This morning my doorbell suddenly rang and a package was delivered. Opening it I found the following book in it:

If you squeeze your eyes you can see the name of the author in the lower right corner. And yes, you are correct. That’s my name! I even have a photo of myself inside the book:

I still can’t believe it but I’m now officially an author. I started working on this book at the end of December last year and now it’s officially finished. The first positive reviews are already on Amazon, one four and one five star!

What’s it about

The book is specifically aimed at people who want to pass the 70-483 Programming in C# exam with Microsoft. The exam covers a wide variety of topics that show that you have experience using C# to develop all kinds of applications.

Microsoft made the C# exam required for getting your Microsoft Certified Solution Developer for Windows Store Apps. However, C# is at the basis for all .NET development. In 2012 C# was even chosen as the language of the year! So passing the Programming in C# exam prepares you not only for building Windows Store apps but also for a solid foundation for building Web applications or other services.

The book contains topics both for advanced and beginning developers. It covers new features like async/await and WinMD assemblies but it also takes a look at how to implement IDisposable correctly or how to profile your application. I have over ten years of experience developing applications in C# but I have to say I learned a lot from writing this book and I tried to reflect this in the book.

Before I started on this project, I didn’t had any idea how a book like this was written. Well, I can tell you: there is more to it than you would think! I was lucky to have a great team that helped me with all steps in the writing process.

Now that the book is finished I’ll start blogging again. I’ll try to cover some of the things I learned while working on this book but I also have a lot of other topics that I want to share with you. A lot has happened the past 6 months in .NET development. Now with Visual Studio 2013 in preview there is a lot of cool stuff coming!

Of course I’m looking forward to any comments you have about the book or questions about writing in general! If you are a blogger yourself and you want a copy to review it, just send me a comment and we’ll work something out.