
Visual Studio 2012 and .NET 4.5 Expert Development Cookbook – Being a programmer, I love technology related books. (Any programmer that doesn’t read is flawed. Sorry, it’s a fact, you will never grow.) I try to read as often as I can. I enjoy reading on-line, easily digestible content and therefore the more concise an article is, the better.
But with books, I often find that I simply scan through them because the content is so long winded or doesn’t get to the juicy bits quickly enough. If it were a spy novel, sure… build suspense, but don’t do that in a tech book I’m reading.
I want the information presented in an easy manner that is easy to understand or explained well. I am probably the most fussy of readers out there. Nicky Scrooby is a journalist friend of mine and that girl reads a lot. I doubt that I would ever come close to her with the sheer volume of books she reads. But nevertheless, I do try get a healthy dose of tech via well written books.
Visual Studio 2012 and .NET 4.5 Expert Development Cookbook – About the book
A little while ago, I was lucky enough to win a copy of Visual Studio 2012 and .NET 4.5 Expert Development Cookbook written by Abhishek Sur and published by Packt Publishing. Abhishek hails from Kolkata, India. He is a Technology Evangelist, Microsoft MVP, Codeproject MVP, DotNetFunda MVP and regular speaker and you can follow his latest articles at his website abhisheksur.com. Before I continue, let me quickly list the chapters of the book:
- Chapter 1: Introduction to Visual Studio IDE Features
- Chapter 2: Basics of .NET Programs and Memory Management
- Chapter 3: Asynchronous Programming in .NET
- Chapter 4: Enhancements to ASP.NET
- Chapter 5: Enhancements to WPF
- Chapter 6: Building Touch-sensitive Device Applications in Windows 8
- Chapter 7: Communication and Sharing using Windows 8
These chapters encompass all 355 pages of great content. I have to mention though, that when I first looked at the chapters I was surprised to see chapters 6 and 7 in there. Windows 8 application development felt almost as if it didn’t fit in with the rest of the book, but let me tell you, I was really glad that Abhishek included it. You see, there are many how-to’s out there, so you could probably read up about the subject on the web. What makes this different is that it is presented as the rest of the cookbook feel and allows you to easily get to grips with the concepts of building your first Windows 8 style application.
Another thing I absolutely love is the regular use of diagrams, colour screen shots and annotations to clearly explain the content to the reader. Believe me when I say, that this one aspect alone stops me from scanning through a book. There are also tonnes of code examples (which are also downloadable from packtpub.com) and surprisingly (for me anyway) quite a few a-ha moments. I will not go into detail (you must buy the book to get that 🙂 ) but some topics were explained in a way that I finally understood them. (My favourite chapter being Chapter 1 – I just love learning more about the Visual Studio IDE.)
It is always refreshing to read a book that leaves me feeling like I have grown in my understanding of a topic. Believe me when I say that some books can leave you wondering how everything fits together. Luckily that is definitely not the case here. The basic software requirements for this book are as follows:
- Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5 and higher
- Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 Express or higher editions
- Windows 8 Operating System (for Chapter 6 and 7)
- The latest version of your favourite Web Browser
As with all of Packt’s books, the format feels familiar (like visiting a good friend) and the content is thoroughly checked by reviewers Carlos Hulot, Ahmed Ilyas, Sergiy Suchok and Ken Tucker. If you are looking for a great book to add to your collection I would definitely recommend grabbing a copy of this book. For me the easiest is to add the eBook to my private Dropbox folder and take it with me wherever I go. This makes reading it on my tablet quite pleasurable late at night in bed. That is my ‘thing’. I enjoy reading in bed.
Whatever your ‘thing’ is, be sure that the Visual Studio 2012 and .NET 4.5 Expert Development Cookbook will not disappoint. You can head over to Packt’s site where you can download sample chapters in PDF format, get more info on the contents and read reviews on the book. As always, I would like to hear any opinions you might have in the comments below.