Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4 book available and it is from a UK author

Note: Cross posted from IUpdateable from Eric Nelson.

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Many, many months back UK based Alex Mackey (Australia now has him) mentioned that he was starting work on a book about Visual Studio 2010 which would also be his first book. I remember at the time thinking “Poor chap – I wonder if he has the slightest idea of what he has let himself in for!?”.

Why did I think that? It was certainly no reflection on Alex who is a top class developer and speaker. However, writing a book is IMHO a mammoth undertaking if it is not your day job. It can consume every spare waking hour – I should know, I’ve tried and failed.  But more importantly, at the time Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4 were still “flexing” a lot! It was the days of the PDC CTP release (which was only available as a very slow virtual machine with much missing or changing) and I also knew we were still many months away from having a stable Beta.

However, I should not have worried. Alex stuck with it and has produced a very comprehensive tone on the upcoming Visual Studio release - Introducing .NET 4.0: with Visual Studio 2010. It won’t be in print until February but it is currently available to download as a pdf. I downloaded it today and I just gave it a quick skim. There is lots of good stuff in there (505 pages, 16 chapters, VB and C#) and I’m looking forward to spending more time with it in the near future. Thanks Alex.

Alex also just posted a summary of the good and bad bits of writing a book about beta (alpha!) technology. An interesting read in itself.

P.S. I also noticed I snuck in to the bit on “What Do Others Think About .NET 4?”. My moment of fame – although the wrong blog :-)

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