July 2008 Technical Reading List

July 25, '08 Comments [28] Posted in Learning .NET | Musings

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. I am a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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Comments [28]

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Friday, July 25, 2008 11:57:12 PM UTC

Head First Design Patterns
Refactoring, Fowler
Pro ASP.Net, Evjen
More Joel on Software, Splonsky

john

Saturday, July 26, 2008 12:20:19 AM UTC

Good list. I would add Neal Ford's "The Productive Programmer". I have a review of it on my blog here:

http://wildermuth.com/2008/07/25/Book_Review_The_Productive_Programmer_-_Neal_Ford

Shawn Wildermuth

Saturday, July 26, 2008 4:04:38 AM UTC

I would like to add "NET Domain-Driven Design with C#: Problem - Design - Solution" by Tim McCarthy

Shiju Varghese

Saturday, July 26, 2008 5:44:29 AM UTC

"Agile Software Development, Principles, Patterns, and Practices" by Robert C. Martin can be a good choice.
http://tinyurl.com/66z3pg

Thanks. :D

https://me.yahoo.com/a/zWV5P9g5lJuXfkV8pk7H2pDN0_n890nfBddlNR9u3g--

Saturday, July 26, 2008 7:22:43 AM UTC

I just finished reading The Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki (It can't be considered a technical book, but it isn't fiction either ;) )
I'm going back-to-very-basics and just started re-reading Applying UML and Patterns by Craig Larman.
I'm also in the middle of Adam Nathan's WPF Unleashed.

http://bahadorn.blogspot.com/

Saturday, July 26, 2008 7:44:43 AM UTC

Windows Presentation Foundation Unleashed
Definite Guide To Grails
And finished Pragmatic Unit Testing In C# With NUnit

http://sharpoverride.blogspot.com/

Saturday, July 26, 2008 7:22:43 PM UTC

Sorry, just testing out OpenID; comments are closed on your other post. : )

http://blog.ntierdesign.com/

Saturday, July 26, 2008 7:51:36 PM UTC

I just started on Transcending CSS. It's a couple years old, but still very relevant, and just a beautifully designed book.

Looking at the previous comments, it looks like the gravatar identicon support for Open ID might be broken. Four comments with the same identicon?

Lance Fisher

Saturday, July 26, 2008 9:10:06 PM UTC

heh.. not nearly as advanced:

Head Start C# & Beginning ASP.NET 3.5

EWeb

Sunday, July 27, 2008 4:13:37 AM UTC

Lance - That identicon is the same because I'm using the email address "none@none.com" for OpenID endpoints that don't return an email address. I suppose I could add a check to my gravatar code to ignore that special case.

Scott Hanselman

Sunday, July 27, 2008 4:38:26 AM UTC

Woah, that's a large list of books! :-)

I'm mostly reading Manning books these days: jQuery in Action and nHibernate in Action (still a 'early access' book unfortunately!).

I've browsed through the 'Refactoring HTML' book and I just don't get it? It seemed rather boring...

re: Shiju -- That looks like a great recommendation. I'll have to go to the bookstore and check that book out.

Eric

Sunday, July 27, 2008 4:54:58 AM UTC

Do you usually read books from cover to cover or pick chapters of interest only? Cause these are too many books to read plus I assume you have another stack for non technical books?

Abdu

Sunday, July 27, 2008 11:45:10 AM UTC

Hi Scott,

Huge reading list - how do you find time to do any work?! ;)

I was just wondering if you or some of your readers could provide some recommendation for a book to introduce me to Silverlight? I'm quite adept at programming, web dev using asp.net 2/3.5, c#, etc - but I have a project that requires a bit of advanced downloading functionality, for which I want to use Silverlight.

However, I have no idea where to start really. Do I code against Silverlight 1 or 2 at this stage? How do I code it? I need a cood book to start me off... so any recommendations are very welcome!

