C# 4.0 in a Nutshell

Feb 2, 2011 · 2 min read · net books c oreilly ·

My Big Company asked me to develop a small-sized application using C# and WebForms. The Customer was a big Italian Bank, and it asked for that technology: I was chosen because of my Java seniority, but I was zero on .NET knowledge

The "C# 4.0 In a Nutshell" was a real time-saver for my. The 1000-pages book written by Joseph&Ben Albahari will give you a complete look to the C# Technology.

It is not easy to find so well written and complete books: only Herbert Schmidt with the "C++, The Complete Reference" give me the same joy of reading about twenty years ago.

The books cover all the C# Language in the first part, with a complete description of basic .NET library (ICollection-s, Strings, Date, I/O).

Some very nice insighs are

Chapter 12 Disposal and Garbage Collection
Chapter 17 Assemblies
Chapter 18 Reflection and Metadata
Chapter 19 Dynamic Programming

I was a .NET newbie before this book, because I was never able to study Microsoft libraries (even in the nice 90-ies pre-windows95 programming). I only used a bit of Turbo Pascal in the 1992-1993 and some Access 1.0 visual basic macros.

After studing this book I was able to draw the archtecture of my project and develop the entire set of layers (from web forms to database access).

My twelve years java knowledge helped me, but this book really outperformed my needs, giving all I need.

The LINQ topic is very well written, and the authors also provide LINQ PAD, a nice utility to train yourself on the LINQ C# Magic. This is very important because LINQ is unique to C#, and it is very difficult to have previous experience on this topic.

The networking chapter teach you how to use the internal Windows http server (!) you got for free inside the Microsoft operating system.

Because of its weight, the ebook edition is a good shot if you have an iPad or an eBook Reader.