Microsoft Silverlight Books

My Review

The book was in great condition, the only problem I had is that it took too long to be delivered to my door and I wasn't able to track my package, but when I received it, the book was intact (it got more than what I expected)

I guess I'm a little impatient :) but overall I recommend this provider.

bruno
20 September, 2010

A really horrible book even for a non-beginner

Read throught 11 chapters of the book. The book is poorly structured and the lack of examples and explanations for the given examples makes this the worst programming book I have ever read. I am not new to programming and I have read beginning Java by Ivor Horton (also published by Wrox). I loved that book and I was expecting the same from this book but I am sadly disappointed.
The book uses example code that it did not discuss in earlier chapters and discusses key concepts of object oriented programming without examples. For example, it briefly brushes over interfaces and does not provide a working example of interface and its relationship to classes and inheritance. I ended up trying to learn about interfaces from msdn instead. I have never taken the time to write a review before because I am usually satisfied, you might say I am easy to please, but this book has pushed my level of disappointed to the point that I am writting a review to warn others not to buy this book. If you need something thick to help level your furniture this will serve the purpose.

John Boseman
27 December, 2009

Good reference, uneven coverage

Some chapters like "Threads" are well written, others like "Generics" are not. I found myself loving and hating this book depending on the chapter. That said, this book does offer more depth and scope than most books making it a "must have" reference book.

I tend to read topics in other books first before covering the same material in this book. Doing it the other way, i.e., using this book as a primer", just does not work unless you are very determined.

Anyway, stick to Wrox and you can't go wrong.

Gregory L. Firth
21 November, 2009

Data Dump

This book contains a lot of facts, but fails to present them in a way that helps you understand the big picture. For example, it has an entire chapter on Collections, including about ten different types. It offers a lot of detail about how each one works, but is useless if you're looking for guidance on which one to use in what kind of situation.

I am a moderately experienced .Net developer, and I bought the book about two months ago hoping it would help me move my level of expertise to a higher level. Since then, I've turned to it about a dozen times, and not once have I found what I needed.

This book is intended to be a "professional-level" work aimed at people who are already IT pros; it's readers know how to look up details of a given interface. These authors are obviously very knowledgeable, but they need to take a step back and think about the what their intended audience really needs.

Wombat Ed
21 October, 2009

Comprehensive

This book is very comprehensive and covers a lot of topics. As the title says, it is for professional programmers. As a beginner, I supplement this book with other beginner books. In my opinion, one of the strong points of this book is that the authors compare language features with C++ and Visual Basic. I have more exposure to C++ and the comparison helps in the learning process.

N. Yu
12 July, 2009

Eric Weinberger's review is exactly correct

I 100% agree with Weinberger's review.

I read through chapters 2-10 of this book, and although there were many good explanations of things, some explanations were lacking and left me frustrated. For example, the description of event handling didn't make any sense to me, even after I read it several times. After reading O'Reilly's Nutshell book on event handling, however, I had a clear understanding of the subject.

Also, Weinberger is right when he states that certain important details seem to be missing. For example, when reading the section on enumerations, I didn't see any description of how enumeration members get default-initialized.

After reading Chapters 2-10, I'm giving up on this book. I like it enough that I'll keep it on my bookshelf as a reference, but, at the same time, I'm not super-thrilled with the quality of this one.


Joel Davis
28 June, 2009

A Fantastice Learning Source or Reference

I'm a developer of average skill, and I have some fairly significant holes in my CS education, so that makes my professional life sometimes interesting and challenging. This book helps me fill in the holes as far as C# specifically is concerned and it helps me with other broader and more general CS topics as well, so that's a big bonus to me.

This book has helped me to understand how to code for certain circumstances, and more importantly, why to use a particular approach for a given problem. It's like a very well taught level-300 CS course in portable form. It's a great language and framework reference, too. It's much more readable than many books on the same topic, so I get a lot from it.

It is a hefty book, but it's a hefty subject. If you want something smaller or more concise, that's fine, but you won't get the excellent detail that's in this book.

I highly recommend this book.

[disclaimer] Wrox generously supports my local user group with giveaway books. I bought this one, however.

Ted Glick
21 June, 2009

If you could only buy one C# book...this is an excellent choice

Ambitous is the first word that struck me as I stood in the bookstore and browsed through the table of contents and flipped through the chapters of this heavy tome.

Delighted is the next word that comes to mind - as I sat in my study at home and began the process of consuming the information and working through the examples.

This is a concise (hard to believe I'm using that word for a text that clocks in at 1730 pages of material)...and comprehensive coverage of C# for Visual Studio 2008.

I am very pleased with the addition of this book to my library.

Kelvin D. Meeks
18 May, 2009

Recommended!

I recommend this book! I am not an expert on this field but I know what is a good book. I have bought this book along with other C# books (Head First C#, C# Cook Book, & Murach's C# 2008). If you are a beginner, you may want to buy along a beginner's book (see my list in the parenthesis). This is a great addition to my growing tech library at home!

Marlon A. Ribunal
13 February, 2009

Mixed bag and some chapters absolutely horrible

Some sections are good, but far too many of them are really bad. Some sections are ultra boring and extremely confusing. It seems some chapters, first one on LINQ comes to mind, are written with a bunch of irrelevant history of how it evolved and then finishes with a brief snapshot of what LINQ is. In many parts of the book the writing is so bad that you have to read it many many times just to understand what the author is trying to say (not even considering the technical content). It seems to try to address a large proportion of C# topics and only skims each of them. To be fair, it would probably take an encyclopedia set to cover the topics this one book skims over.

