C# 8.0 and .NET Core 3.0 - Modern Cross-Platform Development: Build applications with C#, .NET Core, Entity Framework Core, ASP.NET Core, and ML.NET using Visual Studio Code, 4th Edition 4th Edition

As an amateur developer with a desire to become familiar and proficient with C# and .NET Core 3, I found this book to meet my needs and expectations. It provide thoroughly clear explanations of the language and its underlying technology. Its tutorial method is straightforward with good examples and exercises that are easy to follow and that are explained fully but concisely. The chapter organization seems at first to include too many topic, but after a little time they all make sense together. There are a large number of "Good Practice" comments and "More Information" guides that provides enhancements for even better understanding of coding methods and details for understanding the language better. While the screen shots are a bit small (not easy to read in dim light), the author provides web links to those shots early in the book so that they can be viewed more clearly. For those new to the Visual Studio Code IDE, this is good advice given. All in all, this book is superb for a beginner using C# or someone like me with a reasonably good programming background but desiring to enhance ones skills for modern applications.

Haven't gone through this book cover-to-cover, but so far it's been mostly positive. The development steps are clearly illustrated usually with some context as to why things are the way they are and actual code examples. I've got multiple books from Packt publishing on the subject and they're all unique in their own way. I was surprised to see that there's actually a lot of content devoted specifically to UWP apps, which could be a plus if you're looking to transition. The book's physical condition is very good. The text is clear and easy to read. The pages are thick and don't stick together.Overall, this is a good book but I wouldn't recommend it for beginners. If you're just starting out, some of the concepts can be a challenge to understand so be prepared to log some hours figuring things out.

I'm an very experienced C# and .NET engineer and picked up this book to get up to speed on the latest updates to the language and the platform. I found the book easy to navigate. The first few chapters cover the basics. The later chapters do a great job of covering the C# 8 and latest .NET Core features. Mark does an excellent job showing the new features and the why & how to you want to use the latest stuff.

I have worked with a lot of different computer languages in 40 years. With the way C has evolved from ++ to # as well as throwing Xamarin into it, it would great to find a complete book that doesn't skip the fine details from creating, replacing, updating, and deleting records since it can be confusing enough with all the layers of programming and object embedded coding to it. C# isn't COBOL but it can be like Java and converting from Java to C# is a better transition and this book can show you the way.The majority of C# programming is for database applications and this book reflects that. I finally found a new C# reference manual that didn't come from Microsoft Press.

I really liked how this book was organized and how the coverage of the core language was very concise and easy to follow. I did get tripped up on delegates and events, but the author did warn about that.I wish that coverage of web apps included publishing and some mention of containers.I liked the coverage of CMS, but overall I don’t think. The advanced topics of the chapters toward the end warranted full code walk-thoughs. It would have been more helpful to just signpost to the next levels.

Solid content, but some ways the book is written are difficult to make sense of. An example of this is a section about “how to connect to a database” and nothing in the section mentions how to connect to a database. I found myself questioning several areas of the book like this, that didn’t quite make sense or fully explain a topic. Aside from these weird spots, the content is quite good and “deep” enough to be worth continuing.

There are many things to like about this book. It covers most of the fundamentals with syntax while providing suggestions for improving performance. View the table of contents and you'll see he covers a wide range of topics. For additional information on those topics, there are references to additional resources on the web about them (over 360 reference links are included). There is a lot of information provided and a wealth of knowledge to gain from this book. There are plenty of tutorials that he walks you through and he challenges you to perform other tasks on your own to reinforce the learning experience from the chapter. There isn't much I would dislike from the information provided. A couple of links displayed 404, but they were pretty easy to locate where the sites relocated the information. For those who type out the code and step through it, then beware of the intellisense in the VSCode tool. You may find yourself re-typing what the intellisense overwrote. Happy coding.

I do like this book and personally found it interesting. As a Computer Science professor and mostly a a Windows person I would like to obtain supplemental materials (if available) to further assist my Students using Mac for this book. So my question is if there are any useful supplemental materials like slides and if yes - how to obtain them.