Head First C# (Brain-Friendly Guides) | 
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Product Description
Do you want to learn C#? Programmers around the world have learned that C# lets them design great-looking programs and build them fast. With C#, you ve got a powerful programming language and a valuable tool at your fingertips. And with the Visual Studio IDE, you ll never have to spend hours writing obscure code just to get a button working. C#, Visual Studio and .NET take care of the grunt-work, and let you focus on the interesting parts of getting your programs written. Sound appealing?
Unlike other C# books, which just show you examples and expect you to just memorize them and move on, Head First C# gets you writing code from the beginning. You're given the tools you need, and then you're guided through fun and engaging programming projects. You'll build programs to play a card game, explore a house, and help lazy programmers manage their sick day excuses. But it's not all fun and games: you'll build business applications too, like a contact database and a program to help a party planner estimate her dinner parties. You'll build a dungeon role-playing game and a fully animated, colorful simulation of a beehive. And by the end of the book, you'll build a fast-paced, full-featured retro Invaders arcade game.
Make no mistake: by the time you're done with Head First C#, you'll be able to build full-scale, complex, and highly visual programs. And you'll have all of the C# tools you need to tackle almost any programming problem that comes your way.
Head First C# is built for your brain, using the revolutionary approach that was pioneered by the highly acclaimed and popular Head First series. You'll never get that bored, "eyes glazed over" feeling from Head First C#, because it guides you through one challenging project after another until, by the end of the book, you're a C# rock star!
Here's what you'll learn: - Core C# programming concepts
- How to use the Visual Studio 2008 IDE to build, debug and run your programs
- Important .NET 3.5 features, including generic collections, Windows forms, GDI+ graphics, streams, serialization and more
- Using object oriented programming concepts to help you build well-designed programs
- How to build robust applications with good error handling
- The latest C# 3.0 features, including LINQ, object and collection initializers, automatic properties, extension methods and more
Throughout the book, you'll confront and conquer advanced C# concepts. Some of the most mysterious ideas are demystified and explained with clear examples: how Unicode works, events and delegates, references versus value types, the stack versus the heap, what's really going on with garbage collection, and more.
Thousands of readers have learned C# using this innovative book, including: - Beginning programmers who want to learn programming from the ground up
- More advanced programmers who are proficient in another language (like Visual Basic, Java, SQL, FoxPro) and want to add C# to their toolbox
- Programmers who understand basic C# syntax, but are still looking to get a handle on how objects work
- Anyone who's tried to learn C#, but had to deal with books full of dull examples and nothing but boring console applications
- Lots of people who just want to learn how to build cool games!
Head First C# is built to work with any version of Visual Studio 2008, including the free express edition. (It can also can be used with any version of Visual Studio 2005.)
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Customer Reviews:
• Dissapointed By This Book 21 November, 2008
Worked through the first 250 pages and just had to start looking for something else. The idea of illustrations is good but the delivery is not. It's like creating a coloring book for brain surgery - not going to work. Interestingly I always had questions at parts where there was no pencil markup so I could not make sense of things. At page 250, the book is still working on explaining classes and objects. The examples are dry and uninteresting, Very hard to keep focus on them. I found a free ebook on Microsoft site called C# for kids and I was able to get more out of the first 35 pages than from 250 of this book.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A14OWITI0PRH3H
• Sql Express And Visual C# Exprees Is A Bad Combination. 16 November, 2008
The authors provide instructions in Chapter 1 on page 18 for adding a SQL Service-based Database to a project. I never could get pass this step. There was considerable discussion in the O Reilly forum on this topic as many others were having problems getting past this step. I tried all of the suggestions offered but none helped and was disappointed in the authors shotgun approach for providing a solution. Obviously from the number of recommendations many more people made it past page 18 than the people who got stuck there. But as for me I have already wasted a week on this book and will not waste any more time. I bought this book because of the good experience I had with Head First HTML with CSS & XTML. But Head First C# no where nears matches the quality of Head First HTML.
- Reviewed by customer ID: AJODBU92Q6ZGM
• Book Is More Confusing Than Anything. 19 December, 2008
First let me tell you my background. I have a MCSE and my background is in Network Engineering and I am shifting my career to Software Engineering. However I took C++ in college and it was less confusing than this book. The information in this book is all over the place with diagrams, arrows etc, things written all over the place wondering what order are they really suppose to go to and it's confusing me more than anything. I am on Chapter 5 and at this point I am more confused than anything. I have decided to look for a better book at this point.
Hope you find this review useful.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A1A2O2NMAVWK01
• Like Having An Instructor That You Can Understand 20 December, 2008
I've written C# for a while now. But it's always good to go back and brush up here and there. This book is just a good read for both beginning AND experienced programmers. No matter how long you have coded most all programmers are always learning something new about OOP, as simple as it may be and this book does a good job bringing up those issues that a teammate or team lead most likely is not going to show you and so the experience/mentor type of situation happens right in this book as you read. It's pretty cool how they did this.
