Head First C# (Brain-Friendly Guides) | 
 enlarge | Authors: Andrew Stellman, Jennifer Greene
Publisher: O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Category: Book
List Price: $49.99
Buy New: $27.43
You Save: $22.56 (45%)
New (37) Used (10) from $24.75
Rating:  53 reviews
Sales Rank: 11022
Format: Illustrated
Media: Paperback
Pages: 778
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3.7
Dimensions (in): 9 x 8 x 2.2
ISBN: 0596514824
Dewey Decimal Number: 005.133
EAN: 9780596514822
Publication Date: November 26, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: All orders ship same business day via standard shipping (USPS Media Mail) if received by 1 PM CST.
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Product Description
Do you want to learn C#? Programmers around the world have learned that C# lets them design great-looking programs and build them fast. With C#, you ve got a powerful programming language and a valuable tool at your fingertips. And with the Visual Studio IDE, you ll never have to spend hours writing obscure code just to get a button working. C#, Visual Studio and .NET take care of the grunt-work, and let you focus on the interesting parts of getting your programs written. Sound appealing?
Unlike other C# books, which just show you examples and expect you to just memorize them and move on, Head First C# gets you writing code from the beginning. You're given the tools you need, and then you're guided through fun and engaging programming projects. You'll build programs to play a card game, explore a house, and help lazy programmers manage their sick day excuses. But it's not all fun and games: you'll build business applications too, like a contact database and a program to help a party planner estimate her dinner parties. You'll build a dungeon role-playing game and a fully animated, colorful simulation of a beehive. And by the end of the book, you'll build a fast-paced, full-featured retro Invaders arcade game.
Make no mistake: by the time you're done with Head First C#, you'll be able to build full-scale, complex, and highly visual programs. And you'll have all of the C# tools you need to tackle almost any programming problem that comes your way.
Head First C# is built for your brain, using the revolutionary approach that was pioneered by the highly acclaimed and popular Head First series. You'll never get that bored, "eyes glazed over" feeling from Head First C#, because it guides you through one challenging project after another until, by the end of the book, you're a C# rock star!
Here's what you'll learn: - Core C# programming concepts
- How to use the Visual Studio 2008 IDE to build, debug and run your programs
- Important .NET 3.5 features, including generic collections, Windows forms, GDI+ graphics, streams, serialization and more
- Using object oriented programming concepts to help you build well-designed programs
- How to build robust applications with good error handling
- The latest C# 3.0 features, including LINQ, object and collection initializers, automatic properties, extension methods and more
Throughout the book, you'll confront and conquer advanced C# concepts. Some of the most mysterious ideas are demystified and explained with clear examples: how Unicode works, events and delegates, references versus value types, the stack versus the heap, what's really going on with garbage collection, and more.
Thousands of readers have learned C# using this innovative book, including: - Beginning programmers who want to learn programming from the ground up
- More advanced programmers who are proficient in another language (like Visual Basic, Java, SQL, FoxPro) and want to add C# to their toolbox
- Programmers who understand basic C# syntax, but are still looking to get a handle on how objects work
- Anyone who's tried to learn C#, but had to deal with books full of dull examples and nothing but boring console applications
- Lots of people who just want to learn how to build cool games!
Head First C# is built to work with any version of Visual Studio 2008, including the free express edition. (It can also can be used with any version of Visual Studio 2005.)
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| Customer Reviews: Read 48 more reviews...
 Wonderful Way To Learn C#!!! February 19, 2008
Daniel McKinnon (Tewksbury, MA USA)
19 out of 23 found this review helpful
The one thing that most (nearly all) technical books have in common is that they are B-O-R-I-N-G. While this works for many people looking to just get to the meat and potatoes content, if a newbie or beginner wants to be able to LEARN from a book they are at a loss.
That's where the 'Head First' line of books comes in to play.
If you have never read a Head First book you are in for a treat when you sit down and start reading. Nowhere in a HF book will you be bored as these books aren't looking to just teach, but teach in a FUN, interesting way. It's tough to explain a HF book other than it's an experience in itself. Filled with a design, content, and writing that jumps out at you, these books are looking to get you excited to turn to the next page and/or chapter and want to keep reading.
