John Hasson

The book starts out by purporting not to be a reference book. I suppose that is accurate, thus the title “Cookbook” and not C# Reference book. However the more you see of the book, the more you can’t help but see it as anything but a reference book.

It is a different sort of reference book. If you need to look something up quickly, the index will be a better resource then the table of contents. It is really the best of both worlds. If you are looking for something to “sharpen your saw,” just open the book to a subject using the table of contents. If you need an answer fast, then jump to the back and follow standard procedure.

As usual, the text and code examples are top notch (it is an O’REILLY book after all — what would you expect?). There are times when you have 20+pages of code in the book giving you the feeling that they are padding the book (be glad you can download the code samples from the website). There is also the appeal it has for just sitting down and picking a few subjects on C#/.NET and reading over their sample problems and suggested solutions.

The big question you have is, “Is this book for me?” That depends. If your office doesn’t have Internet access or you just prefer a book over a simple google search (this it not an uncommon thing) then this book is definitely for you. If you usually do everything on-line (code snippets, examples and such) then you can survive without this cookbook. I’ll be returning my copy in hope that someone else at the Denver User Group will have more use for it.

I can’t help but shake that this is essentially a reference book (despite what the introduction says). A good reference book, but still a reference book.

Tags: Tech //