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edi02

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about C#

I’m a Powerbuilder programmer (with a VB6 background) but because our IT management took the decision to migrate to .NET (more specifically to C#) I started to learn this language. I received a book “Inside C# Second Edition” by Tom Archer and Andrew Whitechapel and I start reading and playing with C#. After 3 days of intense work I’m totally disappointed. I need an application to deal with windows, menus, controls, events, connections with my database, reports and all this stuff I was doing in Powerbuilder, but reading the above book didn’t give any idea how to deal with these issues. I’ve read more then 200 pages and all is about assemblies, manifests, JIT, MSIL, ildasm all is DOS orientated, nothing at all visual, nothing (but nothing!) useful at this stage...
Maybe I started with a wrong book? Could someone give me some advices from where to start learning .NET and C#, but not this useless theory I started already. If this is all about .NET, I’m totally disappointed!
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Other books that I found that were good include the WROX professional Series.

C# Professional, and C# Professional Second Edition.  Do not get the C# for Beginners, it is REALLY basic.  It describes what a variable is, how a loop works... it even goes through how to install .Net.  

WROX was recently bought out by another publishing agency, so they are in a kind of flux right now.  The books they have published are excellent, and they did promise to begin publishing again soon.


Also, one of my favorite series is the "XX How to program by Deitel and Deitel" (C++ How to program, JAVA How to program, etc).  I have not seen the C# How to program book yet, but if it is anything like their previous books, it will be outstanding.  The Deitel and Deitel books are written like text books.  They have step by step examples and code snippets in the book (with FULL code downloads on an attached CD that comes with the book or is downloadable from their site).  The book also has questions and problems at the end of each chapter.  If learning through a textbook is your style, this is the book for you.  But be warned, you can't even look at a Deitel and Deitel book for under $90 U.S.  I own 3 Deitel and Deitel books, they are that good.  


Finally, after getting some experience with programming in C#, you may want to pick up O'Reilly's  "C# in a nutshell".  This book has virtually no code or examples to speak of, it just lays out the .Net class structure in an easy to use format.  After programming in C# for over a year, I Find that the O'Reilly book is my most used resource.
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edi02

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Thanks guys. That’s really nice to find that there are books to help me at this stage. Inside theory maybe I will have time to focus at a later stage. Do you know something I could download from Internet to start with?
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testn
Hi edi02,

Just to get startup from the web, I recommended you to point to QuickStart documentation from Microsoft. http://samples.gotdotnet.com/quickstart
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edi02

ASKER

thanks for that link, testn!
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phliper
Hi edi02,

(my first comment :-)


Maybe you have learned already, but the first answer to your question before book recommendations is at first, that the name for this what you are looking for (you have described) is "Windows Forms .NET".
So, you can go in a book shop and look yourself for books, which have some good chapters about Windows Forms.
The Petzold bookis quite heavy stuff, but learning .NET from scratch is really not easy:

It´s not only learning new syntax.
It is about learning:

- New concepts of Obect Oriented Programming (except to Java , EIFFEL, Smalltalk or other people)
- New conecpts about programming
- New concepts about operating system integration (new runtime, new security concept)

For example, to work with Windows Forms, you have to be familiar at least with Interfaces, Delegates and Events, to name three important programming concepts.

But the wizards are really good at least for less or fairly middle advanced user interfaces. Of course, when programming high level user interfaces, you will have to stuck in the code yourself from scratch.

Regards, Phliper