Very good for testers, not so much for others

This book is absolutely targeted to software testers. This isn't an in-depth discussion of why one should use C#'s "as" keyword for safe casting, nor will you find details on asynchronous communication. What you will find is a quick coverage of enough basics to enable testers to start hitting web services, Windows and ASP forms, and even deal with basic COM interoperability

The book is well-written, concise, and in a good voice. The authors carry a common project through much of the book, using the development of a bug reporting system to lay out .NET fundamentals. They use a nice building block approach along the way, starting out sections with the extreme basics and moving on to mid-level topics. (You won't find anything particularly advanced in the book, but again, the focus isn't on pointy-headed developers, it's on pointy-headed testers.)

There are several things I don't care for in the book, mostly from a software engineer's viewpoint. One thing would be the authors' notion of code reuse via copying in code or classes vice simply referencing a different assembly and keeping code in one central spot, but that's from a SE's viewpoint...

This isn't a book for any developer to fool with, but it's an invaluable book for testers looking to learn programming in .NET, specifically tailored for their work as a tester.

Other Reviews

• Very good for testers, not so much for others
• Tester's Guide is a Classic