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6 of 6 found the following review helpful:
 Great Way to Learn C# 2010Jun 02, 2010
By Frank Stepanski
There are lots of new things in C# 2010 and .NET 4.0 and this is a great book for existing .NET developers to get up to speed on the new features of .NET and for developers to use as a great reference on many issues that may come up.
Areas of .NET that are discussed are threads, processing, I/O, XML processing, Windows forms, database access, networking security, LINQ, and WPF. There are so many topics covered in this book, it only makes sense that it is over 800 pages.
A quick table of contents is:
Chapter 1: Application Development
Chapter 2: Data Manipulation
Chapter 3: Application Domains, Reflection, and Metadata
Chapter 4: Threads, Processes, and Synchronization
Chapter 5: Files, Directories, and I/O
Chapter 6: XML Processing
Chapter 7: Windows Forms
Chapter 8: Graphics, Multimedia, and Printing
Chapter 9: Database Access
Chapter 10: Networking
Chapter 11: Security and Cryptology
Chapter 12: Unmanaged Code Interoperability
Chapter 13: Commonly Used Interfaces and Patterns
Chapter 14: Windows Integration
Chapter 15: Using LINQ
Chapter 16: Windows Presentation Foundation
There havent been too many books on .NET that cover so many topics in .NET with lots of great examples. I love the chapters on Data Access, Security, and Unmanaged code. The examples are real-life and are explained in detail without too much techno-babble.
Its a great book if your a web or windows developer because it focuses on both platforms and nowadays the difference between desktop and web is getting smaller and smaller. So most of the topics cross-over no matter what area you develop in.
I highly recommend this book and it should be in your developer's library.
5 of 5 found the following review helpful:
 Recipes vs CookBookJun 09, 2010
By Richard Trinh
Most of the recipes in this book seem like they were copied over from the Visual Studio 2005 version. Granted I don't have the 2005 version but I wanted to see more examples using Lambda Expressions and leveraging other .NET 3.X/4.0 features. Although this does leave the book backwards compatible with previous versions of .NET
I liked how the book explained HOW to use the language as opposed to WHAT it is. The reader will see a lot of gotchas, pitfalls and some best practices on how to use the language. The forward mentions this, and people looking for what's in the language should pick up a reference book.
Visual C# 2010 recipes is better than C# 3.0 Cookbook because it does go over some new .NET 4.0 features like the new Parallel class, and it's better laid out and easier to find what you're looking for. But the C# 3.0 Cookbook does complement this well because there are always multiple ways to solve an issue.
This book is a behemoth at over 1,000 pages and well worth the price.
4 of 4 found the following review helpful:
This will go next to my old K&R C book...perfect for my needsJun 05, 2010
By R. Reid
"tsimbler"
I've got 25 years of professional C and database programming under my belt. Windows has not been my focus and .NET was barely on my radar.
This book is like the good old days of 'share and enjoy' code. The cookbook format is perfect for someone like me to get oriented. I downloaded the code samples and have been modifying them every which way - which is the only way I learn things.
What you get are a lot of recipes that do one thing. I find the book was more about .NET 4.0 than about Visual C#. If you ignore the project files you could work these with a text editor and a compiler too.
If you already have a background, you might find it runs out of steam quickly. I usually went from excitment over getting something done with it, to saying "but what if I want to do X instead of Z"?
However, it took me to the point where I could usually answer such questions with MS's online .NET documentation - and I think that's perfect, since that's the place to be long term.
This will go up next to my K&R, which taught me C - this is the book that finally got me into .NET.
3 of 3 found the following review helpful:
Can I Have The Recipe For That?Jun 29, 2010
By Philip F. Japikse
How often do you hear that? At dinner parties, pot luck dinners, Cub Scout events...The asker is not saying "Teach me how to cook", but instead, based on an existing knowledge of food, spices, etc, is looking for the combination and proportion of ingredients and kitchen appliances will allow them to recreate the dish in question.
As a developer, we quite often find ourselves asking the same question. We just use different words. "Can I see the code for that?". It's not a plea for "Teach me how to program". It's an acknowledgement that the combination of code and development patterns produces a result that would benefit the inquirer.
There are a lot of books out that will teach you how to program, write unit tests, as well as books that dive into specific frameworks (like WPF, ASP.NET MVC, etc), or specific aspects of programming (like Unit Testing or Test Driven Development). But wouldn't it be nice to have a book that assumes you know all of that (or know where to look it up), and just listed a sequence of recipes to solve very specific problems?
Enter "Visual C# 2010 Recipes" from Apress. This is the "Recipe" based book that I just finished reading, and I was very impressed. The authors take the approach of listing out a specific problem, describe the high level solution, and then go into the nitty-gritty details of the solution.
Most reference books (even the good ones) require the reader to search around to find something similar to the problem he/she is working on, and then extrapolating the reference material examples into their domain. Don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking the reference books. I have a book shelf and my Kindle full of them. It's just nice to know that when I have a specific issue, I can find a targeted answer.
The authors don't claim to be the complete reference manual for all issues you might face, but there are a *lot* of problems outlined, and chances are you will find what you need. If you don't, there are enough that you can find a similar one to your specific domain problem, and work out the details. After all, if the book contained all possible problems, we would be unemployed.
2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
Wish all recipe books were like this oneApr 09, 2011
By Timo Haavisto
I have perhaps 3-4 meters of .NET 4 books in shelf which I get back to, to 'tune in' again. There have been disappointments (I'm still waiting for a good MVVM book) I have to say, but this book is like a quick rehearsal handbook to .NET 4. When I have to get quick answers to questions like 'how was it again', 'what was the most modular way', 'what was the easiest way', 'how to achieve exactly this particular thing' and so on, this book is the one I take from shelf. It usually answers the problem I have right off the bat, without me having to shuffle ~5-50 pages to find the actual answer.
If I am not satisfied with the answer and wish to get more in-depth analysis, then I go after the other books. But at work, for quick accurate answer to specific problem, this one is the most useful and replaces whole bunch of other books. It focuses to actual issues you will have and gives straight answer without small talk. To change your way of working (long-term change of practises you use) I would suggest the other books again, and the theory on how and why you end up to the issues in the first place.
This book is like a zoom system camera lens of extremely good quality. When you go out to take pictures, one hi-quality zoom lens replaces whole backpack of fixed-mm lenses. It is better - you can shoot the picture at once, instead of while changing the lens you miss the bird and get no picture. But! You still need the fixed-mm lenses for specific purposes, when you have time for preparation and you know what kind of picture you are shooting.
Got the point? Thank you!
Highly recommended and extremely useful at work. Even for people who by instinct select the (most) correct design pattern every single time with no sweat.
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