I dont feel very well studying with this book because they write a line of code of example an to explain it they write 2 pages. Too much bla bla bla which make it very difficult to study and read.

From the size of this book you would think it would have everything you need to know about programming Windows apps with C#. After reading this book you realize that for a book to have that it would need 5 times as many pages.
I am a C programmer with a couple classes in C++ and Java but had not really used those languages for real work. This book is great for someone with programming experience and just a little OOP knowledge. It serves as an excellent overview of all the things that you can do with C# with enough detail for you to try and explore things on your own. It does not provide really deep information in any of the subjects but it seems to give you enough to say "hey I can do that" but having to go elsewhere for the exact details on how you do it.
The book does have it's share of typos - what programming book doesn't. Finding those mistakes do give a little sense of accomplishment - if you don't understand what is being read you may not recognize some things as mistakes.
Anyway, I think this book is definitely worth the Amazon price. I don't know if I would pay the suggested retail though.

This book gets off to a decent start, describing the fundamentals, but the writing style is awkward throughout; it's obvious some authors were more skilled writers, but overall I found the writing style so poor it was a major distraction for me. I had come to expect high quality from Wrox, after reading two extremely well written books by Rod Johnson: Spring Framework and J2EE without EJB, but this fell short.

This was my first introduction to C#/.NET world, coming from the land of Java and open-source. I was trying to stay as much as possible in Java-land, using NAnt instead of Visual Studio and sticking to the API/SDK. In completing my project I ended up relying much more on Google and MSDN, but I did get a good handle on the fundamentals from this book.

I'm not a Pro C# developer (but I am now) and I was able to get through this book. It's probably because I come from an advanced VB6 background. I got a lot from it but I'm still wondering about several things for building a real applications. For example, this book didn't actually show me how to populate a List from a database. In the real world that's what I needed to be able to make a real app in VB6. (Of course I was using collections for VB6.) And all those examples about cows and animals are cute but once again I don't see why they don't use something more realistic. Overall though it's a great addition to my collection. Unfortunately most computer books are useless in just a few months especially since .NET 3.0 is here.

In order to learn C# I started with Visual C# Step by Step by John Sharp, which was a good place to start.
The Wrox book was a very good next step.
It is clear this is not a complete reference, but it will get you much closer to becoming a well rounded C# programmer. Personally, I liked the writing style. It seems that an enormous effort has gone into producing it.
It's useful for learning about aspects I had very little experience with, so yes it is handholding, but I'm grateful.
For a reference work you might use the C# in a Nutshell book.

This book is an excelent resource for C# development. It is a must have. I have already purchased this book 4 times. Everytime I get a copy someone borrows it and never returns it. I totally understand why they would want to keep this book for themselves. It is well written and easy to understand. This book provides a great overview of the language. I typically find the information I was looking for when I open this book.

I was disappointed in the lack of depth the book provided, and as such its not deserving of using the term "professional" in it's title.

Already a seasoned C# user, I bought this book as a reference. From a cursory glance through the TOC and index, it seemed to touch on most all the topics I come across in my daily programming. After having this book at my side on a project, I found that it offered little "professional" help. For those who haven't used (much) C# before, it may serve as an adequate primer. For professionals looking for the one goto book in your collection, this is not it; I'm still searching.

This book doesn't go deep into detail, but it's not supposed to. If you want to thoroughly grasp subtle nuances and details of c#, this is not your book. However, I do recommend it for a quick overview of the technologies.

PS: You should be an experienced developer to read this book. I do like the way it doesn't state the obvious & leave it up to your experience to guide you. And as always, w/multi author Wrox books, it's entertaining to see if you can "spot" the writer by their style.

This is really a very good C# 2.0 (VS 2005) book. I have been jumping chapters (esp Part I as I already know C# 2.0) and read the ones I have of immediate use. So far have not been disappointed. The examples are concise and to the point. The missing star is for some grammatical and typo errors.

This is best book for c# in the market. I am extremly happy.

I don't think this book deserves a 5 star rating. The quality of material between the chapters are too uneven. Some concepts are explained well in some chapters but not in others.

The book should have included more information about the different ways of writing methods, arrays, data access codes..etc. I get the impression that some of the authors are not 100% clear about the subjects they are writing about.

The book doesn't have enough information on how to decode a .rar extension source file. The steps on how to run your very first command prompt program is somehow misleading. Book contains a lot of technical jargons not suitable for beginner!

The book I purchased, along with all the books I have purchased that pertain to computers, I purchased for my son. He has found them to be most informative for his computer usage since he is in college getting his masters degree in Computer Science. I have and will be purchasing future books to help him in his schooling. I have mentioned to other people who have children still in college as to where they can get a great deal on books for them and not have to pay a large amount of money to do so and be in great condition. I hope this will help others when purchasing books from you. thanks

I've read the book just before this one, Beginning C# by Wrox. It was good, but I wanted to go into more depth, and this book hit the spot. I already knew C++, so Beginning C# was too entry-level for me. But Professional C# 2005 approached C# the exact way I needed it to. It is structured in such a way that you can skip around and read chapters in whatever order you need, but it's still worth it to read it straight through. Great book.

