Rating:  - The best of all CLRs
I have read Wrox Visual C# Professional 2005, C# Programming from O'Relly and finally I've got this one. That's what I was looking for. You can exactly feel a professional trainer. Book written with expection that you are going to have a specific questions, and it offers proper answers without falling into some abstractions as some other books do. Excellent book.
Rating: - If Microsoft .NET Was a Board Game, This Would be the Start Square
At the heart of Microsoft .NET is the CLR. .NET development is primarily about directing the CLR. But how can you do that if you don't really know what the CLR is or what it can do?
Most .NET programming books are language centric. The capabilities of the CLR are implied based on the description of the language. Jeffery Richter's book is CLR centric. It describes what the CLR can do and how it does it. C# is used to provide practical examples of how to direct the CLR.
The book clearly and efficiently presents vital information that you'd spends days trying to discover by either pouring over MSDN or writing test applications. Highlights include:
* how source code is converted to IL, stored, managed, and executed
* a description of the code metadata available at run time and how it is used
* how data is classified, organized, and managed
* a description of the members that make up a class (fields, methods, etc.)
* how to handle exceptions
* how garbage collection works
* how reflection works
* how to write multi-threaded applications
Throughout the book there are many warnings about pitfalls and gotchas. The execution efficiency of different approaches is explained for many situations.
I urge any .NET developer who doesn't really understand the CLR to read this book.
Rating: - A must-read
If you're this kind of .NET developer who understood that the more you know about the CLR the better your code will be, this book is a MUST-READ. You'll find information available nowhere else at almost every page.
I really enjoyed the numerous digressions about reasons why MS engineers designed the CLR and the Framework the way it is. For example you'll find answers to tricky questions such as:
Why the C# compiler uses a callvirt IL instruction (and not a call IL instruction) when calling a non-virtual instance method?
What are the rare cases when you should consider using the Explicit Interface Method Implementation? (EIMI)
How the underlying processor architecture and volatile memory access are related in the CLR sphere?
How .NET framework classes with many events such as System.Windows.Forms.Control are designed to save memory at runtime?
And many many many more.
I also liked the fact that J.Richter is one of the very few who has enough knowledge on the subject to criticize some design choices made by MS. Often some alternatives for future .NET releases are proposed.
Clearly, if you are a beginner this is not the first .NET book you should read. But if your goal is to become a.NET expert, then know that you'll end up by reading this book.
Rating: - Invaluable...A must have...
I have been through the book several times already and I haven't found much to not like. Chapters 23 and 24 (Threading and Asynchronous Programming) alone are worth the price of the book. (no one gets threading issues like Jeffrey Richter)
I read a lot of technical books. There are few to which I can say I enjoyed reading. Jeffrey Richter's new opus is one of them. Even at 600+ pages, it is an easy read with a ton of very important information.
Rating: - Enlightening!
Similar to his previous book applied .net framework programming but much more detailed yet easy to read and understand. Thoroughly enjoying it and also like the little sidenotes on some of his personal opinions on CLR and C#.
|
