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Learn to Program with C#
by John Smiley, Lyssa Wald, Michael Mueller
List Price: $39.99
Our Price: $27.99
ISBN: 0072222611
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Osborne Media (23 April, 2002)
Edition: Paperback
Sales Rank: 66,702
Average Customer Rating: 4.79 out of 5
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Rating: 5 out of 5
Great for both novices and midlevel programmers
True to the title, "Learn to Program with C#" clearly introduces the basic principles of computer programming while teaching Microsoft's C# language. This book will be useful to both novice programmers and to programmers, like myself, with some experience in another language. In fact, my earlier experience is in Fortran, Basic and Visual Basic, which I initially learned in a pair of courses taught by the author, John Smiley, several years ago. In reading a review copy of his new book I recalled Smiley's unassuming teaching style that allows each student to build confidence while learning the fundamentals of the language. As a programmer, but without knowledge of any version of "C," I was able to breeze through the introductory chapters, while refreshing my knowledge of concepts such as the "systems development life cycle," which are important to consider before embarking on any programming project. In this book, John Smiley places the reader in a university classroom with himself as the first-person narrator and instructor. Throughout the book, we follow the development of an actual C# application as a "class project" case study. The classroom concept, with named male and female students who ask intelligent questions, is easy to relate to and follow, but is not at all simplistic. This narrative format, unusual for a technical book, works well to lead the reader through the issues that arise during development of a project. Smiley has a very easy-going tone and seemed to anticipate questions that I had regarding the specifics of C#. For me, the most interesting chapters are numbers six through nine in which I learned about methods, instantiable classes, controlling access to object data, and inheritance. I even enjoyed learning about "overloaded constructors," which would have previously seemed to be an arcane concept. All the topics that Smiley undertakes to teach in his book are clearly explained and fully illustrated with "screen shots" and sample code that build pieces of the application that runs through the book. With Learn to Program C#, I think that I learned enough to begin writing C# applications capable of prompting for user input, creating forms with textboxes and buttons, manipulating data, and creating reusable objects.
Rating: 5 out of 5
An excellent book to learn C#
I'm using this book to teach C# at the University level and I find it to be an excellent book to teach students the new C# language, expecially those with no prior programming experience. I've used John Smiley's other books on programming languages in other classes I've taught, and believe me, it makes the instructor's job easy.The book is full of examples, and has an ongoing case study which my students found very useful. In addition, the author has a great support site for this (and all his books) at ...P>From my perspective, that's a good thing for three reasons. First, C# is a language that is in theory, Platform Independent. That means that the language is not designed to run on one specific Operating System such as Windows. In time there will be C# compilers that run on Unix, Linux, and Macs in addition to Windows. I think not 'marrying' the book to a specific Operating System or IDE is a good idea. Secondly, because the author doesn't use Visual Studio to teach C#, my students didn't have to purchase it--all they needed to do was to download the .Net framework from Microsoft--and that's free. Thirdly, as a computer science instructor, I can tell you I prefer my students not to use IDE's, at least in the beginning. It can take several weeks for a student to get comfortable with an IDE, and it detracts from what is really important, learning the language. IDE or not, this book will take you from no knowledge to a complete Windows program at the end. And if you are like my students, you'll find the journey to be fun and enjoyable.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Must book for the beginners
I have yet to see a beginner's book on C# that even comes close to this one. It is amazing how hundreds of C# books out there misses a critical point that the reader may not understand the material very well unless it is explained in easy detail. This book does not miss its easy details.I have intermediate skillset in C# and I still found this book helpful because it provides a refreshing perspective on the fundamentals of C# programming. The book does not merely focus on how to program, but on what circumstances one should use certain features. This is something not every C# book will offer. If you read this book and still can't understand the basic of C#, then programming is not for you.
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