Monday, May 5, 2003		Book Review

C and C++ have been the most widely used languages for developing commercial and business software. Programs made in C and C++ applications often take longer to develop. C# is the latest object-oriented language that enables programmers to quickly build a wide range of applications for the new Microsoft .NET platform. Because of its elegant object-oriented design, C# is a great choice for architecting a wide range of components, from high-level business objects to system-level applications. C# is a language which offers better balance between power and productivity.

This book on C# is written by John Smiley MCP, MCSD, MCT, computer programming professor and trainer. He is also the author of eight other books related to programming.

The book is divided into 13 chapters. Each chapter explains the various aspects of C # in an easy manner. The book has been written in easy-to-understand language and answer many questions related to C#. The first chapter of the book explains the Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC), which consists of nearly six phases — the preliminary investigation, the analysis phase, the design phase, the development phase, the implementation phase and the audit and maintenance phase. The knowledge of the SDLC is the basis of the language and without the knowledge of SDLC, a programmer cannot make an effective and useful program.

The other chapters spread out to fundamental programming concepts, knowledge of objects, knowledge of attributes and behaviours, knowledge to manipulate data and arrays in C# programs, building block strategies like sequence structures, selection structures and loops which are the basic blocks of any computer program.

The concept of object oriented programming that includes inheritance, interfaces and classes are discussed with easy to understand examples. The book explains how to create instantiable classes (classes from which objects can be created). Instantiable classes include two special types of methods, the constructor method and the destructor method. Both of them are explained in the book.

The book describes array processing, highlights on the various types of arrays and array dimensions. Chapter 10 explains why arrays are useful in making code easier to write and use, and how arrays can simplify the coding part of projects.

Controlling access to the data in the object is the chapter where author discusses how to protect data in objects from accidental or wilful manipulation. After teaching how to develop a C # program, the book teaches along with the examples the way to create Graphical User Interface (GUI) to run that program. It teaches how to add GUI objects to the form such as textboxes, buttons, radio buttons and labels. The event handling discussed in the book helps in providing the GUI with intelligence in our forms.

Error handling is a difficult and important part of any application. The general errors which a programmer does are discussed in the book. The book tells about the various types of errors which a beginner can do while making a program. The Error Handling chapter covers three different types of errors; compiler errors, runtime error and logic errors. — AP