Recommended books for VB and C#

[03myersd]

I have just been given a small sum of money to put towards my next year at university, and since my uni doesn't offer any .net courses I would like to go further on my own. I plan on buying a book on VB and another on C#. But I would like these to be as complete as possible. I have had a look and there seem to be a thousand and one different choices. What ones would you reccommend and why?

Thanks!


P.S. Sorry for not making this very clear. It has been a long day and my brain just won't work.

[gep13]

Hey,

Your question reminded me about a recent blog post that I read:

http://jesseliberty.com/2010/08/11/1...in-easy-reach/

Hopefully that will give you some ideas

Gary

[Shaggy Hiker]

At one time, I would have had more useful answers to this, but that was years ago. Back then, I would have started out with a book or two to get into a new language. These days, I would say that the key to learning is to have a project to work on. Since you can get VS Express for free, there isn't any cost issue associated with the development environment, so now you can work on practical knowledge rather than reading something from a book. The problem with a book, in this case, is that they will fall into one of a couple categories:

1) Beginner books: These cover a handful of very basic topics and will be of little or no use to an intermediate user, though they are good places to start. Because they tend to be basic, any money spent on one is a short term investment. It's like buying a pizza, only less satisfying: Once you have finished the pizza, not only do you no longer have any use for it, you would really prefer not to look at it again.

2) Reference books: A small reference is quite useful for some people as far as syntax is concerned, but any comprehensive reference is going to be both massive, expensive, and utterly inferior when compared to the internet.

3) Specific topic books: These will not be general, but a good one will cover one technology (like WPF, WCF, ***, TLAs, or the like) thoroughly. These books can be really useful if you need to use that particular technology, but they are nothing but paperweights if you do not need to use that technology.

Therefore, it is better to have a project in mind and learn what you need to for the project rather than learning at random. After all, the first type of book will be inadequate and generally not broad enough, the second type of book is only for the type of person who wants a quick reference, and the third type of book requires you to first figure out what you are trying to achieve.

[Nightwalker83]

At the moment I am using the "Programming in Visual C#/Visual Basic 2008" books by Julie Case Bradley and Anita C Millspaugh.

[gep13]

All very good points by Shaggy, and I have to agree wholeheartedly!!

Do you have a project that you could work on? It doesn't have to be anything overly complicated, something small to start out with.

Are you interested in Windows or Web Development? With the release of Visual Studio 2010, there have been a number of new applications and technologies coming out, so you are picking up .Net at the right time, there is lots out there to get your teeth into.

Gary

[03myersd]

I have thought about picking a project to work on and using it to teach my self. The problem win that is that I can never come up with a good project which will cover a wide range of topics. For VB I have got hundreds of projects and I am still very much a beginner.

You have some very good points shaggy. It has made me think twice about the books. The main reason I wanted a book is because I use books for learning java and they have been extremely helpful. Everything they taught me about object oriented programming has been of great help in .NET also.

Nightwalker: what are your thoughts on that book?

[gep13]

Instead of a book, you might want to think about looking here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/bb629407.aspx

Some of the videos span an entire series, which show you how to build a complete application from end to end.

If you don't mind paying a bit of money, you might also want to think about having a look here:

http://www.learnvisualstudio.net/

They have a lot of videos, I have a lifetime membership there, which means I get all the new videos coming out.

Gary

[MarMan]

A book I read which I thought was pretty good is Moving to VB.NET by Dan Appleman.

If you want a project, why not make your own version of Windows Explorer (Filemanager)?

You will need to use a treeview, grid, menu and toolbar. Get the icon type from file associations. Launch exes based on the file type. Just an idea.

[03myersd]

That's quite an idea. Just so you guys know, I am just in the process of heading back to university so it may be a few days before I reply again. Don't worry. I haven't forgotten on you!

[Max Peck]

I have found a good source of professional books here:

www.apress.com

I currently have about 5 of their books in PDF format and am actively working through most of 'em.

I agree with Shaggy that it's a good idea to have a project going that you can use as a testbed for the technology. I have two going right now that definitely helps in that regard. Sometimes working through a tutorial can be handy too, but actually using what you learn cements it better in your head. There is just so much material to learn out there that you pretty much need to specialize in some area or you'll spread yourself way too thin. Pick a couple of technologies to work with (for example, in my case I'm majoring on C# and SQL Server) and work with them for awhile. Your combination should be one that you would be able to use if you won a contract to write some software.

-Max

[DeanMc]

I'm also a die hard apress fan, I have found some clunkers in their collection but they have some fantastic authors behind most of their books.

[techgnome]

I don't know how much it is since the company pays for it... but some thing you may want to look at is Safari BooksOnline: http://techbus.safaribooksonline.com/ great way to get books w/o having to worry about them taking up shelf space and paying for something that goes obsolete by the time it hits book stores.

