Illustrated WPF and WPF Programmer’s Reference

I am studying for my MCPD exams, which I am taking in 2 weeks.  Because the official exam guide is so horrible, I picked up a couple more more books.  The first is Illustrated WPF by Solis.  I made it through page 141 before giving up.  I then opened WPF Programmer’s Reference by Stephens.  I made it through page 178.  Both books suffer from the same problem – they don’t teach WPF.  Rather, they introduce all of the concepts of WPF in a subject-specific way.  For example in Solis, Chapter 5 Layout, then Panels, then the StackPanel, then the wrapPanel, etc…  Each section has an illustration or two with a basic code snippet that you can read.  The problem is that I (and most people) don’t learn computer languages like this – it is equivalent to reading MSDN cover to cover.  I draw on my experience from Ivor Horton’s Beginning C++ or Doug Wright’s Beginning VB6.  Those books were more tutorial based with exercises to encourage the reader to have his/her hands on the keyboard.

I have one more book WPF4 Unleashed by Nathan.  I am not optimistic.  I’ll give the book a creditable try but I am already thinking about an application I can write to teach myself the concepts.  I hope I can get it done by my self-imposed exam deadline.

Windows Applications Development with Microsoft .NET Framework 4

I am prepping for my first .NET 4.0 upgrade exam (70-521) that I want to take in a couple of weeks.  I purchased the Microsoft “official” training kit and worked my way though it over the last 7 days.  In a word – “terrible”.  In two words – “really terrible”.  In three words – well, you get the idea.  Why do I think this book is a waste of time?

• There are little, if any, code samples to explain a concept
• The material is not cumulative, nor is there a unifying application/project to tie concepts together
• The actual explanations are overly wordy and opaque
• The code samples, when they exist, are examples of anti-practices.  Consider this nugget from the first chapter:

            foreach(FontFamily F in Fonts.SystemFontFamilies)
            {
                ListBoxItem l = new ListBoxItem();
                l.Content = F.ToString();
                l.FontFamily = F;
                listBox1.Items.Add(l);
            }

(Yup, this was written by someone who considers themselves a professional programmer)

• The book’s size is due to listing each enumeration value in chart form – basically unreadable.
• The pictures are in black and white
• Each chapter ends with helpful “exercises” like “Build a calculator program” or “Practice creating resources” without any guidance on how to do the task or any final answer to check against.

I ordered some other WPF books that were recommended – I’ll spin through them in the coming weeks.  Until then, I am just puttering around with WPF – which is my new BFF (sorry WF)….