Product Description

“Based on my own experience, I can safely say that every .NET developer who reads this will have at least one ‘aha’ moment and will be a better developer for it.”

–From the Foreword by Don Box

 

The popular C# programming language combines the high productivity of rapid application development languages with the raw power of C and C++. Now, C# 3.0 adds functional programming techniques and LINQ, Language INtegrated Query. The C# Programming Language, Third Edition, is the authoritative and annotated technical reference for C# 3.0.

 

Written by Anders Hejlsberg, the language’s architect, and his colleagues, Mads Torgersen, Scott Wiltamuth, and Peter Golde, this volume has been completely updated and reorganized for C# 3.0. The book provides the complete specification of the language, along with descriptions, reference materials, code samples, and annotations from nine prominent C# gurus.

 

The many annotations–a new feature in this edition–bring a depth and breadth of understanding rarely found in any programming book. As the main text of the book introduces the concepts of the C# language, cogent annotations explain why they are important, how they are used, how they relate to other languages, and even how they evolved.

 

This book is the definitive, must-have reference for any developer who wants to understand C#.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #243928 in Books
• Published on: 2008-10-18
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 784 pages

From the Back Cover
C# is a simple, modern, object-oriented, and type-safe programming language that combines the high productivity of rapid application development languages with the raw power of C and C++. Written by the language's architect and design team members, The C# Programming Language is the definitive technical reference for C#. Moving beyond the online documentation, the book provides the complete specification of the language along with descriptions, reference materials, and code samples from the C# design team.

The first part of the book opens with an introduction to the language to bring readers quickly up to speed on the concepts of C#. Next follows a detailed and complete technical specification of the C# 1.0 language, as delivered in Visual Studio .NET 2002 and 2003. Topics covered include Lexical Structure, Types, Variables, Conversions, Expressions, Statements, Namespaces, Exceptions, Attributes, and Unsafe Code.

The second part of the book provides an introduction to and technical specification of the four major new features of C# 2.0: Generics, Anonymous Methods, Iterators, and Partial Types.

Reference tabs and an exhaustive print index allow readers to easily navigate the text and quickly find the topics that interest them most. An enhanced online index allows readers to quickly and easily search the entire text for specific topics.

With the recent acceptance of C# as a standard by both the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and ECMA, understanding the C# specification has become critical. The C# Programming Language is the definitive reference for programmers who want to acquire an in-depth knowledge of C#.

0321154916B10142003

About the Author

Anders Hejlsberg is a programming legend. He is the architect of the C# language and a Microsoft Technical Fellow. He joined Microsoft in 1996, following a 13-year career at Borland, where he was the chief architect of Delphi and Turbo Pascal.

 

Mads Torgersen is a senior program manager at Microsoft. As the program manager for the C# language, he runs the C# language design meetings and maintains the C# language specification. Prior to joining Microsoft in 2005, Mads was an associate professor at the University of Aarhus, teaching and researching object-oriented programming languages. There, he led the group that designed and implemented generic wildcards for the Java Programming Language.

 

Scott Wiltamuth is partner program manager for Visual Studio. While at Microsoft, he has worked on a wide range of developer-oriented projects, including Visual Basic, VBScript, JScript, Visual J++, and Visual C#. Scott is one of the designers of the C# language, and holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in computer science from Stanford University.

 

Before leaving Microsoft, Peter Golde served as the lead developer of Microsoft’s C# compiler. As the primary Microsoft representative on the ECMA committee that standardized C#, he led the implementation of the compiler and worked on the language design.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The C# project started almost ten years ago, in December 1998, with the goal of creating a simple, modern, object-oriented, and type-safe programming language for the new and yet-to-be-named .NET platform. Since then, C# has come a long way. The language is now in use by more than one million programmers, and it has been released in three versions, each of which added several major new features.

This book, too, is in its third edition. A complete technical specification of the C# programming language, the third edition differs in several ways from the first two. Most notably, of course, it has been updated to cover all the new features of C# 3.0, including object and collection initializers, anonymous types, lambda expressions, query expressions, and partial methods. Most of these features are motivated by support for a more functional and declarative style of programming and, in particular, for Language Integrated Query (LINQ), which offers a unified approach to data querying across different kinds of data sources. LINQ, in turn, builds heavily on some of the features that were introduced in C# 2.0, including generics, iterators, and partial types.

Another change in the third edition is that the specification has been thoroughly reorganized. In the second edition of this book, the features introduced in C# 2.0 were described separately from the original C# 1.0 features. With a third helping of new features, this approach did not scale—the utility of the book would be impaired by the reader’s need to correlate information from three different parts. Instead, the material is now organized by topic, with features from all three language versions presented together in an integrated manner.

A final but important departure from earlier editions is the inclusion of annotations in the text. We are very fortunate to be able to provide insightful guidance, background, and perspective from some of the world’s leading experts in C# and .NET in the form of annotations throughout the book. We are very happy to see the annotations complement the core material and help the C# features spring to life.

