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C# Cookbook Review by XPSD
Wish I'd started with this
[Reviewed by XPSD member Steve Grubbs]
Summary
I wanted to check out a C# cookbook after developing in C# for almost a year. I figured I should get a basic understanding of the language and the .NET framework by using it for awhile before I buy such a book. That said, I wish I could go back in time and tell myself to get the C# Cookbook the day I started developing in C#.
Overall Review
I see two main criteria for reviewing a programming language cookbook.
1. The quality of each "recipe"
2. The recipes chosen for the book
The C# Cookbook handles each recipe very well, which we should definitely demand of a cookbook. It has a very simple 4-section format, Problem-Solution-Discussion-See Also. The problem is briefly stated first. The solution is almost entirely code samples, with minimal commentary. The discussion is usually short and sweet, with a few exceptions. The "see also" points to reference topics in the MSDN help, which is of questionable usefulness, since you can search the topics yourself; but, is short enough to skim over easily.
The recipes chosen for the C# Cookbook range from very useful to trivial. One of the trivial examples would be something like, converting degrees to radians. The only language specific feature here is Math.PI, which I don't think is worth the page it's printed on. What I found surprisingly useful were some code samples that I spent time coming up with on my own before reading this book, like a custom trace class that outputs in XML. Fortunately, most of the examples were in the useful category.
A few glaring topic omissions are remoting, ADO, and advanced object serialization.
Per-Chapter Review
* Numbers - somewhat trivial
* Strings and Characters - good introduction to the C# string
* Classes and Structures - good stuff on interfaces, casting, converting, COM interop
* Enumerations - simple, but short and useful
* Exception Handling - an underrated topic that I'm happy to see covered
* Diagnostics - a surprisingly useful set of tools to help with debugging
* Delegates and Events - very good intro for the new C# programmer
* Regular Expressions - very good intro for the new C# programmer
* Collections - a little simple, could have more useful samples
* Data Structures and Algorithms - simple, but good if more advanced types are required
* Filesystem I/O - very good examples of file I/O in C#
* Reflection - a necessary intro to reflection, but a bit simple
* Networking - biggest complaint: Why is there no remoting?
* Security - a good survey of various security issues in C#
* Threading - a good intro to threads and basic synchronization in C#
* Unsafe Code - I tore out and burned this section
* XML - good intro to reading/writing XML in C#