Recently MSPress gave me a copy of Programming Microsoft Visual C# 2008: The Language (Donis Marshall, ISBN 0735625409) to read and review. Having read the book cover to cover, I thoroughly enjoyed every page.

Background

First, a quick bit of background to let you know where I’m coming from. I’m a self-taught C# and .NET programmer – so this is the first book I’ve read on the subject. I wasn’t expecting to learn much about C# itself in the book, more the technologies that were added in .NET 3.5 (LINQ, extension functions, etc). Luckily, I was pleasantly surprised.

Look and Feel

Overall, the book reads like a technical manual. Marshall writes in a very dry fashion, and it’s not the type of book you would read from end-to-end for the sake of reading a book. The use of code samples and real life examples help solidify lessons are fantastic to understand the technical jargon used. All of the paragraphs are kept short and concise are often intermingled with MSDN style documentation and examples.

Typically, the learning curve in each chapter is quite sharp, starting with basic knowledge about the subject and rapidly accelerating to the newer and complex features that .NET 3.5 introduces. The chapters are very content heavy, but this load is lightened by attempting to replicate the examples are trying out new knowledge in Visual Studio while reading. Mixing reading with coding is probably the best way to maximise the learning from this book.

Target Audience

Marshall requests a basic knowledge of programming and Object Orientated concepts. I would also add that a basic knowledge of C#, .NET and Visual Studio are highly recommended. This book is by no means a ‘C# for Dummies’ style guide. The book is more angled towards .NET 2.0 programmers looking to upgrade, Java (or other OO) programmers looking to switch languages or a Computer Science student who wishes to learn .NET.

Content

To say the least, this book is fantastic. Marshall demonstrates her mastery of .NET in the deep level of knowledge presented in this book. There were a great number of things that I learnt for the first time while reading this book, even basic concepts of C# (did you know that C# has a ?? operator?). The topics presented spread from basic Visual Studio usage to LINQ, delegates and the operations of the .NET Garbage Collector.

I’ve learnt a massive amount from this book, and am much more confident in using some of the new features in .NET 3.5 such as Lambda functions and LINQ. The book also contained quite a lot that I would have never learnt from my self-learning such as the internal workings of the Garbage Collector and using some advanced debugging and profiling tools.

Conclusion

Reading this book was beyond valuable for me. I have improved my coding techniques and now understand other coding examples much easier. I would highly recommend this book to anyone with some experience with Object Orientated languages and techniques who wishes to start coding in C# .NET 3.5.

More info and books at http://www.mspress.com.au/ 

- Daniel Paoliello
Curtin MSP

Question: Do you know what IDE stands for?
Question: Do you know what languages Visual Studio can use?
Question: Do you like free pizza?

If you answered yes to the last question, then this event is for you!

The Curtin MSP’s will be demoing off Visual Studio – showcasing its ability as an IDE and why it has become industry standard.

So, even if you think you already know everything there is to know about Visual Studio and IDE’s, come along anyway – there will be heaps of giveaways and FREE PIZZA.

For more information, either click the poster (left) or visit http://curtinvs.eventbrite.com/

- Daniel
Curtin MSP

In case you missed it, recently I was accepted into a Microsoft Internship for 3 months.

We left Perth, Australia on the 23rd of Nov, travelled for around 30 hours and finally got to our apartment in Redmond late on still, the 23rd!

I started New Employee Orientation (NEO) the next morning at 8am which ran day 1 and till noon day 2 when we received our ID cards.

I got one of the Microsoft Prius Shuttles over to my building and met my Manager and Peer Mentor.

So now I’ve just finished my first day on the job here at the Microsoft HQ in Redmond, WA and it was great.

I am in the Server and Tools business division, working on developer tools for Visual Studio Team System.

After having some good talks with my mentor and manager I was introduced to the rest of the people in my team. I set up my machine and added it to the domain. Attended a SCRUM meeting which was primarily focused on quality control of our product. Discussed and decided on the project I will be working on during my internship and wrote up a small “about me” document for the rest of the team.

And true to the Microsoft free drink thing, I went ahead and drank 3 chocolate milks for the afternoon

So first impressions? The team is awesome, and my manager and mentor are really fun and relaxed who definitely seem to know their stuff. My project looks pretty difficult, but really interesting.

I’ve got high expectations for the rest of the internship.

If you have any questions about Microsoft Internships for Australian students, please leave a comment.

Luke

UWA MSP

Register Now at xna.wamsp.com.au

As my day job is working in an Accounting practice I come across problems all the time, that can be solved with computers.

One day I was given the task of looking up the historial share prices of stocks. Given the number of stocks, this wasn’t going to be a nice job, as I would have had to lookup each stock individually.

Another problem that existed was all the major finance websites that have historical data often get it wrong. Just plain wrong. I’ve found errors with Google Finance, Yahoo Finance, etc, etc.

So to do this job, I made a little .NET program called StockPrice.

Using Visual Studio 2008 I was able to very quickly (about an hour) come up with a multi-threaded program that grabbed historial prices from 3 major sites and compared them to each other, giving what it thinks is the most likely price on that day. Further more, Visual Studio 2008 allows me to OneClick publish the program for automatic updates and installation from the web.

If you are interested, please download it and take a look. I am very interested in any feedback you may have. I am happy to support it to an extent at http://forum.wamsp.com.au.

You can check it out at http://www.tidesoft.com.au/stockprice

Please note: The way Google Finance displays historical stock prices for ASX stocks is not consistent. Thus, often the Google price will be out by a day. Be sure to check the date returned on each source.

Luke
MSP (UWA)

This is the first year WA has had Microsoft Student Partners, and don’t we have a lot planned!!

Already, at Curtin, we have decided we shall be running a version of XNA Game Camp and Creating Unit Testing in Visual Studio 2008.

For those of you who don’t know, XNA is the gaming platform that has been developed by Microsoft. With XNA you can develop and deploy games for both PC and XBox 360 and soon to be Zune! If you ever wanted to start learning how to develop games, then here will be your chance! Your local MSP will have more information about when the event will be run at your university.

Unit Testing has been integrated into Visual Studio 2008. Now you can create unit tests for sections of code, create test groups, run tests and view the results. We will be showing you how you can maximize the use of this within the VS 2K8 package and hopefully make your life a little easier when your lecturer asks “Where’s your tests and results for your modules?”

Allan
MSP (Curtin)