Reviewed: January, 2003
Reviewer: Jason Christensen

I am usually very pragmatic in my opinions about books on programming. After saying that, this book is excellent. I have been working in Java/Unix for the last couple of years, and I am now in a position where I must work in C# as well. This book is well targeted for the experienced programmer who needs to come up to speed quickly on the vast and powerful Object Model associated with C# with no prior exposure to C# or .NET.

I have already made this book a standard reference at the company at which I work. I also have recommended it to a number of friends. It has a very impressive balance between level of detail and breadth. A number of subjects are covered thoroughly enough for the experienced programmer to quickly come up to speed with C#. It also is detailed enough to keep around as a valuable desk side reference.

The one thing I don' like is the user level rating on the book. It says that this book is rated for beginning to intermediate developers. While it does start at with some overview material on using the compiler and debugger with a .NET overview, I think that rating must apply to being new to C#/.NET but I don't necessarily believe that this book is adequate for a beginning programmer.

Jason Christensen is a principal at Evergreen New Media, and heads up the Business Integration Services division. Jason has over 10 years of experience in distributed systems, and 3 years working with web-services on both Microsoft and Unix platforms. Based on that experience, Jason and Evergreen New Media's Business Integration Services team focus on advanced platform neutral solutions to web-service architectures.