"Was this just a clever marketing
ploy?"
Nope. I got the book and it sucks.
I do agree with what seems to be Alex's core point - if
you make performance clains, you've got to have figures
to back it up. With .NET I'd personally like to see
figures, IL and comparison to the alternatives (in both
productivity and raw performance).
I'm with you all the way on this one Scott. I totally
see Alex's core point, and while I can't validate
whether they are true or not with respect to the book, I
totally expect to see justification/explanations and so
on about why something is best practice. I think this
makes the content far more useful to readers...Do you
want to learn strict best practices? Or do you want to
understand how those decisions were made so you can
properly adjust them for your given situation? Maybe the
book does that, I don't know....