Accelerated C# 2008 (Accelerated) | 
 enlarge | Author: Trey Nash
Publisher: Apress
Category: Book
List Price: $39.99
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Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 37646
Media: Paperback
Pages: 510
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.9 x 1.3
ISBN: 1590598733
Dewey Decimal Number: 005
EAN: 9781590598733
ASIN: 1590598733
Publication Date: November 12, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: All orders ship same business day via standard shipping (USPS Media Mail) if received by 1 PM CST.
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Product Description
Many books introduce C#, but if you don't have the time to read 1200 pages, Accelerated C# 2008 gives you everything you need to know about C# 2008 in a concentrated 500 pages of must-know information and best practices. C# 2008 offers powerful new features, and Accelerated C# 2008 is the fastest path to mastery, for both experienced C# programmers moving to C# 2008 and programmers moving to C# from another object-oriented language. You’ll quickly master C# syntax while learning how the CLR simplifies many programming tasks. You’ll also learn best practices that ensure your code will be efficient, reusable, and robust. Why spend months or years discovering the best ways to design and code C# when this book will show you how to do things the right way, right from the start? - Comprehensively and concisely explains both C# 2005 and C# 2008 features
- Focuses on the language itself and on how to use C# 2008 proficiently for all .NET application development
- Concentrates on how C# features work and how to best use them for robust, high–performance code.
What you’ll learn - How C# works with and exploits the CLR
- How to use arrays, collections, and iterators
- How to handle events with delegates and anonymous functions
- How to design and use generic types and methods
- How to thread efficiently and robustly
- How to use the C# 2008 anonymous types, lamba expressions, and extension methods
Who is this book for? If you’re an experienced C# programmer, you need to understand how C# has changed with C# 2008. If youre an experienced object–oriented programmer moving to C#, you want to ramp up quickly in the language while learning the latest features and techniques. In either case, this book is for you. The first three chapters succinctly present C# fundamentals, for those new to or reviewing C#. The rest of the book covers all the major C# features, in great detail, explaining how they work and how best to use them. Whatever your background or need, youll treasure this book for as long as you code in C# 2008. Related Titles - Beginning C# 2008 Databases: From Novice to Professional
- Pro C# 2008 and the .NET 3.5 Platform, Fourth Edition
- Pro LINQ: Language Integrated Query in C# 2008
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| Customer Reviews: Read 4 more reviews...
 Decent Book, But the Audience is Wrong July 3, 2008
David A. Lessnau (Niceville, FL USA)
Overall, this is a decent book. But, simply because the author didn't properly define his audience, I have to mark it down a notch. From the 1st sentence of the "About This Book" section in the Introduction (on page xxvi), the author states:
"I assume that you already have a working knowledge of some object-oriented programming language, such as C++, Java, or Visual Basic .NET."
So, I assumed that since I'd already learned C, C++, and Java, but just dabble in programming, I could use this book instead of plowing through another 1200 page book that starts out with a chapter on sequential statements, a chapter on conditional statements, a chapter on iterative statements, etc.. But, that was a faulty assumption. Instead, this book is REALLY designed for programmers who've done some fairly advanced work in other object-oriented languages UNDER THE WINDOWS .NET FRAMEWORK. For instance, at the start of Chapter 1 (page 1, paragraph 1, line 1), it says:
"Since this is a book for experienced object-oriented developers, I assume that you already have some familiarity with the .NET runtime."
And, on page 231:
"I'm assuming that you're already familiar with the nongeneric collection types and collection interfaces available in .NET 1.1--specifically, those defined in the System.Collections and System.Collections.Specialized namespaces."
So, if you're not very familiar with .NET, you'll have problems with the book. Also, the author tends to slip out of even that "advanced .NET programmer" audience in another way: he sometimes writes to programmers who've used previous versions of C#. For instance, when he introduces Delegates in chapter 10, he never really ties them to the C/C++ model of function pointers or Java's inner classes. The closest he comes is saying they implement a callback function.
The author also assumes knowledge of various design patterns from the "Gang of Four's" Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software (Addison-Wesley Professional Computing Series) book (and a few other sources, too). Here are the patterns he references and the pages where he makes those references:
- Abstract Factory: p 451
- Bridge: p 262
- Collection: p 36
- Disposable: pp 3, 19, 106, 187, 189, 374, 376, 377
- Expert: pp 172, 193
- IOU: pp 320, 354, 355, 362
- Monitor: p 337
- Non-Virtual interface (NVI): pp 117, 143, 144, 236, 238, 365, 366
- Observer: p 265
- Singleton: pp 74, 143 285, 377, 381
- Strategy: pp 122, 266, 276, 291
- Template Method: p 366
- Visitor: pp 424, 437
There are also some smaller things that are a bit irritating. First of all, his code formatting is inconsistent. His use of braces ({}) changes constantly. Sometimes he'll start a block with the first "{" immediately following a keyword on the same line. At other times, he'll put it at the start of the next line. Sometimes, he uses both in the same hunk of code. Ditto for his positioning of instance variables (fields in C# terminology). Sometimes he'll have them at the top of the class. Other times, he'll have them at the bottom. Sometimes, both. And, least importantly, he uses too many forward references (especially referring to Chapter 13).
