I'd seen this book around and had the 2nd edition and came across a copy of the 3rd edition at work and borrowed it for this review.

It's not a new book, being just under three years old. So why review it? It's unique and covers things that I've not seen in other books.

I have a mindset where I want to know what is going on, in detail, low level (it's why I like C a lot) and this book is very very good for that.

Understanding some of the depth will improve any developer, help you write more efficient programs but this isn't a book for anyone learning to program unless you're learning C# and already know other programming languages.

• Here are some more Book Reviews

Although it's almost five years old, this collection of collection classes is still very handy to have and compliments that which comes with C# 4.0. Wintellect is a name associated with Jeffrey Richter who wrote the C# CLR book which I'll be reviewing shortly.

The code has a good reputation; it's well written and includes a set, deque, a bag, biglist, multi dictionary and ordered dictionary as well as some similar to those with C# 4.0 (Dictionary, Hash). It comes with a .chm (Windows Hypertext help file) documenting it. Don't forget to right click and unblock that or it won't work.

• Find this and more in the C# Code Library

I asked if the C# was valid (it was) and what the values of a and b would be. It was valid C# with a = 1, b = 2. As the two variables are static they have a default value of 0 before the initializers are executed.

Empire AI Design Doc

Before the Empire C Game programming tutorials start, I thought I'd explain how the AI for the computer player will work. You can read it in the Computer Empire AI Design Spec, the first of 2 or 3 tutorials on the AI.

The Thursday puzzle was C# as correctly guessed. It's a little known fact that the @character is valid in an identifier and this allows lines like class @class etc.

You can find this and other interesting but obscure parts in the C# 4.0 language specification. There's a 2.9MB downloadable htm version of it available from Microsoft.

Mud Server

In a past article I suggested it would be possible to create a Mud Server. Actually a bit more powerful than Mud, more accurately described as a text interface MMO, that can be accessed via a web browser so I'm having a go at writing one.

I've published the first spec. which is more of a design document and says how it's going to be implemented.

• Link to downloadable C# 4.0 specification added to Useful Online Resources