Rating: 
Summary: Response to Jason E. Trout
Review: I wanted to write in response to Jason E. Trout's review. First, I need to state up-front that I was the Technical Editor on the 2003 edition of this book. The two errors that Jason points out indicate that he is reviewing the old (first edition) of Visual C++ .NET Step By Step. I double-checked the 2003 edition of the book and found that both these errors were caught and fixed. The 2003 edition includes updates that reflect changes introduced with version 1.1 of the .NET Framework and Visual Studio .NET 2003. The chapters on Windows Forms have been entirely rewritten to reflect the inclusion of designers with Visual Studio that create forms coded with the Managed Extensions for C++. This means developers can now create Windows Forms using designers, just like a Visual Basic or C# programmer would, instead of needing to hand code them. Julian also rewrote the chapter on ADO.NET so the sample projects require Access instead of SQL Server. So give the new edition a look if you have the chance. I am confident you will find the updates and new information handy, and that errors like the ones Jason mentions have largely been eliminated. I would have preferred to post this review without rating the book, but Amazon's submission forms don't allow it. Thanks,
Eric Dettinger
Rating:
Summary: Much better than expected
Review: I was a little bit worried that a Microsoft Press book might read like a dictionary. That was not the case. I find this book extremely easy to read, filled with very good analogies and explanations. I've always had issues understanding Object Oriented programming, mainly because most books only lightly explain it, and by the time they get to it you're reading chapter 83 and dealing with other complex concepts. I was overjoyed to see that object oriented programming was explained in Chapter 2 (right after the hello world exercise). Needless to say, I was able to understand it right away, for the first time. Programming books are always hit and miss, sometimes they start too slow and then all of a sudden you're lost in advanced, unexplained topics, and don't know how you got there. Sometimes, the chapters just seem to drag on forever and it becomes easy to lose motivation on over covered material.
This book however is a work of art, the chapters are nice and short, easy to follow and have just the right amount of info to cover the topic. Every time a question flag gets raised in my mind, the answer is on the next line. This book is worth the money and the time.
Rating: 
Summary: Not for beginners
Review: If you already know how to program in Visual C++, you will probably find this book covers new features of C++ .NET rather well, although some of the explanations are very short and terse. The code is accurate and the examples are easy to load, saving you a ton of keystrokes while allowing you to concentrate on the walkthrough of how the program accomplishes it's task. However, for the beginner... look elsewhere. For those that know how to code already, take a look at this: Page 14: A "Hello World" program. Page 15: OOP programming, encapsulation, polymorphism, inheritance, classes and objects. Page 21 begins with a "simple" example. Within that example are classes, public and private members, how to access them, pointers, indirection operators, the garbage collector, managed extensions, functions - including the unexplained Console::Write() and Console::WriteLine() functions that perform string output. Woops! Almost forgot namespaces, #include directives and the "using <mscorlib.dll>". Any beginners know what a .dll file is? Then we move onto page 26... Eeek! And, just to make sure you beginners know you're going to be overwhelmed, here's a paragraph from page 23: "Because of these performance issues, the .NET Framework also supports value types. Value types are objects created on the stack. The variable contains the object itself rather than a pointer to the object. Hence, the variable doesn't have to be dereferenced to manipulate the object, which of course improves performance. To declare a value type class, the __value keyword should be used instead of the __gc keyword. In this case, the variables would have been created on the stack. Instead of declaring pointers for this class and then creating the objects on the CLR heap by using the new operator, the objects would have been declared in the same way as the built-in C++ types and the member vairiables accessed by the dot operator rather than via the dereferencing operator." Got all that? Hope so, because before you reach page 50, he'll cover declaring variables, assigning values, Arrays, Pointers, References, Constants, Enumerations, Typedefs, the String class, arithmatic operators, relational and logical operators, typecasting, the Ternary Operator, the sizeof() operator, bitwise operators, precedence and associativity. Neat huh? Only for experienced, proficient C++ programmers.
Rating:
Summary: Great for learning to code C# w/ Visual Studio 2003 IDE
Review: If you're looking for a book to teach you how to program C# using Visual Studio, this is the book for you. The authors put as much focus on how to use the development environment as they put into the language. Previous exposure to programming and object-oriented concepts are helpful, but not required. I strongly recommend the book to those who are new to C# and/or Microsoft's Visual Studio environment. *Note that this is for version 2003, not the 2002 edition.
Rating:
Summary: Great for learning to code C# w/ Visual Studio 2003 IDE
Review: If you're looking for a book to teach you how to program C# using Visual Studio, this is the book for you. The authors put as much focus on how to use the development environment as they put into the language. Previous exposure to programming and object-oriented concepts are helpful, but not required. I strongly recommend the book to those who are new to C# and/or Microsoft's Visual Studio environment. *Note that this is for version 2003, not the 2002 edition.
