Having just finished another O'Reilly title (Programming WPF) that I thought was excellent, I was biased when thumbing through C# intermediate/expert C# programming books. I settled on two books and this (an O'Reilly title) was one of them. My confidence was heightened by the cover's prominent badge "5th Edition."

After reading most all chapters (I skipped a few non-language chapters) it is clear that the book is about 4 weeks of editing from being 5 star material.

Pros
----
- Author is clearly good at his basic craft: educating via the written word
- Author has good knowledge of C# 3.0
- Author employs humor to keep material from being dry
- Book is fairly comprehensive
- Not a lot of fluff, i.e. if it's written it's worth reading

Cons
----
- There are some errors in the coding examples
- Occasionally new material "appears" but is not introduced, described or otherwise addressed anywhere in the book
- Author makes occasional proclamations and generalizations that, to an educated ear, come across as buffoonery
- There are gaps -- some language keywords only appear in glossary
- Index is weak
- Don't care for "Liberty Associates" occurring in code examples
- General feeling of being incompletely cooked

If this was the first effort of the author, I would have given 3 stars. But with name recognition comes expectations and those expectations were not met.

Let not the title mislead the reader: this is not "Programming" C#, this is "Beginning" C#, and it is two books glued together. The first half of this book is excellent, whereas the second half is mediocre. Those looking for programming strategies, specific add-ons (LINQ, WPF) or the nuances of .NET should continue the search for another book.

Roughly half of the book details the language faculties: variables, arrays, delegates, enumerations, interfaces, etc. This division, and the section on ASP.NET, are quite thorough, and comprise an excellent introduction to the language. Its erudite qualities make this a one-stop source for questions about the base language features. Beginning programmers may be lost in swarms of information; however, immigrants from Visual Basic, Java, or C++ will not encounter much difficulty learning the new features of C#, and will appreciate the length of time devoted to these details.

However, in the second half, issues arise in the presentation of features such as LINQ, WPF, and threading. The examples given in these sections are aggravating. Often, the source code written does not match what is being described currently, and often will not compile without editing. At times the writer will refer to objects (in code and in prose) with different names in the same breath. Sometimes, he omits whole chunks of code, leaving the reader to fill in the blanks. The errata on his website describes the accidental omission of two whole sections covering C# 3.0 features, but there is far more he has not attempted to fix. The author is well-learned, but it is obvious this book was rushed, causing careless mistakes.

In addition to these errors, it is my belief that the sections covering LINQ are not comprehensive enough. LINQ for XML queries are not covered. Furthermore, the sections on LINQ for SQL and ADO.NET are confused, partly due to the author's use of the professional version of Visual Studio, not the Express edition which most readers use. If coverage of these technologies is desired, there are better books designed specifically for these features (which the author admits).

The redeeming qualities of this book are in the presentation. Jesse Liberty knows how to entertain the reader. He makes the experience enjoyable, and he explains very well what he actually attempts to explain. Overall, I recommend this book for intermediate programmers, who have general knowledge of pointer-logic, delegates, and object-orientation. Beginning programmers or veteran C# programmers wanting information about new features like LINQ and WPF should look elsewhere.

Jesse failed a loyal reader (C++ in 21 days). I observe that he is busy in producing books recently (co-authoring with other people with his name brand) instead of seriously improving this title. In ONE year period, he has generated the following titles. With a full time job in Microsoft, I doubt how much attention he can give to each of the titles
1. Programming C# 3.0
2. Learning C# 2008
3. Programming .NET 3.5
4. Programming ASP.NET 3.5
5. Learning ASP.NET 3.5
6. Programming Silverlight 2

Just read the Chapter 7 "Strucs" Example 7-1, and its code explanation, you will see how careless he is when putting a piece of code and talking something else.
p. 128 "Also notice that the Location constructor takes two integers and assigns their value to the instance members, xVal and yVal." Hey, where are these xVal and yVal in Example 7-1?
p. 130 "The definition of the Tester class in Example 7-1 includes a Location object* struct(loc1) created with the values 200 and 300. This line of code calls the Location constructor: Location loc1 = new Location(200,300);" Where is it in your Example 7-1? There is no constructor in the code! Jesse still uses the explanations in the 4th ed book while presenting a code different from the code in the 4th edition.

Example 21-4 crashes.

These kinds of mistakes are harmful to those who need confirmation about their understanding of new concepts. I doubt that he has really read through the book and checked the compliability before giving to the publisher.