-tg

[Shaggy Hiker]

I left out one category that is relevant:

4) Crap: There has been a long running practice in the programming and computer book industry that can best be described as a scam. I fell for one of the most famous of these early on in programming. At the time, there was no Amazon.com, and I didn't know enough to go leafing through pages at the book store. Instead, I bought a book via mail order (I forget whether it was online or not) that looked like a comprehensive reference book to C++ programming. I think it was for VisualC++2.0, but whichever version it was, I already had the program. After looking through the book, it began to appear familiar. A bit of checking showed that the author, if you could call him that, had taken portions of the manual, stuck in a whole bunch of screen shots and added fat margins to pad the book out to about 900 pages, and sold it for around $60. There was absolutely NO content that wasn't in the manual other than the screen shots. That may be the worst example, but the general plan is followed by too many programming books: Take a small amount of comment, add LOTS of screen shots, add HUGE margins, pad with anything else you can think of to run up the total book size, and sell for big bucks based solely on page count.

Therefore, if you can, scan through a book to get a feel for how many of these cheats were used. Is it mostly screen shots? Are the margins really big? Is the type size larger than normal, or line spacing greater than normal? All of those should be warning signs. However, I have found some good books that also had fat margins and lots of screen shots, so the second step would be to come up with a topic you would like to learn a bit more about. If nothing comes to mind, scan through the index to see if you find any topic that can get fairly involved, such as TCP communications, or something like that. Then go read that section to see whether it is informative. If it is written in such a vague and general fashion that you don't feel you could use it to write actual code, that would be a bad sign. If it is detailed and comprehensive, then the other things I mentioned can probably be forgiven.

[dbasnett]

If your career is going to be as a programmer, at some point Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming Vols. 1-4ish should be a part of your library.

[abhijit]

I am currently reading a book by Andrew Troelson on C#, that's proved to be useful.

[Nightwalker83]

Nightwalker: what are your thoughts on that book?

For me it explained clearly how to accomplish different thing and showed examples of how to use the different features, object, etc. I'm not sure but I think the books also come with a cd included.

[gep13]

I don't know how much it is since the company pays for it... but some thing you may want to look at is Safari BooksOnline: http://techbus.safaribooksonline.com/ great way to get books w/o having to worry about them taking up shelf space and paying for something that goes obsolete by the time it hits book stores.

-tg

Noice!! I have just suggested this to my bosses here.

Gary

[gep13]

03myersd, where abouts in Scotland are you based? The other suggestion would be to try and get yourself involved in a local .Net Group. There is nothing better than talking face to face to developers about programming.

Gary

[03myersd]

Finally moved in. I am in Edinburgh so that may be an idea. I never knew things like that existed.

I did decide on the first book thought and bought it. I may be judged for this, but I bought C# for dummies. It was an extended edition with extra "books" on WPF and ASP.NET etc. Quite a buy I thought for £28.

I will probably get other when I get more advanced. So this thread will still be relevant.

Thanks for everyones help!

[DeanMc]

Dummies books can be great for the basics as they are very accessible. I wouldn't be ashamed to say I bought a dummies book as I have used them many times in the past for topics I have had no experience with. I also find that their humour helps digestion as some developer based books can be very terse and unbelivably dry!

[Max Peck]

If your career is going to be as a programmer, at some point Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming Vols. 1-4ish should be a part of your library.

Oops ... I've been coding for 35 years and haven't got a copy. Does that put me back at square-one?

-Max

[gep13]

Finally moved in. I am in Edinburgh so that may be an idea. I never knew things like that existed.

Yeah, there are loads of them.

I was just down at a SharePoint .Net User Group in Edinburgh last week. You should take a look here:

http://scottishdevelopers.com/

And to give a shout out to my own group, which is still in it's infancy:

http://www.aberdeendevelopers.co.uk/

I did decide on the first book thought and bought it. I may be judged for this, but I bought C# for dummies. It was an extended edition with extra "books" on WPF and ASP.NET etc. Quite a buy I thought for £28.

I will probably get other when I get more advanced. So this thread will still be relevant.

Thanks for everyones help!

"Books for Dummies" are fine, nothing to be ashamed to there. One thing I would say though is, that they might take "short cuts" on somethings, i.e. do things that aren't best practices, but for now, it should be fine.

Gary

[03myersd]

Yeah I have noticed the shortcuts on occasion in other books. Fortunately I find it relatively easy to break bad habits once I have noticed them. One that I have found already us that the author loves to use vars.

[gep13]

Depending on the situation, the use of var's does have it's place. For instance, within LINQ statements, where the corresponding type is inferred, but I tend to not use them, and explicitly state the type of the variable that I am using.

The use of var is one of those hotly debated topics that you will find lots of people talking about on the web.

Gary