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Head First C#
Michael J. Ross writes "For computer programmers who do not have a solid understanding of object-oriented programming (OOP), learning the C# programming language can be rather challenging, even if they have experience with C or C++, which at least would give them a head start over non-C programmers. Any developer in this situation may well want to begin the learning process with a book that aims to teach both OOP and C# in as gentle a manner as possible, with plenty of patient explanations and illustrative diagrams — such as those found in the book Head First C# by Andrew Stellman and Jennifer Greene." Read below for the rest of Michael's review.
Head First C#
author
Andrew Stellman and Jennifer Greene
pages
778
publisher
O'Reilly Media
rating
7/10
reviewer
Michael J. Ross with Greg Hanson
ISBN
0596514824
summary
A heavily illustrated intro to object-oriented programming and C#
Published by O'Reilly Media on 26 November 2007, under the ISBNs 0596514824 and 978-0596514822, Head First C# is one in a series of "Brain-Friendly Guides." The introduction to this particular book discusses how the series attempts to present the concepts and technical material in a way that is far more intellectually compelling and memorable than the approach currently taken by most books. Some of their guiding principles include: making things visual, oftentimes using novel and even outlandish diagrams; using a casual and conversational style; engaging the reader through exercises and questions; and spicing up the discussions with humor.
On the book's Web page, readers will find links to download the book's sample code, participate in a forum dedicated to the book, register their copy of the book, read and submit any errata (of which there are many), and submit a reader review and read those of other readers.
The book's material is organized into 15 chapters, covering the topics in a progressive order that would probably be most helpful for the inexperienced developer: the advantages to programming visual applications in C# and the Microsoft Visual Studio integrated development environment (IDE); building a simple application to get started; the C# code produced by Visual Studio; basic C# language constructs; an introduction to objects and their components; data types, including arrays and references, and how C# allows you to work with them; protecting an object's data from unintended access, through encapsulation; extending classes through inheritance and subclasses; finding and using class interfaces, and the advantages of doing so; storing data in arrays, lists, and dictionaries; saving data in files and directories, as well as working with file streams and serialization; exceptions and debugging techniques; event handling; how to build complex applications; creating user interfaces with controls and graphics; object destruction and garbage collection; and connecting your C# programs to databases using LINQ. Interspersed throughout the book are three C# labs, which encourage the reader to put into practice their new programming skills, and thus better internalize the ideas of OOP and C# covered in the chapters preceding each lab. The lab applications comprise a racetrack simulator, a simple adventure game, and a re-creation of Space Invaders.
When they see this book for the first time, some prospective readers may be overwhelmed by its size, clocking in at 778 pages. Yet a sizable portion of those pages will read faster than those of the typical programming book, largely due to all of the diagrams and whitespace, which really help to break up the material and make it more digestible. However, what many might perceive to be a strength of the book, could be seen as a weakness by others. In fact, if the unnecessary diagrams and redundant material were to be removed from the book, it might end up only half its current size. But this may only be a deterrent for people who are carrying this book around, or who tend to be impatient and wish to get right to the point of any book they are reading, or who may be upset by the extra trees chopped down to double the number of pages (the book does not appear to have been printed on recycled paper).
Despite Head First C# being clearly intended as an introductory book to object-oriented programming in general, and C# in particular, the target audience especially may be frustrated by all of the errata and other sources of confusion that they will encounter. This is especially true when readers are doing their best to implement all of the sample applications, and struggling when, for instance, the code does not match the figure provided, or even the code on another page. For example, on page 50, the authors instruct the reader to drag a new PictureBox onto a new form, but readers will probably struggle to figure out where to drag it from. On page 105, the authors instruct the reader to flip back and look through the code, to fill in some class diagrams, but they don't clarify what code should be considered. Readers' comments on the online bookseller sites, list far more similar problems. In fact, that there are so many technical errors in this book is quite remarkable given that the technical review team comprised no fewer than 14 individuals! How could so many eyeballs miss so much?
The authors make a real point of reviewing material explained earlier, which generally is an effective approach for this type of book. But the repetition sometimes becomes excessive — enough to annoy even the greenest novice. For example, on page 445, we find the question: "Okay, I still don't get it. Sorry. Why are there so many different kinds of exceptions, again?"
