Comments about O'Reilly Media Programming C# 4.0:

As noted by other's this book is not for beginner programmers. But if you are have some background in programming then this is a great book for a detailed explanation of C# and .NET, sometimes even more than required which I personally love as I learned unexpected things from it.

Comments about O'Reilly Media Programming C# 4.0:

I have to say, I'm rather disappointed with this edition of the book. At this point, I wish I hadn't purchased it.

I have the 4th edition of the book and figured I'd get the 6th edition because there have been a number of changes to the language. The problems that I'm seeing is that there is such an extreme focus on the new features of the language that material that was previously in the 4th edition has been skipped over.

Just now I was looking for a reference to "regions." My code needs to be better commented, even though it's just for myself. Anyways, I look in the index and see pages 24-27 for comments and regions. But when I go to those sections, there's no examples of using regions.

The other day I wanted reference information for loading data into a database, but not using LINQ. There's approximately half a page of information. Personally, I'm not a big fan of LINQ but I think it's good to have it in a book. However, I still can't understand how to use LINQ using the material in this book.

In short... thank goodness for Google, because I'm lost using this book.

Comments about O'Reilly Media Programming C# 4.0:

Very good book, I don't actually have complaints on the book, I like it very much. I learned other programming languages from other books and I'm sure that this book is of a value. The guys that gave bad critics in other reviews probably expected a kind of a Schildt's Reference book and since this book is not a reference but a kind of a tutorial - do not look for apple in a cherry pie.

Comments about O'Reilly Media Programming C# 4.0:

Programming C# 4.0 is an excellent book with which to learn C# from the beginning. I read the book front to back and found very few "forward references." Each subject is thoroughly discussed so that you get a good grasp of the subject matter surrounding the language feature.

The book is not terse. This has been a criticism in other reviews, but they probably should try C# in a Nutshell for that style. I might have called the book Learning C# -- with Programming in the title I expected a complete reference manual. Never the less, the book is thorough and left me with a solid understanding of the language, enough that I could start programming right away.

I would recommend this book to others. As long as you are OK with a discussional style, you will learn a lot about C#.

Comments about O'Reilly Media Programming C# 4.0:

First, if you are looking for a book that will give you the skinny on C# in a quick and easy manner, this is not it. It is overly verbose dealing with technical details that at best should be skipped over and at worst are questionable (the sidebar attempting to link "goto's" and "break's" made me want to tear my hair out - they are not equivalent and using Dijkstra's letter as "proof", when it is the book's author's opinion, is disingenuous - you might have to then argue that exceptions are just fancy "gotos").

Second, if you have never used a programming language in your life, this is ALSO not the book for you. Frankly, this will bore many newbies who don't care if the number is a 32 or 64 bit float, they just want to write programs (later, they will care, but not now).

Third, I found myself (a veteran of 30 years and C++ and Objective C) flipping past the overly verbose text. Frankly, I don't need you to write a program to PROVE to me that floating point rounding errors exist. All of this should have been somewhere in the back with "oh, here is something you might want to know".

All in all, I think that while the authors know their material, the presentation, in my opinion, was poorly thought out. Experienced pros and novices alike will be flipping past text - either it is too far above them or already known.

It is better than "Not Good" - a rework of the presentation would do a lot to make this a better book. As it stands, however, I couldn't recommend it.

Comments about O'Reilly Media Programming C# 4.0:

To much unnessesary text and confused way of presenting C#

To my mind it is almost a waste of time