I've worked with patterns for some time and found the Head First Design Patterns a good intro. Coding is in Java but that shouldn't detract from the principles.

Not everyone is fortunate enough to have close ties with university students and the opportunity to cherry pick the best graduates (juniors). Recommendations are subject to the reputation of the person giving them. Projects don't always coincide with junior availability and often recommend juniors have competing offers. Faced with a mountain of C.V. and a long list of interviews the choice becomes more risky. To get back to the subject of this thread, Microsoft certification or book learning only forms a basis from which experience develops. I don’t wish to seem critical just asking the wider questions on training and qualifications. After all we all want able and proficient programmers on our teams, it’s getting them that’s the difficult bit.

As a MCSD.NET certified programmer I would concede that you could learn to use MS development products though books, it's picking useful ones out from the pile without spending a fortune. Having a good mentor helps and this is where instructors can offer tips and guidelines (bug avoidance in some cases). In my opinion it’s a shame that Microsoft certification does not go into more depth or cover ‘real world’ use. To bring yourself up to date with the various technologies, I would join the various websites where programmers demonstrate their skills and from which you can learn. When assessing potential employees, relevant experience is important but not every programmer or developer can acquire ‘golden opportunities’ to enhance their C.V. Proof or ‘proven track record’ relies on references and good technical interviews in addition to a C.V. For some programmers the only option is to certify in order to demonstrate knowledge to a certain level. Just a quick question, if you had two candidates of equal age neither with commercial experience. One had Microsoft certification and had developed some software components for CodeProject, the other a general computing degree. Who would you hire given all other considerations equal? In my opinion there needs to be some way to ‘capture’ programmer experience and pass this on to others in some form of recognised qualification/certification standard. At the moment the only route to 'experience' other than living it, is via books (these date quickly but provide a good starting point) and programming websites (these constantly change). Certification, if done properly, does show a level of knowledge on a subject and can form a basis for further study. Hope this helps.