Many people have been involved in the creation of the C# language. The language design team for C# 1.0 consisted of Anders Hejlsberg, Scott Wiltamuth, Peter Golde, Peter Sollich, and Eric Gunnerson. For C# 2.0, the language design team consisted of Anders Hejlsberg, Peter Golde, Peter Hallam, Shon Katzenberger, Todd Proebsting, and Anson Horton. Furthermore, the design and implementation of generics in C# and the .NET Common Language Runtime are based on the “Gyro” prototype built by Don Syme and Andrew Kennedy of Microsoft Research. C# 3.0 was designed by Anders Hejlsberg, Peter Hallam, Shon Katzenberger, Dinesh Kulkarni, Erik Meijer, Mads Torgersen, and Matt Warren.

It is impossible to acknowledge the many people who have influenced the design of C#, but we are nonetheless grateful to all of them. Nothing good gets designed in a vacuum, and the constant feedback we receive from our large and enthusiastic community of developers is invaluable.

C# has been, and continues to be, one of the most challenging and exciting projects on which we’ve worked. We hope you enjoy using C# as much as we enjoyed creating it.

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Customer Reviews

So what is this really?
I think several of the previous reviews missed the gist of what this book is. It isn't "plagiarized", nor is it "classic" material - it simply IS a reprint of the current state of the Microsoft C# Language Specification in a snazzy new hard cover, thats all. You can download the C# Language Specification from the MSDN site if you want to take a look at precisely how the content of this book is organized. Microsoft Press first published the C# Language Specification back in 2001 based on the beta content. This is apparently just the current state of the specs, nothing fancy. Many of the examples used here are the same old examples used with the beta edition specs. This is pure techie reference material. Nothing more, nothing less.

So I gave it 3 stars. How do you rate a language specification document? It is what it is. Marketing hype about "destined to be a classic" (ya da ya da) is disingenuous, but charges of plagiarism are ill-considered also: its simply the same old spec document that Hejlsberg, et al, have been working on for the past four years. Just updated.

So if you want a nicely bound edition of the current spec buy the book...

Great reference, but NOT a programming tutorial
I've always held as a personal dictum that the best way to get complete, irrefutable information on something is to go straight to the source. And the new title "The C# Programming Language", co-authored by Anders Heljsberg, a Microsoft distinguished engineer and the creator of the C# language, is such a source.

To paraphrase my favorite quote from the Matrix series, "He IS the architect."

However, the key element to understanding why you should get this book is understanding what it is...and perhaps more importantly, what it is not. The main focus of the book is to provide centralized documentation for the C# language specification. It's not intended to be a comprehensive tutorial to C# development; it's a programmer's reference, profiling the internal mechanics behind the world's most rapidly-adopted programming language.

So, it's not a book where developers can copy out code, find out how to better design classes, or lookup methods and properties within the .NET Framework - it's a valuable reference guide for the experienced developer. As such, I find it to be a fantastic resource for upper-level computer science students (a market Addison-Wesley very adeptly serves anyway), or those professional developers moving over from other languages and/or platforms, and I highly recommend it to those who would make buying decisions for such classes.

People looking to buy it as a programming guide will be disappointed, I'm sad to say, as it's simply not that type of book. This would be akin to be getting lost trying to read the U.S. Constitution to find out how to create a law. It's applicable...but not directly.

However, I enjoyed reading it, for the academic and conceptual benefits it provided. And yes, I did learn a lot, most of which I didn't realize prior. A very, very helpful collection of appendices make this book a great addition to any development team's library. A hale and hearty section is also dedicated to introducing to the new features inherent to C# 2.0 - generics, anonymous methods, iterators, and partial classes.

In my opinion, the book's one major flaw is the misnomer is gives off to the buyer, which unfairly at this point in the .NET game, implies the de facto expectation for a self-help book on learning various aspects of Microsoft development. The true purpose of the book could have been better promoted with the inclusion of a subtitle, something like "The C# Programming Language - An Architect's Guide to the Specification", or something making the true purpose a bit more obvious.

That having been said, the book is a fantastic deal, priced cheap (a great bargain at US$29.95), so buy it if you're an experienced developer who's curious. You'll grow as a developer by increasing your own programming acumen by becoming more intimately familiar with how the C# language does what it does in the background.

The title is beautifully bound, being a hardcover book with one of those little page-placeholder ribbon thingys, the name of which I obviously don't know, but a nice touch nonetheless.

I'm not sure how I should rank this book, as it's a specification, and therefore inherently comprehensive, and likewise subject to standardization prior to publication. But, I did get a lot out of it, so that says something.

Great book, but...
All the raves about this book are correct, but Microsoft rushed it to press too early. It goes up to chapter 23, but Microsoft has already posted chapters 24 and 25 on their web site. Also, some of the material is inaccurate due to Microsoft changing their mind about the 2.0 implementation.