I have written in a few books and hundreds of magazine articles, but I have always maintained I'm just a technology guy who writes. Clearly, Chris Richardson is a real writer. And his editor(s) have done a wonderful job. This book is written like a novel. Most technology books are written mostly as reference. This book makes for a very interesting read...especially for those of us with a mainframe background. After reading this book, the COBOL programmer has obtained enough foundation in .NET, related back to the world he/she is comfortable in (mainframes), to take the next step and dive into more generic .NET titles and some real .NET application programming.

For years my problem has been figuring out how to convert the fantastic amount of talent on the mainframe side of the world to the current technology set so that I can hire them. As everyone knows, this is a brutally tough transition and the learning curve is almost insurmountable. Well, this book is a must for the mainframe programmer who wants to learn application development in .NET and very entertaining for us old guys who love to look back at the way it was.