AWESOME! For those starting out and even intermediate programmers, this is a great BOOK!

Murach's C# 2008 book is an excellent resource for getting up to speed with Microsoft's VISUAL STUDIO development environment. At this point, I have read about 1/3 of the book.

An excellent feature of this book is its use of two adjoining pages for concept presentation. Instructions and explanations are presented on left-hand pages while sample code or screen displays are shown on right-hand pages. This makes it very easy to follow and comprehend material.

The book also has a companion website where sample code is avaiable for downloading. This facilitates both understanding of presented materials and experimentation with your own ideas.

This book is geared to VISUAL STUDIO C# 2008 and I believe you need the latest software. If you are using VISUAL STUDIO C# 2005, then you may want to consider purchasing an older edition with that name.

This book is an excellent college text and I strongly recommend it for that purpose.

I have been frustrated for a while looking for a good publisher. Then I found Murach. Hands down the best publisher. I have NOT been disappointed at all so far. As long as they keep using the same methods, I will be a fan for life.

I strongly recommend Murach's books first above everything else.

I found this book difficult to read... I'm not a fan of books that repeatedly refer to diagrams or code blocks that are located in previous or yet to come pages.

Overall it's just dry... Not enough exercises to reinforce learning.

I made it to chapter 9 and stopped... Just my opinion but if our new to programming I would consider other options.

Murach's C# 2008 is a good book on C#, but it is not great. Too many areas are either lightly covered or not covered at all. To be fair if he had included the coverage it would have been a much bigger book, but Dietel does it and I would expect Murach to have been more complete. For example, in many coverages of methods of objects avalable in the .Net Framework the coverage is incomplete. If your going to cover a subject, cover it completely, either in the book or via a reference to a web page. I think the solution when providing the type of coverage displayed in this book is to have a web site that completes the coverage on each subject. That way the book doesn't weigh thirty pounds and the customer gets the needed complete information on a subject.

Learning a new programming language can prove to be highly difficult for many people, and "Murach's C# 2008" is a complete and comprehensive guide to help readers learn everything they need to know to learn how to use it, and then learn to use it to the maximum of its abilities as if they were a college graduated professional who had worked with the program for years. Leaving nothing out, "Murach's C# 2008" is highly recommended to anyone with interest in the language and for community library computer collections.

"Murach's C# 2008" follows the Murach style where there are two books in one. The even numbered pages contain text. The odd numbered pages contain related diagrams, tables and bulleted lists.

The book targets beginners to experienced developers in Java/C++/VB/.NET along with being useful for training and reference. I'm a little skeptical when a book tries to be all things to all people, but the author does a great job with this. The "paired page" format really helps with this because you can read the most appropriate one (or both) for you at the time. I'm a Java developer. While I was able to skim some sections, I was never bored.

I particularly liked the focus on idioms and skills. There were a lot of "how to do ________" examples along with techniques such as refactoring. The end of chapter exercises were also great.

The book also walks you through features in Visual Studio 08. I like how the author highlights differences between the professional and express editions. The chapter on using the debugger was excellent.

There were only two minor things I didn't like. First, there was one significant difference from Java that was in the text section and I almost missed it skimming. The other was that sometimes the text would continue after turning the page which made it harder to follow the paired pages. I'm impressed that these are the worst things I can write. I recommend the format.

If you are new to C# this is the book from which to learn C# 2008. It is written in a clear understandable manner and can be used with Visual C# 2008 Express Edition. The exercises used in tne book are a great help in the learning process.

This book is an updated edition of Murach's C# 2005. Section 1 covers the basics of using the Visual Studio IDE and the .NET framework. Section 2 and 3 continue using the "paired pages" format: How-to on the left page and examples on the right. This style contributes to the effectivness of the learning process. The basic skills of learning LINQ which is a new feature of C# 2008 are presented.

This is a great book on C# for begineers through intermediate developers.
You will learn by reading this book.