Best C# Books (Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced) to Learn C# 📚
How do you learn C#? Do you want to start learning C#? Do you want to improve your skills or expand your knowledge to senior developer? There are tons of books out there to teach you the ins and outs of C#, but how do you know which ones are right for you? Here you will discover the best books to learn the C# programming language.
You will find books for beginner programmers (for dummies), for intermediate programmers and also advanced for experienced programmers, so you will find the perfect book for you!
Some of them don’t cost any money and you can download online the ebooks for free in pdf. Others of them are for a fee and are available on Amazon.
Whatever your budget you will easily find the best book to learn C# that suits your level and your needs.
Best C# Books for Beginners
If you are wondering what are the best C# books for beginners? These books are ideal to get into the world of C# programming. You don’t need to have any previous knowledge in C#, they are easy, simple and comfortable to read (and if you have some programming experience, even better!).
With these C# books focused on beginners you will learn some basic theory and how Microsoft’s .NET framework works.
You will also learn how to manage and program in the Visual Studio IDE (2019/2022) and a lot more! So without further ado, these are the recommended books to learn C# for beginners!
C# Deconstructed – How C# Works On .NET Framework (free PDF)
What better way to start learning C# than with a book available for free PDF download? With this book you will learn the basics of C# programming language and Microsoft’s .NET Framework.
With this book for beginners you will discover the anatomy of C# and its own compilation stack. You will also learn about storage, files and data access. Another peculiar thing (and why I recommend this book) is that it explains well the C# compilation sequence and execution using CLR (personally I find it amazing to create a solid knowledge base).
📚 Author: Mohammad Rahman
🟢 C# Level: Beginner
📋 Pages: 172
⭐ Rating: 4.0/5 (+10 Reviews)
🎁 Download Free PDF: C# Deconstructed – How C# Works On .Net Framework
Learn C# in One Day and Learn It Well
This book is good for getting started in C#. Whether you have programming experience in other languages or not. It includes a careful section of topics and examples that will help you to better understand C# (for me, one of the most recommended books to learn C# from scratch).
Its main feature is that it is easy to read and all the content is “to-the-point”. It is ideal for people (like me) who are always busy and barely have time at the end of the day. The author claims that with this book you can learn C# in one day.
📚 Author: Jamie Chan
🟢 C# Level: Beginner
📋 Pages: 160
⭐ Rating: 4.4/5 (+1,000 Reviews)
📦 Buy it in Amazon: Learn C# in One Day and Learn It Well
C#: Programming Basics for Absolute Beginners
This is another very recommended book for anyone who wants to get into C# programming. It has more than 70 practical examples (with code excerpts) that help to understand everything in a simpler way, besides, it also brings the outputs of the code extracts to facilitate even more the learning.
In this book you will learn the basics of C#, the structure of a program, how the decomiler works, data types, variables, operators and much more. With this book you will be able to create your first program step by step.
📚 Author: Nathan Clark
🟢 C# Level: Beginner
📋 Pages: 135
⭐ Rating: 4.0/5 (+170 Reviews)
📦 Buy it in Amazon: C#: Programming Basics for Absolute Beginners
Starting out with Visual C#
Personally I found it to be a very great book. This is also perfect for anyone with very small (or null) C# experience. It introduces the concepts very well, in a very clear and “down-to-earth” way, so it is perfect for someone who does not understand the concepts or programming terms.
Also, in this 5th Edition of the book, 2 new chapters about Lambda Expressions and LINQ have been added. It has 5 appendices dealing with Primitive Data Types, Additional User Interface Controls, answers to the questions in the book and a step-by-step on how to install LINQ to SQL classes in Visual Studio.
📚 Author: Tony Gaddis
🟢 C# Level: Beginner
📋 Pages: 960
⭐ Rating: 4.7/5 (+100 Reviews)
📦 Buy it in Amazon: Starting out with Visual C#
Learn C# In 7 Days
Here, from the Learn C# in one day book, comes Learn C# in 7 days (for those who don’t feel able to read the book in one day and want to learn in a quiet and unhurried way, here comes this 7 days version).
