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C# 4.0 in a Nutshell: The Definitive Reference 4th Edition

by Joseph Albahari (Author), Ben Albahari (Author)

4.6 84 ratings

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What people are saying about C# 4.0 in a Nutshell

"C# 4.0 in a Nutshell is one of the few books I keep on my desk as a quick reference. It is a book I recommend." --Scott Guthrie, Corporate Vice President, .NET Developer Platform, Microsoft Corporation

"A must-read for a concise but thorough examination of the parallel programming features in the .NET Framework 4." --Stephen Toub, Parallel Computing Platform Program Manager, Microsoft

"This wonderful book is a great reference for developers of all levels." -- Chris Burrows, C# Compiler Team, Microsoft

When you have questions about how to use C# 4.0 or the .NET CLR, this highly acclaimed bestseller has precisely the answers you need. Uniquely organized around concepts and use cases, this fourth edition includes in-depth coverage of new C# topics such as parallel programming, code contracts, dynamic programming, security, and COM interoperability. You'll also find updated information on LINQ, including examples that work with both LINQ to SQL and Entity Framework. This book has all the essential details to keep you on track with C# 4.0.

Get up to speed on C# language basics, including syntax, types, and variables
Explore advanced topics such as unsafe code and preprocessor directives
Learn C# 4.0 features such as dynamic binding, type parameter variance, and optional and named parameters
Work with .NET 4's rich set of features for parallel programming, code contracts, and the code security model
Learn .NET topics, including XML, collections, I/O and networking, memory management, reflection, attributes, security, and native interoperability

ISBN-10

0596800959
ISBN-13

978-0596800956
Edition

4th
Publisher

O'Reilly Media
Publication date

March 9, 2010
Language

English
Dimensions

6 x 2.18 x 9 inches
Print length

1043 pages
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Joseph Albahari is author of C# 3.0 in a Nutshell, LINQ Pocket Reference, and C# 3.0 Pocket Reference. He has been developing large-scale enterprise applications on .NET and other platforms for more than 15 years, and is author of LINQPad - the popular utility for querying databases in LINQ.

Joseph is currently a freelance consultant.

Joseph's Home Page

Ben Albahari is the founder of Take On It. He was a Program Manager at Microsoft for 5 years, where he worked on several projects, including the .NET Compact Framework and ADO.NET.

He was the cofounder of Genamics, a provider of tools for C# and J++ programmers, as well as software for DNA and protein sequence analysis. He is a co-author of C# Essentials, the first C# book from O'Reilly, and of previous editions of C# in a Nutshell.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ O'Reilly Media; 4th edition (March 9, 2010)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 1043 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0596800959
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0596800956
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 3.15 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 2.18 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #4,760,759 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #477 in Visual Basic Programming (Books)
- #1,048 in C# Programming (Books)
- #1,109 in Microsoft .NET

Customer Reviews:
4.6 84 ratings

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Joseph Albahari
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Joe Albahari is the inventor of LINQPad and an O'Reilly author. He's published 15 books with O'Reilly, including C# 9.0 in a Nutshell and C# 9.0 Pocket Reference, and speaks regularly at user groups and conferences such as NDC and YOW. Joe has been a C# MVP since 2008.
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Ben Albahari
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Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.
Ben Albahari is currently involved in the bioinformatics business. He was a Program Manager at Microsoft for 5 years, where he worked on several projects, including the .NET Compact Framework and ADO.NET. He was the co-founder of Genamics, a provider of tools for C# and J++ programmers, as well as software for DNA and protein sequence analysis.
See more on the author's page

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4.6 out of 5

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A. Mason

The Definitive Practical Guide and Reference

Reviewed in the United States on February 17, 2014

Verified Purchase

The title of the book is a bit misleading, because the focus is on .NET and the CLR framework rather than on C#, which is covered in the first few chapters. LINQ and multithreading form the heart of the book. The authors are in full command of their vast material and have done a lot of independent sleuthing with some help from access to Microsoft insiders directly involved in development. The result is an exceptionally well-written and definitive treatment that is both demanding and rewarding.

The level of the book ranges from intermediate (C#, part of the discussion of LINQ, regular expressions, etc.) to quite advanced (locks, parallel programming, SpinWait, reflection).

