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The Mono Project is the much talked-about open source initiative to create a Unix implementation of Microsoft's .NET Development Framework. Its purpose is to allow Unix developers to build and deploy cross-platform .NET applications. The project has also sparked interest in developing components, libraries and frameworks with C#, the programming language of .NET.
The controversy? Some say Mono will become the preferred platform for Linux development, empowering Linux/Unix developers. Others say it will allow Microsoft to embrace, extend, and extinguish Linux. The controversy rages on, but--like many developers--maybe you've had enough talk and want to see what Mono is really all about.
There's one way to find out: roll up your sleeves, get to work, and see what you Mono can do. How do you start? You can research Mono at length. You can play around with it, hoping to figure things out for yourself. Or, you can get straight to work with Mono: A Developer's Notebook--a hands-on guide and your trusty lab partner as you explore Mono 1.0.
Light on theory and long on practical application, Mono: A Developer's Notebook bypasses the talk and theory, and jumps right into Mono 1.0. Diving quickly into a rapid tour of Mono, you'll work through nearly fifty mini-projects that will introduce you to the most important and compelling aspects of the 1.0 release. Using the task-oriented format of this new series, you'll learn how to acquire, install, and run Mono on Linux, Windows, or Mac OS X. You'll work with the various Mono components: Gtk#, the Common Language Runtime, the class libraries (both .NET and Mono-provided class libraries), IKVM and the Mono C# compiler. No other resource will take you so deeply into Mono so quickly or show you as effectively what Mono is capable of.
The new Developer's Notebooks series from O'Reilly covers important new tools for software developers. Emphasizing example over explanation and practice over theory, they focus on learning by doing--you'll get the goods straight from the masters, in an informal and code-intensive style that suits developers. If you've been curious about Mono, but haven't known where to start, this no-fluff, lab-style guide is the solution.
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The first three chapters tell us how to install the Mono environment and introduce us to C# and its system class libraries. You'll need to already know how to program in order to grasp these chapters: this book will not tell you what a variable or a class member is.
Chapters 4 and 5 show us how to make GTK# and GNOME# applications, using GConf, making druids, embedding Gecko in the application, etc. I particularly like these two chapters as they taught me a lot of things without overwhelming me with code as other GUI programming books did.
Chapter 6 teaches about XML processing: consuming and producing, parsing, validating, transforming, etc. This is another subject with which books tend to overwhelm, but this one didn't.
Chapter 7 discusses communications: ASP.NET (web apps and services), sockets, web clients, databases, etc. I found the ASP.NET part a little bit too short, but it gave me enough information to know what to look for in the Microsoft site.
Chapter 8, finally, touches some advanced subjects, such as using autoconf/automake, tips for writing multiplatform applications, using Java or Basic code, etc.
I found the Advanced GTK chapter especially useful as it covers the kind of things that add that extra bit of polish; drag and drop, druids, GConf and 2D graphics are all there.
There are chapters on ASP.NET and connecting to databases, but I've not read them yet so can't comment on how easy that is. There's also a very handy example of how to use the autotools to package Mono applications.
It's a great book, and at the current price (just over 12 quid) I think people interested in Mono would be mad not to buy it. I'd never done any C# before I bought this, and combined with MonoDevelop (a free IDE) and Jesse Liberty's "Programming C#" I knocked up a small yet useful application in what seemed like no time (see spamtrainer.sourceforge.net).
This is not complete enough to fully replace other resources on C# and GTK# - and it's not meant to be. Instead it is a great desktop reference, so you can avoid all those verbose tomes for your day-to-day work. It is also a grat companion when reading reference documentation, as this shows you how to use the stuff in practice.
I would say that Dumbill and Bornstein did an excellent job on this book, and that O'Reilly has created a very promising new format for this kind of material.
The well written, concise, and focused. This is a strength, and a weakness. The book may be too focused by design. Which leaves you in a situation where you don't have enough book to be valuable on it's own. You will still need O'Reilly's Programming C# book to start learning C#.
I recommend this book to anyone looking to start with GTK#, or who is interested in porting their C# code off the Windows platform. I do not recommend this book for someone just starting out with C#.
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