Customizing CLR
The book gives a good insight in the workings of the CLR as an unmanaged process.
Require more full working code samples as against the code snippets.
Esoteric but valuable.
The topics covered by this book are so specialized that the vast majority of .Net programmers will have no need for this level of detail on these topics. However, if your application does require expertise on any of the topics covered in this book (I needed information on AppDomains), this book is excellent. It is very detailed, clearly presented and authoritative.
Customizing the Microsoft .NET Framework Common Language Runtime
This book does provide a great deal of valuable information for any .NET developer and is definitely a book worth reading. However, since the topic is a bit advance, it would certainly help if the example application used to illustrate extensible application architecture was more complete. The proposed example application 'Boat Race' started in chapter 5 provided a great beginning, but left the reader hanging even after reading chapter 6. The downloaded companion samples did not include any code sample for 'Boat Race', which was the main example used to explain the concept.
Disappointing, sorely lacking in details
After reading the positive reviews on this book, I hoped this book would tell me things MSDN did not. How wrong I was. There is more information on MSDN than can be found in this book. For example, in Chapter 1, the author lists the function ExecuteInDomain, referring to Chapter 7 for details. In Chapter 7, the ExecuteInDomain function is not even mentioned. Also, the author often leaves out crucial details that would allow you to actually understand the point he is trying to make.
Got Hosted CLR?
If you want to understand the intracies of how the 2.0 build of the CLR has been designed and implemented to support the hosting of it this book is it. I am a very curious person, I love technology and even more I love to understand how it works...
When I wanted a better understanding of how SQL Server Hosted the CLR than what BOL could give me I began searching. I was referred to this book by Microsoft Program Manager(s) (as in plural) and sure enough the book filled my void. If you are an expert Microsoft developer/architect this book had better be on your bookshelf.
