C# 2010 All-in-One For Dummies represents a different way of looking at programming languages. Rather than present the standard For Dummies format, which includes only 350 pages on quite a large subject, the book was expanded to include a broader scope and just a few pages were added.
So, although you find all the original C# For Dummies goodness in this book, you also find discussions about Visual Studio, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), service-oriented development, Web development, and a host of other topics. This book is a one-stop shop for a C# developer.
The C# programming language is a powerful and, at some nine years old, relatively mature descendant of the earlier C, C++, and Java languages. Programming with C# is lots of fun, as you're about to find out in this book.
Microsoft created C# as a major part of its .NET initiative. The company turned over the specifications for the C# language to the ECMA (pronounced "ek-ma") international standards committee in the summer of 2000 so that any company can, in theory, come up with its own version of C# written to run on any operating system, on any machine larger than a calculator.