not for beginners
I give this book two stars because it is not what I (a beginner) wanted to use. I cannot say how good a book it is for the audience it is written for.
This book is designed for experienced programmers who know C# code. It surveys the use of advanced programming techniques using LINQ.
The authors explain on page 51 "the ability to read C# code is also important for reading the rest of this book (because LINQ examples are written in C#) and for understanding differences between C# 3.0 and Visual Basic 9.0.
This is not a how to book with introductory examples. It is not for beginners.
A good book although a little light
I feel a little bad rating this a 4 since it's a Beta book. It's really hard writing on betas b/c material changes so frequently.
I liked the book a lot and thought it covered the topics of LINQ and EF pretty well. I think though, it was a bit too heavy into language features of C# 3.0 and VB 9.0. Yes, it's necessary to cover many of these in the context of LINQ but I think proportion wise, it was a bit too much there and a little light in other areas (for instance, unless I totally missed it, i didn't see anything about parallell LINQ). The coverage of EF was good, but I would love to have seen about 50 more pages.
Although it's small the content is right to the point however. They do a good job of discussing LINQ and EF and even showing some more advanced areas and I will say that if you read this book and understand it, you can get just about anywhere you want to be with LINQ. You can read it quickly and be up and running very quickly and that's the strength.
In all honesty, I should probably have given it a 5. My personal opinion is that it's not quite a 5 but definitely higher than a 4. If it were 10.00 cheaper, I probably would have went for the 5 - but it's not a cheap book for the size of it.
The authors did a great job in many areas and considering it's a beta release, they did a superb job.
excellent intro
this is a great into - not something you are going to start using right away, but good to keep in mind for up and coming projects. If you are using VS2005 you can start playing with this - its not a VISTA only tool.
What head start?
Considering that this book is based on a beta product, I was expecting it to have a section on installing LINQ. Sure I can go to the LINQ's website and find out but the author should have added that section and discuss the tricks, tips, caveats and particularly his experiences when he installed the beta version of LINQ. Without the LINQ installed in my machine, I was not able to try the code examples in the book.
There is a relatively long section about C# 2.0 features. That is a nice-to-have section but that is the one he should have omitted.
For a 240-page paper bound book, this is a bit pricey.
I returned the book and promised myself to wait for the final release of LINQ before I buy any book about it.
Decent, but not great
I learned a few things from the book, but overall it left me wanting more. The price matches a much bigger book, so I would've expected it to be full of good stuff, but in fact it was almost cursory on most topics. I realize it's an "Introducing" book, but for the price I would've wanted a somewhat deeper introduction.
(5 reviews)