It seems to be okay to use as a reference to get a brief idea of something - but not much beyond that.

A. Solorzano
12 January, 2009

Excellent for everyone

First note that there are big changes in 2008 version of the language as compared to 2005. This book is prefect for all levels of programming skills. With over 1700 pages its a lot to read and learn but that only refelects the wide capabilities of the C# language as a whole. The book has stuff for both the beginner to the advanced. After you are done with the basics i suggest creating tasks you want to do that will make everday things more convenient for you and attempt to program these. Great way to prevent boredom.

A. Dcosta
06 January, 2009

Excellent C# & .Net3.5 reference book

I was looking for a solid "all in one" reference book on C# and .Net3.5 additions. This book came head and shoulders above everything else out there. This book has complete coverage of the basics and great coverage of new additions. It even has a chapter on Peer-to-Peer Networking (didn't know it was added until I read this book). Some books on C# focused only on the new stuff or limited their scope otherwise. This book is my main table reference. It is not perfect, but because it covers most of the framework and C# syntax if it doesn't have the exact answer for a particular question, there is enough info to really narrow the focus of the next step of more in depth research.

S. Gundorov
11 November, 2008

The ultimate C# Reference

This book is the ultimate C# reference, even if you are not new to C#. Just read throught the chapters you are interested in and you are ready to get started with your project.

Thanks Christian!!!

Sunchaser
09 November, 2008

blissfull

Book is a decent introduction to C# although at 1782 pages a bit of a slog. It doesn't cover enough detail to be good reference, however. I find I need to look at online documentation for even some simple issues. I am an experienced programmer, so I know what I want a language to do. What I am interested in is "how do I do what I want to do?". This book has not proven to be good at answering these kind of questions. But in its defense, I have not found other books to be better - even highly recommended ones.

Lawrence A. Bliss
17 September, 2008

Solid

It is good a book, in my opinion better than most in that area, but don't expect miracles.
I find it very useful, but some things could be done better.


Deka
30 July, 2008

Good in combination with other resources

The content of this book is very good, but sentence structures are often confusing and vital information is sometimes missing. The quality varies greatly from one chapter to another, however, and some chapters are very well written. In combination with other books, this is a good resource, but on its own it can be frustrating at times.

Eric Weinberger
10 July, 2008

Web Developer

Recieved book in excellent condition! The book is very organized and very constructive in teaching me what I need to learn in a step-by-step manner. I very much recommend this book!

J. Gonzalez
03 July, 2008

Thorough and easy to understand

I'm a VB.NET developer expanding my skill set. This book was great in not only covering C# but the .NET framework 3.5 as a whole. They even included some of the differences in the language features. This was all I needed!


Carrie kristapsons
30 June, 2008

Excellent Book

Although I am an advance C# programmer. I found this book excellent in the way it presents staff. It is well written and organized.

Hassan S. Naji
10 May, 2008

Mother of all C# Books.

If you are looking for one book which covers the ENTIRE applications of C# Language, then this is the only book you need to buy. Covers every different type of application that can be developed with C#. good examples all the way. As the title says, it is real PROFESSIONAL Book. 5 stars for sure. Worth every cent.

S. Devasundaram
07 May, 2008

Ultimate guide to C# 2008

If you are looking for a brief introduction to C# this is not your book. But if you are seriously interested in improving your skills in any area, this is definitely the book to have on your shelf.
Great job.

Cor Arana Hector Gabriel
01 May, 2008

MEGA C# Reference

'Professional C# 2008' is one of those ginormous books that I usually (usually) complain is too big, too bloated, too MUCH but sometimes the exception is the rule and that is the case here. With 1750+ pages of material spread over 48 chapters and 3 appendixes, if you are looking for brevity and/or a simple learning book this is probably not for you. If you are looking for a complete solution on learning C# from top to bottom, keep reading because you are in the right place.

Although it's lengthy, I feel a chapter listing is beneficial to detail out all the details of this book:

01. .NET Architecture
02. C# Basics
03. Objects and Types
04. Inheritance
05. Arrays
06. Operators and Casts
07. Delegates and Events
08. Strings and Regular Expressions
09. Generics
10. Collections
11. Language Integrated Query (LINQ)
12. Memory Management and Pointers
13. Reflection
14. Errors and Exceptions
15. Visual Studio 2008
16. Deployment
17. Assemblies
18. Tracing and Events
19. Threading and Synchronization
20. Security
21. Localization
22. Transactions
23. Windows Services
24. Interoperability
25. Manipulating Files and the Registry
26. Data Access
27. LINQ to SQL
28. Manipulating XML
29. LINQ to XML
30. .NET Programming with SQL Server
31. Windows Forms
32. Data Binding
33. Graphics with GDI+
34. Windows Presentation Foundation
35. Advanced WPF
36. Add-Ins
37. ASP.NET Pages
38. ASP.NET Development
39. ASP.NET AJAX
40. Visual Studio Tools for Office
41. Accessing the Internet
42. Windows Communication Foundation
43. Windows Workflow Foundation
44. Enterprise Services
45. Message Queuing
46. Directory Services
47. Peer-to-Peer Networking
48. Syndication

Subject matter is extremely thorough, and the writing is right to the point. Full of usable examples and traditional (good) Wrox design, you will be able to use chapters piece mail to get the information you are looking for or read the book from beginning to end if you want the whole experience.

I feel that this book is best for marginal/new C# developers who aren't intimidated by a tome of this size. There is lots of great information within and you certainly learn what makes C# such a fantastic language to use in today's world.

***** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Daniel McKinnon
01 April, 2008