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Paradoxal Press

Buy directly from Paradoxal Press at $33.99 (Save 43%)



Category: Programming
Level: Beginner to seasoned
900 pages
ISBN-10 097661322-0
ISBN-13 978-097661322-0
$59.99 USA
$79.99 CANADA


Practical .NET 2 and C#2   :   Reviews



I recently had the opportunity to skim-read Practical .NET2 and C#2 by Microsoft MVP Patrick Smacchia. You’ll find the book’s table of contents and examples online at its website (linked from title), along with an impressive list of testimonials. I would have to agree with what many other reviewers have noted – this is a very good comprehensive look at C# 2.0 and how to use it to work with the .NET Framework 2.0. I have perhaps half a dozen C# books on my desk, including the language spec, but I think this book does away with the need for the others. Now if I can just get it back from the guy who borrowed it off my desk…

Steven Smith Microsoft Regional Director, MVP ASP.NET, president of AspAlliance.com and AspAdvice.com

Patrick Smacchia's Practical .NET2 and C#2 is a book by a Master Mechanic targeted primarily to Master Mechanics - and to those who would like to be. I know for a fact that Patrick has literally toiled for years developing the material for this book - and the level of detail and professionalism in the book bear this out (…)

The treatment of Processes, threads and synchronization in Chapter 5 is about the most extensive coverage I have seen in any book for any version of the .NET Framework (…)

In the final analysis, I would recommend this book to any professional - level .NET Developer who has migrated to the 2.0 platform and whose goal is to feed their brain to get farther up the knowledge ladder toward eventual "Master Mechanic" guru level. You will keep this book on your desk for a very long time and refer to it frequently.

Peter Bromberg MVP C#, webmaster of EggHeadCafe.com

I like the way the author explains topics, very direct and to the point. He general describes a topic, why the topic is important, where it is useful and then gives examples on who to use it. This is a not a editorial book like some others I have read lately ... the author is more focussed on explaining .NET than he is on amusing the reader. Perhaps this is why it reads so fast.(...) I recommend this to any .NET developer who wants to fill in the gaps and get a solid understanding of the .NET Framework v2. For someone who has written all or parts of 8 books I am impressed with Patrick’s ability to keep the topics flowing along at a pace that both maintains the interest of the reader and manages to get deep enough into each topic.

John Papa MVP C#, author of several books on ADO.NET, XML and SQL Server

The main thing that impressed me about the book is its combination of an enormous scope alongside a good level of depth. Just about every .NET topic that you might think of is in there from introductions to the assembly metadata tables through to discussions on localisation, threading, security, Windows Forms, Web Forms, Web Services and an interesting section of the book which talks about the C# language and does a comparison to C++ which is something that I haven't seen before.

The other thing that I think is quite different about the book is that Patrick's quite happy to point to online resources to flesh out some of his chapters and so will quite frequently reference MSDN articles written by other authors in order that a reader can go away and get more info - good idea :-)

If you're already pretty comfortable with .NET then I still think this is definitely worth adding to your bookshelf as it brings together so many subjects in a single book. I know I learnt a bunch of stuff from reading it.

Mike Taulty Miscrosoft UK developer evangelist

When you starting reading the first chapters you will notice that Patrick has put a lot of energy and research in this book. You will notice that the book is not an excerption of the MSDN Library, instead you will get a lot of tips and tricks and how-to's, best practices... (...) Definitely a book that you should own!

Gabriel Lozano-Morán freelance MCSD.NET

Normally I don't buy books from people with really 'cool' hair. And I don't typically buy books from Publishers I don't know of. Stupid me. If this book is typical, Paradoxal Press will DEFINITELY be on the list of publishers I buy from regularly. In more than a few instances, I couldn't have gotten my new stuff done without this book. Both Patrick and Paradoxal deserve a ton of credit and this book is a wonderful reference.

Bill Ryan MVP Windows Embedded, co-author of Professional ADO.NET 2

(...)It is not a book about boring syntax details. It is obvious that it was written by a programmer with the know-how and many years of experience – the word ‘practical’ in the title fits perfectly. I also liked the fact the Patrick mentions several (free) tools (i.e. Reflector) that are simply a must have.

I would say that this book is essential for beginners and a good read for skilled developers providing such a wide range of valuable information at hand in one place. Some chapters are really explained in details while others thoroughly cover the basics, leaving you with a good starting point.

