;"Then the authors admit that making a property public is not a good OO design, suggesting to use private property instead and two custom implemented public methods GetXXX() and SetXXX() as the accessors for this property. What a mess!!! And there was no indication to the actual definition of the properties in C# with get{} and set{} accessors whatsoever!!!
Just look at the sample question given in the book:
"Which of the following is the correct way to declare the method
GetPayCheck()?
A. public int GetPayCheck()
B. private int GetPayCheck()
C. private void GetPayCheck(int a)
D. public void GetPayCheck(int a)
"
How would you answer this question? The context wasn't given and without context all the declarations seem to be syntactically correct.
But the answer is: "Since this is a getter method, the method will need to return the value that it retrieves, hence the return type of int. All getter methods should be declared as public."
What "getter method"? Who said they should be public? What I see here is an attempt to declare someone's own personal programming style as a kind of a standard.
Stay away from this book. It will make you to waste your time and money on Microsoft exams.
Basic Introduction - Riddled with Errors,
March 25, 2004If your just looking for an intro to this material, and this book is cheap enough, I suppose it'll do. I would be remiss however if I did not say that there is NO WAY this book alone could get you throught the exams. It just doesn't have anywhere near the necessary depth of information needed for the MS Certs.
Not even good for an introduction,
March 06, 2004"Specifies whether sensitive security information is to be resent if a connection is reopened."
Are these people just making it up as they go along, or what? If you know anything about ADO or ADO.Net then you know that Persist Security Info only refers to whether you can, in code, retrieve the password information from the connection string of an open connection. Regardless of how Persist Security Info is set, the password is available for opening or reopening the connection.
Wait! Maybe this book was intended to be a work of fiction about C#! It's just listed in the wrong section! That would explain the authors just making it up as they went along.
As for being All-in-One, I would call it None-in-One. Many key sections of the book are incomplete and don't tell you that they're incomplete. Other sections are incomplete and tell you to read MSDN for more information. I thought that was what I bought the book for...so I wouldn't have to read the tens of thousands of pages of MSDN.
I have to wonder if the authors have ever written a C# program in Visual Studio. My guess is probably not. This is a quote from the book:
"Notice in the code generated by the Windows Forms Designer that a call to the method InitializeComponent() is made in the constructor of the form. You can then place any of your initialization code in the InitializeComponent() method."
There is no way that the authors have ever successfully done that - added initialization code in the InitializeComponent() method. Anyone who has ever written a C# program in Visual Studio.Net knows that the code in the InitializeComponent method is created by the designer and any changes you make there will be lost as soon as you make a change in the designer.
This is the second (and last) McGraw Hill/Osborne All-in-One book I have purchased. I bought a CCIE edition several years ago. It was as error-filled as this one. Many of us who have been around a long time remember when Adam Osborne was a cultural icon. It's disappointing that the books that now bear his name are not of the same caliber as the books of yesteryear.
But I am being too harsh. I should be sensitive and understanding. The authors are undoubtedly ridden with guilt over having caused hundreds or thousands of unsuspecting buyers to spend money on this book and then waste $125 each taking, and failing miserably, the Microsoft certification exams. That guilt, combined with the shame and embarrassment they feel for having created the lowest rated certification book on the topic, should be punishment enough. I should be reaching out to them, feeling their pain...
Too many mistakes,
January 13, 2004 Seems to have decent coverage of the topics and does have plenty of useful information. However, as noted in other reviews, the book contains a substantial number of inaccuracies, many of which could mislead the reader toward incorrect answers on the exams.Don't waste your money,
November 25, 2003 This is easily the worst book I've ever seen in terms of test prep. I took the exams based upon their "preparation" and failed abysmally, then took them again using another book and passed with flying colors.
The book is full of inaccuracies. Many of the code examples don't work or even compile as written. The explanations of the authors are terse, especially for the advanced subjects, betraying their own ignorance. Worst of all, each exam section covers at most half of the actual information you will see on the exams. None of the things listed as exam tips were even mentioned on any exam I took.
Finally, the prep software that comes with the book uses questions directly from the back of the chapters, so you don't get any new questions. And many of the correct answers are misspelled or syntactically incorrect, which misleads you into thinking the answer is wrong.
Don't even bother to get this piece of crap. Get the study guides from Que instead. They're 1000% better.