On the other hand, the book has some real strengths, including those mentioned above for making the material more approachable. In particular, when the reader becomes accustomed to the visual style of presenting concepts, he or she will probably find it a faster approach to learning the ideas. Admittedly, veteran developers may still prefer the more narrative style of conventional programming books — especially when they encounter rather convoluted diagrams, such as that on page 292. Yet the illustrations are particularly potent for explaining interfaces, as done in Chapter 7.
Although the book will be of most value to newer programmers, experienced C# programmers will find topics of interest and perhaps even some language details and analysis that they have never previously encountered. For instance, some of the questions posed in the sections titled "there are no Dumb Questions," could be valuable — such as the comparison of File versus FileInfo, and when to use one over the other. Also, some of the utilities could help the reader for future development, such as the hex dumper program on page 432.
Sadly, Head First C# is weighed down by excessive redundancy and an errata-to-number-of-technical-reviewers ratio possibly unequaled by any other programming book. Yet, for any programmer new to object orientation and C#, this introductory book should prove an extremely comprehensible and reader-friendly resource.
Michael J. Ross is a Web developer, writer, and freelance editor. Contributor Greg Hanson is a C# programmer in Fort Collins, Colorado.
You can purchase Head First C# from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
On the book's Web page, readers will find links to download the book's sample code, participate in a forum dedicated to the book, register their copy of the book, read and submit any errata (of which there are many), and submit a reader review and read those of other readers.
The book's material is organized into 15 chapters, covering the topics in a progressive order that would probably be most helpful for the inexperienced developer: the advantages to programming visual applications in C# and the Microsoft Visual Studio integrated development environment (IDE); building a simple application to get started; the C# code produced by Visual Studio; basic C# language constructs; an introduction to objects and their components; data types, including arrays and references, and how C# allows you to work with them; protecting an object's data from unintended access, through encapsulation; extending classes through inheritance and subclasses; finding and using class interfaces, and the advantages of doing so; storing data in arrays, lists, and dictionaries; saving data in files and directories, as well as working with file streams and serialization; exceptions and debugging techniques; event handling; how to build complex applications; creating user interfaces with controls and graphics; object destruction and garbage collection; and connecting your C# programs to databases using LINQ. Interspersed throughout the book are three C# labs, which encourage the reader to put into practice their new programming skills, and thus better internalize the ideas of OOP and C# covered in the chapters preceding each lab. The lab applications comprise a racetrack simulator, a simple adventure game, and a re-creation of Space Invaders.
When they see this book for the first time, some prospective readers may be overwhelmed by its size, clocking in at 778 pages. Yet a sizable portion of those pages will read faster than those of the typical programming book, largely due to all of the diagrams and whitespace, which really help to break up the material and make it more digestible. However, what many might perceive to be a strength of the book, could be seen as a weakness by others. In fact, if the unnecessary diagrams and redundant material were to be removed from the book, it might end up only half its current size. But this may only be a deterrent for people who are carrying this book around, or who tend to be impatient and wish to get right to the point of any book they are reading, or who may be upset by the extra trees chopped down to double the number of pages (the book does not appear to have been printed on recycled paper).
Despite Head First C# being clearly intended as an introductory book to object-oriented programming in general, and C# in particular, the target audience especially may be frustrated by all of the errata and other sources of confusion that they will encounter. This is especially true when readers are doing their best to implement all of the sample applications, and struggling when, for instance, the code does not match the figure provided, or even the code on another page. For example, on page 50, the authors instruct the reader to drag a new PictureBox onto a new form, but readers will probably struggle to figure out where to drag it from. On page 105, the authors instruct the reader to flip back and look through the code, to fill in some class diagrams, but they don't clarify what code should be considered. Readers' comments on the online bookseller sites, list far more similar problems. In fact, that there are so many technical errors in this book is quite remarkable given that the technical review team comprised no fewer than 14 individuals! How could so many eyeballs miss so much?
The authors make a real point of reviewing material explained earlier, which generally is an effective approach for this type of book. But the repetition sometimes becomes excessive — enough to annoy even the greenest novice. For example, on page 445, we find the question: "Okay, I still don't get it. Sorry. Why are there so many different kinds of exceptions, again?"
