Best Kept Secrets in .Net

by Deborah Kurata

Whether you are a new or experienced .NET programmer, this book offers data management methods that you might frequently miss in the rush to complete projects on time. Author Deborah Kurata writes a handy, complete guide to lead you through hidden features and tricks buried within Visual Studio.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1590594266
• ISBN13: 9781590594261
• Release Date: September 2004
• Publisher: Apress
• Length: 217 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 7.0" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Excellent Author & Book

I am an Answerer in MSDN forums and I see Deborah a lot answering questions in many different forums and she is extremely bright. All this time I didn't even know she was the author of this. I liked this book so much I actually bought two, one for my desk at work and one at home. Thanks Deb and see you at MSDN, John Grove

Great

This has a lot of great ideas for the professional developer that uses Visual Studio to do .NET development. Many ideas that are hard to find or you have to spend a LOT of time working with others to find. Saves a ton of time. For a small book and a small price, this should definitely be on your shelf.

Very informational for a .NET newbie!

Excellent book! There is lots of good information about Visual Studio .NET. VS .NET includes so many features that there is no way that any one person could find all the features. This book shows you some of the "little" features that you wouldn't ordinarily know about. It covers the IDE, windows forms, coding tricks, ADO, and defensive development. Unfortunately, what it doesn't cover is ASP.NET. This is a great book for beginning and intermediate .NET programmers. It helps you to quickly find the tools that will make your programming life much easier. All code samples are in VB.NET and C#. There are lots of screen shots to help you visualize what you're reading without having to go into the development environment to find it. The book is well laid out and well written. It is straight to the point and very easy to read. It's definitely a book I plan to keep handy when I'm programming.

Good for the one step up from Beginner

This is one of those books that you read and suddenly a light bulb comes on and you think "what a nifty way to do that." Yeah, if you really looked you'd find that you could get a description of that "way" out of several books, out of really going over all the options on all the menus, or perhaps even through the help feature. But how often do you really go to the help screens? Here are a bunch (I didn't count them) of useful little hints and tips that will help you move up a step in the competence department. The book is aimed at (in my opinion) someone who is just a step up from being an absolute beginner. Someone who has started working with .NET and learned the basics can get the most out of this book. It isn't a book that starts out with "This is the Visual Studio IDE." Instead it starts out "When you are using the IDE, sometimes it is helpful if...." This book is said to be aimed at the Beginner-Intermediate level. I agree. If you know everything that's in this book you aren't one of them. Good Job.

So much cool stuff in such a small book

Not since the C#/VB.NET Programmers Cookbook have I come across something with soooo much cool stuff in it. There are tons of great .NET books. But usually you have to read through things (and that's fine - it's the way you should learn stuff). But sometimes, you know you've come across something and you want to do it right without searching all over the place. I often forget which of my books I read a given technique in and search and search. Well, in 207 Pages you'll never have to look far. Chapter 1 - Hidden Treasures in Visual Studio - A must read for any .NET Developer. I'm pretty well versed in VS.NEt but the reference of shortcut keys, organizing your code snippets and Executing VS Commands all had more than a few tricks that I'm GLAD I came across. Chapter II - Designing Winforms - Well, it's a little late - I wish this was out 3 years ago. However that doesn't detract from it. Virtually every subtley nuanced little winforms trick I wanted to do in my career is here in one form or another. I hate Winforms programming so I didn't like the chapter personally as much as the other ones, but that's only becaues I don't like Winforms programming and i've stumbled through, often painfully, a lot of what's covered. It's still kick a33 as a reference though. Code Tricks - another great, GREAT chapter. The discussion on Regexs is one of the most clear I've come across but that's just the beginning. Overloading operators is discussed very to the point and even though that's hardly a major task, her discussion is just so to the point that it's about the best I've come across. Debugging - This is so Good even John Robbins would have to give her props - and he's written the best debugging book ever written. ADO.NET - well, that's probably where I spend most of my time - but she taught me a trick or two. The discussion on validatoin and using Extended Properties is second to none - and that's not just because it's hardly ever touched up anywhere else. Defensive Programming - EVERYONE should have to read this chapter. Everyone (Particularly VB6 programmers ;-) ) Anyway, this is another superb title that APress put out and at this rate, if the others don't catch up, APRess and Addison-Wesley are going to be the only real players in the developer market.