All in all, I would say that this is a Swiss army knife kind of book and I warmly recommend it for anybody in .net (2) development.

Miha Markic MVP C#, authors the RightHand blog

(...) When I looked inside, I found the book formatting and styles are much better than other publishers. It looks like the book is written by a programmer for programmers.(...)

There is a dedicated and well-designed chapter on generics, which tells me that author come from a C++, COM, and ATL background. You know those days ;-). (...)

This is an excellent book for beginner to intermediate level developers, who wants to write applications using .NET Framework 2.0. I think Patrick has done an excellent work. Give it a try and hope you will enjoy it.

Mahesh Chand MVP, webmaster of the site http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/, author of Graphics Programming with GDI+ (Addison Wesley 2003)

(...) This book recently joined some other C# books in my bookshelf alongside books by Richter, Sells, Box, and so on.

The book is very well-written and very comprehensive, covering the common language runtine, the C# language and the framework in 800 pages. The author put a lot of energy into this book, and it shows with a lot of deep insight and behind the scenes information on how features work, including, for example, Reflector screenshots and the generated IL output for a feature.I find myself reading sections on topics I am very knowledgeable to see if there was any information that I missed.

Although I am somewhat partial to this book, since the author reads my blog and borrowed some of my ideas on iterators, this is a really great C# book

Wesner Moise ISV, ex Microsoft developer, authors the blog Smart Software (formerly .NET Undocumented)

I'm impressed with the book. It's not a C# reference, although it describes new features in C# 2.0. And it's not an MSDN reference. It focuses much more on concepts and practical tips. Things that I like:
  • It touches on an amazing breadth of topics. I learn several things new things each chapter. (there's a lot to learn about the CLR).
  • I'm impressed with the concentration of good points. For example, in the middle of a section on Collections (pg 483), he compares System.Collections.Specialized.StringCollection to System.Collections.Generic.List and raises the question: which should you use? And then goes on to provide a useful answer.
  • It's practical. For example, at the end of the section of Collections, it has a nice table mapping between V1.1 non-generic collections and their corresponding V2 generic collections. It also has good use of tables and screen-shots which make skimming through to find a specific item much easier.
  • It's really like a tour guide through Whidbey. The book hits a lot of different topics but doesn't dwell on any topic too long. The book is huge at about 850 pages. It gives a much more structured exposure than just randomly jumping into the middle of MSDN and clicking random links.
  • It has a few pages about debugging support in your programs (pg 510 - 517) from the System.Diagnostics namespace. It mentions the debugger display attributes, Just-my-code, the debuggable attribute, and using Trace.WriteLine / Trace listeners.

    • (...)it's a very educational book with an amazing breadth of knowledge and a nice tour guide through Whidbey.

    Mike Stall Developer on the Common Language Runtime (CLR) at Microsoft

    (...)Its length (>800 pages) is justified by the sheer number of topics touched on (...) Basically, if it's in the .NET platform you'll find it in this book. Coverage of each topic is short and concise, and usually includes a small sample that is easy to understand. If you're looking for a single book to give you a better grasp of the breadth of this platform, this book should fit the bill nicely.

    Fritz Onion MVP, Pluralsight trainer, author of Essential ASP.NET (Addison Wesley 2003)

    I have read about 150 pages of the 800+ page book and the book rocks. The chapters I have read so far (...) are excellent and full of detail. The pages are packed, too:
  • No big glaring gaps of white space and fluff that you get from some books that try to meet a page minimum.
  • Code samples get right to the point as opposed to showing a lot of extraneous code.
  • All code is in C# which means you don't have to deal with duplicate examples in multiple languages.

    • (...) the book is a real joy to read.

    David Hayden MVP C#, professional website developer

    (...)I have been recently poring through a pretty fantastic book - Practical .NET 2.0 and C# 2.0 by Patrick Smacchia. I have to admit, if you are hard pressed on time like I am, and don't have the patience to read through 5 different books to learn what you need to, then keep this book at an arms length. I really like how the chapters are laid out in logical topics, which make it so much easier to find the specific information I am looking for. What makes this book great, is that this book is so much more than just C# 2.0, it's really about the framework (wasn't it always about the framework?).(...)

    Sahil Malik MVP C#, author of Pro ADO.NET 2.0 (Apress 2005)