes. 11. Threads - Thread fundamentals, synchronization, Thread pool etc. This is a very nice tutorial for using Threads in .NET 12. Object serialization - Serialization techniques - both built-in and custom. 13. PInvoke and COM Interop - Nice introduction, shows how to call plain C DLLs, and COM DLLs from .NET and also calling .NET components from COM. For more details get Adam Nathan's book. Well, that is it... Not fit as your first C# book, but if you know some C#, this is a very good book for anybody.