C# seems like a good language to learn.  The library book is :  Head First C# (2nd edition.)  The book is published 2010 and it does have a third edition.  The thought is "sure it should be worth reading and be advantageous enough especially being a beginner's book."  However at chapter two the book mentioned the "CLR" and alarm bells went off.  "Isn't this a similarity that was involved in the deprecation before C++/CLI? "  So, before this book is read, has it aged nicely enough to be worthwhile?

Thank you,

Josheir

CLR == Common Language Runtime.  It has not been deprecated.

The only things likely to be out of date for a book from 2010 are that it won't cover some of the newer features in the latest versions of C#.  But those are easy to learn once you understand the core stuff.

2 hours ago, Nypyren said:

The only things likely to be out of date for a book from 2010 are that it won't cover some of the newer features in the latest versions of C#.  But those are easy to learn once you understand the core stuff.

Assuming the book covers C# 4.0, the only really big thing that will impact your day to day programming is await/async.

The rest is either nice to have (tuples, pattern matching, string interpolation, auto property initialisation, etc) or cool but unusual (compiler API).

On ‎7‎/‎3‎/‎2018 at 3:40 PM, Nypyren said:

CLR == Common Language Runtime.  It has not been deprecated.

The only things likely to be out of date for a book from 2010 are that it won't cover some of the newer features in the latest versions of C#.  But those are easy to learn once you understand the core stuff.

I thought managed code for Visual C++ was using CLR which was "getting ready" for dot net. And than that got deprecated.

Have a nice day,

Josheir

57 minutes ago, Josheir said:

I thought managed code for Visual C++ was using CLR which was "getting ready" for dot net. And than that got deprecated.

Ok, so quick history lesson:

When dot net came out, Microsoft wanted a way to integrate C++ into it. The intention was never really to write .Net code in C++ but to provide a bridging layer so you could call a C++ library from .Net. 

So Microsoft created Managed C++, a set of extensions to C++ that allowed C++ to use the CLR. Technically, they were following the C++ standard for adding extensions to the language. Unfortunately, it was butt ugly and everyone hated it. 

In 2005, they replaced it with C++/CLI (C++ modified for Common Language Infrastructure). This was much easier to use and is still in use today. It's not the preferred way to write .Net, but if you have an existing C++ codebase you want to use from .Net, it's actually pretty good.

And finally there's C++/CX, which is not .Net but C++ for the WinRT platform. You don't really need to worry about it unless you want to write UWP apps. I only mention it in case you happen to see it. 

If you'd like to read more on the history of this, there's an excellent (if slightly dated) article on Ars Technica.

On ‎7‎/‎3‎/‎2018 at 6:43 PM, ChaosEngine said:

Assuming the book covers C# 4.0, the only really big thing that will impact your day to day programming is await/async. 

 

Your assumption is correct, it's C# 4.0 and .NET framework 4.  Thanks for the cool list of the rest, I love that sort of thing!

Josheir

And the rest of the rest.