Rating: 
Summary: Definitely Not For Beginners
Review: It has been a number of years since I touched a programming language, and none of my experience was in Object Oriented stuff. This book has been patently unhelpful. I'm not sure who the audience is - It does not provide much in the way of explanation as to how the architecture works - it just lays it out. It is near useless for a beginner. On the other hand, an experienced programmer is likely to get bored with the "Open this code and change this line" approach. Too bad. This could have been a good book. Unfortunately, I don't know if there are any good alternatives if C# is your first language.
Rating:
Summary: My Book is titled... VC# not VC++
Review: Love this book! I'm a software developer expereienced in c++ now coding in C#. This book is great! It is well thought out and the examples have helped us implement our own solutions. The chapter on GUI Components was excellent. With some modifications we developed a flexible/reuseable Login Component suitable both on the desktop and Compact Framework. Thanks to Jon and John for a great C# book. If you are looking for C++ try another book. One suggestion: republish the link on page 585 in the chapter on Web Services. I cannot connect with the ContentMaster link. Thanks again,
Jim Ryan
Rating:
Summary: My Book is titled... VC# not VC++
Review: Love this book! I'm a software developer expereienced in c++ now coding in C#. This book is great! It is well thought out and the examples have helped us implement our own solutions. The chapter on GUI Components was excellent. With some modifications we developed a flexible/reuseable Login Component suitable both on the desktop and Compact Framework. Thanks to Jon and John for a great C# book. If you are looking for C++ try another book. One suggestion: republish the link on page 585 in the chapter on Web Services. I cannot connect with the ContentMaster link. Thanks again,
Jim Ryan
Rating:
Summary: I hope these are not your first "step by step"s.
Review: Not for beginners. A fast stroll down the C# and .NET reference. Open-existing-program-and-change-two-lines-of-code kind of exercise pattern. Hard to read text.
In detail:
First of all this book's title implies to me it is written for almost beginners. Well how lucky I am I have 15 years+ programming and IT concepts backing to be able to carry on through the pages. Do not buy this book unless you already know well programming/algorithmic concepts and at least one other language and it better be of the sort of C, Java or JavaScript.
This book will teach you one thing very well - opening existing pre-written programs with Visual Studio 2003 and changing a couple of lines in them. It has this exercise repeated about 40 times. What this book will not teach you is writing C# programs from scratch - what do you write first and why, how you enrich it and why; what real world problems you solve with what type of programs structures, what more do you need as source code and definition files in more complex scenarios and further. You better look for another book if you need that. Also, since 100% of the examples are ones that are pre-written (in the book's CD), have in mind, you will not be able to open them unless you have Visual Studio .NET 2003. I was too naive to assume most of the conceptual ideas I should be able to try on my 2002. No, I had to upgrade to 2003. Otherwise I would not have been able to see any of the code the book tries to take you through.
If you at all find it possible to follow the book's text you will be distracted by erroneous and unclear text and often pointless non-technical paragraphs ranging from wired technical religiousness (isn't it great Gates put the System.Object in the center of the universe?) to excitement of the fact that someone has thought of things like sorted arrays let's say.
Rating:
Summary: I hope these are not your first "step by step"s.
Review: Not for beginners. A fast stroll down the C# and .NET reference. Open-existing-program-and-change-two-lines-of-code kind of exercise pattern. Hard to read text.
In detail:
First of all this book's title implies to me it is written for almost beginners. Well how lucky I am I have 15 years+ programming and IT concepts backing to be able to carry on through the pages. Do not buy this book unless you already know well programming/algorithmic concepts and at least one other language and it better be of the sort of C, Java or JavaScript.
This book will teach you one thing very well - opening existing pre-written programs with Visual Studio 2003 and changing a couple of lines in them. It has this exercise repeated about 40 times. What this book will not teach you is writing C# programs from scratch - what do you write first and why, how you enrich it and why; what real world problems you solve with what type of programs structures, what more do you need as source code and definition files in more complex scenarios and further. You better look for another book if you need that. Also, since 100% of the examples are ones that are pre-written (in the book's CD), have in mind, you will not be able to open them unless you have Visual Studio .NET 2003. I was too naive to assume most of the conceptual ideas I should be able to try on my 2002. No, I had to upgrade to 2003. Otherwise I would not have been able to see any of the code the book tries to take you through.
If you at all find it possible to follow the book's text you will be distracted by erroneous and unclear text and often pointless non-technical paragraphs ranging from wired technical religiousness (isn't it great Gates put the System.Object in the center of the universe?) to excitement of the fact that someone has thought of things like sorted arrays let's say.
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