This book is CRAWLING with errors in it. The Microsoft Knowledge Base doesn't even cover many of them, either. The errors aren't just typos either. I'll give some examples of why you shouldn't waste your money on this book:
* Page 54: "Volatile Fields"
"Locks are explained in Chapter 9, Threading".
Chapter 9 in the book is "Exception Handling", and nowhere in the book is Threading mentioned or given as a topic.
* The author discusses writing an equals() method for classes and states : "Objects that are equal should have the same hash code. Therefore, equality can be based on comparing hash codes."
This is so wrong it's not funny. Two completely different objects can have the same hashcode and still not be equal. What is he thinking?
* The author writes a paragraph in the book (page 93):
"Hash codes are recyclable. When a reference is garbage collected, the hash code is returned to the available pool. The hash code is then assignable to a future instance. For this reason, you should remove dead objects from any collections."
I do not know what he means by "recyclable" or "available pool", nor what a "dead" object is. I checked the chapter on collections and GetHashCode() is not mentioned anywhere.
* Page 95, code sample is incomplete. The author left it incomplete, yet uses the example (and discusses the details he left out to prove a point -- which happens to be wrong, too). He speaks about MemberwiseClone() and how it does a bit-wise copy of all the fields (including references). This means that a cloned object will be a shallow copy and still point to the same underlying objects for all of the references. Well, he then essentially says that assigning a new string to one of the references in the original object will also change the cloned object's string. This is absurd and I really think he needs to either go back to C# 101 or pay more attention to writing books because people are spending their hard earned money on this stuff.
I seriously doubt the author is incompetent. I just think it's a matter of carelessness. Either way, I wouldn't buy this book if you are looking for accuracy and good guidance. I recommend Jesse Liberty's book (O'Reilly) over this one, however, Jesse's is a bit dated.
