(Very) Humble Beginnings

At 700+ pages this text contains way too much fluff and filler to be a useful guide to the beginning ASP developer. It's basically a "Visual Web Developer for Dummies" kind of book, only heavier and more wordy. Its target seems to be the totally clueless "developer" who doesn't even know enough C# syntax to save his life. Now, it's true that Visual Studio will allow you to generate a mediocre web site without having to write a significant amount of code yourself, but does it really makes sense to encourage someone to try ASP web development before he has a decent background in C# or VB? I think that is forming code monkeys, not programmers.
Anyhow, to be fair this book has some qualities that I liked, apart from a general vagueness the explanations are quite clear, the "try it out" sections detailed enough, and I especially appreciated the fact that the book uses both small standalone examples and a more comprehensive example website developed piecemeal along the book to illustrate the various ASP.NET aspects and features. Finally what really puzzles me is, I know Wrox has an unhealthy love for multiple author's book, but did it really take 4 people to write an ASP.NET intro for dummies?

Other Reviews

• This book is garbage
• (Very) Humble Beginnings
• Not bad, but couldn't connect
• Where's the code?