Inaccurate, simplistic, incomplete, not up-to-date
What a mess. I cannot express how disappointed I was in this book.
Firstly the book is oversimplifies concepts to the point where the author actually starts to become inaccurate about the precise nature of certain constructs and processes.
Secondly the book is out of touch with more modern design and development methods such as agile development techniques, test based coding etc. It also fails to deliver on its title with almost no detail on problem analysis and no real world practical program design.
Shame on colleges that use this book in their curriculum, this book has almost no application to real world application development
Excellent Book for First-Time Coders
This book was the prescribed textbook for the programming subject which I completed this year. C# is my first programming language, so I will be reviewing this book from the perspective of someone who does not know any programming languages.
I believe it was an excellent introduction to writing code. I have taken out many other books on C# which were nowhere near as a helpful as Doyle's book. The book does a really good job explaining how the language works and how code can be structured. It tended to go a little bit deeper with its explanations than many books, thus fostering a deeper understanding of how everything fits together. However, it does not go so deep as to completely baffle or confuse the beginner.
Another really good aspect of this book is that, at the end of nearly every chapter, a case study is presented and worked through. I found these case studies invaluable in that they demonstrated how a programmer should break down and analyse a problem and how to work through the problem, right through to writing the code. This is so much more helpful than the isolated code snippets that most text books run through. What good is knowing how to write a "for" loop if you have no idea how it can be applied in a real application? i.e. how it can be used as a tool to achieve a desired functionality.
This book is not so good if your focus will be on learning about graphical applications. It does provide a pretty good introduction into the visual stuff, but that's all it really is (a cursory introduction).
Having said that, I believe that people learning how to write code should not even be contemplating GUI applications until they have a good, solid understanding of types and object oriented programming. It is that which this book will provide.
Weak, but usable for the most part
If you are looking for a textbook for a beginning class in C# where you do not expect the students to write large programs, then this one will satisfy your needs. Nearly all of the programs are very simple, very little more than a page of text. All of the fundamental concepts such as variables, arithmetic, comparison and logical operators; control constructs such as if-then, switch and the different types of loops. The basics of Windows form programming with the standard GUI control objects and event handling are also introduced. Object-oriented concepts such as encapsulation, inheritance and overloading are covered, with a chapter devoted to exceptions and another that introduces web pages and ASP.NET.
The problem I have with the book is that nothing is covered in depth. Even the programming exercises tend to be rather light and are often vaguely written. For example, at the end of chapter 11 (page 688), "Handling Exceptions and Stored Data", the following programming exercises are given.
4. Write a program that stores your name, address and local phone number in a text file. Surround your phone number with asterisks. Include appropriate exception-handling techniques in your solution.
5. Place the following values in a text file: 86, 97, 144, 26. To simplify the problem, the values can each be placed on separate lines. Write a C# program to retrieve the values from the text file and print the average of the values formatted with two decimal places.
In both problems, there is no mention of whether a console or form based application is to be created. In problem number 4, there is no context to the exception-handling techniques that are to be used. My assumption was that it should be a form-based application with labeled input boxes. The exception handling would then be to verify that the inputs have the appropriate structure. The level of difficulty of both problems is also much less than I would expect of a programming student near the end of the class.
If you are an experienced programmer and interested in a quick, effective overview of the C# language for self-study, then this book is a good choice. For everyone else, I consider the coverage too light to be worth using.
AVOID THIS BOOK -- Here's why...
Here's why you should avoid this book:
1) This book fails to provide clear, step-by-step instructions on how to create the different applications.
* A perfect example of this can be seen (starting with) Chapter 8 -- the programming Windows Apps section. The author shows a picture of an application that you [the reader] will be creating. After showing you the picture, she [the author] then describes a few of the features that the program will have. When finished with that, she then lets you know that you should be done writting your program and that you should be all done with it. Remember, this is all done without any guidance or help from the author. NOT THE WAY TO TEACH PROGRAMMING!!
2) This book is NOT worth $75 dollars.
* The first seven chapters are strictly dedicated to teaching one how to create old MS-DOS applications.
* Only two chapters talk about the *basics* of creating MS Windows applications. (Remember, no instructions provided on how to create them here.)
3) The teaching style seems to somewhat change throughout the book.
* For example, in the beginning of the book, the author assumes that you are using MS Visual Studio to create your software applications. Later on, in the horrible Windows Development App section, the author somehow forgets this fact and then provides code samples that one needs to type in when using their favorite, *NON*-VISUAL STUDIO code editors.
Normally, I like to give books a good review. However, this is one that I honestly cannot give more than one star. If zero stars were possible, it would deserve it.
(4 reviews)
