C# in Depth

This is a book review for C# in Depth, by Jon Skeet. I started reading Jon's blog sometime around February this year, and found it to be quite great. I really enjoyed his attention to detail and curiosity about how things work. Jon struck me as someone that likes to teach, but takes great care when doing so to avoid myths, over generalizations or terminology misuse; he cares just as much about buggy communication as he does about buggy programs. Wanting to read more of his writing, I picked up C# in Depth and was very happy to discover a book crafted with the same dedication to detail and thoroughness that first attracted me to his blog.

C# in Depth has a very specific focus. It is aimed at developers that know C# 1, and want to learn the ins and outs of C# 2 and 3. When I say C#, I really mean just the language - the book does not cover the CLR or the class libraries. I expected some of the book to be familiar territory for me as I was already quite familiar with C# 2 and this was indeed the case. But it turns out there were still quite a few gaps in my C# 2 knowledge that the book helped fill in (for example, the distinction between unbound, open and closed generic types).

I particularly enjoyed the section on covariance and contravariance for generics. Specifically, Jon provided examples of particular covariant and contravariant operations that would be useful but are not currently supported. These examples were excellent. I have ran into similar sorts of situations in the past but never really understood how they could be potentially fixed. I have long struggled with the concepts of covariance and contravariance, mostly because I read the definition once every year and it never sticks, I have a glimmer of hope that this time it will.

The C# 3 content is great. I had a basic understanding of how each of the new features contribute to LINQ as a whole, but again there were plenty of gaps in my knowledge that the book helped with. I learned a great deal, in particular, from the section on LINQ query expressions and how they are converted to the underlying code.

In my opinion, C# in Depth is more of a teaching book than a reference book. I can still imagine myself referring back to particular parts that did not quite manage to stick, but really it is designed primarily to deliver an instructive lesson. This, however, should by no means be taken as a criticism. I found the teaching style made the book quite easy to read. Jon’s style is precise, and yet never stale. If only more books with such technical content were so pleasant and carefully edited (I do not recall noticing any technical errors).

C# in Depth rocks. Many times during my journey through the book I found myself breaking out for some special time with the C# compiler, just to see what sort of clever tricks we could get up to. The book has brought me closer to mastery of my current tool of choice. If you are a C# programmer and have a natural curiosity about its capabilities, details, and limitations then I am sure you will find this book rewarding.