Best Kept Secrets in .NET
Just got a copy of Best Kept Secrets in .NET and haven't been able to put it down. 207 pages of a33 kicking. Finally someone put together a great reference of keyboard shortcuts and a great discusssion on using the IDE. It's a boring subject but sure as hell helpful and having it SUCCINCTLY in one place, and all of which is useful makes me Really like this book.
Chapter 1 - Hidden Treasures in Visual Studio - A must read for any .NET Developer. I'm pretty well versed in VS.NEt but the reference of shortcut keys, organizing your code snippets and Executing VS Commands all had more than a few tricks that I'm GLAD I came across.
Chapter II - Designing Winforms - Well, it's a little late - I wish this was out 3 years ago. However that doesn't detract from it. Virtually every subtley nuanced little winforms trick I wanted to do in my career is here in one form or another. I hate Winforms programming so I didn't like the chapter personally as much as the other ones, but that's only becaues I don't like Winforms programming and i've stumbled through, often painfully, a lot of what's covered. It's still kick a33 as a reference though.
Code Tricks - another great, GREAT chapter. The discussion on Regexs is one of the most clear I've come across but that's just the beginning. Overloading operators is discussed very to the point and even though that's hardly a major task, her discussion is just so to the point that it's about the best I've come across. Debugging - This is so Good even John Robbins would have to give her props - and he's written the best debugging book ever written.
ADO.NET - well, that's probably where I spend most of my time - but she taught me a trick or two. The discussion on validatoin and using Extended Properties is second to none - and that's not just because it's hardly ever touched up anywhere else.
Defensive Programming - EVERYONE should have to read this chapter. Everyone (Particularly VB6 programmers ;-) )
If you've been doing .NET Development for a while, I'm sure there is a lot that you know that's in here. However there's probably going to be a lot that you don't - I know I've run across a bunch (or forgotten it). The best part is the organization and the size, it's small and very easy to find everythign you want. I only started reading it around 6:30 and I've gotten through a lot of the material - just grab the book, head over to your IDE and run through the examples with whatever project you were working on - you'll be glad you did.
Is it me or are APress and Addison-Wesley the only publishers in this market (ok, MS Press too but they've been slacking lately) that seem to really be making an effort to put out good titles? O'Reilly has some good authors and titles here and there, but they just can't get with APress or AW ,and SAMS, Sybex, wrox etal, they've had years to put out a book half as good as anythign I've gotten from AP or AW lately and I haven't seen anything. Jus tlook at the list of authors for either company and it's like the damned who's who of .NET Development (and a whole bunch of other categories for that matter - but since I spend most of my time in .Net, i guess I notice it more). You definitely won't see either of these guys on Caustic Phil's site (well, with the exception of that Cooper book that everyone tells me is horrid). Looks like Dan and Gary got another slugger for their team.