I think that the C# Head First book is one of the best I have had the pleasure to read. With over 700 pages of content spread over 15 chapters, this is a wonderful book for newbies that want to get coding right away. Filled with all the stuff that you would expect from such a book: basic programming constructs and declarations, object oriented discussion, file IO, exception handling, delegates, and even the newest M$ technology LINQ!!
If you are new to using C# and want to learn in my opinion possibly the best way possible, pick up this book FIRST and use all other guides as references. If you want boring books that are full of drab info and light on the enjoyment, this isn't for you (highly unlikely).
A pleasure to read and easy to learn from, this is one great book on C#.
***** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
Believe the hype February 20, 2008
James Beswick (San Francisco, CA)
14 out of 18 found this review helpful
Computer books tend to be dull, dry and largely ineffective in their content. They either replicate the help contents mercilessly, or bore the reader to death with FOR...LOOPs and basically trivial control structures, while completely skirting any useful content.
Not so with the Head First guides. This is the third I've bought, and although they're targeted towards beginners, evened seasoned programmers can have fun with these books. Did I say fun? Yes I did. The learning style actually takes a relatively tedious subject and injects some life into the whole thing, modeling topics around real-life examples and challenges.
Most importantly, however, if you follow all the exercises and take their advice on doing the crosswords, Q&A, programming tests and everything else, after 700 pages you WILL be able to program C# quite effectively. How many other books are guaranteed to make you learn the topic if you're a willing student? In my case, I've been avoiding C# for years, and I've just finished writing a real-time game as a result of the final chapter.
I can't recommend these guides enough, and the C# edition is a particular good one.
Delivers as Promised September 18, 2008
J. Finkel (Hoboken, NJ)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Background:
After getting a degree in engineering and landing a job finance, I was tasked with writing an extensive analysis program in C#. Eventually I hobbled through the first draft and many many updates using dry, technical reference books and online searches. Recently, I decided to increase the breadth of knowledge to take on other programming projects of my own choosing.
Approach:
Head First C# matched up perefctly with my expectations. The book does not assume much prior knowledge, so someone, like me, with no background in computer science can work through it without much (if any) additional reference. However, unlike other (frustrating) programming books for beginners, it goes right into practical applications, setting itself apart. Despite not neccessarily going from simple to complex in subject matter, each chapter does build nicely on those before it. I would easily recommend this as a primer to C#, or for those like me, who need to expand their practical knowledge.
Style:
In the introduction, the book explains how its style is meant to capture and hold your attention so you actually absorb the material. I appreciated the informal writing style and creative use of fonts, but the gems here are the sections where you are given basic program outlines, some code fragments and asked to complete the program (with a healthy degree of freedom). Some reviewers complain about the amount of errors in the book. Maybe I'm not as attentive to detail, but while you will find some errors, none of them interfered with my progression through the book.
Content:
In addition to this book, you will probably want a reference book or two. Of course, it would take at least a couple dozen books to cover EVERYTHING you can do in C#. Now that I've read this book, though, I at least have a good idea what other books would be useful for me. With some of what I learned from Head First C#, I've created video games, card games and database applications. The variety of topics covered and demonstration of their application makes this a valuable read.
*Learn* C# July 12, 2008
Corey White (USA)
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
Head First C# was my first experience with the Head First series, although I have since also purchased the excellent Head First Design Patterns (Head First).
This book is designed to teach you C# from the beginning. Technical books can generally be categorized as either tutorials or reference texts -- and this is absolutely in the tutorial category. It's intended to be read and worked through in order, from start to finish. If you already know C# and are looking for a reference text, look elsewhere. If you're an experienced C++ programmer looking to learn C# but are already very familiar with object oriented programming, consider checking out the excellent and concise Accelerated C# 2008 (Accelerated). If you're an experienced C# programmer and just want to learn the advanced features of C#2 and C#3, you'll again want to look elsewhere, and you couldn't do better than C# in Depth: What you need to master C# 2 and 3.