I am a long time believer in Wrox. Just like the publisher said, their books are written for programmer by programmer. There are not that many chit-chats in Wrox's book, just to-the-point programmer's talk. This book certainly reflects that principle.

However, I find it super difficult to follow the book content while studying the example source codes.

There are merely any cross references of the code snippet in the book to the example source code supplied. (It will be a great help if the book can point out something such as this following snippet is from example code xxxx).

Most of the example codes are poorly written. They are presented with a few .cs files instead of a decently organized solution/project file. This makes studying the inner logic a lot more difficult since I have to re-make them into solution/project files so I can use the VS.2005 IDE to debug the program in order to understand better.

I am sorry to say that this book is a bit of an disappointment.

I hope they will improve in their next edition.

Great book, good examples. I don't think they missed anything in this book.

This book is a decent introduction to the C# language, in a very slow, very hold-your-hand sort of way. The later chapters on using C# in .NET applications aren't terribly useful because they follow the same overly simplified style of explanation and ultimately run out of space for advanced features.

I usually don't criticize writing styles, but certain grammatical constructs are overused in this book and began to grate on me. If I had this in electronic form, I'd love to see how many times the phrase, "The idea is that," appears in this book. I even saw, "The thing is that," which should never appear in writing. If your sentence begins with "The [generic noun] is that," you can generally omit this entire phrase.

PROS: I liked the book, and learned a lot from it. It is both a very broad and deep view of C# and .NET, covering more than most other books. It has good explanations of things like delegates, properties, indexers, and differences between C# and java, C++ and other languages. The section on ADO (SQL Database classes) is especially good, tho it goes pretty fast. This is a professional book, not for beginning programmers, but especially good if you know java or C++ already (I know both, so it helped even more).

Between this book and the Microsoft web site, I now have a firm understanding of the basics of C#, and a start in learning a good chunk of .NET. Much more to do on learning .NET, of course.

CONS: The problem with the book was a lack of quality control -- many more errors in the code snippets and some detailed explanations than there should have been -- all someone has to do is copy them into a program and try compiling them, and verify it at least compiles! Some were corrected in the downloadable code, but still a lot that weren't (I got tired of submitting errata reports). There were even some simple speling errors (sic) that a simple spell checker could have caught! Jeez guys, come on!

I was forced to go to the Microsoft web site and get accurate data on many occasions. Lost confidence in Wrox.

I got the impression that much of the data had started in one of the other C# books, got edited, and now there are holes, references to code and items that don't exist, etc. More a fault of the editors than the original authors.

Wrox -- put some pressure on your quality control people! These aren't romance novels, people like us actually read these things and USE THEM!!!

Such an awesome guide! I also own the old version of this book: Professional C#. The TOC of this guide is done better than its predecessor. All explanations, illustrations, and examples are really well-covered, practical and complete. However, features new to .NET 2.0 are not highlighted in some eye-catching way (boxed or italicized, for example), they are dispersed in the text and sometimes even difficult to find. Yet I'd strongly recommend every serious C#.NET programmer to have a copy of this text!

This book was recomended to me, and truth to be told, I wasn't disappointed. It is written very well and it's easy to understand. I'm not a native English speaker so that's one more plus from me.

In conclusion, excelent book!

I bought this book to upgrade my .NET 1.1 skills to .NET 2.0. So my focus was more on the new features of .NET 2.0. While I do agree with most of fellow reviewers that the book covers most .NET 2.0 topics I am disappointed at its handling of generics in chapter 10.

In the code examples of chapter 10 generics are combined with anonymous delegates (see pages 281 and 283). This takes the focus away from the subject being discussed and does not promote professional software development practices which usually encourage simple and readable code. I would like to see this chapter re-written.

As far as i've read (only read about 80 pages in the middle of the book)...
It's a massive reference about every aspect of .Net.
Everything is is handled, like windows forms and asp.net but also generics, windows services,...

It's a good guide if you search some information about all different area's in .Net. I think the book doesn't go in depth all the way, but they try to cover every aspect.

I'm still happy i bought it...

Check also their website [...], all sourcecode is available for download.

C# is not just C#, but it is also .NET, Visual Studio 2005, and a host of technologies in which the language is useful. As a professional DBA with some development experience (C, Perl) but no exposure to C# or .NET, I felt the authors efficiently introduced the concepts and specifics I needed to actually understand these complex topics.

I liked the comparisons to Java, VB, and C++, since I have a passing familiarity (but no *real* experience) with all of them. The examples were short, teaching the point of the chapter or section as briefly as possible. While missing the feel of a "real-life" example, it accomplished the goal of demonstrating the underlying concept well.

I'm about a third of the way through (in one long weekend while attending to family), and am enjoying the tome far more than I expected to. I expect to be able to read and understand real C# programs as a result of this book, and perhaps I'll try my hand a writing some short targeted utilities...

