Rating:  - Good for beginner/intermediate
Excellent book for beginner to intermediate C# developer. Beginners will suffer from the lack of meaningful examples. Clear explanations and concise language. Good coverage of basic libraries, however somewhat short, as to be expected, on ASP.NET and Web Services. Definite recommend.
Rating: - A great book to begin C#
This book was one of the best books I have read thus far. I was absolutely impressed with the delivery of Jesse Liberty.
The book opens with a preface that made me really appreciate the mindset of Liberty. He completely skips through the mumbo-jumbo and simply says: if you want to know what is new, put this book down and go get this other one about blah, blah, blah. Then he gives you all of these different categories of reader and if you fit, then this book is for you. That really made me appreciate that he knew he was dealing with a beginner in C# but still a real programmer. None of that intimidation stuff here.
The book is divided into various sections namely the language, programming and the .NET Framework.
There are a lot of do's and don'ts throughout the book even with a brief explanation of why not. There are even tips, but not just any tips. The tips in this book are for the reader and developers of other languages C ++, Java and the like that already understand the topic at hand, but probably know the terms, philosophy or other things relating to that language differently, so he shows how they relate to those other languages.
CODE SAMPLES
It is very helpful that the code samples are available for download to use along with the book. It saves a lot of typing and allow for editing. There are many instances where Liberty gives instructions to cause the code to fail. Then when it does he explains why it failed. That takes us to the warnings that are throughout the book. He even explains the capabilities that C# has and why it would be better to use these instead of the older style of programming that others may be used to.
EXAMPLES
There is also a good dosage of scenarios are used as well. A complex matter is always easier to understand with a good scenario. The tutorial aspect is really good since nothing is assumed about the reader's level of knowledge with C#. Everything is explained, nothing is left out and the really fancy terms are explained before he begins to regularly use them.
OTHER TECHNOLOGY
While the book is about C# you don't get tunnel vision. This book touches on other .NET technologies C# plays along with similar web services, SQL, ADO.NET., ASP.NET to name a few. By the end of this book you will see how C# is a big part of a much, much bigger .NET Framework.
I recommend this book for anyone that wants to know, but are afraid to ask. Read this book.
Rating:  - This is not THE book for experienced or inexperienced
This book goes too much detail into intricacies of language syntax while the examples are too basic and confusing. Some times the important syntactical explanations are too vague and confusing while the infrequently used items are explained in too much detail. I have found that Wrox books are doing a much better job with explaining the concepts and their examples are more in depth and easier to understand. However, it does cover most of the .net concepts and some topics like Threads are covered in an extremely helpful manner. I find this book to be boring to read but will keep it as a reference, as overall, it is not a bad book.
Rating: - Nor for experienced, niither for non...
I really wonder how this book deserved 5 stars from some readers.
Most topics are explained poorly, or sometimes even not explained at all!!! (I started thinking that autor himself need to learn the language). Second, to explain even a trivial thing, the autor presents loooooong codes, what really wastes time, because you always have figure out, which part part of code is really dedicated to explain the point, what sometimes makes me tired before I understand something. Also, in the most of the code examples suddenly there appear something new, something specific to C#, and autor even does not say a word about that. Because of that, since the autor has tendency to use a long code, and on the other hand has a tendency to explain trough examples, this non-explanation makes the book really impossible to understand, not reading several other books.
Who ever is thinking to buy this book please believe me, it is not the first book to read on C#. May be you will understand easily first few chapters having some programming background, but you will have much trouble understanding more advanced topics, specific to C#.
I am giving this book three stars because it is better then some other books, like for example sams c# complete...
Rating: - Covers the Essentials
This book provides a good introduction to basic C# programming. The 4th edition covers C# / .NET 2.0 which introduces many new features compared to 1.x (e.g. generics), and which is the standard platform for Visual Studio 2005 developers. If you're a Visual Studio .NET 2003 developer, you'll need to upgrade (or download a beta version) in order to run some of the examples. This is a book about the C# language rather than .NET, so reading this book will not turn you into a proficient Windows/Web Forms programmer. However, it provides an essential foundation for further reading on more advanced .NET topics. Jesse Liberty writes in a fairly readable style, and I particularly liked the small sections contrasting the way C# does something with similar techniques in C++, Visual Basic and Java. Some of the code examples feel a bit verbose: several times the same long listing appears in full with minor changes between each version. The organization of the book also felt a little quirky, with important topics like streams and threads relegated to the back of the book, appearing after much more obscure discussions of marshalling and remoting. In general though, a good introduction to C# 2.0.
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