This book is primarily aimed towards developers who are new to C#, have none or very limited prior experience with C# and are up for a CHALLENGE. The book does not presuppose that you have any prior C# knowledge since the purpose of the book is to teach you just that. Even if you already have created a couple of small C# projects on your own or have been developing applications for a while you might find the content in this book useful as a refresher. The first part describes the fundamentals of the C# language such as variables, loops and methods. The book then gets progressively more challenging, describing, among other things, object oriented programming, generics, multithreading, asynchronous operations and reflection. The content is tactical, practical and highly modular to make it easier for you to learn. This mean that you actually have to read and implement the exercises in order to learn everything the book teaches. It is not recommended that you only read the book conceptually from cover to cover; the best way to learn is to be tactical and actually implement the practical exercises after reading each chapter. If you are aspiring to take the Microsoft exam 70-483 this book can be a great complement to the more traditional encyclopedic books on the market in that it contains many complete examples and exercises that you can implement to deepen your understanding of C#. The author has worked professionally with C# since it was released and as a Microsoft Certified Instructor for a number of years teaching C#, Visual Basic.NET and the .NET Framework. Read what a former student has to say about the book: "Where to begin ? If someone asked me just off the street, how do you learn the basics of programming - this is the book I would point to. Having myself spent hundreds of dollars on expensive and quite frankly, not very indulging C# reference books (or encyclopedias), I am very fortunate (and now as I realise that this method of teaching exists, frustrated...) to have stumbled upon this one. The layout of the book speaks for itself: Read a concise, to the point description about the basics of what you are about to implement, follow the implementation step by step and review the code/run it. Rinse and repeat. It is really simple and just as powerful a concept, if not more, than actually having a teacher standing by your side - guiding you. If you find the 1,2,3 steps dull and too easy, go do the implementation yourself and you will still find yourself learning alot by reviewing how the author implemented the code. This is truly how to learn fast and still be able to pick up those gems of advice that will take you countless of hours to find out yourself, while still maintaining a level of curiosity none of the other books I've read on programming has ever done. You are literally reading a story book. This is a story with you, as a reader, involved with the creation of a program. The author smooths out the rough edges and all the non-essentials to give you a pleasant, first-hand experience of how a program should be constructed. Just as mastering any craft, mastering programming is not about learning everything at once. Instead you incrementally build your knowledge for a complete understanding and eventually see how the pieces fit togheter. This book is the trademark of a master; conveying the art of storytelling as a technical User-Story for the un-initiated, but eager to learn student. In much the same way as a good fictional book would've done, this book literally grasps you and engages you in learning, that is if you invest the time required. If you have ever found yourself scrolling through MSDN to learn something fundamental about the nature of the C# language and feeling a slight sensation of despair; this is your remedy. In other words: this book is great, read it and become Informed." - Rony Lindgren