Good Books for Learning C# that are Current

Question

I looked through the older posts about this and did not find any I felt really applied to my level of programming experience or was current.

I want to get started learining C#.  My programming experience is a few years old and dates back to a college Visual Basic 6 class and some JAVA.  I have not programmed in years but still remember much of the basics I learned of OOP.

With this in mind, I am looking for a book that will explain things plainly and simply with plent of examples.  I was considering Head First C# and read a bit of it at the book store and I liked it but then online I read that it was actually riddled with errors.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Visit Amazon.com, search for C# in Books and read the user reviews.

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Hans Passant.

Answer 2

LyteWing said:

I looked through the older posts about this and did not find any I felt really applied to my level of programming experience or was current.

I want to get started learining C#.  My programming experience is a few years old and dates back to a college Visual Basic 6 class and some JAVA.  I have not programmed in years but still remember much of the basics I learned of OOP.

With this in mind, I am looking for a book that will explain things plainly and simply with plent of examples.  I was considering Head First C# and read a bit of it at the book store and I liked it but then online I read that it was actually riddled with errors.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Not sure which Head First book you read about as being riddled with errors.  Most of those books are not written in C# anyway, they are written in JAVA.  Furthermore, O'Reily offers C# and VB downloads on their two most popular books "Design Patterns" and its sequel, "Object Oriented Analysis and Design".  Both books require a good understanding of C# syntax.  With that base, most folks can understand 98% of it.

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Mark the best replies as answers. "Fooling computers since 1971."

Answer 3

I learned C# from "Visual C# 2005 How To Program" by Deitel and I like this book so much. But is it a good book? I do not know. Many people hate it.

To know whether a book is good according to your standards, you can check its preview at books.google.com.

Answer 4

Can I make a suggestion in books I have favored?

1.) Pro C# 2008 and the .NET 3.5 Platform, Fourth Edition
2.) Accerated C# 2008
3.) Programming .NET Components, 2nd Edition 

You will need a book on ADO.NET
1.) Programming Microsoft ADO.NET 2.0 Core Reference

You will need this book on LINQ (This covers a lot, LINQ To Xml, LINQ To SQL, etc...)
1.) Pro LINQ: Language Integrated Query in C# 2008 

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John Grove - TFD Group, Senior Software Engineer, EI Division, http://www.tfdg.com

Answer 5

Bassem.mf
I happen to love Deitel, "the Deitels are Deities".

A little verbose though, heavy, and expensive.

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John Grove - TFD Group, Senior Software Engineer, EI Division, http://www.tfdg.com

Answer 6

Not that I know.  In fact, I haven't written one single line of code yet and I have been in "discovery mode" for about two weeks now on C# and SQL Server.  I found an experienced C# programmer on twitter and he has consulted me to get the Deitel books and yes, he knows I am completely ignorant.  They also have a two DVD video set, and from what I understand this is about what you would get in a "boot camp."

Answer 7

If you don't mind shelling out over 100+ on a book, give it a whirl.

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John Grove - TFD Group, Senior Software Engineer, EI Division, http://www.tfdg.com

Answer 8

JohnGrove said:

If you don't mind shelling out over 100+ on a book, give it a whirl.

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John Grove - TFD Group, Senior Software Engineer, EI Division, http://www.tfdg.com

Me personally, in order to do work that will command $70k and up per year, I would call $100 cheap paper :)