Before you start to read this book you will need to take whatever medication you use to handle extreme hype. The author clearly believes that C# is even better than sliced bread. But that should come as no surprise as among all his various qualifications is his Microsoft MVP (most valued professional) for ASP.
This is not the place for me to write about C#, its history (the original project comes from the 1980s) and the motivation for introducing it. However you should note that this book was released in July 2000, at which stage even the author would have found it hard to compile his code with anything other than an alpha version of the compiler.
Most of what you will find in this book you would be able to find out on the web. Additionally, I have serious reservations as to how useful it would be to someone who was not already reasonably familiar with either C++ or Java. I think many authors underestimate the amount of learning that is needed to grasp unfamiliar syntax. The main problem faced by those familiar with Java will be that much of C# will feel familiar. As Java is never mentioned in the book, the author has clearly avoided writing anything about that language. That means that this book will be much less useful than it might have been because the author has deliberately avoided opportunities to draw comparisons and point out differences.
C programmers will have all the normal problems associated with the object-oriented extensions. They will have further difficulties because of the lack of a pre-processor, C++ programmers already try to avoid using that.
The ideal customer for this book is a C++ programmer who needs to quickly gain familiarity with the basics of C#. If you can wait for a little longer or have the time to do your own research on the web you can avoid the irritation of an author who is so determined to tell us how much better C# is than its predecessors.
If you would like a quick introduction to C# from someone who has just finished writing a training course on it for Microsoft, check out The ACCU Spring Conference 2001 http://www.accu.org/events/public/accu0103.htmwhere Jon Jagger is presenting an introduction to C# for C++ programmers.
