Microsoft Visual C# .NET 2003 Kick Start

Rating:
Summary: No wasted time with this one
Review: For any programmer coming over from another language, I really think this book offers the most bang for the buck (and for your time). I'm a VB6 programmer who wasted a lot of time and money on other books that either offer too much hand-holding (next to no code, everything through forms designer) and wasted time on extensive examples building software I'll never use or focused only on console C# applications with no explanation of topics like ADO.NET, winforms, etc. I need to use C# at work and like many programmers, I'm busy and have little time to waste. Yet, I also needed a comprehensive book because the real world of business programming requires the use of data-access technologies (ADO.NET), security, network technologies, etc. This book succeeds on all counts. The coverage is surprisingly comprehensive and details are well fleshed out. Even using ADO.NET in code is covered while many other books only cover using it through form controls in Visual Studio (anyone who writes database-connected applications knows that you really need a high level of control of shaping the data before you can present it). Nothing is dwelled upon for long so be warned that the book does move fast and info is densely packed into each page.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent for people who know some programming
Review: This is a very solid book. It assumes you know the basics of programming like loops, modules and the likes... If you are familiar with any regular programming language (like C, C++, Java, PERL, python, ruby, even shell scripting) then this books is probably your best bet to learn C# quickly.

There is no whole chapters made to get you to write a "for" loop here, you must have programming concepts to really benefit from this book.

As a programmer, I really enjoyed it and was able to get to work quickly on C# programs. If you are totaly new to programming, get another book to get your feet wet before jumping on this one.