On the other hand, the book has some real strengths, including those mentioned above for making the material more approachable. In particular, when the reader becomes accustomed to the visual style of presenting concepts, he or she will probably find it a faster approach to learning the ideas. Admittedly, veteran developers may still prefer the more narrative style of conventional programming books — especially when they encounter rather convoluted diagrams, such as that on page 292. Yet the illustrations are particularly potent for explaining interfaces, as done in Chapter 7.
Although the book will be of most value to newer programmers, experienced C# programmers will find topics of interest and perhaps even some language details and analysis that they have never previously encountered. For instance, some of the questions posed in the sections titled "there are no Dumb Questions," could be valuable — such as the comparison of File versus FileInfo, and when to use one over the other. Also, some of the utilities could help the reader for future development, such as the hex dumper program on page 432.
Sadly, Head First C# is weighed down by excessive redundancy and an errata-to-number-of-technical-reviewers ratio possibly unequaled by any other programming book. Yet, for any programmer new to object orientation and C#, this introductory book should prove an extremely comprehensible and reader-friendly resource.
Michael J. Ross is a Web developer, writer, and freelance editor. Contributor Greg Hanson is a C# programmer in Fort Collins, Colorado.
You can purchase Head First C# from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Ouch, my eyeball!
and C and C++ are all good languages, but I like C@!&$. It's the $h!7.
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
Granted, in this case I don't know the language C#, but in general I never really understood the Head First series, unless you really like printed introductions to languages. It would just make more sense to use free Internet resources to take your first steps in C#, and then get O'Reilly's e.g. C# 3.0 in a Nutshell as a good desk reference. Tech books are expensive, so it just doesn't make sense to invest in a primer that, after you finish with it, is a paperweight.
This book happens to be in our club's collection. Someone gave it to us, I think I found it redundant, and times. but then, most language-centered programming books are, to a certain extent. The first person in our group who read it went through and hi-lighted the page numbers with redundant material on them in blue, and hi-lighted the important pages in yellow. We were able to learn the language's syntax and nuances without reading through long-winded explanations about core concepts in OO or reviews of concepts just covered that way. Generally, I've always found the "language bible" books more helpful than these types of books. Does anyone share my sentiment?
I always loved this series of books. My professor recommended this book to me and it has helped me understand the language much better then any other book. It's interesting, funny, and insightful! A very different take on presenting material then other programing books. As a college student I have a hard time reading through dull school text books. Sometimes I don't even have to open or own a text book in order to get through the class. Although you don't need to buy a book anymore to learn a language with the huge resources the internet has to offer.
Yet, for any programmer new to object orientation...
How many can there be left these days?!? It's too easy to accumulate enough material for a good-sized book by starting from scratch and assuming the reader only knows how to read. Anyone could write a beginner's book on a computer language, without knowing the language too in depth, by just padding it with lots of remedial review material, that 99% of the readers don't need and don't want (to wade thru or pay for).
Attention zealots and haters: 00100 00100
I have read the OOP book in this series and I learned lots from it. I had done PHP in a very non-OOP way, so seeing this book, visually, and having many examples that I could relate to really helped me learn fast. It was easy to understand and easy to read. It was repetitive, but that was helpful for me. It also showed different methods/scenarios for using the same principle, helpful if you don't understand why/how a certain thing works - as seeing it from different angles can help understanding. The HeadFirst series is easy to read, yet can teach "advanced" concepts with relative ease. It was a great help for me learning OOP, and I will most likely but this C# book. It is sad to hear about all the errata, but the idea/message will get through. I was bummed I wanted to comment, because I also wanted to mod the parent up, oh well...now you all can enjoy my 10 cents.
Why must a well designed language be challenging?
I came at Java with some C plus some experience with a (proprietary) object oriented AI system. Java was trivially easy to pick up.
Have gnu, will travel.
Anonymous delegates came out in C# 2.0 (I think), and now we have lambda expressions. Umpteen ways to do delegates, and hardly anybody I know uses them and gets confused as heck when they see code I write that uses them. It's because F10 through the debugger "looks wierd" when you use them and people aren't used to seeing functions inside functions :-)
There's lots of stuff in C# that people never use.
Getting head first is the only way I'll program in C#!
In that post Linus seems to rail more against C++ and not OOP in general. Good design is good design regardless of a language. You can do OO like design in C or even ASM if you follow some rules.
OO is not a panacea, and just because some is OO doesn't make it a better design than non-OO. Each problem is unique.
