Last week I submitted the reaming chapters for my new book. It is now being edited and should be available right around the time that Visual Studio 2010 launches (March 22, 2010).

One place you can order it is here: http://www.amazon.com/CLR-via-C-Third-Pro-Developer/dp/0735627045

I know that many people will ask me what are the differences between the 2nd edition and the 3rd edition and so I thought I’d create this blog post to address this.

Overall, every chapter has been modified making the text clearer, fixing any known mistakes and I’ve added more 64-bit coverage as this hardware is becoming more commonplace. I’ ve also embellished a lot of text to reflect new things that I’ve learned in the last 5 years since the previos edition of the book was published. In addtion, since the 2^nd Edition of the book covered version 2.0 of the .NET Framework and C#, the new book adds coverage of versions 3.0, 3.5 and 4.0.

Also, I always thought I’d write a Threading Book showing how to properly architect software to build responsive and scalable applications and components in today’s world of multi-core computers. However, I decided to just include this other book’s content in the 3^rd Edition of CLR via C# and so Part 5 of the book has five pretty lengthy chapters related to Threading. These chapters (like all chapters in the book) are very prescriptive. That is, I don’t just explain what is in the .NET Framework and how to use it. I explain when to use it and why as well as pitfalls associated with various constructs. I have written a lot of threading material over the past 20+ years and this is all new material presented in an all new way that I think will resonate well with software developers. The 2nd edition of CLR via C# had two chapters related to threading; the five new chapters contain a small part of that material but the new chapters are basically rewritten and add all of the new stuff that is being introduces with .NET 4.0.

Below is the Table of Contents for CLR via C#, 3^rd Edition and a brief description of what has been added to each chapter since the 2^nd Edition.

Part I – CLR Basics

Chapter 1-The CLR’s Execution Model

Added about discussion about C#’s /optimize and /debug switches and how they relate to each other.

Chapter 2-Building, Packaging, Deploying, and Administering Applications and Types

Improved discussion about Win32 manifest information and version resource information.

Chapter 3-Shared Assemblies and Strongly Named Assemblies

Added discussion of TypeForwardedToAttribute and TypeForwardedFromAttribute.

Part II – Designing Types

Chapter 4-Type Fundamentals

No new topics.

Chapter 5-Primitive, Reference, and Value Types

Enhanced discussion of checked and unchecked code and added discussion of new BigInteger type. Also added discussion of C# 4.0’s dynamic primitive type.

Chapter 6-Type and Member Basics

No new topics.

Chapter 7-Constants and Fields

No new topics.

Chapter 8-Methods

Added discussion of extension methods and partial methods.

Chapter 9-Parameters

Added discussion of optional/named parameters and implicitly-typed local variables.

Chapter 10-Properties

Added discussion of automatically-implemented properties, properties and the Visual Studio debugger, object and collection initializers, anonymous types, the System.Tuple type and the ExpandoObject type.

Chapter 11-Events

Added discussion of events and thread-safety as well as showing a cool extension method to simplify the raising of an event.

Chapter 12-Generics

Added discussion of delegate and interface generic type argument variance.

Chapter 13-Interfaces

No new topics.

Part III – Essential Types

Chapter 14-Chars, Strings, and Working with Text

No new topics.

Chapter 15-Enums

Added coverage of new Enum and Type methods to access enumerated type instances.

Chapter 16-Arrays

Added new section on initializing array elements.

Chapter 17-Delegates

Added discussion of using generic delegates to avoid defining new delegate types. Also added discussion of lambda expressions.

Chapter 18-Attributes

No new topics.

Chapter 19-Nullable Value Types

Added discussion on performance.

Part IV – CLR Facilities

Chapter 20-Exception Handling and State Management

This chapter has been completely rewritten. It is now about exception handling and state management. It includes discussions of code contracts and constrained execution regions (CERs). It also includes a new section on trade-offs between writing productive code and reliable code.

Chapter 21-Automatic Memory Management

Added discussion of C#’s fixed state and how it works to pin objects in the heap. Rewrote the code for weak delegates so you can use them with any class that exposes an event (the class doesn’t have to support weak delegates itself). Added discussion on the new ConditionalWeakTable class, GC Collection modes, Full GC notifications, garbage collection modes and latency modes. I also include a new sample showing how your application can receive notifications whenever Generation 0 or 2 collections occur.

Chapter 22-CLR Hosting and AppDomains

Added discussion of side-by-side support allowing multiple CLRs to be loaded in a single process. Added section on the performance of using MarshalByRefObject-derived types. Substantially rewrote the section on cross-AppDomain communication. Added section on AppDomain Monitoring and first chance exception notifications. Updated the section on the AppDomainManager class.

Chapter 23-Assembly Loading and Reflection

Added section on how to deploy a single file with dependent assemblies embedded inside it. Added section comparing reflection invoke vs bind/invoke vs bind/create delegate/invoke vs C#’s dynamic type.

Chapter 24-Runtime Serialization

This is a whole new chapter that was not in the 2^nd Edition.

Part V – Threading

Chapter 25-Threading Basics

Whole new chapter motivating why Windows supports threads, thread overhead, CPU trends, NUMA Architectures, the relationship between CLR threads and Windows threads, the Thread class, reasons to use threads, thread scheduling and priorities, foreground thread vs background threads.

Chapter 26-Performing Compute-Bound Asynchronous Operations

Whole new chapter explaining the CLR’s thread pool. This chapter covers all the new .NET 4.0 constructs including cooperative cancelation, Tasks, the aralle class, parallel language integrated query, timers, how the thread pool manages its threads, cache lines and false sharing.

Chapter 27-Performing I/O-Bound Asynchronous Operations

Whole new chapter explaining how Windows performs synchronous and asynchronous I/O operations. Then, I go into the CLR’s Asynchronous Programming Model, my AsyncEnumerator class, the APM and exceptions, Applications and their threading models, implementing a service asynchronously, the APM and Compute-bound operations, APM considerations, I/O request priorities, converting the APM to a Task, the event-based Asynchronous Pattern, programming model soup.

Chapter 28-Primitive Thread Synchronization Constructs

Whole new chapter discusses class libraries and thread safety, primitive user-mode, kernel-mode constructs, and data alignment.

Chapter 29-Hybrid Thread Synchronization Constructs

Whole new chapter discussion various hybrid constructs such as ManualResetEventSlim, SemaphoreSlim, CountdownEvent, Barrier, ReaderWriterLock(Slim), OneManyResourceLock, Monitor, 3 ways to solve the double-check locking technique, .NET 4.0’s Lazy and LazyInitializer classes, the condition variable pattern, .NET 4.0’s concurrent collection classes, the ReaderWriterGate and SyncGate classes.