Were You Able to Get Started Quickly with WCF?

  • Article

The other day I noticed Brad Abrams plugging the book Silverlight 3 Jumpstart (I’ve only flipped through it so I don’t have a personal recommendation on whether new Silverlight developers should get it). The thing that struck me about the Jumpstart book though is that it is very short for a book, just over 200 pages, while still quite a lot longer and more organized than what you’ll find from most online resources.

The basic flow of the text is like this:

- Why use the technology

Minimal development needs to get started
  • Walkthrough of using basic features
  • Brief list of some of the more advanced features
  • Short discussions of more specialized development topics

That’s pretty much the whole book. You could read through it in one sitting if you wanted to. The average WCF book is 600 pages but covers far more topics at far greater depth, even at the introductory level.

Are books such as the Jumpstart book a missing niche for learning WCF?

Do you think that other resources, such as documentation, blogs, online whitepapers, and long format books, have helped you learn WCF more easily than a short format book would?