PRObooks
Murach s C# 2005
I ve had the pleasure of reviewing and praising several previously released Murach titles. The educational accelerators, large page and type format, print, and writing quality of these titles sets them far apart from other titles offered by the multitude of technical book competitors. Murach s design philosophy works just as well in group consulting and educational training settings as they do in a 1:1 book-to-reader relationship. Their latest release, an update to their successful C# training manual, continues to propagate their successful knowledge-transfer formula while providing programming newcomers and C# 1.x developers alike with some of the easiest, most intuitive, and most relevant examples of C# 2005 in action.
For starters, Murach s C# 2005 drops the pretense of having an unlimited, lazy amount of time to learn the material. Author Joel Murach ditches the mundane exploration of using Notepad to write C# code, compiling it via the csc command line tool, and painfully explaining each of the compiler s switches. Instead, Murach assumes that eager readers already have Visual Studio 2005 installed and running, and are intelligent enough to figure out how to navigate the VS UI. The book also prides itself with providing real-life business object constructs to teach OOP principles, not the usual car, animal, or building visualizations. It follows a logical progression of simplicity to complexity, from the first chapters on C# language essentials, control structures, event and exception handlers, to object-oriented programming practices (including a chapter on interfaces and generics).
Realizing that one of the most frequent business uses of C# code is to interact with databases, there s a substantial number of pages dedicated to all things related to databases, ranging from understanding the objectives of multi-tiered development to the real-world use of Microsoft-specific database technologies such as ADO.NET and the various assemblies and Windows Forms controls that make .NET database application development so easy.
The book concludes with chapters on working with files and data streams, XML, UI enhancements, and, finally, application deployment principles and practices. Code samples can be downloaded from http://www.murach.com/servlet/murach.downloads.DownloadServlet?file=csh5_allfiles.exe, but, frankly, it s unnecessary to do so because the code snippets found in the book are so brief they take less time to type into the editor versus downloading, unzipping, organizing, locating, and loading them into the VS IDE.
Like Murach s first C# book, this updated version is another home run. Now what I d really like to see is Murach tackle the deeper technical complexities of C# programming and distributed team development with the same straightforward approach as has been the hallmark of their existing titles. Perhaps they could even create several volumes focusing on such subsystems ranging from the new XAML graphic engine, the intricacies of network communications, SOAP, REST, RSS, and more alphabet soup. If Murach can make those advanced topics as simple to understand and put into action as the foundational aspects covered in C# 2005, they could quickly become the de facto standard by which all other Windows technical book publishers would be measured. In the meantime, Murach has once again proven themselves worthy educators in the crowded .NET technical training space.
Mike Riley
Rating:
Title: Murach s C# 2005
Author: Joel Murach
Publisher: Mike Murach & Associates, Inc.
ISBN: 1-890774-37-5
Web Site: http://www.murach.com/books/csh5/index.htm
Price: US$52.50
Page Count: 812
