Early Access
Early Access #6 for 5th Edition is out today. (And somehow, I missed the post for Early Access #5, but that was last Sunday.)
The major changes this time around are:
- Updates to the cover. It isn’t wildly different from 4th Edition, but hopefully, it is enough to distinguish the two when sitting side-by-side.
- There are several pitfalls I keep seeing readers stumble into early in the book: (1) not installing the right workload, (2) not picking the right template, and (3) not using the right version of .NET. All of those were called out in the book, but it was really easy to skip through those pages. I’ve now called those pitfalls out in bold and with a little (!) icon next to them to draw more attention to them. Hopefully, fewer people will fall into those pits now.
- One concern I’ve had with 5th Edition (and to some degree, 4th Edition) is how well people will understand things like how code is organized hierarchically and how that relates to scope and things of that nature. To address this, I’ve put in more content and diagrams to try to explain it. If you search the new version for “code map,” you’ll find the places I’ve added new content to illustrate this. (The new diagram type I added I’m calling a code map because Visual Studio can create similar diagrams with the same name. In most places where I put one in, I used that “code map” phrase, so you should be able to use it to find the sites that changed.) I’m not entirely done revising those sections. But I still wanted to get what I’ve got into readers’ hands to get feedback.
The main remaining items are:
- Finish editing the code map/structure/organization stuff.
- A (final?) revision pass through the whole book to polish things off.
We’re getting close to the end of Early Access. Any feedback you’ve still got is greatly appreciated!