Murach’s C# 2005 is one of many books I’ve picked up since .NET 2.0/VS2005 went gold last November. I have to say, I really love the layout of Murach’s line of books. The book would make an ideal textbook for a training class, but outside of a training environment it is still a great learning tool. In addition to great technical material, each chapter also includes practice exercises. Joe Stagnerrecently blogged about the book, too, saying:

But UNLIKE a lot of textbooks, it is easy to read (and therefore learn from), it’s up-to-date, including detailed coverage of the latest C# 2.0 language constructs, and it has a commercial programming feel so it’s goal is not simply to provide academic coverage of the programming language, but rather how to write good code with C#

Wanna learn C# ? Wanna learn more about C#? Want a great desk reference for C#?

Buying this book should be a no-brainer !

Rather than going into great detail myself, I think it’s pretty safe for me to just “me too” Joe’s remarks. You can read more about the book on Amazon.comor on Murach’s web site, where you can also purchase the book online. One feature of Murach’s line of books that I really like is their “paired pages” layout. Whenever you’re on a particular page, the left page contains explanatory text, while the right side shows sample code, figures, etc. This makes it very easy for you to read on the left page and refer to things on the right side, and completely avoids the issue most technical books (and many magazines) have of making you flip several pages to find the code listing or figure references in a particular bit of text. Another nice feature of this book is that it tries, as Joe mentions above, to be on-target for professionals. For example, when using sample applications to make points about C# language features, objects like customers and orders are used rather than shapes or animals.

Finally, this book’s coverage, layout, and organization make it well-suited as a desktop reference, not just as a tutorial. I’d certainly recommend it, but more than that, if you already have a bunch of C# books but are looking for another topic, I would recommend you try one of Murach’s titles. They have a small but growing selection of Microsoft development books, all of which (as far as I know) are laid out similarly to this one. Check them out.