Review: Microsoft Visual C# 2012 Step by Step by John Sharp

Microsoft Visual C# 2012 Step by Step is a good book for beginners. It covers a considerable breadth of the C# language in 800 odd pages while showing how to program with the language using Visual Studio, the most commonly used IDE. As with other books in the Step by Step series, the explanations are pretty detailed but never boring.

The coverage of Visual Studio features while explaining C# programming topics is interesting. There are tables & illustrations to make the content engaging. The Quick Reference at the end of each chapter with brief C# snippets is a valuable addition.

I guess there is no other IDE as full fledged as Visual Studio for coding with C#. Considering there are free Express editions of Visual Studio, I wonder if the vast majority of C# programmers use anything other than Visual Studio for building real-world application. Therefore I found it unusual that C# in the book's title should be referred as Visual C#. MSDN informs that Visual C# is the official term for the implementation of the C# language by Microsoft but it is uncommon to hear C# being called Visual C#.

Though the code examples in the book are well explained, they aren't really practical and may only help beginners to get started. Several chapters of the book have examples on Windows 8 Store Apps, a Windows 8 specific application format that hasn't taken off as much as it was envisaged. If your operating system isn't Windows 8 or if you don't have any interest in building Windows 8 Store Apps, some chapters of this book will be unusable.

I rate this book 4 out of 5 for its presentation.

I received a ebook copy of this book via the O'Reilly Blogger Review Program.