Edinburgh Castle
Head First C#
AuthorsAndrew Stellman & Jennifer Greene
PublisherO'Reilly
ISBN0-596-51482-4
DateNovember 2007
Pages778
Price£30.99
ReviewerAndy Scott
Cover image for Head First C#

Overall

Another "Head First" book that I feel manages well to get the basics of the subject into your brain. It covers C# in a well structured and paced manner suitable for anyone learning the language.

Detailed

For a large and complex subject area such as a introducing a general purpose programming language the book does a very good job of managing to keep any potential confusion and complications out of the way. It introduces the concepts and capabilities of C# in a well defined manner; starting small and slowly introducing more difficult concepts and examples to illustrate them makes it more likely the reader will be less daunted by the scope of the task they have undertaken.

That being said, there are obviously areas that this book does not cover, e.g. network classes, but then such things are probably beyond the scope of an introductory text.

One problem that is in evidence with the book is that it is billed as an introduction to C# programming; however, to an experienced software engineer wishing to learn the language they will find them self having to read through topics that are really the basics of how to write and structure a computer program not the basics of C#. This could prove to make the book less useful than it otherwise would be.

In this, the second, "Head First" book I have read I once again found the use of examples, quizzes, FAQs etc. to be incredibly useful to consolidate the information presented prior to them. The repetition and different style of the examples etc. really does help to fix the information, coupled with the large programming exercises in the book mean the reader should have ample opportunity to act on their new found skills and knowledge. Always a boon in learning.

Table of contents

Head First C#

Ch  1. Get Productive With C#
Ch  2. It's All Just Code
Ch  3. Objects Get Oriented
Ch  4. Types and References
C# LAB 1
Ch  5. Encapsulation
Ch  6. Inheritance
Ch  7. Interfaces and Abstract Classes
Ch  8. enums and collections
C# LAB 2
Ch  9. Reading and writing files
Ch 10. Exception handling
Ch 11. events and delegates
Ch 12. Review and preview
Ch 13. Controls and graphics
Ch 14. Captain Amazing
Ch 15. LINQ
C# LAB 3
Index


    
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