As an experienced C++ and Windows developer with some exposure to Java and COM, I found the chapters on LINQ and parallel programming the most rewarding. The debt to Java is clear, but there is much more besides. Of course I miss not having pointers, but there are many benefits to working in a framework that has well-crafted comprehensive solutions that make networking, multithreading, database queries, etc., easier.

Readers should download the code samples from [...](albahari.com/nutshell/predicatebuilder.aspx)
as well as the more extensive C# sample code from
[...](msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa287464(v=vs.71).aspx)
I also recommend downloading the full-scale application available at
[...](A-Generic-Reusable-Diff-Algorithm-in-C#, CodeProject)
(if these links are broken, just Google.)
Finally, readers will want to download LinqPad from the authors' website. That's fine, but you should also load the samples into Visual Studio and modify them to compile and run from the VS IDE (you will need to add appropriate references to the project, which gives good practice in discovering where things are in the framework). Tweak the code in the VS IDE and see what happens -- you may be surprised!

There is no fat or padding in this book and you will need to consult your on-line help for details about options, signatures, etc. Instead, the authors focus on the most productive programming patterns for solving the important practical problems that arise again and again in seemingly countless guises. They share a great many insights and tips in the bear-track and bear-trap sidebars and you should make every effort to understand them in detail.

In doing this, you may find yourself going off the deep end here and there. This happened to me in the discussion of Thread.MemoryBarrier and the volatile keyword. Many questions arise here that the authors don't go into, and a fully satisfactory treatment of memory barriers demands a discussion of their hardware implementation. As I understand it, a memory barrier ensures that no memory access before/after the barrier can be moved so that it occurs after/before it. A variable marked volatile cannot be cached, either into a register or into the secondary (level-2) cache -- how does this relate to acquire and release fences? The error exposed in the example class IfYouThinkYouUnderstandVolatile is difficult to reproduce. Apparently, there is no way (Parallel.Invoke fails, for example) to arrange for two threads to execute Test1 and Test2 exactly simultaneously in parallel on my quad-core i5 processor, and without this such an event in the wild would be too rare to show up in practical test runs. So you'd have to look at the IL code (release build with optimizations), but I can find no reordering on my machine. Still, it's possible the just-in-time (JIT) compiler might reorder the IL instructions, and special tools would be needed to catch that. It seems the authors here are holding out their little pinky to the devil, but he wants more. The take-away, which the authors recommend, is just to stick with locks.

This is one of the very best programming books, in a class with Pietrek's "Windows 95 System Programming Secrets" and Richter's "Advanced Windows Programming".

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Jason Short

Amazingly clear in concepts, and execution

Reviewed in the United States on June 25, 2010

Verified Purchase

I have honestly stopped purchasing a lot of technical books in the past few years because it seems that they are all collections of blog posts (short, fragmented, and not well thought out).

This book is amazing for the clarity of the presentation. Each chapter is obviously well thought out, almost like a well designed program itself. You can read through a chapter and come away with a complete understanding of all the various concepts, alternatives, and syntax usage examples. In most cases the author will also briefly discuss why you may not want to use a specific construct over another one.

The Parallel Programming chapter covers .Net 4 parallel programming in a way I have never seen before. Now I get it. With the other articles and blogs I had read it seemed like it was just new ways of controlling locks, it is not. There are new objects to help you do things the old way, but there are also new ways to do things.

I bought this book based upon the strength of his C# 3 book, and I think this book has to be of even higher quality than the previous. I ordered copies for every programmer who works for me today. It will be one of the few .Net books that I keep as a reference.

4 people found this helpful

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Enrique Thedy

Best reference book

Reviewed in the United States on October 22, 2011

Verified Purchase

This title fits perfectly to my needs: a complete reference for all aspects of the language, with a smart balance between deep and overview: some themes like LINQ have 2 full chapters (over 100 pages) with very good descriptive graphics and lot of examples (and best of all, you get the two syntax, fluent and query)
All the examples have the right size (I don't want to pay for something I can download), maybe with the idea that the reader uses LINQPad to replay and really this app it's a good companion for the book.
The writer's style is friendly (yet for someone that don't speak english, like myself).
And because you WANT a C# reference: this book haven't a single word about ASP or ADO... ;-)
Some points I wish to change:
Perhaps a little more space for dynamic programming
The book's format (OReilly's standard I think) it's not very comfortable for me, I prefer others sizes like Wrox or MSPress, but it's not assignable to the book but to the editorial.

