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Visual C# 2005 How to Program
Visual C# 2005 is an exciting language in which to work, and there are many powerful features you should learn to effectively program with the language. To master it requires access to good learning material and a good resource. There are, of course, many books available on the market, but Visual C# 2005 How to Program by Dr. Harvey M. Deitel and Paul J. Deitel of Deitel & Associates, Inc. completely explores all the secrets. Authored by this father and son team, this book contains 27 chapters and 10 appendices of rock-solid content.
The book begins with a chapter introducing us to the world of computers, the Internet, and Visual C#. The authors provide brief coverage about the various kinds of computing languages, in addition to a basic introduction to the .NET Framework. Chapter 2 provides a comprehensive overview about the various aspects of Visual C# 2005 Express. Chapters 3 and 4 examine developing C# applications with Visual C#, classes, and objects. The authors make use of UML diagrams to illustrate the concepts, which I feel will be a great help for developers. Chapters 5 and 6 provide exclusive coverage of various control statements, with the help of source code and flowchart diagrams.
Chapters 7, 8, and 9 provide in-depth coverage about methods, arrays, classes, and objects. From my point of view, the book should cover classes and objects before discussing arrays. I feel that software engineers will find this book a very useful resource because some of the chapters are written from a software engineering point of view, although novice users will find it difficult to grasp that content.
With the help of case studies, Chapters 10 and 11 delve deeply into various object-oriented programming concepts, such as inheritance, interfaces, and operator overloading. Chapter 12 covers the various aspects of exception handling. Chapters 13 and 14 provide comprehensive coverage about GUI concepts. The authors examine each control with the help of detailed explanations, source code, and screenshots. Some of the common properties and methods are tabulated, along with a short description about each one.
With the help of a GUI-based application, Chapter 15 analyzes in detail the concept of multithreading. Chapters 16 and 17 examine strings, characters, regular expressions, graphics, and multimedia. Among other concepts, you ll learn how to animate a series of images. Chapters 18 and 19 examine some of the core topics associated with C# programming, such as files, streams, and XML. Chapter 20 examines aspects associated with database programming, with special reference to SQL fundamentals.
If you want to develop an ASP.NET application using C#, you should not miss Chapter 21 it provides in-depth coverage about the various facets of developing an ASP.NET Web application. The chapter includes two case studies, which you can implement in your own Web site by downloading the complete source code from ftp://ftp.prenhall.com/pub/deitel/Cs_HTP2e/examples/index.html. An interesting point to note is that each chapter ends with a section-wise summary. The authors deserve praise as they spent considerable time writing a detailed summary for each section in every chapter.
The remaining chapter discusses Web services, networking, searching, sorting, data structures, generics, and collections; sample applications are included. The book contains several appendices, such as ASCII character set, Unicode, XHTML tutorials, HTML/XHTML special characters, Colors, ATM case study code, and crisp coverage of Visual Studio 2005 Debugger. The book includes complete source code for each sample application, accompanied by relevant screenshots. Moreover, you can also download them separately from the previously mentioned FTP site. You can also download sample chapters of the book from ftp://ftp.prenhall.com/pub/esm/sample_chapters/engineering_computer_science/deitel/CsHTP2e/index.html.
The book makes use of Visual C# 2005 Express and discusses all the concepts of the language in a lucid style. Each chapter is organized in a logical manner with numerous source code, screenshots, step-by-step instructions to perform the relevant task, lists of useful resources available on the Web, section-wise summaries, lists of terminologies, self review exercises followed by answers, and exercises. The authors provide ideas for good programming practices, performance tips and a note about common programming errors in each chapter. However, I think the authors should provide the answers to self review exercises at the end of the book rather than at the end of each chapter.
The book consists of more than 1,600 pages of solid content, with adequate explanation regarding all the essential aspects of C# programming. Readers need not go through any other material if they appropriately grasp the content of this book. I feel it is improbable to master the entire content within a short span of time, but the book certainly can be used for reference purposes. It is an ideal and essential resource for students, developers (all levels), and instructors. The review exercises at the end of each chapter can be used by instructors to ascertain the knowledge of their students. The learning time will, however, vary, depending on the ability of each student.
Even though the book is bulky and heavy to handle, it is provides excellent material essential to mastering Visual C# 2005 effectively.
Anand Narayanaswamy
Rating:
Title: Visual C# 2005 How to Program, 2nd Edition
Author: Dr. Harvey M. Deitel and Paul J. Deitel, Deitel & Associates, Inc.
Publisher: Prentice Hall
ISBN: 0131525239
Web Site: http://vig.prenhall.com/catalog/academic/product/0,1144,0131525239,00.html
Price: US$102
Page Count: 1,648
