Code Project's helped me out a lot in the past, especially if you're looking for something specific that a book won't usually cover. But I just also wanted to add by saying that a fairly good primer on C# and .NET is a book by Andrew Troelsen called "C# and the .NET Platform". It gives a good overview on a lot of the main points about the language and .NET framework with regards to console, classes, reflection, window frames, controls, GDI+, etc. Not that bad of a reference book IMO, but that's just my $0.02.

Yeah there's some really great stuff there on codeproject. As for C# books, the ones that I use are: Programming C# 2nd Edition by Jesse Liberty (O'Reilly), and Programming Microsoft Windows with C# by Charles Petzold (Microsoft Press). The one by Jesse Liberty is good for those with C/C++/Java programming experience wanting to quickly learn C#. As for the one by Petzold...it's basically the C# version of his classic Programming Windows book.

"As for the one by Petzold...it's basically the C# version of his classic Programming Windows book."

Is that a good thing, or a bad thing ? Is it much different to the fith edition of 'Programming Windows' I have a copy of that (5th edit), and found it to be very informative and have recommended it to several people, who in turn told me how bad and outdated it was !! Yet i still haven't found a better guide to the Win32 API.

From what I've found, there are basically two kinds of technical books. The first kind is meant to be a tool for learning something new (like Game Coding Complete or the various Game Programming Gems series). The second is meant as a reference for something you already know (like The Standard Template Library or The C/C++ Programmer's Bible or even C++ Primer).

Petzold's books fall into the first category. They're not great for learning, but excellent when you're trying to remember all those style flags or the 14th parameter to some 543 parameter function (half of which are NULL).

Of course, the Win32 API itself is pretty much obsolete. No one I know bothers with it anymore, they just use C# or a similar higher-level tool. I would imagine a C# version of the classic Petzold books would be an excellent reference, but a poor way to learn C# or .NET.

-Rez

Petzold's 'Programming Windows, 5th Edit' was actually one of the first programming books that i purchased, that and a couple of books on C++ (Wiley's teach yourself C++, and a copy of Sam's Teach yourself C++) at first Petzold's book taught me very little (the fact i didn't know C or C++ had a lot to do with it) , it was a case of reading all three books at once learning a bit at a time from each. Now that I've been programming a while, and have learnt enough to understand Petzold's book, its taught me a lot, and has definitely paid for itself.
Many newbie programmers (learning to program so they can make games) , want to be able to jump straight in and make something straight away, Not - "Hello World!". The fact of the matter is, it doesn't work like that, and patience is a virtue.
Do you really think the Win32 API is dead Rez ?? I have recently read an article saying that it did lose user's while they toyed with and tested .Net, but that many returned to Win32 because of the overhead that comes with .Net programs.

Well, I'm pretty out of touch with standard application development; I was speaking more about tools in games. One of our oldest tools here was written in C++ using the Win32 API but the rest are in C#.

It all comes down to weighing development costs vs the performance gain. That's why we're all using C or C++ and not Assembly. I do think there will come a time in the not too distant future where C# and other .NET languages (not to mention hardware) will be fast enough to make the old C-style of Win32 programming obsolete, even in larger enterprise applications. We're already making that migration in the gaming industry; most of our game-specific code is in Lua. Only the truly generic code performance-intensive code (like graphics) are in C++. Over the years, this ratio will slowly shift so that only the inner graphics loop is in C/C++ and the majority of game code is in a higher level language.

Then again, I do have blue hair.... what do I know?

-Rez

Your hair is blue now? Bollocks. I was thinking about dying my hair blue again. I haven't dyed my hair since I grew it out, and I'm curious how awesome a blue fro would be.

Yup! I think I had neon orange when you last saw me. I usually change the color twice a year, though I'm really liking this particular shade of blue.

I could see bluish green for you.

-Rez