Beginning ASP.NET 4.5 in C# (Experts Voice in .Net)

I have been looking for someone, anyone to properly answer my questions about ASP.NET web development. This is the only resource (including every course on Udemy, every YouTube video, and even the books in the Development for Dummies book series) that handles every question I had and even the questions I didn't know I had. While I am not an absolute beginner, I was glued to this book and how easy it is to follow and understand. I agree with some of the negative reviews when they say there were not enough code examples and code examples that were in the book were not properly formatted. But that didn't slow me down at all. Best instructional source I have EVER purchased! Hands down.

This was my first foray into the ASP.NET world. I had previously worked on an Outlook plug-in that utilized C#, so I'm not unfamiliar with the coding language or the Visual Studio platform. As a result, the first few chapters were essentially review, though I read them anyway since there is usually a nugget or two I can pick up from the review. I found the book to be very well-organized with some great examples. In addition, all of the coding examples could be pulled from the website in situations where you get stuck. Relating to that, there were a few examples in the book that didn't seem to work right out of the box, but the process of figuring those out helped me to learn. I will say, and it has been repeated by other reviewers, that at times it was a little frustrating to learn about a particular concept and then find out chapters later that there is a much better way to do it and thus you'd gone over the other one essentially as reference (e.g. raw ADO.NET vs. LINQ and the Entity Framework). Now, I don't tend to mind that as much, as it gives me another opportunity to learn. Plus, you never know when you might need to use the older way to accomplish something (backward compatibility, customization, etc.).I've experienced other reference guides that continue to build on one example, so you can see it evolve and how the newer items improve your life. This one, however, relies on disjointed examples. The pro of this is that you start with a clean slate each chapter (in some cases multiple clean slates depending on the number of concepts covered), the con is that you don't get a chance to see what happens when you drop some different code into a program that is already geared to run on something else, and being forced to compensate for it. I did this on my own for some of the projects just to see that dynamic in action. However, all in all, the examples were quite good and illustrated many things within the ASP.NET framework that I definitely would not have visited were it not for this book.This book was a great first look at ASP.NET for me, and has been serving as a great reference guide as I've been tooling around on a small project. Relating to that, I will say that the index at the back has been less-than-helpful when I needed to look up some specific items that I knew I had come across at some point in the book.I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who is looking to get into the ASP.NET world.

I'm self-taught in most things computer, especially programming. Now I'm managing a fairly simple website and I need to know how to find my way around it and make changes and improvements. I bought this book because I was struggling with the intersection of ASP and C#.There's no way I could learn what I need to know by just reading this book. As a beginner, I just don't have the background to read what's offered and develop a full understanding of the concepts. That said, the book provides a framework for learning what I need to know. When I'm stuck, I Google the concept, learn what I need to know, then return to the book. It makes for slow-going, but I'm slowly developing the background I need.As other reviewers have noted, the book never tells you which files the sample code comes from. It's definitely worth downloading the sample files so you can look at the full code, preview the website, look at the source code, and make changes to see what happens. The code in the book doesn't always match the code in the files, but you can usually figure out what the author is referring to.I'm about 200 pages into the book and intend to finish it because my fairly simple website includes advanced techniques. That and the book will be more useful as a reference if I've worked through all of it.

This book is very detailed in its instruction. Moreover, it is easy to follow and comprehend. Mr. Matthew MacDonald is a superb author and instructor. It is one of the best technology books I've read. Well done! Thank you.

I am just starting out with C# and this book has the approach of "throw all the info you can" in the very beginning. If you're new to learning C# then this is a good book as it has good examples of code and talks a lot about the syntax. While this book doesn't have any questions or exercises like many other books, I find this to be a very good book for references as I am constantly going back to previous chapters to review material.

This is a great book overall, very thorough. However, it's annoying that the author doesn't tell you which file your working in. Which fortunately was pretty easy to determine, usually... there were a couple of times where i couldn't figure out what file he was working in because the code didn't represent any of the practice files yet required another page to make it run. It's just an annoying thing to waste time on when your trying to learn something.

this book uses a lot of insider lingo so if you are truly a beginner I would steer away at first. If you want to become a professional programmer this is your book. It dissects the code well. The chapter layout doesn't seem to be logical. I skipped the first two chapters then read them last. Overall it is a great reference and anyone who wants to become an asp.net programmer will need to have this in their library.

It wasn't exactly what I expected, but it should have been. It truly is a beginner's book, more so than a lot of the books labeled as beginning/beginners, etc.If you know absolutely nothing about ASP.NET and C# this is a book you should get to make a huge leap in understanding.

I would highly recommend this book if you want to get started with ASP.NET development in C#.It is written in an excellent style which is both technically competent and easy to understand. Although it is an introductory text, it actually covers a wide range of subjects related to ASP.NET. This book enabled me to build a website with secure logins, consistent themes, and effective access to a SQL Server database, and I have still only properly read about half of the chapters!As with any modern technology, there is a lot to learn with ASP.NET, and you will probably have to search the thorough online documentation to achieve everything you need to. What this book gives you is a great understanding of the fundamentals so you are then able to comprehend and make good use of the online documentation which would otherwise be overwhelming.Definitely one of my better purchases!

I bought this book because I moved into a role using ASP.NET and C# although I'd never used these before. I found this book to be very well written, without the jokey patronising style of some other "Beginning ..." books I have bought. Although a lot of information can be found via the internet, it tends to be very tightly topic-focused, can be wrong, incomplete or very out-of-date, and what this book does is to give the reader a broad framework into which more specific pieces of info can be fitted.It does give a very good overview of the fundamentals, including, for example using Visual Studio - e.g. I'd found out how to create a project but I didn't know the difference between that and a website, and why a co-workers site generated .designer.cs files but mine didn't. I've by no means covered the whole 800+ pages, but enough to confidently recommend this as an intro for a capable developer new to ASP.

This is quite a good book for people who are starting development on ASP.NET with C#.My only issue is the index at the end which is poorly constructed and very difficult to navigate: I had to put post-its on all the main chapters and on the subjects that are the most relevant to me.Besides this, I would highly recommend the book to anyone starting with ASP.NET with C# or anyone who already has some knowledge but need a good and reliable source of information, instead of navigating endlessly on the numerous websites and blog on the same subject.

Very well written book full of good practical examples, ideal for anybody who is used to using ASP.Net 2.0 for example and needs a quick guide into the facilities in 4.5, as well as acting as a revision tool for those things you had forgotten.

Very Detailed and easy to follow examples with descriptions. Whether you want to get in depth knowledge or use the book as a reference it is a must buy book,