I am very happy to announce that the core content for my upcoming Sams Teach Yourself Visual C# 2010 in 24 Hours book is done!
I still need to incorporate comments from Claudio and Eric (my technical editors) and then incorporate edits from the Sams editors, but all of the really hard work is now done.
Even though I knew before starting that it would not be easy I don’t think I was really prepared for just how difficult it is to actually write a book. I started actually writing around mid-July 2009, so it has taken about 7 months (however, the process actually started mid-April 2009). I am currently weighing in at 476 content pages, but the final page count will be a bit higher due to the front and back matter (table of contents, index, etc.) and a forward that Eric has graciously agreed to write.
Working with Sams has been a great experience. Working with both Claudio and Eric has been great as well; they have both provided an incredible amount of comments and insight. I also want to thank Keith Elder, Shawn Weisfeld, Brad Abrams, and Krzysztof Cwalina for their early input on the table of contents (Although I did end up changing the table of contents slightly from what they originally saw, the majority of it is still the same and without their input I would have had a much harder time focusing the content.)
The book should hopefully be on the shelves sometime around April, in time for the official launch of Visual Studio 2010 and C# 4. If you have already looked at one of the earlier editions and decided that it wasn’t for you, please give the new edition a chance to change your mind; for those of you who already have an earlier edition, I hope this one will be of interest to you as well. This new edition is quite a bit different from the previous ones by being much more language-focused and taking a more holistic view of the language by focusing on what is in the language now rather than showing how the language evolved.