Rating:  - COOKING WITH C#!!
Are you an experienced C# or .NET developer? If you are, then this book is for you! Authors Jay Hilyard and Stephen Teilhet, have done an outstanding job of writing a second edition of a book that was put together based on programming problems that the authors ran into when they were first learning C# as well as during their continued use of it.
Hilyard and Teilhet, begin by focusing on the numeric and enumeration data types used in C# code. Then, the authors cover both the String and Char data types. Next, they cover a wide range of recipes from design patterns to converting a class to interoperating with COM. The authors then focus on the new generics capacity of C#, which allows you have code operate uniformly on values of different types. They continue by examining recipes that make use of collections. Then, the authors use two new features of C# to solve very different programming problems. Next, they show you how to implement exception handling in your application. The authors then explore recipes that use data types that fall under the System.Diagnostics namespace. They continue by showing you how delegates, events, and anonymous methods can be used in your applications. They also cover a very useful set of classes that are used to run regular expressions against strings. Then the authors show you how to implement certain data structures and algorithms that are not in the FCL. Next, they deal with filesystem interactions in four distinct ways. The authors show you ways to use the built-in assembly inspection system provided by the .NET Framework to determine what types, interfaces, and methods are implemented within an assembly and how to access them in a late-bound fashion. Then, they cover accessing a web site and its content as well as programmatically determining web site configuration. Next, the authors explore some of the uses for XML. The authors then explore the connectivity options provided by the .NET Framework. They continue by exploring areas such as controlling access to types, encryption and decryption, random numbers, securely storing data, and using programmatic and declarative security. Then, the authors address the subject of using multiple threads of execution in a .NET program. Next, they discuss how C# allows you to step outside of the safe environment of managed code and write code that is considered unsafe by the .NET Framework. Finally, they help you how to determine locations of system resources, sending e-mail, and working with services.
This most excellent book is laid out with respect to the types of problems you will solve as you progress through your life as a C# programmer. More importantly, nearly every recipe contained in this book shows you how to solve a specific problem.
Rating: - This book saved my life - multiple times!
I actually bought the first edition of the book and I loved it so much that I am getting the second edition. There were several times that I needed a quick tip or trick on how to solve a problem and I found the answer here. Excellent use of your money.
Rating: - ONE OF THE BEST
This is the only book that even mentions "closures". I have all the C# 2005 books by "Troelsen", Wrox book, Microsoft's "Visual C# The Language", etc. and none of them talk about "closures".
This is a good book!!
Rating:  - Fine Recipes for "Well Done" Code
I use O'Reilly's cookbooks for two purposes; first to find out ways to do task at hand in a better way and second to explore the feature set a programming language has to offer. From a developer's mindset an annotated reference to a programming language may not be much helpful as compared to seeing code-in-action. I can read all about observer design pattern and the file system watcher class but having an code segment showing the implementation is priceless; so is "Replacing the stack and queue with their generic counter parts", spiffy eh?
The book is well done and authors have covered a whole lot in over 1100 pages including threading, unsafe code, XML, networking, delegates and regular expression recipes. My favorite recipe as a language features creep would be 9.15, "Using Closures in C#". (Closure is a function that refers to free variables in its lexical context).
Having said that, I'm missing things like SOAP extensions, serialization and small nitpick http request / response spoofing techniques in there which us developers do much often and hence the 4 stars. But if you are working with C# and want something more than a Google search (for instance knowing that secure strings won't work unless you have Win2K sp3 or higher), buying this book would be a wise thing to do.
Rating: - A Must Have C# Reference
Jay Hilyard and Stephen Teilhet have put together an outstanding collection of C# sample code. Newly revised and updated for C# 2.0 (it covers generics), the book is aimed at intermediate and advanced developers who wants a slew of sample code at their fingertips (all is downloadable, of course).
With 20 chapters, each consisting of between 10 and 30 "recipes," C# Cookbook extends to the level of detail not seen in tutorial books or standard references. This book provides completed, debugged code snippets ready to use in your applications. From simple tasks like "Determining if a File Exists" to more advanced ones like "Using Event Logs in Your Application," I expect to use this book extensively.
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