Book review: Accelerated C# 2008 by Trey Nash

re: Book review: Accelerated C# 2008 by Trey Nash

skeet — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 00:11:59 GMT

Pete: It was changed in the ECMA spec, but not in the Microsoft spec. The C# 3.0 spec still talks about destructors.

re: Book review: Accelerated C# 2008 by Trey Nash

Pete — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 23:23:42 GMT

Hi Jon!

re. finalizers != destructors

I believe that the term 'destructor' was changed to 'finalizer' in the C# 2 spec for the very reason that it's deeply misleading. I also seem to remember that using the tilde syntax was an acknowledged design mistake in C#.

re: Book review: Accelerated C# 2008 by Trey Nash

desperate c# student — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 12:44:56 GMT

please i want to learn how to programme using visual c#. i need ebooks and tutorials along with practice files. can anyone help.

my email is bossmanogu@yahoo.co.uk.lets get in touch

re: Book review: Accelerated C# 2008 by Trey Nash

skeet — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 22:36:04 GMT

@Jink: I do take your point. I'll try to tone it down for future posts (although there's quite a lot in the review I posted tonight, too). Maybe I should make do with a really strong disclaimer right at the top. I just want to avoid any hint of actually trying to disturb the market for my own gain with these reviews.

Jon

re: Book review: Accelerated C# 2008 by Trey Nash

Jink — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 22:07:32 GMT

Nice effort at a review. I'd like to offer "my view" about your writing style oin this article: Avoid all the hoo-hawing. Everyone knows that this represents your personal view, that it is necessarily biased and that you don't speak for the whole world. So much emotional baggage makes for a tiring read.

To quote William - "The lady [gentleman, in this case] doth protest too much, methinks"

What does `event` keyword actually mean in C#

Vladimir Kelman — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 14:48:25 GMT

Sorry for posting it here, but I think this stuff is quite important for a novice C# programmer to understand, while Trey's blog (www.treynash.net/.../accelerated_c_2008_now_availab.html) does not allow to post messages and posting errata at www.apress.com/.../721 seems to go nowhere...

On a page 262 of "Accelerated C# 2008" it is said, that "an event is a shortcut that saves you the time of having to write the register and unregister methods that manage a delegate chain yourself". As I understand, events has rather opposite role, As authors of "C# 3.0 in a Nutshell" book said on a page 112, "The main purpose of events is to prevent subscribers from interfering with each other."

Please see details at pro-thoughts.blogspot.com/.../delegates-and-events-what-does-event.html

re: Book review: Accelerated C# 2008 by Trey Nash

Vladimir Kelman — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 11:10:43 GMT

Jon, don't scare me. If you, such a well-known programmer have trouble keeping up with industry, who would ordinary programmers survive? :)

BTW, to prove a point in your analysis of "Accelerated C#", I partially skipped a section about constrained execution regions and critical finalizers. It was too special.

re: Book review: Accelerated C# 2008 by Trey Nash

skeet — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 19:55:38 GMT

@Vladimir: Yes, Scala is one of the things I'd like to learn about. Along with Python, F#, Erlang, Boo and Smalltalk. Hmm. I can't see all of that happening any time soon...

Jon

re: Book review: Accelerated C# 2008 by Trey Nash

skeet — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 12:28:35 GMT

@Guyon: Not sure about that, but even if the read *was* consistent, it happens before the method call - so any changes made after the read but before entering Interlocked.Exchange would effectively be lost.

re: Book review: Accelerated C# 2008 by Trey Nash

Guyon Roche — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 12:18:08 GMT

Nice Review.

Regarding the Interlocked "Read" chapter, I was always under the impression that if you only use the Interlocked family of functions to modify a 32 bit number, all simple reads on that variable are guaranteed to be consistent.

Has this changed?

re: Book review: Accelerated C# 2008 by Trey Nash

tym — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 10:26:57 GMT

Hi everybody from Russia!!! Rescently I was buy this book and red it. It is wonderful book! I'm just started programming width C# and book by Trey Nash helped me so much! Thank you, Tray, for you work.

re: Book review: Accelerated C# 2008 by Trey Nash

Corey White — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 16:26:56 GMT

Hey! I'm the reader who recommended this to you (or, actually, asked you to write a review). Thanks for doing this -- and sorry it took me so long to comment. I've been busy, and just noticed this in the Headlines on the Visual Studio start page, of all places.

Anyway, this was a great review, and a great resource. As I mentioned before, I read this (well, actually I'm still reading it) as a companion to the far lower level Head First C#. I've found it to be an excellent way to get further coverage of topics after HFC# introduces them, and I've been learning C# from the ground up using both books.

One thing I think should have been emphasized a bit more in your review of this book is the level of readability and approachability. I'm not sure it makes sense to compare this to the Nutshell book (which I've also been reading lately) -- Nutshell is absolutely a reference text, whereas the Accelerated book can be read straight through. I think it's clear from the criticisms in your review that the Accelerated book goes into some real depth on many topics, but what's not so clear is that it builds to that depth (er . . . digs to that depth?) from essentially nothing. The writing is also remarkably good, and manages to be engaging without the conversational informality of the Head First book. It's been my bedtime reading for the last couple of months, and yet I can read it without falling asleep or having to take notes -- which is a feat, ladies and gentlemen.

