Understanding .NET (2nd Edition)

Writing the preface for a book's second edition is funit means that people thought the first edition was useful enough to warrant an update. .NET has changed in significant ways since this book first appeared in 2002, changes that are reflected in this new edition. Since its original release, the .NET Framework has become the foundation for a new generation of Windows applications. Developers and the people who pay their salaries stepped up to the challenge of adopting this new environment, and the result has been better software.

Still, new people come to .NET every day. Like the first edition, the goal of this book is to help developers and their managers understand this big new world.

Who This Book Is For

.NET is huge. There are plenty of books that provide detailed examinations of each facet of this enormous technology crystal, plenty of books with hardcore, hands-on information. This isn't one of those books. I believe strongly that understanding .NET as a whole is essential before delving more deeply into any single part of the technology. Accordingly, my goal here is to provide a broad overview of the .NET technologies.

If you're looking for a big-picture introduction to the whole of .NET, this book is for you. Whether you're a developer just getting started with .NET, a technical manager who needs to make decisions about these technologies, or a student seeing some of these ideas for the first time, this book should be a useful guide. There is enough detail here to satisfy many people completely, while others will use this book as a stepping-stone to more specific knowledge. In any case, I hope the book's organization and content make it easier for you to come to grips with this mass of technology.

Fact and Opinion

Grasping a new technology requires learning the fundamentals. What are its main parts? How do they work? How do they fit together? But really understanding a technology requires more than this. You need to know not just how things work but also why they're important, how they compare to what's gone before, and what might happen next.

This book aims at providing all of these things. In the text itself, I've tried hard to remain strictly tutorial, focusing solely on describing what .NET is. In the perspective boxes, I give some broader views on various aspects of the technology. In every case, the perspective expresses my view of why things are the way they are or what the future is likely to hold. By separating the objective from the subjective, I hope to make it easier for you to distinguish between the two. By providing opinion as well as fact, I hope to make this book both more interesting and more enlightening.

Acknowledgments

I'm once again humbled by the willingness of people to help with projects like this. For this second edition, thanks go especially to my reviewers: Harry Pierson at Microsoft, Richard Monson-Haefel of the Burton Group, and Dave Corun at Catalyst IT Services. They all read every chapter and made many useful suggestions. Thanks also to Ralph Squillace and Ted Pattison, who answered key questions at important moments. Everybody who helped with the first edition once again has my heartfelt thanks: Bob Beauchemin, Keith Brown, Cori Day, Ted Demopoulos, Bill Estrem, Jeannine Gailey, Kit George, Greg Hack, Rob Howard, Maxim Loukianov, Juval Löwy, Peter McKiernan, Yahya H. Mirza, John D. Mitchell, Christophe Nassare, Eric Newcomer, David Sceppa, Aaron Skonnard, and Mike Woodring.

At Addison-Wesley I'm grateful to Elizabeth Peterson, Stephane Nakib, Jana Jones, and Karen Gettman for all they've done for me and for the Independent Technology Guides series. I'm also thankful for the efforts of Kristin Weinberger, first my editor, now my friend and (remarkably) neighbor, who originally brought me to Addison-Wesley, and for the hard work of Nancy Hendryx, the copy editor for this edition.

The list of acknowledgements in this book's first edition ended with Diana Catignani, pointing out how much poorer my life would be without her. She's now Diana Chappell, mother of our two beautiful daughters. Words cannot express the poverty that would ensue were she not my wife.

David Chappell

San Francisco

March 2006