CLR via C#, by Jeffrey Richter, provides thorough coverage of the core features of the .NET Framework 2.0. It is a great review of information that you’re already familiar with, and is certain to teach you some useful things that you didn’t already know. The book is very practical, and includes Richter’s often strong opinions on how to properly use the technology, and which parts of the framework to avoid entirely. I highly recommend this book to C# programmers, regardless of experience – I’ve read a number of books on the CLR, and this one held my interest throughout.

Head First Design Patterns, by Eric Freeman et al, was a nice change of pace from most technical books. The basic idea behind “Head First” books is to use lots of pages with pictures and diagrams and crazy fonts and humor and exercises to get the information to actually stick in your brain. This particular book takes that approach with the most important design patterns from the Gang of Four book.

This book was, at the very least, a good review of those patterns; I think it succeeded in helping me remember their names and uses. Specifically, the design patterns described are Strategy, Observer, Decorator, Factory Method, Abstract Factory, Singleton, Command, Adapter, Façade, Template Method, Iterator, Composite, State, Proxy, and Compound. The remaining Gang of Four patterns are each given two pages in the appendix. The many examples throughout the book are all in Java, but a C# developer should be able to follow along easily.

Despite my typographical issues with the book, I highly recommend it to anyone that wants to learn some of the fundamental design patterns in software development.

The book that I’m currently reading is chock-full of some of my biggest typographical pet peeves.

Am I the only person who  notices when an extra space is used inadvertently between two words of a sentence? Even the grammar checker in Microsoft Word is kind enough to let you know when you make this mistake. It really drives me crazy; I seem to find doubled spaces everywhere I look. (Did you notice the doubled space in the first sentence of this paragraph?)

Speaking of doubled spaces, please don’t type two spaces after the closing period of a sentence. The Elements of Typographic Style (and Bill Hill!) back me up on this one. I know that your typing teacher told you to use two spaces. I don’t doubt that typing teachers are still teaching two spaces, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s wrong. (Don’t use two spaces after a colon, either.)

One more – when typesetting source code with a fixed-width font, please don’t use ligatures. (Notice the “fi” – that should be fixed-width font.) I don’t understand why any fixed-width font would support ligatures anyway – doesn’t that violate the idea of letters being a fixed width? Of course, the easiest way around this problem is to stop using fixed-width fonts for source code – it reads a lot better in a normal font, anyway. On screen, 10pt Verdana is the best font for reading and editing source code that I’ve found; I’m sure a similar font would look great in print.

Update: David (a coworker) reminds me that there are books in print that use variable-width fonts for source code, most notably The C++ Programming Language (3rd Edition) by Bjarne Stroustrup, which uses an italic roman font, and Effective C++ (3rd Edition) by Scott Meyers, which uses a sans-serif font like Verdana. I found both to be more readable than the standard fixed-width Courier, particularly the latter.

Update 2: Speaking of source code, don't let your word processor or typesetting software make any helpful character substitutions. For example, I don't know of any programming languages that allow “smart quotes” around "string literals".

Update 3: Al prefers double spaces after full stops and colons, and asked that I quote the relevant passage from The Elements of Typographic Style:

2.1.4  Use a single word space between sentences.

In the nineteenth century, which was a dark and inflationary age in typography and type design, many compositors were encouraged to stuff extra space between sentences. Generations of twentieth-century typists were then taught to do the same, by hitting the spacebar twice after every period. Your typing as well as your typesetting will benefit from unlearning this quaint Victorian habit. As a general rule, no more than a single space is required after a period, a colon or any other mark of punctuation. [...]

Professional .NET Framework 2.0, by Joe Duffy, contains 600 pages of mostly interesting information about the latest release of the .NET Framework. For the most part, the book covers topics to an appropriate depth; that is, it generally manages to finish a topic before I get tired of it.

It is difficult to review a book full of information about a technology that you are already experienced in, because you can’t properly evaluate how well the book would have taught you that information had you not already known it. My inclination is that this book would be fairly inaccessible to someone without reasonable experience in a previous release of the .NET Framework and/or the C# language.

The book could have used a bit more editing. I had a strong feeling of déjà vu while reading about anonymous delegates in chapter 14, so I looked back to chapter 2, where I found the pretty much the exact same text.

Still, the writing style is good, and I learned some things I hadn’t already learned from other sources, so I recommend this book to anyone that wants to fill some of the gaps in their knowledge of the .NET framework.