Free Ebook on C# Programming

christophw writes "The programmers of SharpDevelop (better known to the /. crowd will be its sibling MonoDevelop) together with the publisher Apress made the book Dissecting a C# Application - Inside SharpDevelop available as a freely downloadable PDF document (no, no registration required). So if you want to judge for yourself if one can build an application of scale with .NET (or Mono for that matter), you now have a 500+ pages book for the holiday reading season (or the virtual bookshelf)."

Shameless self-promo

[prostoalex]

Free tech books [techbooksforfree.com]
Large collection of free online books at UPenn [upenn.edu] (not just tech)

Re:Shameless self-promo

[kisielk]

Definitely good, your site rocks :) Books could possibly use some better categorization especially if you start adding any more, but overall it's an awesome resource.

Re:Shameless self-promo

[battlemarch]

Oh my... nice. Thank you.

Now, having said that.. you missed one. :-)

Teach Yourself Java in 21 Days [newdata.box.sk]

Re:Shameless self-promo

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Never, in my entire life, have I missed Java.
Only thing looked better in the rear-view mirror was that <human> <female> who shall remain unnamed.

Re:Shameless self-promo

[prostoalex]

This one is not really clean in terms of copyright. It's a copy of Teach Yourself Java in 21 Days from Sams, and I am not aware of Sams ever releasing any of their stuff into public domain. All the books on my site are clean.

Re:Shameless self-promo

[battlemarch]

Then you may want to check your C/C++ page.

I found the Java book by first following the link to Teach Yourself C++ in 21 Days [newdata.box.sk] on your C/C++ page.

Re:Shameless self-promo

[prostoalex]

Ah, thanks, this one slipped through.

Re:Shameless self-promo

[battlemarch]

No Problem, you're welcome.

And again, thank you for all those useful links.

Re:Shameless self-promo

[Kelerain]

I'd just like to note
"- E-mail required to download the single 500-page PDF file."
Isn't quite true. If you uncheck 'Subscribe to Apress Newsletter' then hit download, it will let you by, without an email address.

And I *love* your site by the way. I've used several of those resources already and forwarded it to my academic advisor, who forwarded it to the entire CSET program. (small program though). Keep up the great work!

Re:Shameless self-promo

[superpulpsicle]

Thanks man. Seems like most of them have pdf links so you can permanently hang on to them forever.

Re:Yeah, right

[Anonymous Coward]

Without working in .NET for more than a couple months, with an open attitude, you can't really have a credible opinion. Just because it's Microsoft, you'll get the people who are automatically anti, and then you also will have people who are only Microsoft that will think it's gods greatest gift. Fox example, C# has some nice features such as using delegates for events vs. having to implement the observer pattern in java. But then you'll also have somebody who doesn't know about the SOAP toolkits in Java that can build WSDL proxies just like the .NET utility does. More than anything, it's all opinion. Use the right tool for the job. If I'm going to write a web service, I'll take an ASP.NET web service any day. If I need to parse a huge file, give me Perl. Can't all languages just get along!!!

Re:Yeah, right

[Decaff]

For many of us, it's not a case of being pro- or anti-Microsoft, it's a matter of simple business sense: Having only a single supplier for a technology has never been considered a sensible strategy in any area of business - with the strange exception of IT. Perhaps there is a mistaken sense that much software is always short-term and temporary, so it doesn't matter if the neat and friendly development system you use comes from only one company, and runs on only one platform.

Well, I was using Turbo Pascal

Re:Yeah, right

[Decaff]

There is a very big difference between .Net and the OSS implementations - one is supported by Microsoft and the other's aren't. One meets a full (and possibly changing) spec, including libraries, the others don't.

But if you don't want to use .NET,Mono, or dotGNU then fine. But don't think you can influence anybody else to not use them.

Oh, I not only think I can influence people not to use .Net, I already successfully have. I manage development that HAS to be successfully cross-platform. Not partially

Re:Yeah, right

[Decaff]

Oh, I understand how bitter you and the other rabid microsoft haters are that Mono and dotGNU was even started.

Not bitter, just puzzled. Why copy Microsoft? All that expertise could have gone into an entirely new bytecode/runtime/language combination - something that could never be threatened by patents or trying to catch a moving target.

I find it bizarre that so many developers who don't like Java (because of licencing) are prepared to work on duplicating Microsoft technologies. In the past, anyone

Re:Yeah, right

[Decaff]

The only missing bits are going to be the Microsoft.* namespace. This is insignificant.