The 5th edition cuts a few topics of 4th edition to cater for those materials to be presented in his other books (see the above) so that you have to buy two or three books in stead of one. I do not blame him, maybe it is necessary. If that's case, this book should focus on C# core language concepts with enough depth such that the readers have a one-stop source for C#. Leave Part III and Part IV (even Part II except LINQ concept) to other books. Superficial introducing topics will not be helpful for people who will use them.

I think this book is a little conversational and a little too friendly for my needs. The examples are poor : Liberty Associates and let's do a web service which tracks MY book sales? I get tired of this, then noticed the second, third, and fifth editions are basically the same.

I like the books like Nutshell and Cookbooks, that introduce the concepts piece by piece, with very good real-world examples.

Save your money!

I respect Jesse for all that he's done to educate the masses in a wide variety of programming-related topics. But I'm not impressed with this book primarily because it is chock full of mistakes. A technical book that contains so many mistakes makes learning the language so much more difficult. I have found code snippets that don't even compile.

I wrote the first edition of Programming C# back when C# version 1 was first released. At the time we were among the first to introduce the idea of breaking a language book into three sections: (1) C# syntax and programming skills (2) applying C# to creating Windows and Web applications and (3) advanced topics (threading, etc.)

Various editions have won numerou awards (VSJ Book of the Year, Amazon Editor's choice...) and at times the book has been the best seeling .NET book overall. I believe this is because I set out to tell the story of C# and how it fits in with creating real .NET applications; rather than creating yet another reference book. That is a commitment we've never lost sight of.

C# 3.0 represents a significant maturation of the framework and the language and was released to coincide with a great expansion in the capabilities of .NET (e.g., the introduction of WPF, WCF, WF, Silverlight and much more).

My decision was to tackle all of this across three books:

1. A TOTAL revision of Programming C#, with a complete rewrite of both the existing parts and a concise but thorough explanation of the new language features such as LINQ. I also decided to maintain my commitment to placing the teaching of C# within the context of writing Web and Windows applications, so the appropriate chapters were added.

Finally, we subjected the entire book (revised chapters and new) to the most rigorous technical review I've ever wittnessed. The review proces itself took months. Nothing was allowed to slip by. We were determined to get it right.

2. I also participated in writing the forthcoming Programming .NET 3.5, a unified perspective on the new and emerging .NET technologies. Our goal is to provide a greater context for applying C# across many different kinds of applications.Programming .NET 3.5

3. Finally, I'm pleased to say that I'm giving away a series of tutorials on Silverlight on the Microsoft Silverlight site ([...]) which you can read about on my blog ([...]) and I have started writing a new book, Programming Silverlight 2, that I hope to release this fall.

THIS book, Programming C# 3.0, 5th edition, represents by far, the most extensive and compreensive revision I've ever undertaken; I would guesstimate that we put as much or more time into revising this book as we do into writing many first edition titles. Moreover it also represents 8 years of thinking about C# and how to use it effectively, how to implement best practices, and how to eliminate areas of confusion.

I freely admit that to date, it is the book I am most proud of because it represents the kind of book I most like to learn from.

Thank you.

-Jesse Liberty

I know C++ at deep and I bought this book to learn the C# language, I've never used Java before.

I would give it 5 stars because it does what the title claims: teach the C# programming language, and it does very well, but I'm refusing to give the 5th star because in the top of the cover it claims it is a guide to building windows and web applications, for sure it is not, and the black strip on the book's cover claims it covers LINQ and XAML, and sincerly a couple of chapters and some examples is not covering, it's introducing. Authors should be more involved in this kind of stuff, and editors should stop telling lies.

The book teaches the C# language assuming you already know how to program, the margin notes are mostly for Java and Visual Basic programmers. Every concept is provided with an easy to follow source code example, and most are introduced quickly and to the point, although I wish the first 3 chapters were shorter. Almost all the code in the book is for the console, as the book doesn't try to teach the user interface. The last part of the book introduces some new technology of the .Net 3.5 as WPF, LINQ and XAML at a superficial level, I apreciated that because I didn't know nothing about this, I found the WindowsForms and .ASP chapters also superficial, but well, may be some readers don't know about it. The chapters on Threads and Streams are well explained and I'm happily surprised the author decided to include this advanced concepts. I think the container classes (Dictionaries and Arrays) deserves more pages and more performance advices.

The book has few typographical errors, as a capital letter where it should be lower-case, fortunately they were not in the source code.

The book in not suitable to any level of devolopers. I think the book is just teaching syntax to Java programmers only. I will recycling my copy of the book. I do not feel good even selling it.

This book is an easy read and is filled with good examples and explanations. I would recommend this to anyone who wants to get a basic knowledge of C#.