Microsoft .NET for Programmers by Fergal Grimes and published by Mannig Publications Inc. is a presentation of Microsoft's new .NET framework. The front cover contains the comment "The entire .NET, presented simply and concisely using C# examples" is a sweeping statement considering the rather modest (by programming book standards) length of 356 pages from cover to cover. Although one must raise an eyebrow about the presentation of the entire .NET within the books context, the examples were presented simply and concisely. The back cover says that Mr. Grimes "is a .NET expert with 15 years experience developing diverse applications for embedded, mainframe, client/server, and Web-based platforms." It goes on to state that he has both his MCSD and is a Sun Certified Java Developer. The preface of the book says that the intended audience of the book is intermediate and advanced programmers.

Now briefly about myself as to my qualifications to review this book. I have been programming database applications primarily in Access and VBA for about 5 years. I have also taken a couple of courses in beginning Java to broaden my horizons and begin gaining a grasp of a solidly object oriented language. When the opportunity was presented at a recent meeting of MAD to review this book I jumped at the chance because I've been hearing that .NET is the new trend in Microsoft programming.

The reason I included the last paragraph is to help the reader understand the importance of some familiarity with an object oriented language approach to programming structure. Without the basic knowledge of Java ( or some other OOP language like Delphi or C++) I would have been lost from the beginning. Mr. Grimes states up front and proceeds with the assumption that the reader has a basic familiarity with the structure and syntax. He does include as one of the appendices a 31 page "Introduction to C#," which gives a brief overview of the syntactical presentation of the various logical, mathematical and comparison statements, creation of classes and structs, methods, exceptions, events, interfaces, attributes and threading. With a basic understanding from my Java experience, I was able to follow his examples fairly easily.

The vehicle which he chose to present his example code is a video poker machine. At first this seems like an unusual choice for an example, but each succeeding chapter made his model choice more clear. Many books of greater length talk extensively about various programming aspects and devote only a small portion of the text to discussing the handling and presentation of data. I find this curious since most real life applications deal extensively with data I/O and processing. The poker machine example discussing data throughout the book. The model starts with an array of 4 suits with 13 cards each. The player begins play by placing a bet--user input. The program must determine if he has enough credits to place such a wager--input validation. If the player has sufficient credits a hand of 5 cards is dealt. These cards must be subtracted from the deck array--memory modification--so they will not be available until a new deck is created. The player may chose to hold or replace any of the cards he has been dealt in an attempt to improve his chances of getting a winning hand. New cards are dealt to replace those discarded. Then the program assesses the hand and awards points based on a pre-determined point system--data evaluation and response. Further, the program keeps track of the number of winning and losing hands and in the more advanced model actually is capable of modifying the "random deal" to achieve a more "desired" win-loss ratio. As you can see the poker machine becomes a strong microcosm of a larger data processing environment.

Another significant point of interest was the presentation of the varied functionality and flexibility of the .NET structure. Anyone who has been involved with Microsoft products for any length of time has heard about the movement to develop a framework that would allow VB programs to communicate with C++ programs; for Windows based applications to interface with non-Windows based programs; for applications to be more easily ported to a web based GUI. There's been COM, DCOM, DNA all of which made strides in this direction and yet seemed to fail to compete head to head with Java as a platform independent, web dynamic, programming language. With .NET Microsoft seems poised to make a significant challenge in this area of technology.

In the successive chapters, Fergal, who you recall is experienced in a variety of application presentations from embedded to web-based, takes us through the process of creating a simple presentation using a command prompt, builds a GUI to present the information in a more attractive manner, adds graphics, and then modifies it so several people can play at the same time. Ultimately he shows us how to convert the application to a web based presentation without having to rewrite all of the code to an HTML format. The beauty of this progression is that the original objects change very little, only the presentation becomes more sophisticated.

The reason this is possible is that .NET relies on a concept called IL. IL is .NET's native language. It is a stack-based assembly language that is fully compiled at load time. Because of this, regardless of whether the original code was written in VB.NET, or C# the Intermediate Language is the same and can be understood by an application written in another language via the specific compiler. Currently there are compilers available for C#, VB.NET, Jscript.NET, Cobol, Perl, Python, Eiffel, APL and others are planned.

Fergal demonstrates this portability as he takes the poker machine model and moves it through the various stages of application presentation with minimal code modification. Some of the transformations are even accomplished by calling on built in system services which can reformat an object, i.e. from a windows based presentation to XML for web presentation.. At one point in the book he states, "The historical division of skills between Visual C++ component developers, Visual Basic graphical user interface (GUI) developers, and VBScript/HTML web developers is a thing of the past." (P. 11) As you read through the remainder of the book, you realize that indeed the proof is in the programming.

All in all, I found this book to play as advertised. It was a straight forward presentation of the breadth of .Nets extensibility. I believe that an intermediate or advanced programmer who is coming to .NET from either a C++ or Java background would be able to take the concise examples and move swiftly into knowledgeable productivity. For those of us on the lower end of that scale, the capabilities described, and the range of development and adaptability presented makes .NET a very attractive and dynamic tool to add to ones programming skills.