I just finished reading a review copy of “Programming .NET 3.5”
from O’Reilly. The book, published in August, is an overview of the
latest .NET Framework revision. You’ll get an introduction to the
topics that have been introduced along the way that include technology
from .NET 2.0, .NET 3.0, and the latest version; .NET 3.5. Also
included are libraries such as ASP.NET MVC and Silverlight.
You can easily pick up this book and enjoy the introductions to
technologies such as Windows Communication Foundation, Windows Workflow
Foundation, Windows Presentation Foundation, ASP.NET MVC, and
Silverlight. Each of these topics are presented in a way that will be
familiar to .NET developers. New developers, without experience in
.NET, will be able to take a lot away from this book. It certainly will
do more for the developer who already has a .NET background, no matter
how brief it is.
That said, if you only pick up the book for the introduction to each
technology, you’ll be missing the best that this book has to offer.
Unlike most technology books these days, this book explains the topics
within the context of best practices and real world scenarios. For
example, prior versions of ASP.NET did not promote decoupled
architectures. In fact, it made it difficult to achieve them. With the
technology available in .NET 3.5, modeling and implementing proper
architectures is encouraged and facilitated by the framework. This book
will show you how that works in .NET 3.5 and introduce you to the
technologies at the same time.
I highly recommend this book. It will be on my desk for easy reference for my .NET projects in the future.