November 26, 2007 spout writing

C# 3.0 in a Nutshell, LINQPad and Pure Genius

I absolutely love what the Albahari brothers (Joe & Ben) have done with C# 3.0 in a Nutshell. Not only is their prose concise in a way that mine is not, but I have learned a bunch of stuff about LINQ I didn’t know, they built a tool (LINQPad) that lets you experiment with LINQ interactively in a way that the designers of LINQ themselves don’t support and the tool has all kinds of wonderful features that LINQ, SQL and Regular Expression programmers alike will want to use regularly long after they’ve read the book.

And if that weren’t enough, the tool comes with an integrated tree of samples that follow along with the material in the book, teaching the material from another angle and reinforcing it perfectly. It’s pure genius and if I ever write another book, it’s a model I’m going to follow. Very highly recommended.