This is an excellent resource for learning C#/.NET. It covers the basics of the language and then eventually heads into more advanced topics such as ADO.NET, ASP.NET, etc. Like with any book, the more you know coming in, the more you can take advantage of it, but I would say that even someone new to programming can get a lot out of this book.
Good Stuff:
1) Each topic in parts 1-4 is covered in a step by step fashion with plenty of examples to help you learn by doing.
2) Excellent summary for each chapter highlighting key points in a tabular format including mini code examples. This is by far one of the best way of doing a summary in a programming book I've seen.
3) You can do 99% of the examples with MS Visual C# Express Edition which is free. So you don't need to go out and buy Visual Studio 2005.
4) The books is broken up into 6 parts and this organization is well thought out. Parts 1-4 pretty much cover the language, Part 4 covers how to use Windows Forms with C#, Part 5 covers how to use ADO.NET with C# and finally Part 6 covers ASP.net.
5) Good topic coverage for a beginner book.
Stuff that could have been done better:
1) My primary frustration with this book is the many typographical errors. The errata list is bigger than what I would like to see and it wasn't even exhaustive. I found many errors not on the errata and even though I submitted them, I got no response. Make sure you print out the errata and keep it with u while u read.
2) There is no coverage of how to use C# with XML, nor is there coverage on File I/O, streams etc. It would have been good to have chapters on these topics. I think they're more important that covering ASP.NET.
3) Part 5 (ADO.NET) is not that good. The way that ADO.NET is explained is not as step by step as the previous 4 parts. The order in which things are done does not lend well to explaining the concepts. For ex: the first thing the author does is have you run a command line SQL script to modify a pre-existing database. Some more basic parts of ADO.NET such as how to create a database from scratch in Visual Studio are not covered at all. You would think that this is what would be done first. The chapters on ADO.NET could have been written in a much better way, preferably one that assumes little to no prior knowledge of a database. Nonetheless, to have ADO.NET coverage at all in a book at this level is good.
4)Part 6 covers ASP.NET. There are four chapters on this topic which quite qood considering this is not an ASP.NET book. Don't expect to get a good understanding of ASP.NET however, as ASP.NET cannot be understood well in such brevity.
Bottom Line:
I recommend adding this book to your arsenal if you plan on learning C#. It covers the language in adequate detail in a step by step fashion. [...]
