The C# Players Guide – Zack Thomas

Over the summer I dedicated myself to learning C#. The reason I choose to learn C# is that I have started learning programming with python, and was interested in getting an introduction to a c based language and have an interest in learning more about game engines. Also, I had previously attempted to jump into learning C++ and found it overwhelming.

I really enjoyed the pace of this book and found that the author did a good job of talking plainly, which I always appreciate. Each chapter fairly short and focuses on a narrow concept. What I liked most he is that he seemed to give you room to develop questions and then answered them when you were appropriately prepared. I really appreciated his explanation of value vs reference variables. He does a great job of explaining more abstract concepts.

In chapter 20 there is kind of a midterm project where you are to build a tic-tac-toe game in the console. I really enjoyed this project it gives you a chance to explore OOP concepts and data structures along with control flow.

The second half of the book is really where I kind of started to get lost. The author introduces a lot of advance topics quickly. I was actually ok with this because the purpose was really just to expose you to these ideas so that when you eventually ran across them again you would know where to turn for answers.

The last chapter in the book has you work on 5 projects by yourself with no assistance. By far the most challenging and interesting one was creating a version of Conway’s Game of life in the console. On top of that I took a program that let you play Blackjack that I had previously made in Python and converted it to work in C#.

Conway’s Game of Life Repo:

https://github.com/zackthomas1/ConwaysGameofLife

Connect Four Repo:

https://github.com/zackthomas1/ConnectFour

Blackjack Repo:

https://github.com/zackthomas1/BlackJacks

Reverse It Repo:

https://github.com/zackthomas1/ReverseIt

Message From Caesar Repo:

https://github.com/zackthomas1/MessageFromCaesar

Link to book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/C-Players-Guide-3rd/dp/0985580135)