asp.net

Pro ASP.NET 3.5 in C# 2008: Includes Silverlight 2, Third Edition
$59.99
Like many of those who have already posted a review of this book, I have read many programming books over many years, and this one really stands out.

This book is amazingly well organized and well written. It is not as long as it is because it is filled with straight reference material that you could just as well look up online. It's long because it covers an huge amount of conceptual ground. And what's amazing is that none of it feels rambling, repetitive, or disorganized. It is meticulously cross-referenced and each section gives you a clear map of what you're going to cover and how it all breaks down. The approach for each topic is to start with a brief motivating introduction, then zoom out to a comprehensive bird's eye view and list the options available for approaching the problem, and then to dive into each option in detail, comparing and contrasting the trade-offs. The author is willing to give you the details on something but also willing to say, "actually, this method isn't really used much for such and such reasons", which is very helpful.

This book is a superset of many lesser books on individual topics that are dealt with pretty much comprehensively in one or more chapters in this book (and in most cases any details remaining on a given topic are easy to look up online once you have the foundation presented here). For most of the topics, the only background needed is some basic experience in C#.

If you want to know everything about Microsoft's world of web programming, get this book, read it, and when you return to your personal list of what you have left to learn you'll likely find it's much shorter.

Finally, I want to repeat that the actual writing in the book is very high quality which helps make the book a pleasure to read. The tone is professional, yet inviting. You don't feel like you're indulging a programmer as he tries to write entertaining prose (if I read one more sentence in a programming book that follows the pattern, "To help you manage your widgets, the system includes a component called, appropriately enough, the Widget Manager!" I think I'm going to, appropriately enough, barf). You feel like you're reading a book by a skilled writer who happens to know a ton about programming.

ASP.NET 3.5 Unleashed
$64.99
I have read more books on ASP.NET and related technologies than anyone ever should and still claim to have a life. This book, about halfway through it, distinguished itself as the best I have read even to date. If you had to choose a single book to learn ASP.NET and actually be proficient and have a strong understanding of it after only one book, this is that book. Lucid, smart and comprehensive, it sets the bar discouragingly high for other authors.

Pro ASP.NET MVC Framework
$49.99
This is one of the best books that I have ever read, not just for ASP.Net MVC. The writing style of the author is excellent, and you do not feel bored at all while reading this book. I have been reading this book like a novel. Having said that, this book present all the concepts in a very clear manner, and does not bother explaining the documentation, as that can be easily obtained from msdn. This book explains all the prerequisites in a nice manner as well, so that you can find a natural flow. Also, this book encourages using TDD, and introduces concepts such as IOC and how can they be used with MVC.

Over and all this is an excellent book, and is a must read.

Professional ASP.NET 3.5: In C# and VB (Programmer to Programmer)
$54.99
This is a traditionally organized WROX book; anybody who read books of that series will find it very familiar in structure. One detail in presenting the material is usage of two major .NET languages: VB.NET and C#. That seems quite logical thing to do when covering anything about .NET Framework due to almost total convergence of both languages by Microsoft. Having code listings displayed in both languages also makes it easier to pay attention to syntax differences, which is, by itself, a useful thing sometimes.

Both beginners and mature web developers specialized in ASP.NET find this book useful. It is very vast in content (this is somewhat normal for anything related to web programming) and covers all major topics such as Membership objects, commercial website organization, Master pages, data binding etc. Lots of topics covered in the book are applicable to desktop applications development as well.

I personally found the chapters dedicated to LINQ useful in my development. LINQ is heavily pushed by Microsoft and authors of the book build a strong case why. They make it obvious how helpful LINQ can be in certain seemingly routine problems such as sorting, that sometimes are quite labor intensive when solved traditionally. What was really cool to learn is that LINQ can be used quite efficiently for pagination tasks if you are building your own custom web controls. Although LINQ chapters are good they don't cover everything you may need to know about it - that's not a disadvantage of the book though, it gives you a good basis to build upon and additional research (as any web developer would attest) will be required anyways.

The book is not cheap as all "perishable" programming books tend to be but it has its value. I believe, ASP.NET developers will find it quite complementary to the arsenal of manuals used for referencing and learning.