Rating:  - Good, but way, way too expensive.
Deitel, Deitel, Listfield, Nieto, Yeager, and Zlatinka, C# How to Program (Prentice Hall, 2002)
One would think, given how much this book and CD package costs, you'd at least get a good title. Yes, the title is as above. Not even a colon to make it halfway grammatically correct. Just "C# How to Program." Sheesh. The title does not indicate the remainder of the text, however. C#HTP (I can't bring myself to type that title again) is good, solid intro stuff, with a couple of detours out into places that C# books don't normally go (e.g., accessibility features in C# or C#'s implementations of the traditional LinkedList and Queue structures, neither of which I've seen covered in any other C# book I've read). It reads somewhat dry, like a textbook, but let's face it; the Deitels are textbook authors. You shouldn't be expecting Stephen King.
The book itself is actually something of an afterthought, it seems. The whole thing (and extra appendices they didn't put in the book) can be found on the accompanying CD-ROM, with a whole lot of audio and video extras, programming tips, code, etc. integrated into the text. The presentation is quite nice, though the fixed nature of the pop-up code sample boxes makes a few of them somewhat harder to read than they probably should be. ("Fixed" as in you can't change the width of the blocks of text therein.) Good stuff. I'm not sure it's worth the amount it retails for, but if you can find a reasonably-priced used copy on Amazon ("reasonably priced," here, means "about the same amount you'd pay for other computer books of this level of detail"), it's worth picking up. *** ½
Rating:  - Excellen Book for the Serious Professional
There is nothing superficial about C# - How to Program. This book is a rigorous and thorough treatment of the C# language from ground zero to proficiency, should you decide to read the entire 1250 pages, and program the practice exercises. This book is very well written, and could easily be used for a college-level course in computer science. As a self-study guide, you cannot help but to learn the C# language, as well as adopt good programming and software engineering techniques. The presentation of each software snippet follows a rigorous software engineering discipline that build good technique that can only help you in a code walkthrough and in debugging your own software. If you stick with the book, and use C#.Net (for an additional $100 - street price) you can learn the basics of C# and probably do 98% of the things you would need to do with the language.
If you read the other reviews, you can see that they run hot and cold. It seems to me that the reviews with the most stars are from people who want a thorough knowledge of C#, and the ones with fewer stars are from people who have treated the book superficially, or wanted a "quick fix" to the difficult issue of learning a programming language. If you want to KNOW C#, buy this book and STUDY it. If you want to just be familiar with C#, try something else.
I found this book is very well written, and I highly recommend it! It is better than the books I have seen from MS Press, and others.
Rating: - The only way to learn c#
I am a huge fan of the how to program series, it is how I learned java. Since the how to learn java 2nd was rock solid, it was a no brainer for me to pick this book for c#. The line by line explanation of the code and tons of live examples are the key to learning as far as I am concerned (a newbie to c#). I am on ch 18 of this book and have written my own tools library (a wishlist of handy internet tools I have always wanted) and file back up and file syncronization manager (no way am I spending 25 bucks for an off the shelf app!). The book has a few code errors but that is no biggee, I was easily able to figure out solutions (plus that is when I knew I had learned something -- I when started catching mistakes) HEHE!
Rating:  - Bad Bad Book
I cannot stand the way the book is layed out. Bolding words throught their text that have no real stand out value is what really ticks me. An there detail is bad.... example is variable types, there is about 2 lines on the subject.
I had an issue on dataset and datatable, its non existant in the text.
I can't believe I spent $85 on this text.
Rating:  - Ugh - Tries to Do Too Much and Delivers Not Enough
I'm a seasoned programmer taking a class in C# for an advanced degree. This book is actually the text for the class - and I'm having the hardest time following it.
The authors try to present a great deal of information, but they end up glossing over things and not really giving the reader in-depth information.
In the end, this book confuses more than it helps.
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