Advanced .NET Programming | Advanced .NET Programming

Simon Robinson

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First Printed December 2002

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN 1-86100-629-2

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Credits

Author

Simon Robinson

Technical Reviewers

Gwyn Cole
Mitch Denny
Jeroen Frijters
Jim Hogg
Christian Nagel
Valery Pryamikov
Morgan Skinner
Gavin Smyth
Helmut Watson

Managing Editor

Louay Fatoohi

Commissioning Editor

Julian Skinner

Technical Editors

Douglas Paterson
Julian Skinner

Project Manager

Charlotte Smith

Production Coordinator

Sarah Hall

Cover

Natalie O' Donnell

Indexers

Andrew Criddle
Vinod Shenoy

Proofreader

Dev Lunsford

About the Author

Dr. Simon Robinson is a freelance programmer based in Lancaster, UK. He has a varied background, having graduated with a PhD in theoretical physics in 1992. He then spent a couple of years working as a physics researcher, mostly doing mathematical modeling of certain types of superconductor, before he realized there was more money in doing straight computer programming!

He worked for a period at Lucent Technologies, doing a mixture of programming and research into new technologies, before taking up a career in full-time writing and freelance development. He has now written a large number of books for Wrox Press, and most notably was the main author for the best-selling Professional C#. He is extremely keen on .NET and the way it is revolutionizing programming. He mostly codes these days in C# or C++, and sometimes in VB.

At present, he's busy writing various .NET developer utilities, and his longstanding pet project, a computer game, which he has resolved to complete sometime in 2003. If Wrox don't throw too many more books at him, that is...

As far as personal life is concerned, Simon's outside interests include performing arts - and he has been combining computer work with part-time studying for a degree in that field. He also likes science and current affairs. He is not married but lives in a shared student house. His immediate aim after finishing this book is to relearn the delicate art of starting a conversation by saying "Hello," instead of "using System;"

You can visit Simon's web site at http://www.SimonRobinson.com

Almost any book can of course only be written with the involvement of quite a few people, and this is certainly true of this book. For a start this book would not have been what it is without the hard work of the reviewers. And I don't think I've ever before had the privilege to work with such a highly qualified set of reviewers - thanks to Charlotte Smith for getting that team together. I couldn't believe my eyes at some of the names behind the comments when the first chapters came back to me for editing. Particular thanks are owed to Jim Hogg and Morgan Skinner at Microsoft, for suggestions and advice that went well beyond the bounds of normal reviewing. Moving on, there's Alex Lowe and Dan Wahlin for making available the C# to VB translator at http://www.aspalliance.com, and allowing me to use it to assist with generating the online VB versions of the code examples. I've also had numerous stimulating discussions with various people, too many to mention, on the DevelopMentor .NET listservers at http://discuss.develop.com, which on many occasions have been a source of inspiration - so thanks to all the relevant people on that list. And I should specially mention Julian Skinner, the main editor. It is Julian who had the original idea for this book back in the summer of 2001 and pushed the idea through, keeping it going through several delays when I was tied up with other work. Also thanks to Doug Paterson for his hard work on editing.

Then on the personal side, my girlfriend Anne for putting up with my being glued to the computer for the 3 months of writing, and various friends who I hope haven't quite forgotten what I look like. My flatmates Florian, Kat, and Simon, who returned to the house to find they were sharing it with a .NET hermit. And Florian and Simon - you will get that game of multiplayer Civ soon...