Rating: 
Summary: console programs
Review: This book joins the stampede teaching console programming. You have to work in the black screen DOS environment. The authors seem never to have heard of windows. Do they write DOS programs for a living ? I think not. These books should carry a warning " Reading this book will teach you nothing useful "
Rating: 
Summary: Nice introduction to the future
Review: This book was handed out to all of the attendees at Microsoft's PDC in July. It is a very nice introduction to C#, assuming you are familiar with C++. I would urge you to read Jeffrey Richter's forthcoming book on NGWS first (they handed out a preprint of the first three chapters). Richter does a great job of laying the foundation that C# builds upon. The two books should complement each other nicely. The language C# itself deserves 5 stars. If you have ever tried to use COM from C/C++, and suffered from "VB envy", you will think you have died and gone to heaven. The new environment is very clean and well thought out. OOPS is finally poised to deliver on all of those old promises about code reuse and programmer productivity. By the way, if you are coming from a Java environment, this book will be pretty frustrating. Java is never mentioned. I think a short chapter summarizing the differences between Java and C# is crying out to be added. That is why I marked the book down to 4 stars.
Rating:
Summary: Avoid this book. doesn't do a great language justice
Review: This book was written in only a few weeks by an outsider for free distribution at the PDC for reasons only the marketing folks can explain, it doesn't do a great language justice! I'll give the author credit for a valiant attempt however considering what must have been his very limited time with C# and he's a clear writer which is very good. Still, the author of this very small and lightweight book has only limited information and experience with the C# language and it shows. While I am not an expert on C#, I do know enough about it to know he skips important features of the language or doesn't emphasize features that should be emphasized (like versioning). All in all he simply doesn't do a great language justice. The book to get is Eric Gunnerson's "A Programmer's Introduction to C#. Gunnerson is on the C# design team at Microsoft and knows the language as well as anyone. His book has oh 10 times the information Wille's slender book has...
Rating: 
Summary: Good presentation for C# but lack of .....
Review: This books is good for introduction and a glance to what C# is and what it can do but the most important part of the language is a bit weak on this books such as interface, delegation and event for C#. It should focus more on that rather then focusing on the normal syntax such as logical statement coz it should provide a comparison chart for C++ and VB against C# even better. By anyway, it provide me a better idea on the differences between C++ and C# and I think this is the best we can expert based on the length and price of the book. Thanks for reading my review:-)
Rating:
Summary: Language Reference
Review: This is a decent language reference with short concise examples of C#. C# is familiar territory to C++ and Java developers offering a new twist on OOP. This book does a good job of covering all of the language basics in an easy to understand format which makes it an extremely fast read - It took me 3 hours to read it cover to cover, skimming over parts of the langauge which I previously understood such as if-then-else statements. If you are looking to get up to speed, check out this book. If you are looking for solutions, look elsewhere.
Rating:
Summary: Nicely Done Intro, Somewhat Dated Terminology
Review: This slim 204-page book is for experienced C++ or Java programmers who need a quick introduction to C#. C# is the professionals' preferred development language for the .NET platform. There have been many changes in the .NET platform (although fewer in the specifications for C#) since the book was first published in July 2000. For example NGWS, next generation windows services, VOS, virtual operating system, and VES, virtual execution system, are used throughout to refer to essential portions of the .NET environment; but these generic terms have been replaced in the latest (beta 2) Microsoft release of .NET and C#. Having read two other .NET books prior to this, I was initially confused by the vocabulary of this book - until I looked at the copyright date. Nevertheless, this small (9" x 6") book written by a seasoned professional can be usefully and easily stuffed into the briefcase of the experienced programmer. The publisher should do a second addition. On the shelves of my local mega bookstore, this still seemed like the best of the more compact introductions to C#.
Rating:
Summary: Hot but very introductory
Review: This small book (just 200 pp.) will help you understand what is this new C# about in a very quick and easy way. The main advantages of the book are its brevity (in a good sense), ease to read, and of course its availability. Its drawbacks are direct results of advantages: the book gives only an introductory description of the language itself and lacks many important related details and topics. E.g. standard .NET classes are not covered, interoperability with the old COM is only touched, etc. I think the ideal reader for this book is a C++ guy with some COM experience. The author claims that if you are a VB guy it's also OK, but I can't neither confirm nor deny it. It is obvious that next year we'll have lots of deeper (I hope) books on C# and .NET, but if you wish to learn more about it right now this book is not bad at all.
Rating: 
Summary: First book, weakest of the lot
Review: When this book first came out (around the time of the PDC last year in June), it was the only C# book on the market. As such, many of us clamored to get our hands on something while we waited to see who we could hork PDC CDs off of to install .Net. As such, the book sold quite a few copies, something it did not warrant. There is nothing in this book that you cannot find in the help documentation. It is a rushed job that covers material you can find in two other books (more ont he way) in much more detail. Note that I do not fault the author for the content in this book. The book was rushed to be given out as a free sample at the PDC. You can read some of Wille's articles on the web and find that he is a very competent programmer and author. However, this book has outlived its time. If you are serious about learning C#, you would do much better to consider "A Programmer's Introduction to C#" or Wrox's "C#, Programming with the Public Beta". The Wrox book is a bit easier to read, has better code samples and puts C# in perspective, while the Programmer's Introduction is much better at getting in depth in the inner workings of C#. If this were July of last year, I might recommend this book a bit higher (although it still would not garner many stars), but there are much better books on the market now, so this pamphlet, er book, is a complete waste of time.
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