The author himself claims that you don’t need to have knowledge of C# to read this book. In Learn C# in 7 days you will learn how the .NET framework works and how to set up a .NET environment. In addition, there is a more advanced part in which you will discover the concepts of Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) and its possible uses in the real world of C#.
📚 Author: Gaurav Aroraa
🟢 C# Level: Beginner
📋 Pages: 477
⭐ Rating: 4.0/5 (+25 Reviews)
📦 Buy it in Amazon: Learn C# In 7 Days
Best C# Books for Intermediate Programmers
Let’s raise the level! These books are more advanced than the books for beginners. If you already have a strong foundation in C#, master the basics and have already created your first Hello World (required😉), these are the recommended books to advance and improve your C# level.
Getting Started With Advanced C# PDF (free PDF)
This is one of the best books to learn intermediate C# for free. This book will teach you the basics of the most advanced features of the C# programming language and help you learn how to use them and integrate the different techniques with Visual Studio.
It is in PDF and ePUB format for download. It is a good recommendation because you can learn to create fast and flexible applications using generics and also applications with multi-threading and asynchronous programming.
📚 Author: Vaskaran Sarcar
🟠 C# Level: Intermediate
📋 Pages: 504
⭐ Rating: 4.0/5 (+50 Reviews)
🎁 Download Free PDF: Getting Started with Advanced C#: Upgrade Your Programming Skills
C# in Depth: Fourth Edition
This one is a bit more advanced than the previous ones, it goes beyond the general concepts and focuses on explaining more in depth the different sections of the book. The author himself claims that the book is perfect for programmers with an intermediate level in C#.
The main topics of the book are how to write asynchronous code, composition with tuples, string interpolation, pattern matching and more. I consider it to be very good for someone who has a fairly solid foundation and wants to improve and expand their C# knowledge.
📚 Author: Jon Skeet
🟠 C# Level: Intermediate
📋 Pages: 528
⭐ Rating: 4.6/5 (+210 Reviews)
📦 Buy it in Amazon: C# in Depth: Fourth Edition
Agile Principles, Patterns, and Practices in C#
Another very good book (maybe my favorite for everything I learned). Robert Martin is a well known author in the programming world for his book “Agile Software Development: Principles, Patterns, and Practices” — very popular book — and with the help of Micah Martin they have adapted it to C#.
It explains in a very good way the Agile principles, Test-driven development, pair programming, design patterns, UML diagrams and how to put everything learned in practice in a real project. If you want to understand and enter the world of Agile software, this is the first book I would recommend for that.
📚 Authors: Roberet Martin & Micah Martin
🟠 Level: Intermediate
📋 Pages: 768
⭐ Rating: 4.5/5 (+140 Reviews)
📦 Buy it in Amazon: Agile Principles, Patterns, and Practices in C#
Adaptive Code via C#: Agile coding with design patterns and SOLID principles
This book is characterized by the way in which the author teaches how to add flexibility to your code. It focuses on different types of techniques to adapt to the requirements and demands of a company or client especially with SOLID principles and design patterns.
With this book you will learn in depth about anti-patterns, design patterns along with exercises including the SCRUM system and how to implement it in both programming language (C#) and IDE (Visual Studio).
📚 Author: Gary Mclean
🟠C# Level: Intermediate
📋 Pages: 432
⭐ Rating: 4.5/5 (+130 Reviews)
📦 Buy it in Amazon: Adaptive Code via C#: Agile coding with design patterns and SOLID principles
Head First C#: A Learner’s Guide to Real-World Programming with C# and .NET Core
A very simple but very complete book. It has a very simple step by step of all the tools it explains and you will learn from how to use classes to how to create 3D games for game development (Unity) through query data with LINQ and all in a very practical way.
One of the outstanding features of this book is the amount of visual information. The explanations are accompanied by demonstrations of C# and Visual Studio. It has theory (just enough) and a lot of practical part. You will learn how to develop real applications that are useful in the real world.
