Head First C# (1st ed., 2007) by Andrew Stellman and Jennifer Greene wins on something most programming books miss: a visual character unlike anything before or since. Concepts arrive through pictures, puzzles, and conversation instead of dense reference prose, turning material that’s usually bone-dry into something you actually want to read - and the unusual angles are what make them stick. It sounds gimmicky, but it just works (for some people). There’s an Invaders clone at the end, but the chapters leading up to it were the better part.
It’s a beginner’s book and doesn’t pretend otherwise: it gets you productive in C# fast, but won’t give you the spec-level why. Start here, then graduate to something like Jon Skeet’s C# in Depth, which covers the history and reasoning behind many of the language’s design decisions. And once you’re comfortable, Head First Design Patterns is the natural next stop in the same style.
This one’s personal. I came across it back in 2007, in my early .NET days - and let’s be honest, this is Serbia; nobody was buying an O’Reilly book; a PDF was making the rounds. What stuck with me was how weird it was: nothing else looked or read like it, and that’s exactly why it was fun. It’s still one of the first books I recommend to beginners - precisely because it’s strange enough to keep you awake.
Who is this book for?
Newcomers to programming who learn better from pictures and odd angles than from dense reference prose. The format is polarizing, so flip through a chapter first. Experienced developers won’t get much out of it as a reference - though they might enjoy it purely for the ride.
I picked it up and flipped through it again recently, and wrote this up mainly so I’d have a link to send whenever someone starting out asks what to read.
The authors
Andrew Stellman and Jennifer Greene - longtime developers and co-authors of several Head First titles. Their real specialty is teaching.