"For computer programmers who do not have a solid understanding of object-oriented programming (OOP), learning the C# programming language can be rather challenging, even if they have experience with C or C++..."
If you are an experienced C++ developer who doesn't know enough about OOP to get by in C#, then I'd say you need more help than any mere book is going to provide.
For computer programmers who do not have a solid understanding of object-oriented programming (OOP), learning the C# programming language can be rather challenging, even if they have experience with C or C++
Well if you have "experience with C++" but no "solid understanding of OOP", there might already be a problem with your programming skills.
My first program:
Hell Segmentation fault
These 700+ page books on programming languages have too much bloat. Usually because they're full of recipes, plus a rehash of introductory programming material.
A really well written 50 page book on C# would be more useful. Especially if it came with a little summary card with the syntax. Code examples should be on an associated web site.
Of course, it's a Microsoft product, so it has "strategic complexity", not minimalism.
Please, elaborate as to how C# is "goo". What exactly do you mean? In the sense that you don't think the language is designed correctly? The runtime doesn't do it for you? The compiler? The type system? The platform itself?
Because "teh M$ goo" is not exactly enlightening, other than in the "I hate Microsoft" sense, which is your prerogative of course, but has nothing to do with the technical merits of their products. Especially when you
base your opinions on incorrect premises, since J++ (and J#) have nothing to do with the Sun complaints that brought the antitrust trial, which is what I assume you are referring to here.
Someone actually modded you up, which means that someone out there assumes you were not merely trolling (which is what it looks like to me, frankly). So a more detailed explanation of your claims would be double plus good.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
Head first was pretty good, but I still prefer my old standby - "Balls Deep Into C#"
It's M$ goo. It's a "we lost our J++ lawsuit so we gonna rewrap our crap" thingy..
Except it came out better this time.
Flamebait? One could argue not. Admittedly my experience with C# is very limited, but the first time I used it about five years ago, it struck me as as blatant a copy of Java someone could make without getting sued... but without the baggage and with a few nice improvements.
MS don't deserve *too* much credit for this, since (unlike Sun) they were able to benefit from five or six years of someone else's experience when creating their language, but with the ability to start with a clean slate and no backwards-compatibility baggage.
(Java inevitably accumulated a fair number of dead ends and improved reinventions of the same functionality over the years.)
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
So? Linux is a blatant copy of some other *nix.
Open Source software factories are constantly churning out copies of commercial software.
What's your point?
Can someone please explain what is wrong with C#? Something other than the fact it was created by Microsoft or simply that it is 'rubbish'.
What features of the language do you have a problem with? Ok, so there's no multiple inheritance. What else?
I've been doing ASP.NET via C# for a living for about 18 months now, and I've found it to be a perfectly servicable language. What's the problem with it?
I hate Microsoft's business ethics just as much as the next /.er. I'm still going to judge their products based on their own merits.
Technoli
MS don't deserve *too* much credit for this, since (unlike Sun) they were able to benefit from five or six years of someone else's experience when creating their language, but with the ability to start with a clean slate and no backwards-compatibility baggage.
... were able to, but didn't. The difference between C# vs Java was like C++ vs C. C++ and C# basically just add a lot of syntactix mumbo-jumbo onto a plain, reliable, usable language.
Mandatory generics, iterator yield, implicitly typed variables, 'object initializers', extension methods, embedding C++ and SQL directly into the code, operator overloading, implicit conversions, conditional compilation, etc -- none of those C# features actually helps you write better programs, and a lot of the so-called improvements in C# just make it a complicated mess.
The main problem in C++ and C# is that just looking at a statement you can never be sure what it does without poking around a lot of places (in Java a statement always says exactly what it does). A simple statement like "x.y = a[b]" can involve at least 6 different method calls. In Java is always means assign array element to a field.
Like C++, there are some people who will claim more features are better no matter how much more complicated (and generally the 'never enough features' crowd lives in Redmond). But at the rate C# is gaining kitchen sinks I think it will only be a few years until people switch back to Java because it doesn't have all that baggage.
