Pathetic...

Tried to use this book to brush up my knowledge in some specific areas of .Net development. I liked the "all-in-one" idea since there are many common topics applicable to all the three Microsoft exams. And this book could be good if only the authors knew the subject! I read only the first chapter and it was enough! Even on the inroductory topics there were too many errors, and not just typos, but complete misunderstanding of the subject. It looked like the hands-on experience of the authors doesn't go further than creating the "Hello World!" application.

For example, what the authors call a property is actually a field. Here is a quote:

"The syntax for creating a property within a class file is as follows:
= ;"

Then the authors admit that making a property public is not a good OO design, suggesting to use private property instead and two custom implemented public methods GetXXX() and SetXXX() as the accessors for this property. What a mess!!! And there was no indication to the actual definition of the properties in C# with get{} and set{} accessors whatsoever!!!

Just look at the sample question given in the book:

"Which of the following is the correct way to declare the method
GetPayCheck()?
A. public int GetPayCheck()
B. private int GetPayCheck()
C. private void GetPayCheck(int a)
D. public void GetPayCheck(int a)
"

How would you answer this question? The context wasn't given and without context all the declarations seem to be syntactically correct.

But the answer is: "Since this is a getter method, the method will need to return the value that it retrieves, hence the return type of int. All getter methods should be declared as public."

What "getter method"? Who said they should be public? What I see here is an attempt to declare someone's own personal programming style as a kind of a standard.

Stay away from this book. It will make you to waste your time and money on Microsoft exams.

Other Reviews

• Pathetic...
• Basic Introduction - Riddled with Errors
• Not even good for an introduction