Listen, I buy technical manuals the way some women buy shoes. I love reading and learning this stuff to stay ahead of the pack. So I don't expect this to be James Patterson or Dean Koontz. Alright? But this has GOT to be one of the most painful, and worst "Pro" books I have ever had the misfortune of purchasing.



First off, either the implied level of the book'S intended audience is wrong ("Pro"), or the writers have no clue as to the type of development real "Intermediate to Advanced" .Net developers do in the real world. I'm up to chapter 4 and haven't tried to run one line of code. The first problem is that all the code examples thus far, are bogged down and cluttered with Master Page code with does nothing to advance the concepts, but merely act as a cute and stupid advertisement for the book you're reading. Secondly, they take a concept that in and of itself is complex, and then, because of the examples they use, they dumb it down to a level that is so insipid, the experienced developer's eyes are glazed over, and he finds himself just skimming over the code, which normally is my favorite part of these types of books.



When you start getting to the meat of basic concepts, they introduce a "custom" textbox example. Ok, I thought, "They'll use this to show some basic concepts, and then move onto more advanced examples of custom controls." Wrong! They use this stupid custom textbox control throughout the first four chapters. When a developer has used complex data-binding templating with hand-coded AJAX, can you imagine how mind-numbing it is to look at four chapters of code for a f'kin textbox? Let alone actually type in, or go through the hassle of downloading and installing projects for this kind of dreck.



Another problem I had was that they'd spend a lot of time and pages explaining a concept, and then after they're finished, they'd blithely say in effect "Here's an easier or better way to do it." How about telling me upfront there's an easier way of doing something, and let me decide if I want to bother learning to do it the harder way.



There are other issues as well, but I think my opinion is clear.



In a nutshell, my main problem with the book is that there are some important concepts to be learned in the first several chapters (probably in later chapters as well), but they are presented using the most boring, simplistic and unimaginative examples possible. As such, it was torture to read, and even harder to pay attention to what they were trying to impart, because my mind constantly sought escape through any excuse to be distracted from what I was reading. A floating piece of lint, or an errant cobweb was good for an hour or two of respite from this literary version of waterboarding.



In fact, the only reason I've spent the last hour or so composing this review, is because, you guessed it; I needed a break from this f'kin book!