New Microsoft release for 70-536

I was in the bookstore and saw a new release for 70-536. Has anyone checked it out yet? It is noticably shorter than the first edition. Is the first edition still ok to study from?

Thanks

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MidLiveUpgrade

The one i just bought was the "Microsoft .NET Framework-Application Development Foundation" Second Editon.

Just started working my way through it.

Dave.

JDMurray

The one reviewer of it on amazon.com wasn't too impressed, but one book shouldn't be your own study resource. The book's discussion comments indicate that the 1st edition is still good to use.

MCPWannabe

This book and I have a Love-Hate relationship.

I love how it goes about some of the explanations adding some clarity. Concepts are organized and layed out well with plenty of examples. Furthermore, the labs are probably the strongest part of any Microsoft Press Programming book.

I can't emphasize how much one will learn by knowing how to do those labs and understanding them.

Unfortunately, the books is not written for a beginner -- the Comp Sci grad who just graduated or the person who just learned a programming language or the person who is just starting out with microsoft's version of object-oriented programming.

What I really liked about the .NET 1.1 foundations /Windows Programming book is that the first 4 chapters were specifically for the beginner -- polymorphism, classes, garbage collection, collections, and interfaces were covered in both a theoretical and a practical manner.

This was perhaps 158 pages of the book but it was an essential 158 pages of the book. It set me up to quickly understand 2.0 as I found myself well-grounded with the basics.

Now, Microsoft has apparently decided that the basics are two trivial. It's unfortunate. I taught a class of very experienced programmers, and I found myself having to review collections, polymorphism -- overloading methods, delegates, etc.. The students were lost and did not understand the concepts.

Unfortunately, this slowed me down and was something that I was unprepared for...

I would recommend that someone who is new to windows programming get the original .NET 1.1 book if possible and read chapters 1-4. Everything there applies to 2.0 also except that 2.0 has some expanded capabilities. It's only 158 pages, but it will set one up to master .NET foundations quite well. I know for a fact that I would have been lost if I had not covered this first.

On my feedback to Microsoft, I'm going to emphasize that I believe that they should put a section of their book covering the fundamentals back in as the new .NET path is much harder to reach.

Right now, I think that there are only 6,330 Enterprise Application Developers worldwide, and I think that the new approach by Microsoft of abandoning the fundamentals has contributed to this.

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/certified.mspx

GDude

Are you referring to "MCAD/MCSD Self-Paced Training Kit: Developing Windows®-Based Applications with Microsoft® Visual Basic® .NET and Microsoft Visual C#® .NET, Second Ed"?

DeepCode

MCPWannabe wrote: »

...Now, Microsoft has apparently decided that the basics are two trivial. It's unfortunate. I taught a class of very experienced programmers, and I found myself having to review collections, polymorphism -- overloading methods, delegates, etc.. The students were lost and did not understand the concepts.

..TOO trivial....... Well since it is not a beginner's book, it is consistent to have those concepts absent. I also cannot imagine how one can be an "experienced" programmer and not understand polymorphism, delegates (function pointers) , collections and method-overloading. That's like an "experienced" electrician not knowing the difference between connections in series and connections in parallel.

MCPWannabe wrote: »

Right now, I think that there are only 6,330 Enterprise Application Developers worldwide, and I think that the new approach by Microsoft of abandoning the fundamentals has contributed to this.

I am 2 exams away........

MCPWannabe

GDude wrote: »

Are you referring to "MCAD/MCSD Self-Paced Training Kit: Developing Windows®-Based Applications with Microsoft® Visual Basic® .NET and Microsoft Visual C#® .NET, Second Ed"?

That's the one. Try to get a cheap 2 dollar copy or some pdf version off the web. You only need the first 4 chapters.

pavel486

I followed yours advise and got the "old" book. (it's for exams 70-306 and 70-316, may be some clue for somebody who still looking, plenty of them on eBay)
Four chapters are 215 pages and it's definitely helped a great deal. I also recommend to review Ch.5 (Testing and Debugging).
I'm writing code for 10 years now and I'm really surprised how much stuff I missed. For some of you outside of academia - I'm dealing every day with code written by "experienced" programmers. Many of them have no clue what's a "delegate". Gosh.. I'm one of them myself.
I'll say this book is a must for 70-526 and may be for 70-536 (I'm just started it)