I agree. Dune is a must for every programmer worth his salt. Also - Lord Of The Rings :)

CLR via C# seems like a great book. I'll be sure to pick it up. Thanks.

I've read Code Complete, and yes, It's a great book. The other ones seem like nice recommendations, I'll take them into consideration. Thanks.

Just ask IE6 :)

Hi to everyone in this great crowd. For two years now, I've been a professional programmer. I work in .NET (C#, ASP.NET, WPF, WCF) and so far the ride has been great - I am hoping for a long and prosperous career. But I have a nagging voice in my head reminding me that everything I know of .NET was learned ad-hoc, in the heat of the moment, in a do or die situation. Starting a project in a never-before-used technology was, and still is a frequent occurrence. Now, don't get me wrong - I would soon get bored if everything stayed the same as I love learning new technologies, and googling for answers to my questions. But I have this nagging feeling that I need to learn the "proper" way to do things sooner or latter - preferably sooner. Here I am talking about using general language features, design patterns, and the lovely .NET framework classes to their full extent. So, in the attempt to en-better my (still somewhat green) professional skills I am asking for advice - do you know of some good books to get a .NET programmer on the way to better and greater coding? Do any of you have the "It may work, but learn to do it right" urge?

The guy that was on karate for 2 weeks probably won't adapt a stance in real danger, it takes much longer that that to make any fighting techique/style a natural thing in real situations. Even if he does, he'll be doing it on purpose, to show that "I have skills", and that has only one effect - make everyone present laugh their asses off. I'm talking about subtle stances for a fight, positioning the body for movement, not Chinese Kung-Fu movies claw style thingies that the 2 week karate guy would display :)

big skilled human > small skilled human > big unskilled human > small unskilled human. Size helps, but skill does take precedence. I trained ninjutsu at one time in my life, and I must say that even after 3 years of training it was obvious to me that the much lighter and physically weaker instructors assistant (a girl no less) could kick my ass in under 3 seconds... Even if someone is weaker, if they are well trained, they will be faster, avoid and block blows, hit harder, and actually have an idea of what to do to win... Moral of the story: If you see someone adopt a fighting posture, step back :) disclaimer: this post is meant as a comparison in a perfect "all things being equal" setting, and does not take into account any special conditions such as one combatant holding a gun and beer and the other one running toward him for 50 yards :-D