Cheers

Dan

Dan Nash

Sunday, July 27, 2008 12:02:00 PM UTC

Code Leader is highly recommended

buckley

Sunday, July 27, 2008 2:46:08 PM UTC

The Little Schemer.

Einar W. Høst

Sunday, July 27, 2008 3:49:59 PM UTC

On the client side, recently:
AdvancED DOM Scripting
Accelerated DOM Scripting with Ajax, APIs, and Libraries
Javascript: The good parts

Code leader just landed on my wishlist.

cruster

Monday, July 28, 2008 12:40:11 AM UTC

I am reading

1) Linq in Action -- Great book
2) C# 3.0 in the Nutshell --- Great example , really Like this book.

Thanks,
RN

Monday, July 28, 2008 9:26:06 AM UTC

Do you have a strategy for choosing books to read? Or do you just pile up books according to your whims and fancies (like I tend to)? Sometimes it occurs to me that I treat Amazon like a restaurant rather than a pharmacy: I order what I feel like rather than what's good for me. Good fun, but perhaps not terribly healthy in the long run?

Einar W. Høst

Monday, July 28, 2008 12:14:35 PM UTC

Just finished said WPF book. Tip: plan on reading most - possibly all - the appendices too. Most are important enough to warrant dedicated chapters in the book, IMHO.

Kent Boogaart

Monday, July 28, 2008 3:33:02 PM UTC

I'm reading now
Code Complete
Patterns of Enterprise Application (Fowler)
Applying Domain-Driven Design and Patterns: With Examples in C# and .NET
Essential Windows Communication Foundation

What is better read in PDF (Online 24x7) or in the Book?

David Carrillo

Monday, July 28, 2008 3:36:09 PM UTC

Dumb question. But do you write .Net code on your Mac? I love my Mac but feel like a traitor cause I write .Net applications. Where's the loyalty? lol.

David

Monday, July 28, 2008 4:11:53 PM UTC

I would recommend Sells book for WPF. I have found it's the only one I need. I have tried reading the two you have on your list and found both of them lacking. There are too many computer books being published on interesting topics. Pick your battles wisely.

As for my current reading, I have The Productive Programmer on its way.

J.P. Hamilton

Monday, July 28, 2008 5:53:23 PM UTC

David - Yes, I run Vista x86 on my Mac. I don't feel like a traitor, it's running my code! :)

Einar - Not strategy, I just read whatever seems interesting at the time, although I do take personal recommendations for books *very* seriously if the recommendation comes from someone I trust or respect.

Dan Nash - Focus on Silverlight 2. Don't bother with Silverlight 1.

Scott Hanselman

Monday, July 28, 2008 10:47:09 PM UTC

I reccomend safari books online

virtually all these books are on there! + the others people have mentioned.

It's really changed how I access technical information, its fantastic.

I tend to read a lot more books, but I only read certain parts, and I tend to read a lot more across multiple books.

Keith Nicholas

Tuesday, July 29, 2008 12:04:02 AM UTC

Head First Design Patterns

slapout

Wednesday, July 30, 2008 2:56:31 PM UTC

Agreed that personal recommendations count for a lot. What about reading circles? Do you (Scott) or you (others) have any experience with that? Personally, I have the problem that most of my close large-cranium friends are non-programmers, so the last recommendations I've gotten are Wittgenstein and Herodotus ;-)

Einar W. Høst

Wednesday, July 30, 2008 8:36:42 PM UTC

Code Complete (again)
Accelerated C#
Effective C++ (again)

Summer is usually a good time for me to re-read a book - especially this summer since Alaska has been experiencing more rain than usual ;-)

Matt Childs

Friday, August 01, 2008 3:11:59 PM UTC

Hi All,

I am wondering if you guys know of any good books on advance .net 3.5/c# or other related tech, that are not the size of the phone book, preferably within 200 - 400 pages to get me up to speed, otherwise there's no way in hell I'll ever finish them, and if I can’t finish them, what’s the point?

WL

Wei Liao

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