It's always difficult to know what books are worth buying and
what are not; and there is certainly no shortage of reading material on the
shelves. Here are some books that personally I have found useful. I'm not going
to go into detail about what is contained in the books, I suggest you find a
copy in a bookshop and flick through it before making any purchase; better
still borrow a copy for a collegue and buy it only when you have decided it is
worth the cash.
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eXtreme .NET
Neil Roodyn
ISBN: 0321303636
A great book on Extreme Programming which is an agile development
methodology, includes subjects such as test driven development, continuous
integration, refactoring and pair programming to name just a few.
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Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture
Martin Fowler
ISBN: 0321127420
Essential reading for serious developers. Contains a huge number
of "design patterns" which are basically proven approaches to solving common
design problems in large applications.
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Enterprise Solution Patterns Using Microsoft .NET
Microsoft Press
ISBN: 0735618399
Another good design patterns book, not as comprehensive as Martin
Fowler's (above) but still a worthwhile read. Downloadable for free from
microsoft
here.
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Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction
Steve C. McConnell
ISBN: 1556154844
An excellent guide to good programming practice. An absolute
must for any serious developer. A new version (Code Complete 2) is now
available.
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ASP.NET with Visual Studio.NET
Stephen Walther
ISBN: 0672324768
A great introduction to ASP.NET, covers a wide range of topics
with clear examples. Not so good for reference but excellent for
learning.
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JavaScript: The Definitive Guide
David Flanagan
ISBN: 0596000480
A good reference book and introduction to Javascript coding.
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UML Distilled: A Brief Guide to the Standard Object Modeling
Language
Martin Fowler
ISBN: 0321193687
The best overview guide to UML I have read. This is a
hugely popular book.
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Moving to VB.NET
Dan Appleman
ISBN: 1893115976
A good starter for learning VB.Net, be sure to read it carefully.
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Essential XML
Don Box, John Lam
ISBN: 0201709147
A difficult read but very informative.
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Applied Microsoft .Net Framework Programming
Microsoft Press
ISBN: 0735614229
Take a look under the scenes of the .NET framework. An excellent book. All code
examples are written in C#. In fact, this is the best .NET book I have read to
date. Consider also the book below ...
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Applied Microsoft .NET Framework Programming in Visual
Basic.NET
Microsoft Press
ISBN: 0735617872
I've not read this book and so have not rated it, but I image it to be the same
as the one above but with all the code examples in VB.NET. I have mentioned it
here in case you are put off by the C# examples in the book above.
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Building Web Services for the Microsoft .NET Platform
Microsoft Press
ISBN: 0735614067
I used this book to revise for the C# Web Services exam and found it really
useful.
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Visual Basic.NET
Threading Handbook
Tobin Titus, Srinivasa Sivakumar, Fabio Claudio Ferrachiatti, Kourosh
Ardestani, Tejaswi Redkar, Sandra Gopikrishna
ISBN: 1861007132
This book provides a good overview of threading and there are hardly any out
there at the moment. It is espcially good for those that have come to VB6 and
aren't familiar with writing multi-threaded code. However it is let down by
poor sample code (which sometimes don't work) hence the not so good rating.
It's still worth a read though if you feel your threading needs improving.
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Inside SQL Server 2000
Kalen Delaney
ISBN: 0735609985
This series of books is an absolute must for anyone using SQL Server.
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Programming Distributed Applications with COM+ and Visual
Basic 6
T. Pattison
ISBN: 073561010X
An excellent guide to COM+, a real gem.
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Transactional COM+
Tim Ewald
ISBN: 0201615940
A difficult read but lots of detail.
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Xml in Action
by William J. Pardi
ISBN: 0735605629
A great introduction to XML, although significant chunks are out of date now.
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Visual Basic.NET or C#...Which to Choose?
by Dan Appleman
Electronic book available from
www.amazon.com.
This e-book compares C# with VB.NET and well, the title says it all really.
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Essential ADO.NET
By Bob Beauchemin
ISBN: 0201758660
I've not read this book which is why it is not rated but two collegues have told
me that it is an excellent read. I am going to try and read it soon and will
rate it then.
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