Inside C#

Author : Tom Archer

Microsoft Press

ISBN-0-7356-1288-9

The nice thing about this book is that it does not take ASP, VB or C++ as a starting point. C# is a language which was build from the ground up. Officially Java and C had a great influence but a Delphi developer will feel very much at ease when reading this book. Besides describing how to program in C# the author spends a lot of attention on the way things work under the hood.

The book is divided in 4 parts. 

• Laying the groundwork

The author first does a very good introduction on the fundamentals of object oriented programming. After which .net, as a collection of class libraries, is introduced and is used in Hello C#.

• C# class fundamentals

In C# and .net everything is an object. Classes are needed to create objects. The full potential of C# classes is described in accurate detail, including chapters on the type system, methods, properties, indexers, attributes and interfaces.

• Writing code

Having laid a solid groundwork for all declarations the time is right for programming statements. The working of operators is compared by looking at the generated intermediate code, making it clear for every byte of a C# program how it will work. In the chapter on program flow the author spends a couple of interesting, open minded, pages on the possibilities of jump statements in C#. The language has very powerful features as operator overloading and user defined type conversions. Tom Archer makes it very clear when these features can be useful and how to use them. A final chapter is spent on event handlers in C#.

• Advanced C#

The last part has four chapters on advanced events. "Multithreaded programming" introduces the threading namespace in .net. "Querying metadata with reflection" covers more than the title suggest, it does show how to extend a running C# program with runtime written, compiled and linked code. "Interoperating with unmanaged code" describes how to work with legacy code in a .net application, this could be COM or could be a plain windows DLL. The final chapter "Working with assemblies" is filled with very essential info on understanding how version management is handled in .net. I would consider this last chapter essential knowledge to every .net developer.

Conclusion

I would recommend this book to every C# programmer. If object orientation still puzzles you, it provides a good and clear introduction. It is a clear reference for the C# language, the included eBook on the CD can be searched on every detail. If you only need a clear quick reference without any background I would recommend Eric Gunnerson's A programmer's introduction to C#. Tom Archer's book, besides being a good reference, also clarifies the technical base under C# and .net.

After the official release of .net "Inside C#, second edition" came out. All material is updated on the release code and the advanced section has quite a few new chapters.