Rating:  - Not for beginners
I'm am new to ASP.NET and figured this book would help give me a good start in developing my own pages.
Although it has helped me start the foundation to ASP.NET I find myself forced to look to other resources for answers to my questions. I found this book full of errors and poor explainations. If you are reading this don't buy it if you don't know how to program.
Rating:  - Tutorial-Based Introduction to ASP.NET
I am a C++/UNIX developer and this is my first .NET book. It teaches by example and gives broad coverage of several topics which provide the basis for developing two full featured web applications.
The approach is to teach individual topics in daily lessons and then at the end of each week, use the newly aquired skills to "flesh out" a Banking web site.
It was important for me to have working examples as a context to learn new skills, but the book is light on theory and has opened quite a few questions that I am now studying (Web Services and Remoting in particular) However, certain areas like ADO.NET, I felt gave adequate coverage and I do not feel compelled to study further.
I wish the book had more information on the .NET framework.
This is a good primer to ASP.NET and .NET development with a broad range of coverage and good examples, but is not a great reference. It is a little too basic (just a little. . ) for an experienced developer, but the broad range of coverage and working exmaples make the book worthwhile. Few of the "reference style" .NET books provide more than short code snippets, while this ties everything together in useful applications. I would recommend this book to those who are new to Web Development and .NET but caution that this will not be the last .NET book you buy.
Rating: - Code doesn't work!!
As I'm going through this book, I notice that a lot of the code doesn't work as it is written in the book. I also was unable to download the code from their website and get it to work. I am constantly getting a host of errors though I've typed the code perfectly from the book. I find that the help file in Visual Studio.NET provides me with working code that has subtle differences from the book.
Rating: - Great book if you have solid programming experience
Walter Nicolau's words mirror my thoughts exactly. I couldnt say it better than him. For the totally uninitiated this book is going to be frustrating, you will need at least a thorough understanding of one programming language( in order to comprehend the logic) and although a basic html is enough. I would say if you really want to master this book in 21 days, strong html experience is needed plus experience in script programming. Bottom line, I agree this book has too ambitious agenda, it would be better renamed "Learn ASP.NET in 21 days for ASP programmers" because it goes into detail about what is difference between ASP.NET and ASp, plus the author has background in ASP previously.
I had only been traversing this book for 6 days, and was disappointed by the 6th day answer key. The calculator source code that is given was really buggy, to me this is inexcusible. Don't get me wrong, the exercises are great and challenging, understanding them would indeed help in reinforcing the knowledge that you have gained in each chapter. However the 6th day exercise would really take about 2-8 hrs programming time (4 for me) to get it done from scratch. Day by day the exercises in the book is getting more and more complex, so I figured I would just go through the answer key and learn from there. However, I was so disappointed finding that the answer code is way less correct than mine :o . Looks like this book was released in a rush ;) , I was even more disappointed that there's no errata correcting this error.
Bottom line, if you are confident about your programming skills and not a beginner than this book will still be a great value to you. If you are a beginner, who has only made your own personal homepage (by notepad/homesite, not using frontpage or MS Word), then I wouldnt recommend this book for you.
Rating:  - Teach Yourself ASP.Net with Payne
From the introduction: "Previous programming is not required, but will help immensely" (page 1). Correction: programming experience IS required and will indeed help immensely. "The only must-have prerequisites are a basic knowledge of HTML and some familiarity with your operating system" (page 2). Correction: In order to be able to follow the examples, you need to be familiar with C#, VB, and XML programming languages and understand what .NET delivers and how to install its components on your machine because you will need all these to run your examples, exercises, and projects.
Having said this, I move to state that the master ASP in 21 days does not look like a realistic goal. In fact, if you are a beginner, chances are that by day three you will be thoroughly confused (and maybe even frustrated).
According to my view, the main weakness of this book lies in its overly ambitious scope. Although clearly and coherently written, despite its 900 plus pages, Teach Yourself ASP.Net... barely covers the basics and lets you hanging on at topics that need substantial coverage, for example: web forms, user controls, caching, and business objects, to name a few. It does start on an ambitious note with an impressive agenda but the author soon loses touch with his audience and starts using advanced notions without properly explaining their purpose or entangles himself in some awkward phrases: "The if statement on line 18 checks the CheckBox control's Checked property to determine if the check box is checked" (page 163). The learning process is also slowed down by lack of practicality; after going through ten listings where the "Hello World" or "Hello There" outputs are used, one starts to get a little bored. In all fairness though, the book does contain a few interesting projects, which add to its stronger features.
Another feature that I disagreed with was the usage of VB and C# languages. The author starts by listing examples using both languages but soon abandons C# almost completely in favor of VB.
This is clearly not a book for beginners and one absolutely needs to complement the reading with other books on the subject. As far as the 21 one days goal is concerned, I think that although not incorrect, it is deceiving. It depends on how many hours a day one can set aside for study. If the answer is 24, then, yes, the target is achievable.
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