Tell me more ×
Programmers Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about software development. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote 2 down vote favorite

This question is not a duplicate - I'm not asking about the best books. Rather, I'm asking for the best order in which to study. I'm new to programming but I finished a very, very simple book (Beginning C# 3.0: An Introduction to Object Oriented Programming) and wrote some simple programs. These are the books I plan to read from here:

Pro C# 2010 and the .NET 4 Platform

C# 4.0 in a Nutshell: The Definitive Reference

CLR via C#

C# in Depth, Second Edition

What would be the best order in which to study them?

share|improve this question
2  
I'd advise you to code more and read books less.Books are cool for some kind of a longer tutorial,but I think there is no book that will tell you how to handle all possible errors in your code and that kind of experience can only be got by coding not reading.Btw also check the MSDN manuals for c#.Also,If you use VC# use f12 to jump to definition which many times yields additional info. – Aleksandar Aug 28 '11 at 18:22
Hi tarek11011, I'm sorry your question was migrated here unnecessarily, but given the size of the scope and the number of books written on the subject, in what order you should read a specific subset of those books is unlikely to help any future visitors. The only types of book recommendation questions that are on-topic here on Programmers.SE are ones that invite coming up with the canonical book for the subject. – user8 Aug 28 '11 at 20:40

migrated from stackoverflow.com Aug 28 '11 at 18:17

closed as too localized by Mark Trapp Aug 28 '11 at 20:39

This question is unlikely to help any future visitors; it is only relevant to a small geographic area, a specific moment in time, or an extraordinarily narrow situation that is not generally applicable to the worldwide audience of the internet. For help making this question more broadly applicable, see the FAQ.

2 Answers

up vote 1 down vote

A lot of these are good books, and cover good information. Personally, I prefer the latter two in your list, but that's my preference.

Personally, I feel the "best" book is the one that is the one you understand the best (provided the information is all correct). Read portions of the books, and see which author's writing style is the easiest for you to follow and comprehend, and start there. This will make it easier for the book to be relevent for you.

share|improve this answer
up vote 3 down vote

Of those books I would read C# in Depth second to last and CLR via C# as the last book.

C# in depth covers a wide area of C# concepts in depth but does not offer a lot of hand-holding - it helps having a good foundation before reading the book.

For CLR via C# it is a must that you do understand how the C# language constructs and related .NET framework classes "work", the more you understand of how things work, the more you will get out of the book since the author explains "the inner workings of the machine", how are they implemented internally (the mapping to the CLR) and why. It is much easier to understand the "why" and "how" if you know the "what" already.

share|improve this answer

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.