Pro C# 10 with .NET 6: Foundational Principles and Practices in Programming

The book takes one through a lot of C# and NET which I like. There are a few places where someone not previously familiar with the language might have trouble. I had bought most previous editions, so that was not an issue with me. It does provide introductions to WPF, Entity Framework, MVVM and other special topics, but these topics are vast in themselves. The introductions are brief, as they cannot be long in a large book already. In summary a worthwhile book to have, I rate 5 stars.

The book itself is great. It's extensive, well-written, and does it's job well. For those of you buying new, I attached pictures of two issues. There is some minor damage to the spine and the cover page was stuck together, damaging the paper when I pulled it apart. The book is still usable, this is just something you should note before spending $40 on what should be a book in new condition.

This book provides a comprehensive review of the .NET platform and C#. First, the book is well-structured and the chapters go from most generic features to some specific functionality (a little bit OOP -> C# features -> EF -> WPF -> ASP.NET Core). All chapters have a variety of code samples which is good.However, the idea behind this book isn't clear. It is written in the introduction that experienced readers can refresh their knowledge and get up-to-date with .NET 6. Readers who are new to .NET will get a good overview of it.Unfortunately, the information provided isn't very "Pro" as it is stated in the title. Quite often authors do remark that a topic is out of the scope of the book when it is really necessary to give Pro details about multithreading, reflection, app domains, Span (absent in the book) and etc. Also, there are sometimes typos in code samples which is confusing. In addition, the book is very long (3000 pages, Kindle version) because it covers too many topics often skipping really interesting details.The authors use a dummy application in code samples. And it has a few similar controllers (for CRUD operations). Quite often 5-10 pages are spent just to show how all these controllers we extended with one attribute. Again, it looks more like a training course but not a book.Chapters about API, MVC and Razor pages are very similar, even with the same text and code samples. Probably, the authors tried to make these parts independent. But when you read all the chapters it looks strange.To summarize, I wouldn't recommend this book as a Pro. It is comprehensive and well-structured documentation for beginners. And the book together with code samples may be used like a "learning course" to onboard with .NET. For more experienced people, the book may look like a well-organized copy of the Microsoft site.

This book seems designed with the primary goal to be large. Over the years and editions, a lot of cruft seems to have been left in. Toy examples abound in the first half of the book.The book seriously needs an editing pass with a focus on consistency and reducing the amount of old content that is presented just as prominently (if not more so) than the newer features that replace it. It's good to know the history of a feature; you don't need entire example projects for each iteration of that feature.Cons:* Typos and inconsistencies in the examples. Some were obviously left over from a previous edition and never looked at again.* Some examples just plain don't work. Verified by taking the source directly from the publisher.* Book is long for the sake of being long.* Errata site not kept up to date. There are hundreds of errors and mistakes.* Toy examples everywhere.* Some topics are glossed over (how, in a book this large?!) but the author then claims they were thoroughly discussed.* Few examples of actual "Pro" level work.* Doesn't cover how professionals actually use C# or any of their workflows. Focuses solely on language features (whether they're still relevant or not).Pros:* It looks good on your desk to people who don't know better.* You get a lot of practice debugging someone else's confident mistakes.* It could still be worse.The publisher, editor, and author all dropped the ball on this one.Suggestion: Skip this one unless you can get it used for under 10 dollars.

Books like this go through many iterations as new versions are released, thus requiring the authors to revisit the previous version and update.But this book comes off more as a bad revision of previous versions than a well crafted guide for the current c#10. Much time is spent on legacy versions (good if you are dealing with legacy versions, but too verbose for those wanting to learn current practices). It's clear they have parachuted new code examples in at various points, as the variable names don't always line up with previous examples. And, further, too many mistakes in the examples.Learning to code is confusing for most people. Trying to debug sample code from a text makes this process very difficult. Yes, it pushes people to learn on their own, but it also means it's hard to know what to trust.

As you can see from the title, this is a review of the binding of the book. My book has been treated very gently but the binding is coming apart. So, it may be better to get a kindle version (though the last time I did that, I didn't like it very much). Binding aside, the content is good. If you read and put to practice what you read, your C# skills will go up.