I thought Kevin McNeish's book was a great beginning for experienced VFP developers to try to move into the world of dotnet. Granted it is not as indepth as all of the others but I think it is a great starting point and the developer can move into more indepth information from there. Just my personal opinion...

Hi, Tracy,

I agree with you. When someone is moving into a technology that initially appears 'daunting', a book that serves as the 'starting point' that you described can be valuable.

When I first read the book, I wasn't as thrilled about it as I thought I'd be. Then I looked at a few chapters again and got a better understanding of what Kevin was looking to accomplish.

The book isn't heavy in any one area of .NET, but I think it's one of the better books available as far as touching on many of the aspects of .NET (the IDE, ADO, C#, WinForms, Web Services, etc.) To this day, I still refer to the PDF version of the book for various things. I think it's a very good book of fundamentals.

I think by offering a taste of what .NET has to offer, yes, it encourages the reader to learn more by looking for more detailed references. (The other titles I mentioned are really strong for their particular areas).

My only real gripe about the book is that the Winform chapter was a bit light. Also, while the chapter on object orientation was quite good, things like interfaces could have had more meaningful examples.

I think the irony of the book is that one with little or no VFP background can still gain from the book. So I give it 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Kevin