C# Precisely

The book C# Precisely gives a concise description of the C# programming language, version 2.0, including generics, iterators, anonymous methods, nullable value types, and partial type declarations, but excluding most of Microsoft's .Net Framework class libraries except threads, input-output, and generic collection classes.

The book has 204 pages, a comprehensive index, and 209 examples. The complete ready-to-run examples are available for download below.

See the table of contents. Here is a list of the few changes relevant for beta 2 of Visual Studio 2005.

Bibliographic data

Order it from Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.

Some reviews and comments

• Gabriel Mateescu in Online Computing Reviews, 5 August 2005: "This book stands apart from other books about the C# programming language by uniquely combining three attributes: completeness, clarity, and conciseness of description."
• Peter N. Roth in C/C++ Users Journal, October 2005: "I highly recommend this book as one from which to learn to program using C#. But due to the bracing brevity of the text, I can only recommend it if, and only if, you are already a programmer."
• Anders Hejlsberg, Microsoft: "Blaise Pascal once wrote, 'I have made this letter longer than usual, because I lack the time to make it short'. Peter Sestoft and Henrik Hansen have taken the time to write a short book on C# that leaves nothing out."

• As a zip file (169 KB)
• As a gzipped tar file (66 KB)
• Formatted two-up in Postscript (467 KB)

See also

• Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 beta download including the C# 2.0 implementation.
• The Mono project including a C# 2.0 implementation preview.
• The C5 generic collection library for C#/.Net
• Ecma C# 2.0 Language Specification Mirror Site.
  Peter Sestoft is a member of the C# standardization committee (Ecma International TC39 TG2).
• Some sample programs using C# 2.0 generics
• Java Precisely, a compact quick reference to the Java Programming Language.