When Gary Cornell and VB legend Dan Appleman founded APress, they both committed to writing a book to get their fledgling company off the ground. (Dan wrote the API Puzzle Book.) This is Gary's contribution.

This is the book that you want to read if you have knocked around VB 6 for a couple of years and you've decided to move up to .NET.

For the target audience, technical books don't get much better than this. It's full of industry insider comments, comments and opinion that experienced programmers will appreciate, and it answers the "why" questions that Microsoft left completely out of the "official" documentation. Because the focus is much more than just syntax and code examples, the "shelf life" of a book like this is much longer. Don't buy this one to have in case you need it. Buy this one to read.

About the Author

Gary Cornell is another author who started his career as a mathematician (PhD, Brown University) but after a twisted career through technical training and writing, ended up co-founding APress ("The Authors Press") with Dan Appleman primarily because he was disgusted with the way traditional publishing companies treat technical authors. He has reached the point in life where he speaks and writes plainly now. Here's a quote about Microsoft's Upgrade Wizard, for example, "The whole idea of giving us a half-baked conversion tool is an abomination IMHO."