FOREWORD

Many computer books are so heavy that lifting them causes a hernia, yet they have less content than your favorite tabloid. Many academic text books are so boring that they turn your brains to dust, yet they don't teach you anything that is of use in the real world.

Not with this book! This concise book is jam-packed with the insight of many years of accumulated wisdom and experience from the authors. Each chapter comes with ample examples and exercises, but what I like best is the pixie dust of summary 'forms' that is sprinkled throughout the book.

The early introduction and extensive use of the platform-independent Views GUI library makes learning and teaching from this book fun and rewarding. Further evidence of the real-world character is the inclusion of a chapter on debugging. Even in the unlikely event that you never make any coding mistakes, a debugger is a great tool for understanding the dynamic behavior of programs; for the rest of us, it is an additional powerful tool to help us locate errors.

With a copy of C# Concisely on your desk, every day is your lucky day.

Erik Meijer
Technical Lead
Microsoft WebData Team

31 July 2003