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Essential .NET, Volume I
After chapter one's history of the evolution from COM to the CLR, the book takes a bottom-up approach to the CLR, starting with a deep and detailed six chapter look into the core elements of the platform. Chapter two begins with assemblies, the programmatic units in the CLR, and the implications of their construction. We learn how they are versioned, loaded and built, and why therefore they may be written in as many .NET languages as required. There's real depth to the material here -- you really do touch the bottom of the abyss, so to speak -- but it's countered with occasional levity that keeps this a readable book instead of a dense reference manual. The same is true of all the text. To wit, there's even some irony; "To allow old dogs to avoid learning new tricks, there is finalization," he declares in the next section on the Common Type System.
It's here that we discover how different types and interfaces are distinguished from themselves and from one another, and how their variations and relationships are kept separate by the CLR. It's refreshing to note that the proverbial big picture is never very far away from the commentary. After taking time to explore the avenues for types and interfaces, Box notes that types themselves aren't very interesting until you start working with instances of those types, and we're off again working through another thirty pages on how object instances preserve a sense of identity, how they are cast into other types and how they incorporate themselves into the concepts of reflection and metadata. Only then do we look at the actual lifecycle of an object, its creation, modification and disposal. The attention to detail is great, and there's little ambiguity in the text, but with that comes a slowness to this section that may leave readers frustrated.
One recurring theme of the book is the idea that while there is a very proper way and set of rules for doing things, there will always be circumstances in application development which call for exceptions to be made to those rules and made possible by .NET. This is true at a small scale and, as chapters six and seven prove, at a large one too, covering as they do how the CLR calls and runs methods first on a single machine and then over a wire. How does the runtime treat methods called explicitly, implicitly through a delegate, asynchronously, or as a combination of the three? How do remote calls and types bridge whatever gaps they must cross and activate the remote objects and methods they're targeting? The answers are here.
Essential .NET reflects Box's pride in .NET and also his slight dissatisfaction with it. You can sense that while he knows .NET version 1 is an improvement over COM, it's not as good as it could be and things are still be done in v2 and beyond. Chapter eight's look at AppDomains and in particular its discourse on threading within and through AppDomains is a good example of this. Meanwhile, we finally come full circle in our investigation of the CLR, seeing how the assemblies we built in Chapter 2 are resolved and executed within AppDomains. Exceptions to rules being included, we also see how objects references are marshaled across AppDomains for inter-application communication if this is required.
The last two chapters look at wider topics around the CLR in as much detail as they can for topics which have entire books dedicated to just them. Chapter nine covers code-access security and chapter ten topics which are not of the CLR but which be can be addressed from within a .NET application: explicit memory management, using p/invoke to import COM methods from DLLs and so on. Both are concisely written and to the point, but unsurprisingly leave you feeling like there's more to these topics than is covered here. Chapter nine is a great and clear introduction to code-level security, for example, but you'll get a lot more out of Michael Howard's book, Writing Secure Code if you want to know more.
Essential .NET isn't an easy read but everyone should try to read it at least once. Focusing on the CLR itself and how it deals with the components of an application means that it truly is aimed at the community of .NET developers as a whole (including those building and using alternate implementations of the CLR). The provided code examples are expressed in C#, but this is incidental, really, and won't stop VB.NET, J# or any other developers getting a great deal out of this book.
This is a dense, complex volume that requires a fair amount of effort to understand and use, and to some extent this may put people off. On the other hand, it is so packed with great nuggets of information that they may be inspired to keep reading. Of course, there is the question of whether this book will actually improve your .NET development skills, but in riposte, you can honestly say that no volume details the CLR and its potential so well, and that this alone is worth the book's cover price.
You can purchase Essential .NET, Volume One from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Isn't that an oxymoron?
(Thank God I got that joke out of the way.)
Bash script for FP whores
Get it? C-sharp? Because he uses knives...and they have to be sharp?
The important thing is that I am happy with me.
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
I am afraid that it's completely outside my realm of interest. May I suggest that Slashdot post less about this ".NET" in the future, and more about haunted Mexican food?
That is all.
Donald Knuth will be writing THE definitive book on bytecode languages in TAOCP volumes 11-12. I don't see any reason to dick around with some amateur's feeble attempt.
Their blogs may be the only clue to the higher level of thinking that they operate at
Well let's not get delusions of grandeur here...
Some of us had no idea CLR was going to replace COM. We all wanted COM to die a horrible death and now you've ruined the surprise. On top of that, you give away the fact that .NET is the first of a series. I suspect we won't get a real ending, but a cliffhanger that guarantees we show up for the sequel.
Following volumes to cover Microsoft service pack updates and bug fixes.
.NET, Volume XXIX - What NOT to do...."
"Essential
Informatus Technologicus
CLS? That's easy.
At least this review didn't give away the ending.
- Despite popular opinion, I am not perfect.
It *is* cross platform! ... it runs on more than one release of Windows ...
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
and emiting the most obnoxious of smells.
very few Slashdot submitters or editors show basic competance
That would be competence.
Linus Torvalds can lick Steve Ballmer's scrotum!
Does he have to sign an SCO-like Non-Disclosure Agreement to do it?
Table-ized A.I.
Hmmm, Essential
Just kidding...
So .Net is the new coke for this generation? ;p
-- vranash