CLR via C#
5 stars (out of 5)
At the heart of Microsoft .NET is the CLR. .NET development is primarily about directing the CLR. But how can you do that if you don't really know what the CLR is or what it can do?
Most .NET programming books are language centric. The capabilities of the CLR are implied based on the description of the language. Jeffery Richter's book is CLR centric. It describes what the CLR can do and how it does it. C# is used to provide practical examples of how to direct the CLR.
The book clearly and efficiently presents vital information that you'd spends days trying to discover by either pouring over MSDN or writing test applications. Highlights include:
- how source code is converted to IL, stored, managed, and executed
- a description of the code metadata available at run time and how it is used
- how data is classified, organized, and managed
- a description of the members that make up a class (fields, methods, etc.)
- how to handle exceptions
- how garbage collection works
- how reflection works
- how to write multi-threaded applications
Throughout the book there are many warnings about pitfalls and gotchas. The execution efficiency of different approaches is explained for many situations.
I urge any .NET developer who doesn't really understand the CLR to read this book.