6/22/2008 1:18:28 PM #

Very good list - I will definitely look up the books which are not on my bookshelf yet!
I recently read the "Framework Design Guidelines"; it's a great book, but not the easiest to get into: at times, it feels like reading a coding standard. I think it's really worthwhile after having struggled with designing a reasonably large system yourself. What I really enjoyed about it was the embedded comments from the developers of the .NET framework, on why they made certain decisions, and how they thought about it, or even why they disagree with their colleagues!
I also agree on "Learning WCF". I have bought it as a companion to "Programming WCF Services", and found it much more understandable and helpful to get started with WCF.
One of my personal favorites is missing here: Test-Driven Development by example (Beck). It's well written, a very quick and fun read, and almost immediately applicable. Its influence on my way of writing code was almost immediate.

Mathias Brandewinder

6/23/2008 4:31:41 PM #

@Mathias - Oh... thats a good one I forgot to add. I'll add that one (by Kent Beck) this week. I already realized I have a few that I missed when I looked at my bookshelf. This list was completely off the cuff! I agree with you on the Framework Design Guidelines. I rate it highly because of the tips and info from the .NET framework authors. Its good to hear some insight into the "WHY' things were done. As for the Programming WCF, yeah, Juval's book can be "daunting" at first. So its definately good to start with Michele's. However, I do find Michele's book kind of slow at times, but the content is rock-solid. I'm not complaining, all technical books sort of have a "snooze-out" zone or "insomia-cure" tothem, one way or another.

Donn