Others say...

"A Huge computer Book, Just on the IDE Itself"
Microsoft's Visual Studio 2005 is an enormous product. It is Microsoft's standard and proposed developmental platform for virtually all programmers. It's basically an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) on steroids. That means it starts as a text editor so that you can type in the programs you are writing. Added to this is a series of help menus, debugging aids, and other things to assist you in writing programs. After you get your program written, then there are additional tools that will assist you in running the program, tracing the flow control, putting in breakpoints, etc.

Being Microsoft, the main emphasis in Visual Studio is Visual Basic and Microsoft's C# while other languages are covered to a somewhat lessor extent. This book does not cover the languages themselves. It's a full size, thick book just on the IDE itself.

But on the IDE it has everything there is to know about using the IDE. Especially helpful are the authors comments on various third party add ins you can get off the web, often at no cost.

The last chapter in the book is on the Visual Studio Team System which talks about using Visual Studio to manage geographically distributed software projects that may be in development all over the world at once. While this chapter will give you the fundamentals, there is another whole book on using Team System. You'll just get an introduction from this book.

"Excellent overview of features, but focuses mostly on VB and C#"
Professional Visual Studio 2005 fills an important niche: it is for experienced developers who are new to Visual Studio and need an explanation of the environment and all of its features. The book fulfills that need reasonably well, but it is important to understand what you will and will not get from it.

What it does well is to explain the environment and the general approach to development that underlies all of the key aspects of Visual Studio. This begins with the structure of the IDE and its options, then proceeds through a vast tour of Visual Studio concepts, .NET framework fundamentals, various parts of the development architecture (such as security and database connections), an introduction to other features such as developing for devices and team services, and moderately in-depth explorations of important topics such as debugging and deployment. As such, it serves as a combination of a general overview and a concise manual.

Of particular value is that it describes and exposes many features that one might otherwise overlook. Visual Studio 2005 is a huge, complex piece of software, and there are capabilities and options (for everything from IDE options to XML to automation) that are not apparent at first.

What it does not do is to address the aspects of Visual Studio that are specific to individual languages. As is appropriate for a book for experienced developers, it does not present much code or "how to" examples. However, it would be helpful if it discussed more of the differences that affect development in languages besides C# and VB. There is a consistent emphasis on those languages and the [...]
It also presents only minimal tutorial aspects. Although the general steps are described, there are not detailed walkthroughs of such steps as how to compile, build, and debug programs in a given language. It would be nice to have a few chapters on such topics as "porting Unix C code to Visual Studio", or "Moving from Borland C++ Builder to Visual Studio". Those are not critical omissions, but would be nice for some readers. Finally, the book is primarily about the usage of VS from the point of view of individual developers; it focuses mostly on the "professional" version, not on the specific enterprise/team capabilities (which are briefly covered in one chapter).

In short, this book is a good, comprehensive conceptual "manual" for Visual Studio 2005, especially for VB and C# developers. However, there is still an unfilled niche for a book on "Visual Studio 2005 for C++ Developers".


"A great book, despite unwarranted bad review"
Professional Visual Studio 2005 is an exceptional book. It is not often that you encounter a book of this kind written with this kind of clarity and thought.

To the previous reviewer, I would suggest that you read the book before reviewing it, rather than just looking at the pictures. If this is how you judge all of the technical books that you look at, then it is little wonder that most if not all of your book reviews consist entirely of scathing remarks.

However, it does sound as if you have done an exhaustive study on Australian developers to determine that they are all sub-standard programmers. I guess it must be hard for us, when we all live in tin sheds in the outback, coding on our primitive workstations made out of kangaroo skins and old Fosters cans. I would say that your "experience" with Australian developers is more of a reflection on your company's hiring policy or the standard of whatever technical forums you frequent, rather than a reflection of the technical experience of an entire country.

In short, this book is a great book for anybody wanting to know about Visual Studio 2005, and the previous review should be ignored.