Recommend C# books besides Head First C# & Illustrated C# 2008 for beginner

Question

I had searched related "book-recommend" threads before I post mine cause I didn't find what I'm looking for...

I'm a newbie with a bit of PHP experience, currently I'm trying to learn C#. I brought two books from the shop Head First C# & Illustrated C# 2008, I have this thing for learning stuff visually, that's why these two books are on the top of my list.

But it turns out they're not as good as I thought, please please dont get mad if you're fan of these books, let me allow me to explain why at the end.

Here's few key things I'm looking for in the book: - provides practical exercises at end of each chapter. - kinda 5W1H style, What/Why/When/Where/Which/How (if it's possible) - gives a target project, build on bit by bit at each chapter (if it's possible)

And here's my problem with these two books:

Illustrated C# 2008, excellent reference book, nice and clean, I really wanna to love it but it tells you all about the trees, but very little about the forest, and another problem I have is that for example, delegate is the concept I really dont understand, why would I use a delegate? Or when would I use a struct instead of a class? That being said, I still think this book is one of the best C# books out there, and for sure I'm gonna re-visit it later on.

HFC, before I got HFC, I've read Head First Programming...using Python, which is really good, I had such a great time with it, but HFC kinda let me down, maybe C# is too complex, too big for this kinda style? The pages are so cluttered with doodles and pictures and snippets of text and faux-handwriting and arrows that it's just plain hard to follow the conceptual thread of the instruction.

Answer 1

I am a huge fan of O'Reily books and would suggest the learning C# book.

Answer 2

Hi, I think if you say a little more about your goals in learning C#, you'll get more focused answers.

If you are focused on becoming a competent WinForms programmer, that's one thing : if web sites and ASP.NET and interaction with databases and n-tier computing solutions, SilverLight, or WPF, are your future targets, that's another. If your goal is "WinForms," I'll edit this post to include further recommendations.

That said : I don't think you could go wrong starting off with the latest edition (3.0) of Jesse Liberty's book on C# from O'Reilly : Programming C# However, it's not filled with fancy pictures and diagrams.

Edition #4 of this book will come out in April, 2010.

Answer 3

I would recommend Essential C# 3.0 by Mark Michaelis. I liked it better than the O'Reily book by Jesse Liberty (which is not bad at all).

Answer 4

this book here is awesome. Pro C# 2008 and the .NET 3.5 Platform, Fourth Edition

It says "Pro" in the title; don't let that scare you. What it means is that it won't start explaining basic programming like for loops, switch and stuff like that.

Answer 5

Not a book, but you might want to look at LearnVisualStudio.net.

As for books, I like O'Reilly's C# 3.0 in a Nutshell.

Answer 6

Jon Skeets Books and Articles

Such as C# in Depth

• Framework Design Guidelines provides very good information about the "why" you are looking for.
• The books for the .NET Certification : MCPD Self-paced Training Kit is VERY good.

Answer 7

Take a look at Microsoft® Visual C#® 2008 Step by Step. Microsoft Press books are always easier to learn.

Answer 8

I'd recommend you to continue with something serious, like Jeffrey Richter's "CLR via C#" by MS Press

Answer 9

I agree with you on the HeadFirst C# book. Not as good as, say, their JavaScript book. And I'm a subscriber to the learnVisualStudio tutorial website; the videos and material are great, but they're good to use as an extra, not exclusively.