Book Review: Visual Studio 2012 and .NET 4.5 Expert Development Cookbook

Earlier this week, I got my hands on the Visual Studio 2012 and .NET 4.5 Expert Development Cookbook written by Abhishek Sur and published by PACKT Publishing. 

While the book title is misleading, I found this book quite interesting. Later I noticed two other but smaller titles – Quick Answers to Common Problems and Over 40 recipes for successful mixing the powerful capabilities of .NET 4.5 and Visual Studio 2012. Now the book title made more sense to me. It is actually a book with 40 common questions and answers that every experienced .NET developer should know. 

Usually, when you read a book, you expect it to be focus on a certain topic but this book is different. The Visual Studio 2012 and .NET 4.5 Expert Development Cookbook is written for intermediate to advanced developers who want to load their arsenal with 40 more versatile weapons. You may already have used some of these weapons in your career but even if you end up loading half of them, it will be very useful.

The book does not focus on any one topic but covers commonly asked questions related to the new features introduced in .NET 4.5 and Visual Studio 2012. The book answers questions related to Visual Studio 2012 IDE, .NET Assemblies, memory management, ASP.NET, WPF and Windows Store apps. So if you are a developer who just focuses on any one discipline such as Web development or Windows development, you may not find the entire book useful immediately. But as an experienced developer, tech lead or architect, you should have these 40 tricks under your belt. 

Chapter 1 focuses on Visual Studio 2012 IDE and 5 tips and such as how to use smart tags and refactor code. If you've been using Visual Studio 2008 and 2010 and not sure what cool features are added to Visual Studio 2012, you may want to read this chapter.

Chapter 2 covers a few common but advanced questions about  .NET assemblies. The chapter talks about how to find memory leaks using PerfMon and 10 common mistakes developers made when working with .NET assemblies.

Chapter 3 discusses some advanced topics related to asynchronous programming and expects you to know basics of the asynchronous programming in .NET. 

Chapter 4 covers topics related to ASP.NET enhancements, and use of HMTL 5 and JQuery when building ASP.NET applications. 

Chapter 5 comes a few new WPF features added to .NET 4.5 including MVVM and Ribbon control.

Chapter 6 and 7 gives you a glimpse of Windows 8 app development. I am not sure how much these chapters can help you but if you've never built Windows Store apps, you will get to build couple of quick apps. Chapter 7 demonstrates how to enable app to app sharing, notifications, and data transfer services in Windows 8 apps. 

If you are experienced developer and wants to learn what is new in .NET 4.5 and Visual Studio 2012 and take advantage of these new features, you may want to check this book out.