It's very windows orientated, but that's about all I find wrong with it. Not a problem if you're never leaving Windows land - I find it an excellent language. If you are going outside of Windows, pick a more suitable tool for the job or use mono.
throw new NoSignatureException();
Mandatory generics, iterator yield, implicitly typed variables, 'object initializers', extension methods, embedding C++ and SQL directly into the code, operator overloading, implicit conversions, conditional compilation, etc -- none of those C# features actually helps you write better programs, and a lot of the so-called improvements in C# just make it a complicated mess.
I couldn't disagree more. Leaving aside your mischaracterisation of LINQ as "embedding SQL directly into the code" all of these features can *hugely* improve the readability of code.
Having used both Java and C# extensively, I know which language I prefer by a long chalk. Happily Java 7 will (eventually) gain at least some of the nice features of C#, but unfortunately not all - and it won't get rid of checked exceptions...
I now use Java professionally, but I'm constantly missing the features of C# which consistently allow me to write readable, reliable code.
Um, the features listed by my post's parent.
I don't have time to describe them all in detail here (or, more importantly, how they can improve readability of code) but here are a couple of URLs which give a bit more information:
http://csharpindepth.com/Articles/General/BluffersGuide2.aspx
http://csharpindepth.com/Articles/General/BluffersGuide3.aspx
Shameless plug: for a lot more detail, read C# in Depth... (there are sample chapters available at http://manning.com/skeet)
We all stand on the shoulders of giants.
Java was not revolutionary, it was evolutionary. Sun certainly had a lot of 'prior art' to guide them when they developed Java.
I'm sitting here wondering what you think made Java so special that it was, by your logic, in a class unto itself? It wasn't the first OO language, it wasn't the first platform-agnostic language, it didn't expose a new and wild syntax, etc.
Java was successful not because it was groundbreaking: It was successful because it took all the best innovations from the existing languages of the mid-90s and coupled them with a familiar syntax and a large and cruft-free library.
The framework ecosystem gave a further boost by giving C and C++ programmers a route to web development that didn't involve terrible pain (CGI) or the loss of self respect (VB Script).
I imagine Anders had similar goals for C#.
I agree. I don't even let our programmers use pointers in C, except for specific cases where the language is limited (returning multiple values, and char * for strings). If you dump pointers to structures and use more abstract coding, just accessing properties of objects through object references/handles, everything gets better.
In fact, you can also get waaay faster.
Beer is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy.
Well, if you're afraid of object orientation, there isn't much we can do for you, nor are you the target audience, but you really should try to modern-up your skillset if you code for a living. Once I "got it" i found I didn't want to go back to procedural coding at all.
Secondly, while there are times when points might be nice, the tradeoff (basically, you lose all the safety that a VM gives you) is unacceptable. In C#, you can do method pointers using delegates or reflection (another scary OO concept), and use pinned memory and marshalling for reading data into structs, without sacrificing safety. That covers 95% of what you'd want to do with pointers (The other 5% would be arrays of pointers, simply because an array of delegates would just be too slow in many such situations).
Jeremy
-- none of those C# features actually helps you write better programs, and a lot of the so-called improvements in C# just make it a complicated mess.
I couldn't disagree more. Leaving aside your mischaracterisation of LINQ as "embedding SQL directly into the code" all of these features can *hugely* improve the readability of code.
...
I now use Java professionally, but I'm constantly missing the features of C# which consistently allow me to write readable, reliable code.
That's why I like perl. All those features make for more readable code.
> but you really should try to modern-up your skillset if you code for a living
Modern? Simula67 introduced an implementation of OO with objects, classes and inheritance in... guess what year?
OO should only be one paradigm in the programmer's toolkit; applying it to all problems is unwise. Procedural, OO, AO, DO, functional, logic; they're all equally valid across an unbounded problem space.
This is a silly place to post a review about a C# book. Most of the readers here are way too narrow minded to post any reasonable discussion about the book (or anything involving M$).
The posts here pretty much prove my point. It's actualy kind of sad - it's obvious some of these people are fairly bright, yet they can't seem to see past their 'elitism' BS - which is anything but.
The review itself should probably be marked 'troll'.
I don't particularly like microsoft - but yep, I do code for a living in C# after having done so in Delphi (way back in delphi 1). And sorry guys, but it's pretty damn cool - the database access stuff needs work but in general, it's a very nice language to work with (and the IDE rocks). And yeah, well, as long as windows land is 90% of the world, that's where I'll be coding. Call me back when linux manages to get some desktop penetration worth talking about.
EK