Press Release
April 27, 2005
"Visual C# 2005: A Developer's Notebook": Jesse Liberty Offers a Code-Focused, Hands-On Approach to the New C#
Sebastopol, CA--In an effort to make the .NET platform more attractive to
developers, Microsoft has taken several steps to enhance the appeal of
Visual Studio 2005, the toolkit for the soon-to-be released .NET Framework
2.0. In addition to many tweaks to the IDE itself, key changes involve the
two .NET languages: Visual Basic .NET and C#. Although Microsoft has
found resistance to VB.NET among entrenched VB6 programmers, the company's
experience with C# has been far more positive. In fact, the C# language is
the primary reason many C, C++, and even Java programmers have migrated
to .NET.
The new version, C# 2.0--also called Visual C# 2005--now has components to
make development with .NET quicker and easier. The beta version has been
available for several months, but so far there's only one book for those
early adopters who want to get up to speed with it. Written by bestselling
author and .NET trainer Jesse Liberty, Visual C# 2005: A Developer's
Notebook (O'Reilly US $24.95) is neither a tutorial nor a programming
book in the usual sense. Instead of an introduction to the language,
Liberty's book jumps right into the new features of C# 2.0 for those who
sincerely want to hit the ground running.
"This book is written for programmers who are already familiar with a
previous version of C# and who used a previous version of Visual Studio
.NET to build Windows or web-based applications," Liberty explains. "It
covers very little of the material an experienced C# programmer already
knows. My goal is to help them build on current knowledge, not to waste
their time demonstrating old material."
Liberty has written six other books on .NET for O'Reilly (including
Programming C# and Learning C#), but this one is truly unique. The
look and feel of Visual C# 2005: A Developer's Notebook is just what the
title implies: a notebook with text on graph paper that invites readers to
jot down comments as they go. And rather than long discussions, readers
will find code--lots of code. "These books are about programming in the
trenches, and are filled with instruction, not lecture," explains Brett
McLaughlin, creator of the Developer's Notebook series. "The intent is
that you're coding as you go along."
Liberty gets right down to business. Chapter 1 starts off with a lab for
creating a type-safe collection using "generics," the most anticipated new
feature in C#. "The goal of the book is to equip developers to create
meaningful applications, not just to learn about changes to C#," he says.
"Each chapter consists of a series of hands-on labs, each of which
introduces a new feature, shows how it's used, and then walks readers
through an example, explaining details that they need to understand along
the way."
Generics in C# 2.0 enable developers to create type-safe code that's easy
to maintain, so they can dramatically cut down the time it takes to
develop new applications. The book's first chapter deals with this and
other changes to C#--such as iterators, anonymous methods, partial types,
static classes, nullable types, and others. The second chapter explores
new productivity-enhancing features in Visual Studio 2005, such as
automatic refactoring and improvements to the editor. The remaining three
chapters demonstrate new features for creating Windows applications, web
applications, and ways to interact with databases.
"One of the stated goals of .NET 2.0 is to push more of the plumbing into
the .NET Framework and to provide controls for Windows and web developers
that reduce the amount of code they will write," Liberty explains. "The
ASP.NET 2.0 development team wanted to make it possible to build web
applications with 75% less code than required before. Their success is
remarkable."
In all, nearly 50 labs emphasize changes that can increase productivity,
simplify programming tasks, and add functionality to applications. At the
end of each lab, Liberty includes a section called "What about..." that
anticipates and answers likely follow-up questions, and a "Where can I
learn more?" section that points readers to magazine articles, online
resources, Visual Studio 2005 Help entries, and other books.
"Visual C# 2005: A Developer's Notebook is not an exhaustive reference,"
Liberty remarks. "Instead, I introduce developers to what's new in the
language, the development environment, and the class libraries; then I
equip them for further exploration of those areas that are likely to be of
interest to them."
Additional Resources:
Visual C# 2005: A Developer's Notebook
Jesse Liberty
ISBN: 0-596-00799-X, 221 pages, $29.95 US, $41.95 CA
order@oreilly.com
1-800-998-9938; 1-707-827-7000
About O'Reilly
O'Reilly Media spreads the knowledge of innovators through its books, online services, magazines, and conferences. Since 1978, O'Reilly Media has been a chronicler and catalyst of cutting-edge development, homing in on the technology trends that really matter and spurring their adoption by amplifying "faint signals" from the alpha geeks who are creating the future. An active participant in the technology community, the company has a long history of advocacy, meme-making, and evangelism.
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