But if you want to *learn* C# and object-oriented programming, and especially if you have little or no prior programming experience, look no further than this fantastic book. If you're reading reviews of the book, then you probably know two things: it has an unusual style and some quirky humor, and it has a bit more than it's fair share of errors. These two things are true, but there's a lot more about the book that you should know, and that's mostly what I want to talk about in this review. Before I move on, though, let me say two things. First, the conversational style and the humor are sometimes overstated -- this is a book about programming, and it's not a joke a minute or anything. I know that you can't Search Inside here on Amazon to see what the book is like, which I assume is because of the visuals-heavy design and unusual layout of the text, but just do a quick search for the book's website and you can download a full sample chapter and some other excerpts. Judge for yourself before dismissing an excellent book based on its unusual (but effective!) design. Second, the errata *are* extensive, but they don't get in the way of your learning. This book shines for its well-chosen examples, its focus on your learning (you'll be talked to rather than at), and its great overall structure -- and none of the errata interfere with any of that at all. If the extensive errata lists do bother you, I wrote a small free program that can sort through them for you and filter out the types of errors or page ranges you're not interested in. (You can find the link stickied at the web forum for Head First C#.)
There are also some features of the book that I don't see mentioned often enough, and which I want to comment on briefly before getting to the heart of the review. First, I love that the introduction is actually useful, giving you valuable insights on why the authors made the design choices they did (why text is in the pictures, rather than beneath them as captions, for example), and offering advice on how best to approach the book if you want to maximize your learning experience. I highly recommend reading it. Second, it's worth mentioning the way that the book uses the (free) Visual Studio 2008 IDE to make graphical Windows applications throughout, rather than focusing on a text editor and console applications like many other introductory texts. Visual Studio is a powerful IDE, and it *helps* you learn with syntax highlighting and Intellisense -- I'm very glad that the Head First C# authors chose to incorporate its use into the book, because it often allowed me to focus on concepts at first rather than syntax, picking that up gradually through repeated use with the IDE's guidance. Third, you'll be making some genuinely impressive software over the course of the book -- between the use of Visual Studio and the authors' being unafraid to assign projects that take several pages just to *describe*, you'll get a much better feel for what it's like to make real software than you would from the small "toy" examples that are more common in many other introductory books. (But don't worry, there's plenty of guidance, including fully annotated solution code for most of them, and a helpful web forum if you get stuck.) Finally, the book has the advantage of going to print for the first time after C# 3.0 and .NET 3.5 were released, and it fluently combines the various iterations of the language, teaching C# *as it now exists* from the ground up in an order that makes sense for someone learning now from scratch, rather than taking the more common but less sensible route of introducing C#1.0 features before C#2 before C#3. This is great, because it allows the authors to introduce some of the powerful and convenient features of the newer editions of the language and framework -- the stuff that really makes C# appealing as a language -- quite early in the book.
The funny thing about Head First C# is that the conversational tone, the humor, the quirky layout, and the pictures make the book seem completely un-academic. At first glance, it's as far from an academic textbook as you could possibly get! But I've come to realize that reading through the book from the beginning, doing all the exercises, is as close to the structured learning experience of an academic course as you can get in book form. The brilliance of Head First C# isn't in the phrasing of any given sentence or the coding style in a particular snippet -- it's in the overall structure of the book and especially in the examples chosen for exercises, which allow you to build up your knowledge incrementally while still reviewing past material. (Which is why the errata really aren't a big deal.) I've seen some reviews point out the book's "redundancy" as a flaw, and I just shake my head. The book is often repetitious, but never redundant, and always deliberately -- seeing the same material repeatedly from different perspectives and at different times is absolutely key to learning anything, and the repetition is one of the best features of the Head First series in general and this book in particular.
So there are errors. So there's a bit of fuzziness in the phrasing sometimes. So it doesn't cover Advanced Language Topic A or B. So what? This book is a teaching tool. It's a full course -- instructor, fellow students, textbook, homework, projects, review sessions, and conversations with peers -- stuffed onto paper, rolled up, printed, and stuck between covers.
I've learned C#, and I've *retained* what I've learned. I've had fun doing it. And if you too want to learn C# and programming, I can't recommend Head First C# highly enough.
Simply One Of The Best Books For Learning C# April 10, 2008
Marcos A. Romero (St Augustine, FL United States)
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
I'm going to agree with most of the other reviews here. I think this book is a spectacular learning device. I just finished the book off over two weeks, and feel like I've gotten more out of it than any other book by far. I still used some other books to get a little more in depth, but all in all I have no complaints.
I think a new user could take this book and write some good code when they were done. Make sure you do all of the interactive exercises, they will help to ingrain your knowledge.
I have over 20 Beginning/Professional C# books and this is by far my favorite.
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