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Average Customer Rating:

Adequate	Customer Rating:
Fortunately C# and .NET aren't the most taxing topics in software development, otherwise this book wouldn't be adequate. However although mediocre, verbose, and printed in a too-small font, it's good enough, and quite possibly the best of a so-so pack.

Broad but neither deep nor concise

Customer Rating:

I can recommend this book but only to programmers experienced in an OO language. I have only read 500 pages so far but am sufficiently annoyed that I felt the need to write a review. I have covered all the core and advanced C# features and am now heading in to the .NET assemblies section. I have found the phrasing imprecise and the editing substandard. I am surprised that no errata has appeared on the publisher's "Pro C# 2008" web page despite it being released last year. Code examples are copious but frequently differentiate themselves very little from previous examples and could save hundreds of pages by being cut down. Despite my criticisms, I feel that I have now gained a working knowledge of C#. I am sure that any experienced OO programmer could do the same but I shudder to think that somebody might rely on this book to introduce them to OO concepts. To be completely subjective, I really dislike Troelsen's writing style. I had the opportunity to dip in to the text before I bought it and at that time I felt it was written in an approachable style but after 500 pages I am grinding my teeth. Sentences that equate to, "X is a feature of C# but is useless until it is made use of," are not uncommon. The phrase "to be sure" now makes me flinch. Some sentences just stagger me with their irrelevance.

It doesnt get much better than this

Customer Rating:

I have read a couple of the previous versions and for me Andrew is the best technical author bar none. This isnt a light book to carry around but its worth it if you have to. You might think "how can this be a good book as it covers everything" but Andrew covers every subject with enough detail so that by the end of each section you know the concept, understand what is required for that concept, and have sufficient code examples to work with and even take further. Top drawer work

Great Technical Book

Customer Rating:

This is a really excellent technical book that you can actually enjoy reading from cover to cover. It assumes a reasonable level of competance, but actually goes through learning C# and .NET in a way that would be an excellent beginners method too (especially if you went through every example, to which source code is available online). The author even manages to get in the odd bit of dry humour too which never goes amiss in a thick technical book such as this! The book regularly points you at a number of web resources which the author has built up over the years which give excellent additional information about topics which are outside the scope of the book. Overall, I'd say this is one of the best technical books I have ever read.

For seasoned programmers only

Customer Rating:

An exhaustive reference book on all things C#... But I would disagree with some of the earlier posts that recommend this for novices. If you've been programming in other languages and you want to transfer your Knowledge to C# 2008 terms, then yes, you don't need to have read another book on C#, this is the definitive guide. There doesn't seem to be anything better out there to take you from Non-C# Professional Programmer to C# Professional Programmer. But if you're starting out from scratch in programming, you won't be programming for long if you count on this to take you from zero knowledge to pro. From the very first pages, the reader is expected to follow streams of self-referencing jargon which will be quite clear to programmers, but to the novice, here's a little how it feels like: [H.Mpp] is a derin picker (see chapter 59) without all the rumms and can be divided into Yoos and AD2s (unlike G.O. which objectivies even without greeling the original Z and we all know how annoying that can be!)Here's an example: ?hy/ HYYu (lks) ? So you see how much easier it is to code in C#? Joking aside, the point is that if you are already familiar with the jargon and what it actually refers to, this is a goldmine of information, but if you're just starting off, I would go for the Head First C# book. It'll get you up to speed in no time.