This book is a disappointment.
Its chock full of errors, its shameful in the treatment of the language. Maybe I'm spoiled but I expected this book to be on par with something like the Perl series (ie advanced, written for someone beyond their first year in development) and not 1000 pages of screen shots. Save your money, this book isn't worth it. I have been a long time fan of the publisher and clearly was disappointed. The free content on MSDN is far better then this.

I am disappointed that the chapter "Assemblies and Versioning" from the 4th edition was removed from the 5th edition. And the 5th Edition is smaller than the 4th Edition.

i had version 2.0 for the book but seeing that it's no longer listed I'll leave a review for that book. But you might be thinking.. that wouldn't be fair. Let me just warn you without having read this book what you can expect. Expect to see examples using dogs and cats. It'll be that kind of book.

If you've been developing for awhile you'll recognize that the author has been a brand name of sorts for programming books. I can't recall what the quality of the previous books were but you almost get the feeling that the author knows he'll sell books based on this brand name. Almost a kind of arrogance to think you can put together such a low quality book and think it's acceptable.

Usually I don't give away my books. I hold onto them and keep them as references. This is one of those books that I lent to someone and said just keep it (someone dabbling in programming). Read the amazon reviews and I'm sure you'll find several others that are easily worth the money you would have thrown away buying this book.

The previous book I had been through about the 5th revision of that edition and was still filled with error let alone absent of relevant examples. Best practices? Don't even think about it.

Having just finished another O'Reilly title (Programming WPF) that I thought was excellent, I was biased when thumbing through C# intermediate/expert C# programming books. I settled on two books and this (an O'Reilly title) was one of them. My confidence was heightened by the cover's prominent badge "5th Edition."

After reading most all chapters (I skipped a few non-language chapters) it is clear that the book is about 4 weeks of editing from being 5 star material.

Pros
----
- Author is clearly good at his basic craft: educating via the written word
- Author has good knowledge of C# 3.0
- Author employs humor to keep material from being dry
- Book is fairly comprehensive
- Not a lot of fluff, i.e. if it's written it's worth reading

Cons
----
- There are some errors in the coding examples
- Occasionally new material "appears" but is not introduced, described or otherwise addressed anywhere in the book
- Author makes occasional proclamations and generalizations that, to an educated ear, come across as buffoonery
- There are gaps -- some language keywords only appear in glossary
- Index is weak
- Don't care for "Liberty Associates" occurring in code examples
- General feeling of being incompletely cooked

If this was the first effort of the author, I would have given 3 stars. But with name recognition comes expectations and those expectations were not met.

Let not the title mislead the reader: this is not "Programming" C#, this is "Beginning" C#, and it is two books glued together. The first half of this book is excellent, whereas the second half is mediocre. Those looking for programming strategies, specific add-ons (LINQ, WPF) or the nuances of .NET should continue the search for another book.

Roughly half of the book details the language faculties: variables, arrays, delegates, enumerations, interfaces, etc. This division, and the section on ASP.NET, are quite thorough, and comprise an excellent introduction to the language. Its erudite qualities make this a one-stop source for questions about the base language features. Beginning programmers may be lost in swarms of information; however, immigrants from Visual Basic, Java, or C++ will not encounter much difficulty learning the new features of C#, and will appreciate the length of time devoted to these details.

However, in the second half, issues arise in the presentation of features such as LINQ, WPF, and threading. The examples given in these sections are aggravating. Often, the source code written does not match what is being described currently, and often will not compile without editing. At times the writer will refer to objects (in code and in prose) with different names in the same breath. Sometimes, he omits whole chunks of code, leaving the reader to fill in the blanks. The errata on his website describes the accidental omission of two whole sections covering C# 3.0 features, but there is far more he has not attempted to fix. The author is well-learned, but it is obvious this book was rushed, causing careless mistakes.

In addition to these errors, it is my belief that the sections covering LINQ are not comprehensive enough. LINQ for XML queries are not covered. Furthermore, the sections on LINQ for SQL and ADO.NET are confused, partly due to the author's use of the professional version of Visual Studio, not the Express edition which most readers use. If coverage of these technologies is desired, there are better books designed specifically for these features (which the author admits).

The redeeming qualities of this book are in the presentation. Jesse Liberty knows how to entertain the reader. He makes the experience enjoyable, and he explains very well what he actually attempts to explain. Overall, I recommend this book for intermediate programmers, who have general knowledge of pointer-logic, delegates, and object-orientation. Beginning programmers or veteran C# programmers wanting information about new features like LINQ and WPF should look elsewhere.