I don't know how many pages answered so many questions for me. For example it really teaches you about Interfaces well. It tells you WHY, beyond just the stupid general term of an Interface which doesn't really tell you jack outside of the basic definition of an interface...and really shows you in a well worded teaching-like way to explain WHEN you should use it and WHAT can happen. I also like the info about upcasting and downcasting.
What I like is that this book doesn't just give you a boring syntax read. It makes you understand all those little "uh huh" points that otherwise a book written with too much jargon will end up spinning your head. This book takes things step by step but talks about both simple but advanced subjects. One example of this is that while it's talking about simple things, it also talks about how objects are managed in the heap. That is invaluable because this is one of the hardest things for programmers to understand. There are a ton of small little things that affect the heap and reasons why things happen in the heap and this book tells you about it in a way you can understand while you read each page and example. This is a very effective way to teach an OOP language when you are combining 2 different thoughts in every page (memory and syntax).
So I recommend this book to anyone, even experienced programmers because it's a fast read that I'm sure everyone will find out some new things that you did not know about OOP even if you think you already know it all.
One thing to note by the more experience programmers out there. This book started out too slow for me. The concepts were way too novice. But realize once you hit the chapter "Types and References", it starts to become useful to you.
I also like the fact that it sneaks in little C# 3.0 tricks once in a while while you are reading basic C# 2.0 syntax examples and explanations. It's a good way to say "hey you could do it this way but guess what, you can do it even easier this way because this is a new feature in C# 3.0". Rather than always having a dedicated chapter to all C# 3.0, this sneaks in those situations where it makes sense to use a feature in C# 3.0 in various scenarios throughout chapters.
Basically this book teaches you rather than just give you paragraphs of technical jargon and no real-life information of how to use it. Half the problem with most books is that it lacks any examples or really good explanation of the SITUATIONS in which you would use certain OOP techniques and just stating how C# works without the why will not do much good. While a book can't tell you every situation, it gives you very common reasons and that's why this book is a gem. Practicing is also just as important but the "uh huh' moments will be resolved very quick just by reading this book front to cover very quickly.
If you happen to be a college student or recent grad or just someone trying to get more into OOP, this is an absolute must have.
- Reviewed by customer ID: ABWNHJYT7DRGK
• Great Concept, Poor Execution 21 December, 2008
I so badly want to give "Head First C#" five stars -- this is the way technical books /should/ be written -- but after having worked through a few chapters, I can't.
As a technical writer, I detest dull books that fail to engage the reader. Stellman and Greene's approach, loaded with Alice-friendly pictures and conversations, is a great way to keep the reader interested and involved. *
Unfortunately, the execution falls well-short of the goal.
The fundamental problem is that "Head First C#" assumes the reader knows little or nothing about programming. This is /not/ the audience for a C# book, because C# is a relatively new language, and beginning programmers rarely start with it. Those learning C# are usually programmers having experience with C++, Java, or some other object-oriented language. They're likely to be distracted reading about things they already know.
A book cannot simultaneously "focus" on two audiences. "Head First C#" should have ignored the newbies and aimed at programmers moving to C#.
One does not expect absolute perfection, but some of the explanations are poor, such as what, exactly, static functions and variables are, and why they're needed. As for delegation -- I haven't found /any/ book that explains it in the detail needed (not to mention that each writer has his or her own take on how and when it should be used). Delegation should be covered in full in its own chapter.
"Head First C#" is one of the most-poorly edited technical books I've seen. ** Not only are there garbled sentences even a perfunctory edit would have caught, but there are inconsistencies in the code, which can be thoroughly confusing even to experienced programmers. Indeed, the bad editing started with the acquisitions editor, who should have forced the writers to focus on the book's most-likely audience.
If only for its worked-through program examples, "Head First C#" is worthwhile. But buyers should be warned that, though it's in its fourth printing, with many errors corrected, you can still wind up (as I did) with a copy of the first printing, purchased in 9/2008. (The O'Reilley site has a list of the corrections, but it's a lot of work to enter them yourself.)
"Head First C#" /could/ be a truly great book, but it needs a thorough rethinking and reorganization. It is, perhaps, the supreme example of all the things wrong with the technical-book industry. But O'Reilley doesn't understand, and probably doesn't care.
* It isn't the only way, of course. Really good writing -- see Charles Petzold -- is the starting point. If the writing is good enough, you don't need many pictures.
** Novels can be poorly edited, as well. I can give examples.
- Reviewed by customer ID: ARFCORBCTKX1J
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