If you are anything like me, the following is a common scenario: You are writing some code not in the language you traditionally use. Although you know a needed command in your language of choice, the keyword in the language you are using is not even remotely similar, and you can't even think of a word to type in the help file to try to get it. You want to be able to flip through a short book that has your keyword in it, along with the equivalent way of coding it in the new language you are using. This book attempts to fill that need.

This book—as well as my recognition of the need for it—grew out of my own experience. I was teaching courses on VB.NET exclusively. Then one day, I was asked to teach a C# course. It was in front of about 25 C# students that I figured out, the hard way, that knowing VB.NET does not mean you automatically know C# (and I even knew C++).

Microsoft has advertised that the .NET runtime is language agnostic, and that C# and VB.NET are so close that switching between the two is really nothing more than choosing between semicolons and Dims. That is true to a certain extent. However, during that week in front of the firing squad, I discovered that there were a lot of differences between the two, some really obvious, and some more subtle.