If this is going to be the case soon, I'm certainly going to be more interested in Mono, although I'd still be very nervous about what MS would do if Mono got really successful.

Oh really? What kind of support? I'm somehow entitled to talk to a support engineer from Sun because I download the SDK? Or are you talking abut a support contract?

Support contract. You can buy support for Java from Sun.

Re:Yeah, right

[Nohea]

Mono and dotGNU are NOT complete implementations of .Net

Linux is not a complete implementation of Unix

Re:Decaff

[Decaff]

It's obvious that by the number of posts you've made on this thread (for a technology you have no interest in)

I have an interest in all IT technologies, as does any decent professional programmer who wants to keep their job.

that you are absolutely infuriated that Java is dead on the desktop and that .NET is being embraced by many in the Gnome community.

I'm not infuriated. Why should I be? I don't develop much for the desktop, and what I do is for Linux (well, actually for Windows as well, as I use

Re:Decaff

[Decaff]

Ok, you see like a reasonable fellow compared to the normal slashdork fangirls we see around here so I had a knee-jerk reaction to you and apologize.

That is very decent of you - thanks!

It's not that Java is bad. It's that Sun's stewardship of Java has been bad. All the way from McNealy screaming in the late 90s that Java was the platform and the OS was irrelevant to the disaster that is Swing.

I certainly agree with you in most respects here. Sun have never been good at knowing how to pitch Java. It

I'll admit...

[Svartalf]

...I'm at least passingly interested in C# and if Mono can help my clients kick their MS habits, then it's all right in my book. As for ASP.NET being a right tool for the job- that's quite debateable. In all honesty, a Java Servlets and JSP engine is in the same class- in fact, it seems more robust (At least on the Linux side of things...) than IIS and ASP.NET is- or IIS/Apache and Mono's rendition of the same.

Having delegates seems to be nice, but I can't say that it produces better code- just easier to

Re:Don't get it

[mattgreen]

Kind of like people who fool themselves into thinking they know what they are talking about?

Re:Don't get it

[LiENUS]

Have you used .Net? it is actually quite decent, and if you really need libraries it is possible to make calls to windows dlls. Perhaps you should give it a try, its not just a Java clone. When it matures a bit it will be an excellent way to achieve cross platform applications.

Re:Don't get it

[Decaff]

Exactly how is .Net supposed to be a way to achieve cross platform applications? Microsoft have no intention of porting .Net to anything other than Windows, and have not provided assistance in the development of .Net clones (such as Mono). Full .Net is likely to remain Windows-only long-term.

Re:Don't get it

[LiENUS]

I developed a .Net application without cross platform in mind at all, and immediately it ran under DotGNU's Portable.NET. and microsoft has expressed an interest in alternative implementations of .NET. according to the Mono faq at http://www.mono-project.com/about/faq.html#msft [mono-project.com]

Question 38: Is Microsoft helping Novell with this project?

There is no high level communication between Novell and Microsoft at this point, but engineers who work on .NET or the ECMA groups have been very friendly, and very nice to answer our questions, or clarify part of the specification for us.

Microsoft is interested in other implementations of .NET and are willing to help make the ECMA spec more accurate for this purpose.

Re:Don't bet on it

[kupci]

Given MSOFTS past history, I wouldn't bet my marbles on much help from them. A company I know that has a MSOFT product, and uses VMWare where they need to deploy on a non-MSOFT platform.

Re:Don't bet on it

[LiENUS]

Except for the fact that .Net code already runs on other platforms see http://www.go-mono.com/ [go-mono.com] and http://www.dotgnu.org/ [dotgnu.org].

Re:Don't bet on it

[Decaff]

Except for the fact that .Net code already runs on other platforms

No. only some .Net code runs on other platforms.

The difference with Java is that if you have a J2EE or J2SE implementation on a platform you get all of it. Every last API and libary. Guaranteed and tested. There aren't half-implemented bits or enterprise features that aren't supplied.

Re:Simple mental exercise

[Decaff]

Name five platforms that J2EE has been ported to.

Windows, Linux, Solaris, HP/UX, zOS, OS/390, MacOS/X, OpenVMS, NonStop, Tru64.

Name five platforms that Mono runs on.

Well, it's available as packages for Linux, Windows, and MacOS/X. I would imagine that it would compile for many other platforms, such as Solaris and BSDs (that's 5!). I would be surprised to see a version for OpenVMS or zOS.