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DP Sailor

Best C# Reference Available

Reviewed in the United States on March 24, 2010

Verified Purchase

I don't have to make this review long at all--C# 4.0 in a Nutshell is simply the best reference available for the C# programming language. It covers everything you would expect, plus is has extensive coverage of LINQ, lambda expressions, reflextion, threading, and many other topics regularly encountered by .NET developers. I cleared my bookshelf of a half-dozen texts when I got this book; it rendered them superfluous.

One of the bast aspects of the book is its LINQ coverage. The authors make available a downloadable LINQ utility called LINQPad, which is very useful for developing LINQ queries. The program contains most of the LINQ examples from the book, which makes it a particularly valuable learning tool. I dodged LINQ when it was released several years ago, because it's documentation was so bad. I am using C# 4.0 in a Nutshell to learn it, and I am very impressed by both the book and LINQ.

2 people found this helpful

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AlanR

A Must-Have C# Book

Reviewed in the United States on April 25, 2011

Verified Purchase

For anyone with interest in C# programming, a beginner or an advanced programmer, the "C# 4.0 in a Nutshell: The Definitive Reference" is a great learning and reference book, a true treasure of in-depth knowledge. Written in a clear, well structured, systematic, comprehensive, and highly interesting way, this book fully deserves a place among the classic books in programming. In my experience, the finest and most valuable programming language book I have ever had in my hands (and I have had a few indeed). I bought it at first (for the speeed of delivery) in the Kindle-for-PC version, then I bought it also in a hardcopy version to have and use it as an always-at-hand quick reference (and I bought also the "C# 4.0 Pocket Reference" and the "LINQPad 4", a fantastic and very effective tool, from the same autors). A definite must-have on C#.

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Luca

c# 4.0

Reviewed in Italy on June 6, 2016

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Ho acquistato questo libro per approfondire le mie conoscenze di c#, avevo la necessità di focalizzarmi sul framework 3.5, e, nonostante questo libro copra anche la versione più aggiornata, si riesce tranquillamente ad estrapolare le sole parti che interessano. Lo consiglio perchè veramente ben fatto, di alto livello, con esempi ben comprensibili. Sicuramente un libro non adatto ad un principiante.

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Comprador

Biblia de C#

Reviewed in Spain on March 26, 2012

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La guia de referencia definitiva de C# y .NET basico. Obviamente no cubre todos los ambitos de .NET (para eso hay libros especializados en cada tema), pero para los novatos y para los expertos que desean tener una guia con todo lo esencial de C#, este es su libro.

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marias-vienna

Must-have Referenz für C#

Reviewed in Germany on April 19, 2011

Verified Purchase

Ich bin seit ca. 20 Jahren Softwareentwickler und habe mich in .NET mit der Beta 2 des Framework 1.0 eingearbeitet. C# Entwickler wurde ich mit .NET 1.1 (davor VB.NET). Dieses Buch ist für mich DAS Standardwerk schlechthin, das jeder C# Entwickler besitzen sollte.

Es liefert in-depth Informationen zu C# und der CLR bzw. dem .NET Framework, sowohl theoretischer Art als auch mit vielen aussagekräftigen Beispielen. Der Stil ist prägnant, auf das wesentliche konzentriert, kein Ausufern und dennoch umfassend und sehr gut verständlich.

Das Buch kommt auf einen Umfang von rund 1000 Seiten, der aber nicht abschrecken sollte. Einzelne Themenbereiche werden abgeschlossen behandelt, falls nötig die Referenzen zu anderen Kapiteln angeführt, sowie Tipps oder eventuelle "Fallen" angeführt. So kann man sich in ein Thema vertiefen ohne das gesamte Buch gelesen haben zu müssen und auf jeden Fall Gewinn daraus ziehen.

