Applied .Net: Developing People-Oriented Software Using C#
Authors: Ronan Sorensen, Russ Williams, John Roberts, George Shepherd
Venue:  (2001)

From the Book: Like a storm that has built energy out at sea, the first waves of a new era of computing have begun to pound the "beaches" of software development. The forces behind this storm have been building for sometime and as the waves make land, a somewhat unsuspecting industry braces itself and prepares to survive the fury. Although this is a rather dramatic way to characterize the current state of affairs in the computer industry, it is nonetheless accurate. Never before has so much technology been made available to such a large community of developers in such an integrated and distributed fashion. Just as someone standing on a beach can tell there's a storm approaching, as a developer you recognize that a change in the industry is underway. Undoubtedly, you're trying to figure out what all this means and how best to prepare yourself. This book is meant to provide a level of understanding that will prepare you not only to survive in this new era of development but to actually thrive. The information here will help you understand the .NET technologies and show you how they all fit together in a way that will enable you to effectively build next-generation solutions. This book conveys these ideas through the development of several .NET applications using C#. Applied .NET offers a people-oriented perspective on the new forces changing software development and a set of principles that can be applied to building effective Internet software. We use the term people-oriented to describe the new wave of software that is approaching as it captures the dynamism that stirred up the .NET storm. The originof this term dates back several years to a book authored by Ronan in 1998Inside Microsoft Windows NT Internet Development. Part I of that book introduced the new paradigm of people-oriented programming and the concepts embodied within this type of software. The second part of the book explained how earlier technologies could be used to develop systems adhering to these principles. The .NET technologies take such a significant step closer to the goals and ideals first presented in that earlier work that our choice of subtitle for this book was naturalDeveloping People-Oriented Software Using C#. This serves our desire to present a perspective on how .NET can be applied to build a new and very exciting class of software. So although this book applies .NET technology, the objective of that application is to create something more transcendent, which is formally referred to as people-oriented software. In the period of time since Inside Microsoft Windows NT Internet Development was published, the ideas it presented have matured and sharpened as a result of various discussions between the authors of this current book. Some of those discussions produced more heat than light, but in the end we are all in agreement that the principles laid out in this book are the right ones and that the future will no doubt be people-oriented. This became even more evident just recently when Microsoft announced their Hailstorm initiative. Any doubts about the people-oriented perspective ended with that announcement. We are entering a new era in which people will not have to be computer-oriented to use softwaresoftware will be oriented to how people actually live. Software will be running many devices we use everyday and all of them will be connected in unimaginable ways. The core theme running through it all will be how software is embedded within society and oriented to the people who will use it. From a people-oriented perspective, .NET is a means to an end rather than an end in itself. No doubt, other books will go into more detail in certain areas of .NET than this one does, and they will be very useful in that regard. This book, however, tries to strike a balance between theory and practice so that we can show you not only how to apply .NET but also what it is possible to achieve as a result of that application. As useful as we think the perspectives and principles contained in Applied .NET are, we just don't stop there. The book will actually show you how to apply what you've learned by building realistic .NET applications; ittakes a look forward in a practical way.