Well, this book comes with a huge load of material. It is well written and has many useful examples. Also it covers a very large spectrum of topics. The only thing I don't like is that it constantly make comparisons between C#, Managed C++, Visual Basic .Net and sometimes Java and in some chapters there's no room for covering something useful as e.g. assembly loading or updating. If the authors would have avoided making these comparison probably there would have been enough room to cover some topics a little better. Also, I'm learning C#, not C++, not Visual Basic and not Java so I'm not intersted at all at those comparisons.
Apart from this thing anyway, I had the previous book (Professional C#) and as soon as this book came out I ordered it from U.S.A. since I didn't want to wait for the italian translation. This would give you an idea about the goodness of the book itself.

This is an incredible reference with a ton of great sample code to help you get the most out of the latest version of C#. I highly recommend it!

I like the professional series of wrox and I like this book too, it covers all aspects of c# with enough details. I have to say that the really important thing is that the autors give you a lot of ideas even if in some cases they are not deeply developed... you can google to find out more. This a gold mine of infos and ideas.

Our team decided to use this book as our primer to begin the daunting task of a total rewrite of our quality and regulatory metrics software using C#. We chose this particular book because of the manner in which it allows developers, well-versed in other languages, to hit the ground running with C#. The chapters are very well laid out and the content is a perfect match. Some on our team have been in the industry for nearly 20 years and made comments on how much they have enjoyed the book. Obviously we are in the "child" stages of the development cycle, but this book has enabled us to kick the design phase up a few gears. So all in all, in our opinion, this book is a must have!

What a great book. Since Amazon doesn't list the book's table of contents, and you're probably wanting more information about what's in it before you buy, here's the table of contents from my copy of the book:

Part I: The C# Language.

Chapter 1: .NET Architecture.

Chapter 2: C# Basics.

Chapter 3: Objects and Types.

Chapter 4: Inheritance.

Chapter 5: Operators and Casts.

Chapter 6: Delegates and Events.

Chapter 7: Memory Management and Pointers.

Chapter 8: Strings and Regular Expressions.

Chapter 9: Collections.

Chapter 10: Generics.

Chapter 11: Reflection.

Chapter 12: Errors and Exceptions.

Chapter 13: Threading.

Part II: The .NET Environment.

Chapter 14: Visual Studio 2005.

Chapter 15: Assemblies.

Chapter 16: .NET Security.

Chapter 17: Localization.

Chapter 18: Deployment.

Part III: Data.

Chapter 19: Data Access with .NET.

Chapter 20: .NET Programming with SQL Server 2005.

Chapter 21: Manipulating XML.

Chapter 22: Working with Active Directory.

Part IV: Windows Applications.

Chapter 23: Windows Forms.

Chapter 24: Viewing .NET Data.

Chapter 25: Graphics with GDI+.

Part V: Web Applications.

Chapter 26: ASP.NET Pages.

Chapter 27: ASP.NET Development.

Part VI: Communication.

Chapter 28: Web Services.

Chapter 29: .NET Remoting.

Chapter 30: Enterprise Services.

Chapter 31: Message Queuing.

Chapter 32: Future of Distributed Programming.

Part VII: Interop.

Chapter 33: COM Interoperability.

Part VIII: Windows Base Services.

Chapter 34: Manipulating Files and the Registry.

Chapter 35: Accessing the Internet.

Chapter 36: Windows Services.

Part IX: Appendices (Web Site Only).

Appendix A: Principles of Object-Oriented Programming.

Appendix B: C# for Visual Basic 6 Developers.

Appendix C: C# for Java Developers.

Appendix D: C# for C++ Developers.

Index.


I hope that helps.

I have the 2nd edition of this book for .NET 1.0 and recently got this recent new edition focused on .NET 2.0. My big comment after reviewing this book is that C# 2.0 is dang cool! I love the new features and really am anxious to apply generics now into my applications. I give this book a big thumbs up in getting me up to speed in C# 2.0. It is a BIG book - 1540 pages and is heavy enough to leave dents in your legs. The authors do a good job of explaining C# from start to finish. There is also a tremendous amount of what I will label as 'tips and tricks' throughout. Here's my big reasons to get this book:

* It's big and covers so much from the C# world in an `applied' manner
* It covers all the core C# items and then expands out to areas that are less covered in other books - such as working with Active Directory or GDI+
* Covers working with SQL Server 2005 quite nicely
* Even covers futures such as working with WCF

Basically if you are a developer in the C# world of .NET - then this is something you would want next to your keyboard.

I like the previous edition and pre-ordered this new one.

I am satisfied with the first chapters, and also like the overall re-arrangement of the chapters, better than for the previous edition.

Not being a web-developper, on the other hand, I cannot recommand this book for anything but trivial with databases or with GDI+. The book is hit very badly by trying to cover too much, it just miss the "pro" mark in many places, to be barely at the "advanced introducion" mark, imho. I like the new chapter on Generics, but the chapter I dislike the most is about "Viewing .Net Data". At the defense of the author(s), that is probably due to insane cuts made by the editor, but the end result is what the customer can read.

One star, but that poor result is for the editor. Probably much more stars for the authors, at least, that sounds to have been a nice work, from the portions that seems to have been left intact.