Microsoft Visual C# 2013 Step by Step

I'm an intermediate level programmer with no formal computer science education. When I started this book I had about 5 months on-the-job experience with Python, and a couple months with C#. This book gave me the foundation I needed to take full advantage of what C# has to offer. Every chapter is very clearly written, and teaches step by step, just like the title says. I like to learn by doing, so I was glad that examples with sample data are included for every concept. First you learn the theory, then you try it out. For those days where I understand the gist of a topic and don't have time to do the examples, I can look at the finished code samples instead. The writing is very clear, and the editing is clean. The author is concise, specific, and never wasteful. This book has been a tremendous help at my job, and the skills I've learned have allowed me to take on many new responsibilities. That said, This probably isn't the best book for a first-time programmer. C# is not as intuitive as a language as Python or Ruby. However, if you have a little programming experience, and you really want to learn, this book is the first stop I'd recommend.

I used this book as the companion text for an intermediate C# EdX course. Though I have used C# for many years, I didn't always have time in my job to immerse myself in the latest features of C# and the .NET framework, such as LINQ, Entity Framework, async and tasks. Reading this book and working through the carefully written (and working!) examples for this course gave me the necessary foundation that made me feel comfortable that I will be able to apply these techniques in a future project if the need arises The code that accompanies the book is of high quality and every project contains a Win7 and Win8.1 version. Hence, if you are a VS2013 C# programmer, and you want to learn C# or brush up on features, this is the book to get. John Sharp has written a number of books and his careful build-up of concepts throughout the chapters shows not only his knowledge of the subject matter but also his experience as a teacher.

This is single handedly the best programming book I have ever read. I have used multiple books in the past for VB.Net, VBA, PHP, HTML, CSS, and Javascript; none of them have matched this quality. This book is easy to understand, offers excellent reasoning for C# code choices, and so far is error free. I am casually going through this and have not found a single mistake through Chapter 5. Great book, Highly recommend.

"Step by Step" is exactly the phrase to describe this approach -- a welcome incremental, not overly simplistic, clear and informative trainer for anyone new to C# or .NET while not totally new to programming; as the book introduction explicitly cites "developers...not completely new to programming". Working through the example code is almost necessary for someone like me, in order to get the full picture of some of the concepts in context, esp. if moving from a procedural coding paradigm to this objective oriented approach. A great knowledge builder for the syntax of the language.

This is a really good C# book. I'm coming from a Java background but my company is beginning the migration of our current apps to C# so I need to get up to speed. This book is definitely helping me to do this. The code samples are spot on in terms of working as expected. John includes many helpful notes that help to explain or clarify important concepts. You can't go wrong with this book...

Buy this book if you are a beginner. If you have a previous edition (like me) then you can skip this book, because you can look up anything else on the internet, or look for an advanced book on C#. I rate this one 4 stars because i already have the c# 2010 book, so there is 10% new stuff. Pros: Easy to read Easy to follow

I bought the kindle version, and am working through chapter 5. Here are the pros and cons so far: Pros: 1. The author does explain sample code clearly. Cons: 1. Writing for both Windows 7/8 and Windows 8.1 only inflates the number of pages, due to separate sets of instructions for each OS. It makes for poor reading too, since there is so much irrelevant content that does not apply to users of either OS. 2. The samples quickly goes into XAML(Windows 8.1 Store Apps) territory. XAML is an entire concept on its own, and is a poor choice to teach C#. It would have been better to just stick to Console Applications whilst teaching C#. Or even Windows Forms Applications. 3. The samples are unecessarily complicated. What I mean by this is that concepts like if statements, and while, for and do while looks are not difficult to understand. However, the author for some unknown reason has decided to use samples with complicated concepts that require significant amounts of time to understand. For example, in a sample for the do while loop, the author decides to "convert a positive decimal whole number to it's string representation in octal notation". This is not an easy concept(octal notation) to understand, and the author has to explain it in great detail. Do while loops are easy to understand, but using a sample with a complicated concept makes learning an otherwise easy to understand do while concept very complicated. Why not use the do while loop to write out the letters of the alphabet? That would be easy to understand. Another example is for a sample regarding the switch statement. The sample "reads the characters of a string and maps it to it's XML representation". The switch concept is easy to understand, but introducing XML makes the sample unnecessarily complicated. Why not use the switch select the letter "E" from the word "read"? Using simple samples to teach simple C# keywords and concepts makes more sense than using complicated samples to teach simple C# keywords and concepts. 4. The writing style is personal, and not professional ie. "this code is absolutely ghastly" and "my teacher would roll over in his grave if...". That's all for now. Time to tackle chapter 5.

As a non-programmer trying to learn to be a programmer, I've read a lot of books on programming, most of which are quite lacking. My biggest gripe about programming books is that they might teach you certain concepts, but not necessarily how to use them or why they are important. This book does a good job of doing that. There is lots of handholding. Throughout the book, on pretty much every topic, you'll find things like "So you've learned about this, now we're going to work through an example of how you use it. And I'm going to point out why you do it this way and not that way. And things to be careful about." The "Notes" in each section are almost worth the price of the book. If you're an experienced programmer, you probably don't want the handholding, but for the inexperienced, or even somewhat experienced, the repetition is a much needed component of the learning process. I highly recommend this book and wish all other programming books were similarly written.

An excellent book ! The book is full of screenshots. I highly recommend this book for those who need it.

Perfecto

It's a good book. Full of details and examples that are easy to understand. Missing some critical components such as db connections and very little of LINQ

Premettendo che arrivo dalla programmazione in fortran e c++, ho trovato questo libro semplicemente meraviglioso! Lo stile di scrittura è semplice e scorrevole, attento a rimarcare le cose importanti senza però mai appesantire la discussione. Ogni capitolo è ricco di esempi grazie ai quali mettere subito in pratica le cose apprese e i riassunti di fine capitolo permettono un ripasso rapido delle cose viste in caso di ripassi futuri. Consigliatissimo!

一抹の不安があったのですが、結局的中してしまいました。この本のような参考書の場合、最初から順に読んでいくより必要な箇所を探して読むことのほうが多いと思います。残念ながらキンドルフォーマットではたとえば索引である項目を引きたくても、まず索引のその場所にいきつくまでにもずいぶん時間がかかります。デジタル技術を駆使すればもっと使いやすいフォーマットになると思うのに大変残念です。