Rating:  - Decent
Has a decent sample site, at leat you know you are learning from someone who has written a real world application.
Rating: - Great Book For Programmers!
First, this book is not aimed at the absolute beginner programmer, and it is not an exhaustive reference for asp.net 2.0 or C#. However, if you are an intermediate level web programmer with a good C# background, this book will be a nice addition to your library. Instead of writing alot of details about the book, I'd like to highlight areas that I found to be most helpful for me.
As the subtitle suggests (Problem-Design-Solution), this book very carefully and logically provides a practical approach to web development with asp.net 2.0. In the beginning module, the chapter "Planning an Architecture" was particularly helpful for me. Here, Marco "lays the groundwork for the rest of the book." From this chapter, I learned how to build a solid architectural foundation for an entire web site project. The chapter guides you through the planning process by helping you tackle important considerations such as: "Designing a Layered Infrastructure" (n-tiered design), "Choosing a Data Store", "Designing the Data Access Layer" (DataSet or Custom Entities, etc), "Designing the business logic layer", and User Interface considerations (presentation layer). This chapter makes you step back, take a deep breath, and plan out the project. So often programmers (me included) fail to plan appropriately for a given project. Instead we jump in head first to finish quickly only to find out that our efforts in post-production will far out-weight our production efforts.
Lastly, this book covers all sorts of web site projects. As I said before, its not an exhaustive reference for asp.net or C#, but its a great "go to" book when you need to be steered in the right direction. It certainly helps you ask the right questions. Anyone in web development professionally, in my opinion, should have this book. Thanks Marco.
Rating:  - Could have found a tutorial online...
Though reasonably well written it is really just a tutorial that I could have found as easily online. Note quite what I had hoped for in a book on Problem, Design and programming. I had hoped for better detail on the design approaches and methodologies than were gotten here.
In short, not a book that I expect to open a lot if ever again.
Rating: - Overall, the reviews may be good, but...
Like several others, I bought this book because of the glowing reveiws. I simply could not be more disappointed.
The book is not at all easy to follow, laden with errors, and backwardly stated sequences -- you are told to do something, and then told, after you do it, to do something else, first. Just think if this sort of instruction was all you had were you attempting to defuse an explosive device: "Now, cut the blue wire. You should, first, cut the red one, or the device will blow up in your face." Not the best way to sequence things, is it, as you are likely to be proceeding one step at a time.
The code, as presented in the book, is incomplete, despite the author's having said that you can, if you wish, type the code yourself (which I prefer to do for learning purposes) rather than simply downloading it. Additionally, the reader is told to employ menus in Visual Studio to access selections that simply are not there.
Worst of all, the book presupposes a level of expertise on the part of the reader such that it comes across in actuality as one pro talking to and offering advanced-level suggestions to another pro. If, however, you do not as yet inhabit so lofty a level, you should know that the book presupposes that you already know and know well what you bought the book to learn.
The book is extremely verbose; seemingly, for every line of coding presented, there is page upon page of novel-like reading. This may work for some; others, however, prefer a straight-forward, concise, clear and hands-on approach. There is no teacher like experience, and material presented in a wordy, essay-like fashion does not readily invite follow-along, learn-as-you-do instruction, which is the most effective way to acquire a skill.
To those who found the book so favorable, I offer congratulations for having discovered a volume of information that has, according to their reviews, worked so well for them. I, however, simply do not happen to fall into that category, wish though I may I did, and am constrained rejoin those who must go on wishing that once, just once, a good, clear, concise, reasonably error-free and genuinely instructive book on C# & ASP.NET would make it to the market place. Until then, disappointment and frustration of the sort engendered by this book and the all too many like it will continue to make learning web programming much more difficult and time-consuming than it must be.
Rating:  - It blew me away
The author warnes that the book is not for beginner programmers or even pros who do not have ASP.Net experience. Unfortunately for me it was true - he is operating with subjects and concepts well beyond my level. Also the book is in [...] and I do my tinkering in [...]. But I open the book time to time to read some passages that always leave me in awe of this kind of expertise.
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