development

As a Computer Scientist, there is a certain level of pride associated with understanding the inner workings of compilers, memory management, object oriented programming, etc, and this book offers a fine disucssion of the inner working of the CLR and .NET framework. Its unlikely that a professional Software Engineer would have anything bad to say about such well presented "intellectual" content, but I am pragmatic and bought this book for an *applied* approach to USING the .NET framework, which is why I say this book has missed the mark.

If the book were titled "Detailed understanding of CLR and .NET underpinings" or "CLR for Compiler Geeks" then this book would get five stars. But thats not why I bought this book. I bought it for useful examples (or at least useful annotated reference material) to help me in my .NET development. This book does not deliver. This book would be a good textbook for an imaginary 400-level CS elective course titled "Microsoft CLR". The course would not have any labs.

I avoided the temptation to give myself the professional "warm fuzzies" by giving this book five stars for its fine discussion of CLR/.NET internals, but I'm in the trenches and need more pertinent information to get up to speed on .NET pronto. I will return to this book after a year of working with .NET to fill in the gaps in my knowledge or as bedtime reading material.

I was expecting a book along the line of OReillys "Nutshell" series that are chock full of useful exmaples with terse, reference style descriptions. This book is more conversational in its presentation and reading it feels like a waste of time. This is not a good first (or second) .NET book. For now I am better served by the .NET Framework SDK.

Two years ago, I took a course from another member of the Wintellect Team (Jeff Prosise) and was very impressed with his knowledge. I should have purchased Prosise's .NET book.

Again, this gets 2 stars because its title is deceptive.

As a C++ programmer moving into the C#/.NET world, I found this book essential to good .NET program design. With VS 7, Intellisense and MSDN samples it's possible to just "jump in" and start writing Windows apps in C#, but I wouldn't recommend it if you have the time to read this book first. Richter describes in detail the intricacies of compilation, IL, value types, boxing, interfaces, the garbage collector, and other things that work slightly different from how they did in the C++ world. It WILL help you know where to expect those subtle bugs and how to avoid them.

In addition, Richter covers a lot of the new features built in the language that will save you development time. He doesn't tackle most of the specialized classes in the .NET Framework like other books (e.g. the Wrox one) does, but he does go in depth into the ones that will be used by most programmers - for example, the new things you can do with strings (all Unicode, with built in text conversion routines and methods for locale-sensitive comparisons), the new type objects that all objects expose (not just strong typing, you can query the inheritance model and all sorts of good stuff), and some delightful tricks you can do with enums that will make you fall in love with them all over again.

If you tried to read Advanced Windows and were scared off or bored, I want to reassure you that Applied Microsoft .NET Framework Programming is more readable than Advanced Windows was - you can actually hole up in a little cafe and read it from end to end if you want to, in about a day and a half. It's also a little more accessible to people without a theoretical background or college degree in computer science. But rest assured, Richter goes into quite enough detail for the compiler geeks among us.

Understanding of COM, object-oriented programming, interfaces, stack vs. heap memory, etc. is required. I thought I would be dragged into .NET kicking and screaming, but I've become quite the evangelist - partially due to this book.

This book is the absolute best book for the .NET Framework. It is strange that the used book price ($6.5) for the same book with CD and Poster, The Applied Microsoft .NET Framework Programming in C# Collection, is much lower than the used book price ($30) of this book, Applied Microsoft .NET Framework Programming on July 14, 2004. I recommend the reader to buy the latest version of the book with CD and Poster at much low cost.