

Top Books Every .NET Developer Should Own - jdanylko
http://www.danylkoweb.com/Blog/top-10-books-every-net-developer-should-own-QG

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chollida1
Maybe I'm getting jaded, but if you post a top books list and each book has an
amazon referral code it makes me think you posted this to get money and not
because it provides any value to people.

I guess the easiest test is to judge the list itself, and in my opinion money
grab aside, the list fails on its own merits.

If you think about C# it has 3 good stories, its concurrency, Linq and the
.net framework. This list doesn't even try to hit these areas. Instead it goes
after tiered cliches like re-factoring and design patterns.

Has anyone read a re-factoring or design patterns book and got anything out of
it? I've tried, heck I own a few of the books listed here and I wouldn't
recommend it.

Its missing something on concurrency
[http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920030171.do](http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920030171.do)

Jon Skeet's excellent book on C# [http://www.amazon.ca/C-Depth-Jon-
Skeet/dp/161729134X](http://www.amazon.ca/C-Depth-Jon-Skeet/dp/161729134X)

The CLR via C# [http://www.amazon.ca/CLR-via-C-4th-
Edition/dp/0735667454](http://www.amazon.ca/CLR-via-C-4th-
Edition/dp/0735667454)

Linq in action [http://www.amazon.com/LINQ-Action-Fabrice-
Marguerie/dp/19339...](http://www.amazon.com/LINQ-Action-Fabrice-
Marguerie/dp/1933988169)

~~~
tonyedgecombe
You can get a huge amount just from reading the specification which is usually
installed with the framework at C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio
12.0\VC#\Specifications\1033

~~~
guiomie
I never knew the spec was there. Isn't the spec documentation outdated ? If I
look online, ECMA-334 is at it's 4th edition (June 2006).

~~~
teh_klev
That's the last time MS submitted C#'s spec to ECMA.

The latest spec is always available online via:

[http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/ms228593.aspx](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/ms228593.aspx)

------
jasode
I don't know if the intended for the list to be an audience of _experienced_
.NET programmers who _already_ write quality code.

However, he didn't qualify his "top 10" books which one could interpret as the
10 most important for _any_ audience. If that's the interpretation, I propose
a much different list which I think is more universal and applicable for a
top-10:

Effective C# (Covers C# 4.0): 50 Specific Ways to Improve Your C#, 2nd
Edition, By Bill Wagner

[http://www.informit.com/title/0321658701](http://www.informit.com/title/0321658701)

More Effective C#: 50 Specific Ways to Improve Your C#, By Bill Wagner

[http://www.informit.com/title/0321485890](http://www.informit.com/title/0321485890)

Framework Design Guidelines: Conventions, Idioms, and Patterns for Reusable
.NET Libraries, 2e, By Krzysztof Cwalina, Brad Abrams

[http://www.informit.com/title/0321545613](http://www.informit.com/title/0321545613)

C# 5.0 in a Nutshell, 5e, The Definitive Reference, By Joseph Albahari, Ben
Albahari

[http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920023951.do](http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920023951.do)

Debugging Applications for Microsoft® .NET and Microsoft Windows®, John
Robbins (This book is old but one can get more up-to-date info from the free
.NET debugging tutorials on channel9.msdn.com)

[http://www.microsoft.com/mspress/books/5822.aspx](http://www.microsoft.com/mspress/books/5822.aspx)

[http://channel9.msdn.com/Series/-NET-Debugging-Stater-Kit-
fo...](http://channel9.msdn.com/Series/-NET-Debugging-Stater-Kit-for-the-
Production-Environment)

Improving .NET Application Performance and Scalability

[http://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/download/details.aspx?id=1171...](http://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/download/details.aspx?id=11711)

CLR via C#, 4e, By Jeffrey Richter (If a person on the team is writing low-
level foundation components, the knowledge in this book is a must. Otherwise,
most C# developers writing line-of-business code can skip it.)

[https://www.microsoftpressstore.com/store/clr-via-c-
sharp-97...](https://www.microsoftpressstore.com/store/clr-via-c-
sharp-9780735667457)

[In other words, I would substitute 7 of the article's suggested top-10 books
with the ones above. If education time is limited, I'd rather a developer read
the 2 Bill Wagner "Effective C#" books as priority over the Martin Fowler
"Patterns" books.]

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bigdubs
So, I get the idea behind this list and there are great things to cover in the
books included and most of the topics are not just for .net devs, they are
pretty generally applicable.

I am not in the camp that you need to own books to understand topics. Read
blog posts, write sample programs, cruise through stack overflow for common
nuggets of wisdom. Piece things together yourself. This has mirrored my day to
day practice more closely, rather than cranking through a tome in hardcopy.

There are some books that are genuinely interesting reads; Code Complete, SICP
etc. But not a lot of the professional development books you see (or are on
this list) are worth the money.

Also, not included on this list and was genuinely a book I referred to a lot
when I was learning (though I now realize most of the information is available
directly from microsoft) was CLR via C# by Richter.

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fsloth
Since the topic was ".Net" and not "enterprisey web stuff" \- my list of top
ten .Net books would include "Expert F#" by Don Syme et. all. and Sestoft's
"Programming language concepts for
developers"([http://books.google.fi/books/about/Programming_Language_Conc...](http://books.google.fi/books/about/Programming_Language_Concepts.html?id=YeJL2kechd8C&redir_esc=y)).
To me, these are .Net's K&R and SICP.

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alkonaut
Very web/enterprise-focused, and heavy on "design patterns", most of which are
usually OO-patterns, that is, are patterns used to ease the pain of OO, and as
such only apply to C#/VB devs. At least the GoF book wasn't listed.

Periodic reminder that not all developers work on web things.

~~~
guiomie
I don't think design patterns only apply to C#/VB devs ... A lot of C#
patterns are easily usable in Java.

~~~
alkonaut
Correct, I only referred to .NET so listed the (major).NET OO langs.

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QuadDamaged
Ok, this list is bull, doesn't apply to .Net, one could read books about Java
and end-up with the same knowledge in the end.

CLR through C# is really more important for my field.

~~~
taude
I think the author is implying that there's a lot of .NET devs out there that
don't have sound computer science backgrounds, or formally trained in OO, or
work on projects with minimal patterns knowledge, etc.

I think this is half-true: it probably depends on the company, the verticle,
how much the company has a tech focus, etc...

EDIT: And he also mentions his thoughts on "a language is a language is a
language" futher implying that the language is easy. Writing good maintainable
code is hard.

------
guiomie
One book that was quite helpful for me was "ASYNC IN C# 5" by Alex Davies. It
is quite concise.

