well integrated language

It is no accident that the authors start off the book with a chapter on Visual Studio. A persistent theme in the book is how it is more than just about C# as a language. The authors suggest [strongly] that a key advantage about the language is its extensive integration with .NET and the ease of coding. For the latter, the book gives a brief tour of Visual Studio highlights. Like the ability to bookmark places in source code files, and a "Back" button. Very much following a well-proven and popular browser usage. Plus Visual Studio shows C# files in a tree format, which permits an easier overview of a large source file.

Part 2 of the book deals with the C# syntax. Comprehensive. If you have programmed another object oriented language, then you should not have any problems here.

But later sections in the book may actually be more interesting and useful to you, once you've mastered the syntax. Several chapters show how to use C# with ASP.NET. To easily write more powerful dynamic web pages. Quite aside from C#, you also get a quick, effective education in ASP.NET. With an editing environment where you can drag and drop components from a toolbox onto the web page that you are making. Intuitive, with less chance of error; which enhances your productivity.

The most advanced section is perhaps that about Web Services. In the computing industry, this topic is still somewhat inchoate, but much has been done to flesh out SOAP, WSDL. Including notably WS-Security. The book demonstrates how to construct a Web Service. Some of you may be interested in the Microsoft-specific Web Services Enhancements, version 2. It offers interesting utilities that may be of merit for a specific Web Service that you want to build. These tend to be along the lines of improved security. [Though it is unclear the extent to which the industry is using WSE.]

Other Reviews

• Little late but good service
• Unhelpful
• Yet another sloppily-edited, hastily-published book
• well integrated language