Overall, if you happen to be an advanced programmer who programs in an object-oriented .NET environment for a living and you want to pick up the latest version of C#, this is a very good book. It certainly won't bore you with trivial stuff, and the way the author presents things will be very helpful. But, if you're just a dabbler with limited experience, the book will probably be confusing. As such, I can only rate it an OK 3 stars out of 5. In future printings, if the author merely revises the stated audience to reflect the actuality, and standardizes the formatting of the code, this book would easily be a 4 star book.
 Pretty Good May 28, 2008
Angel Rapallo (US)
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is a pretty good book. This author is obviously a strong C++ programmer or was for many years, so his approach to the writing about
C# is very C++ bias which I think is very refreshing and pretty neat, to compare the OLD way and the NEW way. Dont get me wrong I am not implying
C++ is dead, I think is still by far the strongest most powerfull language ever, i am just saying C# is more practical, more FOR NOW, for the 21th Century..............
I like many 1990s programmers started in C, C++ so C# is like back to the good old days. C was one of my favorite language for many years..I did some java but I feel C# has gone beyond it by far.
C# for Real Developers January 28, 2008
William G. Ryan (Atlanta, GA)
15 out of 15 found this review helpful
I bought this book last Wednesday and figured it would be a decent enough overview of the new language features. I don't want to downplay the job he does covering new langauge features becuase that coverage is superb, but the job he does covering C# fundamentals is so well done that it eclipses everything else.
So it's a great book for beginners? Well, probably not. I think beginners would benefit by it but it's not a beginners book by any mean. What I do mean is that he does a really in depth job of covering just about every aspect of C# so that he can show the benefits of the new features as well. I've read over 100 books on .NET in the 7 years I've been working with it and frequently the Go to guy when it comes to exception handling for instance. So I really wasn't expecting to learn anything new here. But stylistically, the points he raises in showing how one could elegantly handle a Transaction rollback scenario is just really brilliant. And that same brilliance is exemplified throughout the book.
To that end, the examples in this book are it's real strength. As someone who's written a few books myself, I know how tempting it can be to come up with really simple and overused examples b/c basics aren't much fun to write about. Trey however totally resisted that temptation and I for the life of me can't see a single area that looks like he just 'wanted to get it done'. Everything is seemingly well thought out and written in a way that can clearly make his point clear. He also harkens back to C++ and the fact he has a ton of C++ experience shows through everywhere. It has a feel to it reminiscent of my senior computer science textbooks but without the stuffiness and without coming off as academic. On the contrary, it's the whole aire of advance business scenarios that makes it so cool
Now on to the new language features. I've read several books on LINQ and Lambda expressions. And while they are all great, his explanation of Lambda exprssions and the walk down Functional Programming memory lane is priceless. Had I read this book early on, the nuances of Lambda expressions would have been a lot easier to understand. His coverage of LINQ is in depth as well but he manages to really keep on track and show the business aspects of LINQ without every going down the path of sounding like a 'cool new feature cheerleader'.
I'll admit I have a pretty strong like of Apress books and have a pretty high expectation with their stuff. When I read Faison's Event-Based Programming : Taking Events to the Limit - I found it to be one of the most compelling and well done books I had read in ages. Internally, I thought it would be a longgg time before I came across a book anywhere near that good. Well, all I can really say is that Trey Nash proved me quite wrong. He exceeded any expectation I had by tenfold and got a lot out of this book - not just in C# terms but across the board.
 Whirlwind Tour of the C# Language December 24, 2007
Page Brooks (Florence, SC United States)
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
The book is appropriately titled as it includes the fundamentals for novices and a fair amount of advanced material to satisfy the intermediate developer. Don't expect to see too many pages devoted to any one topic as this book covers everything from basic C# syntax to Lambda Expressions. For a language book, it was refreshing to see some mention of best practices for once. Just about all of the chapters are sprinkled with advice and tips relating to real-world scenarios.
The book is very readable (which is extremely important to me) and the author did a great job presenting his thoughts in a coherent manner (which is very difficult to do). Again, if you are looking for a detailed reference on the new features in C# 3.0 such as Lambda Expressions or LINQ, you may want to find another book. This book covers those topics, but I believe the primary goal of this book was to give novice and intermediate developers a quick refresher on all of the language features from versions 1.0 - 3.0.
Could have been better December 18, 2007
Akash Aggarwal (Cincinnati, OH United States)
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
It has been a good read so far but it is lot of pages and lot of information so not sure if it is really accelerated. I have enjoyed Essential c# more than this one in some aspects but this book nicely explains the new c# 3.0 features. Problem is it covers all the old c# stuff also which is not necessarily a problem for everyone and might be a good refresher for some. I would still highly recommend this.
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