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C# Network Programming Review by Jason E. Smith
OK for a sys admin
This is a good book if you are a systems admin (like the author) wanting to write simple network programs in C#. However, the author has a very limited knowledge of .NET programming. In most of his numerous code samples, his ignorance of CLR fundamentals shine through. For instance, on page 192 he has these lines of code in the VarTcpSrvr.cs listing:
byte[] datasize = new byte[4];
datasize = BitConverter.GetBytes(size);
The first line of code creates a new byte array named datasize on the managed heap. Then the call to BitConverter.GetBytes(...) returns another byte array and stores the reference in datasize! The first byte array will now be garbage collected, as it is no longer referenced and was never used in the first place. The book is filled with code examples like this.
If you are a professional developer, the book doesn't have much to offer, as you will likely already know nearly as much as (if not more than) the author. Not to mention, seeing all the poor coding samples will likely become a distraction. I still give this book three stars because the networking content is good and the code samples do, in fact, seem to work. They just happen to be coded poorly. Since the author doesn't really understand the platform he's coding on, approach with caution -- especially if you are a beginner.