I've been slacking off a bit on my new Programming Paradigms category.  Besides the usual "I have a new job and I'm busy" excuses, I've also been reading the daddy of all .Net Programming Paradigms books: Framework Design Guidelines: Conventions, Idioms, and Patterns for Reusable .NET Libraries by Krzysztof Cwalina and Brad Abrams (both of whom's blogs are required reading as well, go subscribe).

I'll put it succinctly: If I had a team of developers, this would be a requirement for them to read.  If I was bringing in a new team member, this would be sitting on their desk from day one.  It is by no means heavy or mundane reading, though it does expect a thorough knowledge of .Net terminology.  A lot of it is common sense, especially if you've been doing .Net development for a reasonable length of time...these are the same guidelines that the BCL teams follow when authoring the .Net framework so a lot of the basic stuff will be easily recognizable.  But there are also some real gems in it, and one of the really nice touches is that quite often there are anecdotes from various Microsoft employees giving their own personal insight and endorsements as to why some of the various guidelines are the way they are.

I haven't quite finished it yet, but will be posting my various thoughts on many of the guidelines mentioned throughout the book in the coming weeks.  Anyone picking up .Net for the first time would do well to save themselves a ton of head scratching by reading through this, and seasoned developers who may be used to deviating could also use this as a refresher.  If it worked for MS, there is no reason why it shouldn't work for the rest of us.

Sidenote:  My absolute favorite parts of the book are the "we didn't follow this particular guideline, and this is how it bit us in the ass" tidbits, of which there are quite a few.

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