This comparison is irrelevant anyway - it's not answering my point about incomplete APIs in Mono.

Re:Simple mental exercise

[LiENUS]

And how old is mono? mono is just starting up, their goal isnt even to get api compatibility untill 2.0. and people are running mono in production environments with xsp already.

Re:Simple mental exercise

[Decaff]

And how old is mono? mono is just starting up, their goal isnt even to get api compatibility untill 2.0

A good reason to hold off using it for large-scale and business critical applications.

and people are running mono in production environments with xsp already.

Yes, but this STILL does not answer my point about incomplete APIs. I wish Mono well, and hope it takes off as a popular and successful development platform: an open-source and robust competitor to Java would be a great idea. But, it should s

Re:Simple mental exercise

[LiENUS]

And for what reason cant it be a full cross-platform implementation. the only parts they intend to leave out are things in the Microsoft.* namespace. and a lot of those they are implementing in the Mono.* namespace. when mono 2.0 is finished, you should be able to run anything not depending on something in the Microsoft.* namespace.

Re:Simple mental exercise

[Decaff]

when mono 2.0 is finished, you should be able to run anything not depending on something in the Microsoft.* namespace.

This is contradicted by the Mono website!

I quote:

Although WinFS, Avalon and Indigo are very exciting components, at this time it is too early to tell when those components will be available for Mono.

and:

Unsupported technologies

Some technologies are very hard to implement or are being phased out by components in the Longhorn time frame. In some cases, we feel that they are not cruci

Re:Simple mental exercise

[LiENUS]

Both of these quotes appear to be out of context, i'm not even sure where the first one comes from and the second one is in respect to running VisualStudio.NET programs under the current version of mono.

Re:Simple mental exercise

[LiENUS]

Oops, forgot to post some more information.
According to http://www.mono-project.com/about/mono-roadmap.htm l [mono-project.com]

Other components like Windows.Forms, Directory.Services, Enterprise Services and JScript are being developed but are not as mature as the other components but are under development by various people.

Re:Simple mental exercise

[Decaff]

Both of these quotes appear to be out of context, i'm not even sure where the first one comes from and the second one is in respect to running VisualStudio.NET programs under the current version of mono.

They are not out of context. They are taken directly from the Mono roadmap page:

http://www.mono-project.com/about/mono-roadmap. h tm l

The second is not in respect to VisualStudio.Net programs. Its a general statement. VisualStudio.Net is not mentioned in that context at all.

Re:Simple mental exercise

[Decaff]

Other components like Windows.Forms, Directory.Services, Enterprise Services and JScript are being developed but are not as mature as the other components but are under development by various people.

Yes, I have seen that page. It's the same page that mentions that some of the enterprise services are likely to remain unsupported!

That page gives a definite emphasis on the intended use of Mono: the 'open source desktop'. Well, fine! That's actually what a lot of .Net is being used for. But, a large num

Re:Don't get it

[Decaff]

My point is made by another quote from that site:

Question 50: Can mono run the WebMatrix?

No. That requires System.Windows.Forms support which is not currently implemented.

A non-Microsoft .Net is always likely to have significant sections with are 'not currently implemented'

Re:Don't get it

[Bill Dog]

I thought Windows Forms was going to be essentially deprecated [msdn.com] anyways, when Longhorn is released, in favor of Avalon/XAML?

Re:Don't get it

[nickd]

Microsoft dont need to port it.

Mono [go-mono.com]
Portable.NET [southern-storm.com.au]
DotGnu [dotgnu.org]

So some of the biggest groups in OSS development seem to think that it might be a good idea to have an implementation of the CLI for other operating systems (Linux, OSX, Windows, Solaris, NetBSD, FreeBSD) and architectures (x86, PowerPC, ARM, Sparc, PARISC, s390, Alpha, and IA-64 to name a few).

What you have to keep in mind is that the CLI (the virtual machine in a sense) is an ISO standard (Java still isnt). The API's such as the System.* name

Re:Don't get it

[Decaff]

What you have to keep in mind is that the CLI (the virtual machine in a sense) is an ISO standard (Java still isnt)

I would rather have a non-ISO standard from a company (Sun) that has had a solid reputation for decades for upholding standards, than an ISO standard from Microsoft, which has a solid reputation for dumping standards on a whim.

The ISO standard for the CLI will be of no use at all if Microsoft decides in a few years that an entirely new technology is better and relegates .Net to legacy (look

Re:Don't get it

[winchester]

The ISO standard for the CLI will be of no use at all if Microsoft decides in a few years that an entirely new technology is better and relegates .Net to legacy (look at how it has treated Visual Basic 6 developers, for example).