📚 Authors: Andrew Stellman & Jennifer Greene
🟠 C# Level: Intermediate
📋 Pages: 800
⭐ Rating: 4.6/5 (+170 Reviews)
📦 Buy it in Amazon: Head First C#: A Learner’s Guide to Real-World Programming with C# and .NET Core
Best C# Books for Advanced and Experienced Programmers
You are not a C# senior developer? Because if you have reached this point it means that you have a very high level of C#!
But don’t worry because there are also books to reinforce knowledge and master C#. With these advanced C# books you can learn from parallel, multithreaded and asynchronous programming to creating microservices with Docker and many techniques to write better C# code.
Gray Hat C#: A Hacker’s Guide To Creating And Automating Security Tools (free PDF)
An amazing book, what more can I say. If you want to improve your C# security skills, this is your book. With it you will be able to create your own security tools and run them on Windows, Linux, macOS or mobile devices.
Gray Hat C#: A Hacker’s Guide To Creating And Automating Security Tools (Author: Brandon Perry)
The book is divided into several topics. Create Fuzzer to scan for XSS and SQL injections, generate consoles and payloads with cross-platform Metasploit, learn how to create your own .NET decompiler and more! Recommended book.
📚 Author: Brandon Perry
🔴 C# Level: Advanced
📋 Pages: 304
⭐ Rating: 4.7/5 (+35 Reviews)
🎁 Download Free PDF: Gray Hat C#: A Hacker’s Guide To Creating And Automating Security Tools
Concurrency in C# Cookbook: Asynchronous, Parallel, and Multithreaded Programming
A very practical book, this second edition has more than 85 practical code excerpts and exercises to understand asynchronous programming techniques and parallel processing (like a tutorial). In addition, the book has different examples with tools to make concurrency much easier or how to raise the level of abstraction.
In this book you will learn how to use async and await for asynchronous operations, how to speed on concurrency, how to create dataflow pipelines, unit testings, recognize old asynchronous styles and how to write adapters for them.
📚 Author: Stephen Cleary
🔴 C# Level: Advanced
📋 Pages: 258
⭐ Rating: 4.6/5 (+110 Reviews)
📦 Buy it in Amazon: Concurrency in C# Cookbook: Asynchronous, Parallel, and Multithreaded Programming
Professional C# and .NET
This book is already intended for developers with advanced knowledge in C#. It explains the latest features in depth and the possibilities for creating applications using Blazor, WinIO and ASP.NET. It also includes microservices deployed to Docker, GRPC and more.
The book also talks about the extension of the .NET framework to other platforms such as Linux or macOS. It has a section dedicated to Azure services: Azure Key Vault, Azure Active Directory, Azure Functions and more.
📚 Author: Christian Nagel
🔴 C# Level: Advanced
📋 Pages: 1008
⭐ Rating: 4.6/5 (+10 Reviews)
📦 Buy it in Amazon: Professional C# and .NET
Functional Programming in C#: How to write better C# code
Another very good book, it talks about functional programming. In other words, it teaches and helps you how to apply all the theory and what you learn in a practical way and in real world projects. It has many practical examples and you don’t need to have a very high level in C# to be able to read and understand the whole book.
The book consists of 3 parts in which to begin with, we have a good introduction to core concepts. On the other, functional learning (structure of an application, error handling, multi-argument functions) and ends with a part of advanced techniques such as Lazy computations, stateful computations, Reactive Extensions and more.
📚 Author: Enrico Buonanno
🔴 C# Level: Advanced
📋 Pages: 408
⭐ Rating: 4.6/5 (+60 Reviews)
📦 Buy it in Amazon: Functional Programming in C#: How to write better C# code
C# 10 in a Nutshell: The Definitive Reference
What can I say about this one? I would dare to say that it is the best book to learn advanced C#. This book has been released not too long ago so it covers 100% the updates of .NET 6 and C# 10.
In it you will learn from basic syntax and simple variables to much more advanced and complex topics such as patterns, closures or pointers. You will also touch LinQ and asynchronous programming with concurrency, cryptography, assemblies and more.
📚 Author: Joseph Albahari
🔴 C# Level: Advanced
📋 Pages: 1864
⭐ Rating: 4.4/5 (+30 Reviews)
📦 Buy it in Amazon: C# 10 in a Nutshell: The Definitive Reference
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