Rating:  - An abridged version of Deitel's "C# How to Program"
Although Deitel's "How to Program" books are primarily intended for use as textbooks in intro-to-programming college courses, the books tend to be around 1,500 pages long and contain a lot of code examples and breadth of coverage of more advanced programming topics, making the books useful to experienced programmers wanting to learn a new language. But unlike college students who are required to purchase a specific textbook for their programming class, professional programmers are less willing to pay exorbitant prices, so the "Deitel Developer Series" offers slightly cheaper, abridged versions of the "How to Program" books, targeted at professional programmers.
"C# for Experienced Programmers" is one of two abridged versions of "C# How to Program." The "C# for Experienced Programmers" book retains full coverage of the more advanced topics while condensing treatment of basic intro-to-programming concepts, such as control structures and arrays, and removing the end-of-chapter exercises. Chapters on control structures and arrays are still there, albeit in condensed form, so if you need to know, for example, how to declare an array in C#, you can look it up. Object-oriented programming is covered in full, in case you're not already familiar with it from another language like Java. More advanced topics covered include exception handling, multithreading, networking, graphics and multimedia, SQL, ADO .NET, XML, ASP .NET, and Web Services.
Although "C# for Experienced Programmers" is essentially an abridgement, it does contain one (1) chapter not included in "C# How to Program." The chapter is about Microsoft Mobile Internet Toolkit, which is used to develop applications for wireless platforms such as cell phones. Also, "C# for Experienced Programmers" includes all of the appendices in printed form, whereas "C# How to Program" has many of the appendices in electronic form on an accompanying CD. If you buy a used copy of "C# How to Program," the CD might be missing, in which case you would not have access to these appendices. However, the appendices are mostly nonessential or not directly related to C# programming. For example, there are four (4) appendices on writing HTML and XHTML.
The other abridgement, "C# A Programmer's Introduction," focuses more on basic programming skills like control structures and arrays, and omits or condenses treatment of more advanced topics like ASP .NET and Web Services. Experienced programmers and anyone familiar with basic programming concepts and the C++/Java/C# style of syntax will probably want to avoid "C# A Programmer's Introduction" and choose either "C# for Experienced Programmers" or "C# How to Program."
So which one is the better buy for an experienced programmer? I ultimately decided to buy "C# for Experienced Programmers": it's cheaper and includes the full, unabridged content of the later chapters and appendices, minus the exercises. "C# How to Program" has a lot of introductory material on basic programming concepts that you don't really need (although I suppose it's easy enough to skip over stuff you already know). Plus, "C# How to Program" isn't even in full color like previous Deitel "How to Program" books. Full color makes reading code examples easy (e.g., comments are in green), but "C# How to Program" instead uses a black, white, and red color scheme. "C# for Experienced Programmers" is in black and white, which I personally prefer over monochromatic red. "C# for Experienced Programmers" also has sturdier pages than "C# How to Program" -- the only downside is that the pages are also thicker and cause the book to be much larger and somewhat unwieldy.
There is also a second edition of "C# How to Program" now available, updated for the new version of .NET. Apparently the Deitels decided that it was too confusing having two "for programmers" versions of their "C# How to Program" text, so instead of "C# A Programmer's Introduction 2/e" and "C# for Experienced Programmers 2/e," there is only one second-edition "for programmers" book, called "C# for Programmers (2nd edition)." As with the two first-edition "for programmers" books, the end-of-chapter exercises are missing from "C# for Programmers 2/e," but otherwise the only difference I noticed in comparing the tables of contents available from the Deitel website was that "C# How to Program 2/e" has a few more sections in the very first chapter, one of them entitled "What is a Computer?"
Rating: - A very good book for C# beginners
This book is what you need if you do not know C# or .Net and need to write a non-trivial application in C# soon. I picked it up when I was already an experienced Java developer with a good knowledge of OO and UML. While some topics covered in this book seemed to be way too trivial to be included in a book with 'experienced' word in the title, it does it job pretty well.
Rating: - Recommended for experienced programmers starting with C#
I work many years with C++, and needed a good book to
give me a solid and educational foundations of C# in
a solid way, and the book helped me a lot with the great
examples. The educational approach helps you to get the
core of the language, and then you can use the online
manuals to complete the little details
Recommended for experienced programmers who move to C#
Rating: - Great book, but for beginners
I found this book great for getting up to speed on .NET and C# in a short time but certainly not for experienced programmers.
Rating:  - For beginners only guys
It's not for Experienced Programmers. If you are a VB programmer then this is a good book for you but if you are working with C, C++ or Java then get another one like Professional C# or C# and the .NET Platform.
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