Plus the fact that just the CLR was submitted for certification, not the all-importent windows.forms and web.forms libraries every windows developer uses...

Plus the fact that if you do not live in the windows world, there already is a well-established cross-platform language, wit

Re:Don't get it

[Decaff]

Plus the fact that if you do not live in the windows world, there already is a well-established cross-platform language, with the associated runtime, called Java. Well supported by major vendors like IBM, who basically told Microsoft to shove .NET in a warm, dark hole.

The thing I find it hard to get across to many Windows developers is that Java does Windows too! It may not do things as elegantly as .Net in terms of the client side, but the full functionality is there: There are plenty of tools that allo

Re:Don't get it

[Decaff]

but just as much as Java has failed with "write once run anywhere

I think that almost all current Java developers would disagree with you here! Almost all the tools I use for Java development and all the libraries I use are completely platform neutral. In the early days there were serious platform-dependencies (there were thread issues on Linux for example), but those days are long past. I routinely transfer major projects between Windows, Solaris and Linux with no effort at all.

Eventually way downt h

Re:Don't get it

[Decaff]

And I can certainly respect your point about porting legacy systems to new technologies being a pain, but hey, it gives you a job (hehe).

heh - and a lot of others too!

I guess what chaps me the most about everybodies anti MS sediments is the fact that MS DOES provide good technologies, but nobody ever gives them the credit.

I agree that when they do things, they do things well. My grouch with them is based on nearly 30 years (!) of using their products (I used their cassette-tape-based Macro Assembler

Re:Don't get it

[ivano]

debugging on .NET is a joy! And I'm a Java guy (well, depending on the time of week)

Ciao

Using SharpDevelop for about a week

[Omega1045]

I have been taking SharpDevelop for a test drive for the last week. I have been developing C#/.NET apps for the last 2 or 3 years with Visual Studio. I have found that VS.NET does a pretty good job, but has some big, bad bugs when you run into them (very occasionally for me).

I have found SharpDevelop to be very nice. The environment is very, very similar to VS.NET. It has a very professional look and feel, and I have found it a nice platform for building C# apps.

The only part missing in SharpDevelop is the ability to add "Web References", or references to XML SOAP resources. VS.NET automajically builds local interface classes and adds them to your project when you reference a XML SOAP resource, so that you have local classes and functions to call on. In turn, these call on the SOAP functions over the network. You do not need to know anything about the inner workings of the SOAP protocol to call upon remote functions.

Other than that missing piece, SharpDevelop is very fully featured and has yet to crash. Make sure to read the FAQ on their site if it does crash the first time you try to run it after install - their is a bug in the installer.

Re:Using SharpDevelop for about a week

[LiENUS]

My only complaint so far about sharpdevelop is that its a bit slow starting up, however ngen seems to speed it up a bit. My understanding of VS.NET is that it does some extra trickery wherein the executables it produces actually contain x86 code and for the most part just use the .Net api instead of using the vm. This would explain why VS.NET is so much faster than #Develop.

Re:Using SharpDevelop for about a week

[mattgreen]

I believe most of VS.NET is written in C++. The Forms Designer is written in C#, among a few other things (add-ins can be written in C#, for example, implying the CLR being hosted inside of the app for extensibility purposes).

I still find VS.NET quite slow for an IDE, however. Once I got one gigabyte of memory it really seemed to help things, but I'm still somewhat disappointed with it overall. Gone is the perkiness of VS6.

Re:Using SharpDevelop for about a week

[RodeoBoy]

In my experience a gig makes a big difference. My current work environment I am also running IIS and a full suite of Rational tools and my machine plugs along fine. At half a gig that setup is very slow and can only run VS decently when nothing else is loaded up.

Re:Using SharpDevelop for about a week

[cyberjessy]

The only part missing in SharpDevelop is the ability to add "Web References", or references to XML SOAP resources.

For most people, it would seem that the lack of an integrated debugger is the biggest problem with Sharp Develop. You will have to debug externally with GuiDebug, which is slightly time consuming while testing code.

They are planning to include debug in some future release.

Re:Using SharpDevelop for about a week

[Omega1045]

I noticed this, but I guess it is a feature I use so much in VS.NET that I missed it in my review!

Time for digital book burning

[JPyObjC Dude]

Let me ad VB help files, J++, VBScript for starters :]