On the other hand, as a beginner I don't feel qualified to fully analyze a lot of the deeper points, which is why I really appreciate in-depth reviews like yours. It's not so much that I'm going to 100% agree with your criticisms, but the things you've pointed out as issues now seem to me more controversial, and I'll take care to look into them in further depth. With your Head First review, I mostly used Accelerated C# 2008 to get more detail and alternate viewpoints on the problem areas you highlighted; with this book, I'll probably use yours and the Nutshell book.

So -- thank you. A great and extremely useful review of a book that I've learned a lot from and really enjoyed.

re: Book review: Accelerated C# 2008 by Trey Nash

Vladimir Kelman — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 23:11:36 GMT

I hope I can represent an average reader here (I'm in .NET / C# for less than a year, but I have some limited C++ background, read Stroustrup, etc.)

"Accelerated C# 2008" is my first C# book and I like it very much. It's not an easy reading, and I'm still reading it. I'm periodically switching to "C# 3.0 In a Nutshell" and some other books and articles to clarify some stuff. Your book, Jon, is waiting its turn as well. It was very interesting to read your comments and discussion here. I hope to be able to ask Trey some questions in his blog too. (It would be nice to have a more active discussion there.) I think, it's the best way to master a new language.

"Essential C# 3.0" was mentioned above as another good C# / design book. Thank you, but what about forthcoming new edition of "Framework Design Guidelines" by Krzysztof Cwalina and Brad Abrams?

Jon, you said you "got Java (and all the associated technologies) to keep up". I wonder if a new Scala language is among those associated technologies? I became interested in it after I read a remark by Bruce Eckel saying that it might be a next BIG language, gradually pushing Java out... Now I'm deeply in learning it, it's simply exciting.

www.scala-lang.org/index.html

www.scala-lang.org/.../tutorials.html

www.artima.com/.../programming_in_scala

Inlining vs. Math.Pow() - a C# Dilemma | Dmitri’s Weblog

Inlining vs. Math.Pow() - a C# Dilemma | Dmitri’s Weblog — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 15:18:09 GMT

Pingback from Inlining vs. Math.Pow() - a C# Dilemma | Dmitri’s Weblog

re: Book review: Accelerated C# 2008 by Trey Nash

Abdullah BaMusa — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 19:58:57 GMT

I just wondering how Microsoft can miss hire someone like you. They have to invest in experts like you. Any way thanks for very useful information you share with us. keep going

re: Book review: Accelerated C# 2008 by Trey Nash

skeet — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 16:18:05 GMT

Trey: I was okay with going deep on the topic (I certainly learned stuff there) - it was more the ordering that bothered me for that point. But your comments are very welcome, and it's good for readers to get a balanced set of views instead of just mine :)

Jon

re: Book review: Accelerated C# 2008 by Trey Nash

Trey Nash — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 16:13:13 GMT

Allow me to defend the discussion on Critical Execution Regions (CER) if I may.

I know it may seem like a deep topic, however, the reason it is mentioned in the chapter on exceptions is because it is entirely germane and required in order to create bullet proof exception neutral code.

The problem is, in order to create exception neutral code, we must be able to have a fundamental set of operations that are guaranteed never to throw. That is so we can have a sequence of code that is guaranteed never to throw. I dig into the reasons why in my chapter on exceptions. However, in the CLR, that is impossible without CERs because certain exceptions (such as thread abort exceptions) may be delivered asynchronously, that is, the executing code does not even trigger them. Thus, we need a mechanism to be able to turn those off temporarily.

After all, this is exactly why CERs were introduced. The reality is, especially when it comes to classes that manage unmanaged resources, CERs are essential to allowing one to implement a sort of RAII idiom in order to clean up resources reliably.

Hope this helps explain my intentions with going so deep on such topics. ;-)

-Trey

re: Book review: Accelerated C# 2008 by Trey Nash

skeet — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 17:09:29 GMT

I know, everyone says I should read it - and I will, sometime, I promise :)

I'm mostly a pure .NET guy - I'm mostly blissfully ignorant of Windows internals, aside from the threading stuff I've read in Joe Duffy's book.

Don't forget I've got Java (and all the associated technologies) to keep up with too...

Jon

re: Book review: Accelerated C# 2008 by Trey Nash

Granville Barnett — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 16:39:20 GMT

I can't believe you haven't read C++ Via CLR - I had that pegged down as a certainty!

My preference now is really to read about the nuts and bolts of things, how they work rather than focusing purely on the syntax. I reckon I can figure that stuff out alone.

I'm not sure if you are a pure .NET guy, but there are another few books in the dev space that I have labelled "legendary" these include: Windows Internals (new edition out soon on Vista and Win Server 2008), and Windows Via C/C++. Both excellent, and very informative.

I'm still in shock about the CLR Via C# book, if there was one book I would tell people to read for .NET dev it would be that.

re: Book review: Accelerated C# 2008 by Trey Nash

skeet — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 16:21:55 GMT

Yup, I liked Essential C# 2.0 as well, although I don't think I've read it cover to cover. I'll add the 3.0 version to my list of things to review at some point. I'll also *have* to add "CLR via C#" - I've heard so many good things about that, but haven't actually read it, sadly enough.

As for buying a book about C# 3 - it really depends on how much detail you want to know, and whether you mind hunting around for it. These days practically anything can really be found online - the benefit of books is that they try to structure your learning into a sensible order, whilst still giving more than a single page tutorial.

Of course, I'm somewhat biased...