Best book to get intimately familiar with the .NET framework?

Question

In my spare time, I do a bit of home development primarily using free tools (Eclipse, Java, PHP, Ruby, Rails, etc.) as they are with what I'm most familiar; however, for my 9-to-5, I work as a developer in the .NET environment using all Microsoft tools. Our product is built using a framework that sits on top of .NET and that was developed in-house.

Although I've no complaints about our framework or what I do on a day-to-day basis, I'd like to get in deeper to the .NET Framework. I've got a personal copy of Visual Studio and am comfortable with all of the Microsoft Tools, though I'm less familiar with the framework and available libraries. I know that similar questions have been asked on this topic, but I'm hoping that the community can suggest book (or books) based on exactly what I'm looking for...

• I develop web applications, so if the book is primarily focused on ASP.NET, then that's okay. If the book(s) primary focus is on desktop application programming with a side of ASP.NET, that's fine, too. My primary goal is to learn more about the .NET Framework and the associated libraries - not how Web Forms or Windows Forms are built. Whatever means used to that end are fine with me.

• I don't want a book that gives lengthy tutorials on Windows Forms, controls, Web Forms, and/or any of the beginner or intro stuff. If there's more than one chapter dedicated to how to drop controls on a form and program events, then I'm not interested.

• I'm indifferent about the language used in the book.

• I'd like the book to have various assignments and/or walkthroughs of building full applications using the framework versus a physical copy of the API reference. Again, desktop or web-based programming is not really a big deal, but I lean in the direction of web applications.

• If possible, I'd prefer the book not have contrived examples, but stuff that's a little more concrete and directly applicable to real world programming. Simple examples on using StringBuilder as demonstrated through the use of concatenating all of the Star Trek character names are what I wanna avoid.

I'm comfortable with the .NET languages and the tools so I don't want primers on them. Above all else, I want to become more familiar with what is available in the .NET Framework such that I'm comfortable enough building applications outside of a framework built on top of .NET.

Answer 1

CLR Via C# 2nd ed.

Answer 2

Programming Microsoft Visual C# 2005: The Base Class Library I've found this to be one of the best book about .NET and even if it's based on .NET 2.0 it's still a very good volume

EDIT: Just finished reading it so I can now agree and suggest CLR via C# second edition. very in depth analysis and well written

Answer 3

If you can't find the Framework info online that you're after, search for .NET 3.5 Framework (or change the version to the Framework you're hunting down) at any online bookseller you prefer, and you'll soon drown in the number of titles.

If you're looking to certify in the Framework, the 70-536 study guide (which IS the Framework exam) from MS is fairly thorough. It might even be helpful if you're not looking to certify, as it does contain the walkthroughs.

Answer 4

Professional C# 2008 by Christian Nagel et al.

Answer 5

ocdecio's answer is probably going to be your best book, but two others which give a thorough treatment to core .NET topics:

• C# 3.0 in a Nutshell
• Accelerated C# 2008

Don't be fooled by the C# in the title - about half of each of these books is about the framework.

Answer 6

If you really want to get deep knowledge of .NET FW then there are two must-read books:

• CLR via C#
• .NET Framework design guidelines

Based on this statement

If possible, I'd prefer the book not have contrived examples, but stuff that's a little more concrete and directly applicable to real world programming.

I would recommend to get a copy of

C# 3.0 Cookbook, Third Edition

Completely updated for C# 3.0 and the .NET 3.5 platform, the new edition of this bestseller offers more than 250 code recipes to common and not-so-common problems that C# programmers face every day.

Here are some of topics covered in this book:

* LINQ
* Numeric data types and Enumerations
* Strings and characters
* Classes and structures
* Generics
* Collections
* Exception handling
* Delegates, events, and lambda expressions
* Filesystem interactions
* Web site access
* XML usage (including LINQ to XML, XPath and XSLT)
* Networking
* Threading
* Data Structures & Algorithms

Answer 7

Several good books have already been mentioned, so I'll just add Professional .NET Framework by Joe Duffy. It covers a lot of the same stuff as CLR via C#, but if you're really interested there are enough differences between the two that I would recommend getting both.

Answer 8

Check out my list of good recently published books related to .NET development:

http://www.riaguy.com/books/