Learning Curve 2.0

With Everything Microsoft 2.0 slated for release in Q3 (cross your fingers) we’re in for another learning curve. If you watched Scott Guthrie’s interviews at Channel 9 you heard him say that the number of classes in .NET 2.0 had doubled. *gulp*

Overall I’m very happy with the 2.0 stuff I see, especially SQL Server 2005. I hate VS.NET 2003 so much that I can’t wait to begin using VS.NET 2005.

What bothers me is the way these new technologies are served. Back in the ASP days we all had—what?—“Professional ASP 3.0.” These days we bask in the abundance of .NET publications. On the one hand this is good. On the other hand there are so many of them that quality suffers bad. As Lenin once stated, “In the land of the Soviets, every housewife must be able to rule the state.” Or, in our days, everyone should write a book on VB.NET, right? :)

Now, look at the following picture:

I grabbed books I keep at home and stacked them up (a couple of Eric Meyer’s books are missing from the picture because they are at work). Anyway, .NET books are on the left, web design—on the right. Look at the average size of a .NET book! Do web designers have less to say and is their content inferior? No, of course not.

It has become progressively difficult to find time for 1,000 page volumes. As the picture demonstrates, you can cover technologies and be brief about it.

What I’d personally like to see is less of these huge books which SWAT can use as door wedges, and more really focused ones. For example, how about a book covering the CultureInfo class? So much can be written about this class. Formatting of dates, numbers, currencies; culture sensitive and invariant string manipulation, etc, etc. This is a topic worthy of its own book.

Here’s another one: the DateTime class. There are so many nuances about converting dates into or from UTC dates, as well as their formatting, parsing and so forth. This may well be a book of its own.

I hope some people reading this heed the advice and fill the niche. After all, they can easily establish themselves as authorities in these niches, as opposed to writing big ass books that have everything and yet nothing.

Well, folks, buckle up. We’ve got mucho reading ahead of us. ;)

I completely agree. I also read quite a bit, especially about ASP.Net, and would love to see the size of these volumes go down and the quality go up. My favorite book of all the 1.x material is Nikhil Kothari's "server controls and components" book. It is 650 pages, and does start with an overview, but that first chapter is only 13 pages. The rest is completely relevant - this is a huge topic and demands 650 pages. Perhaps a better example is James Newkirk's "Test-Driven Development in Microsoft.Net" which is only on 1 subject. I am much more interested in books divided into smaller bits, rather than the Wrox (sorry but true) "The all-inclusive yet shallow book on .Net" type...

Milan, I won this book from a drawing some years ago and I haven't even read the first page, but after reading you would like a book about the CultureInfo class I took it to see if it had anything about it. I think it probably has more info that you would ever want about internationalization inside more than 1000 pages:
Developing International Software

This one is specific.. ;)

Ezequiel, yes, this *is* one fantastic book! I certainly have it in my collection.