Ich selbst ertappe mich dabei, dass ich "schnell etwas nachschlagen" will, und dann am Thema hängenbleibe und mehr lese als ich ursprünglich vorhatte, sogar zum Zwischendurch-Lesen nehme ich das Buch zur Hand, es liest sich für mich fast wie ein guter Roman - vielleicht ticke ich aber auch zu sehr C# :-)

Beispiele, Kapitel die ich zuerst gelesen habe, und die mich sofort für das Buch gewonnen haben:

- Serialization: Engines, Performancevergleich, DeepClone und referenzielle Integrität von Objektbäumen bewahren
- Framework Fundamentals/Equality Comparison
- Disposal & Garbage Collection/Managed Memory Leaks

Ich denke, dass es kaum einen C# Entwickler gibt, der nicht von diesem Buch profitieren würde. Immer im Kopf behalten, dass es hier um eine Referenz geht, und keine Einführung in OO-Programmierung mit C# oder ähnliches. Ich schreibe aus der Sicht eines langjähren .NET Entwicklers.

6 people found this helpful

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Yossu

Excellent - gems in every chapter

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 11, 2011

Verified Purchase

When I flipped through the table of contents for this book, my first thought was that I'd wasted my money. I've been programming for 30 years, and using C# for at least five of those. I didn't think there would be much new to learn about (for example) IO, and assumed the chapter on it would be dull. ha, I was wrong there! I learned loads of new tricks and tips that I never knew before.

Even seasoned programmers will learn a lot from this book, and newcomers to C# will find all they need.

If I were to criticise it at all, it would be in the chapter on reflection. Not that there's anything wrong with this chapter, but like every other source on the subject I've read, it leaves me wondering why I would bother with it. I have heard of people who use reflection for all sorts of clever things, and I would love to know what and how, but have never found out. This book covers reflection in a clear manner, but didn't give me any great incentive for using it. That could be more a reflection (pun intended) on the subject rather than a criticism of the book.

As I said, this is a small criticism, and the number of tips and tricks I picked up in the other chapters more than made up for the lack of anything exciting in that one chapter.

However, even without the small gems in the familiar subjects, one of this book's real diamonds is the section on Linq. I've read a lot about it, and used it a lot, but never really understood it until I read this book. Together with the free LinqPad (written by one of the authors), it's a brilliant way to learn a very useful tool.

I haven't finished the book yet, but am happy to give it five stars even now. Strongly recommended.

Edit: 15th May '11 - Having finished the book, I still stand by my five star review, but would like to add that there is a very comprehensive set of chapters on parallel programming in C#. Given that I don't tend to write compute-intensive applications, this is of little interest to me, and I found it a bit boring after the first chapter. I just skipped it and skim-read the rest, taking mental note of the fact that it was there if I ever need it.

To be honest, I think this section should have been shorter, and the depth of material put into a book dedicated to parallel programming. However, given that the rest of the book was excellent, and the price was reasonable (so no complaints about being charged a lot for pages I wasn't interested in), I left it as a five start review, and just added this note.

10 people found this helpful

Hannes Fuchs

Must have

Reviewed in Germany on October 7, 2011

Verified Purchase

Dieses Buch ist mit Abstand das beste Buch zum Thema C# / .Net 4.0.

Es ist allerdings nicht für Anfänger im Programmieren allgemein geschrieben. Grundkenntnisse sollten vorhanden sein. Hat man diese, ist das Buch einfach nur noch ein Genuss. Sonst oft nur spärlich behandelte Themen wie Multithreading/Parallele Programmierung kommen hier voll auf ihre kosten. Anstatt Grundlagen bis ins letzte Detail durch zu kauen und hunderte Seiten für GUI Programmierung mit Bildern zu verschwenden, scheint der Author sich bei jedem einzelnen Satz gut überlegt zu haben ob man ihn braucht und was er dem Leser bringen soll. Sprich: Das Buch ist trotz seiner 1000 Seiten keinsfalls überladen oder liest sich zäh. Im Gegenteil, es ist als würde man einen spannenden Roman lesen. Und die Beispiele sind so simpel als möglich und so kompliziert wie nötig gehalten. Sprich: Sie sind kurz und auf den Punkt gebracht.

Also von mir, eine uneingeschränkte Kaufempfehlung. Ich arbeite selbst als Softwareentwickler und das Buch lohnt sich wirklich (außer für absolute Neulinge im Programmieren, wo es evtl. noch ein overkill ist).

2 people found this helpful

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