Book Review: C# Smorgasbord by Filip Ekberg

smorgasbord

Book Review: C# Smorgasbord by Filip Ekberg

About the Author:
Filip is a Software Engineer working with various techniques such as C#, WPF, WCF, ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET and much more. Currently working at Star Republic in Sweden as a Software Engineer working with both newer and older technologies in a Windows environment, mainly focusing on ASP.NET MVC development.

During his years of Programming, Filip has managed to accomplish some of the following:
• Software Engineering Degree @ Blekinge Institute of Technology
• Managing the Software Development Company SmartIT eSolutions Sweden which focused mainly on developing software and web solutions.
• Working as an Amanuensis ( Teacher ) @ Blekinge Institute of Technology teaching Java, C++, Sql and Network-programming.

You can read more on his blog here.

I saw a tweet from @daniellangnet who said this book was fantastic and if your looking for something to read over the holidays then give this a go, I actually ordered the book without even reading anything about it, unusual but glad i did!

Chapter 1: Introduction to Parallel Extensions :- Learn the basics of paralleization, use basic Linq, and how to optimize code by introducing parallelization.
Chapter 2: Productivity and Quality with Unit Testing :- Understand why tests are import, create a test project and improve code quality.
Chapter 3: Is upgrading your code a productive step? :- How to find bugs faster, How to use Resharper to get a more manageable project and to get things done faster.
Chapter 4: Creating a challenge out of the trivial tasks :- Challenge yourself to create understandable and higher quality software.
Chapter 5: Asynchronous programming with async and await :- Identify where yo might need asynchronous processing, refactor a synchronous app into becoming more responsive.
Chapter 6: Dynamic program :- Create and extend a dynamic object by using the ExpandObject, also understand why introducing dynamic objects might cause problems long-term.
Chapter 7: Increase readability with anonymous types and methods :identify where you might have single purpose methods that you can replace with anonymous methods for increased readability and lucidity.
Chapter 8: Exploring Reflection :- User reflection to get information about types at runtime and understand more about properties and methods.
Chapter 9: Creating things at runtime :- Create your own method at runtime using Reflection, be able to read IL and understand portions of it.
Chapter 10: Introducing Roslyn :- Create a basic code analysis that suggest issues in your code, run code snippets on entire code files.
Chapter 11: Adapting to Inversion of Control :- Understand the basics of Inversion of Control, introduce a Dependency Injector into your application.
Chapter 12: Are you Mocking me? :- Create a mock of any interface and write tests that introduce

This book as you can see has something for everyone, i have thoroughly enjoyed reading it from cover to cover and will be reading a good few of the chapters again, it’s a very handy reference book and covers a number of topics that as a developer can help you explore, improve and be inspired – just as it says on the front cover.

I picked this book up on Amazon for £19 and its well worth it – recommended reading for 2013.