31 used & new from $6.13

Have one to sell? Sell yours here

Tell the Publisher! I�d like to read this book on Kindle Don�t have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here.

Practical Guidelines and Best Practices for Microsoft� Visual Basic� and Visual C#� Developers (Pro-Developer) (Paperback)

~ (Author), Giuseppe Dimauro (Author)

4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (20 customer reviews)

Available from these sellers.

14 new from $9.80 17 used from $6.13

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

Programming Microsoft Visual C# 2005: The Base Class Library (Pro-Developer)

by Francesco Balena

4.9 out of 5 stars (12) $40.49

Programming Microsoft� Visual Basic� 2005: The Language (Pro Developer)

by Francesco Balena

4.2 out of 5 stars (22)

Programming Microsoft� ADO.NET 2.0 Core Reference

by David Sceppa

4.6 out of 5 stars (10) $37.79

Programming Microsoft� Visual C#� 2005: The Language (Pro Developer)

by Donis Marshall

3.7 out of 5 stars (34) $31.49

Microsoft Visual Studio Tips

by Sara Ford

4.2 out of 5 stars (12) $20.44

› Explore similar items

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Get the real-world coding guidelines, expert tips, and rock-solid guidance you need to take your Microsoft .NET development expertise to the next level. Drawing from their extensive programming and consulting experiences, respected developers Francesco Balena and Giuseppe Dimauro share 350 best programming practices for Visual Basic and Visual C#, clearly stating the purpose of each practice, and when and how it should be applied. Youll get practical, valuable advice on the rightand wrongapproaches to using different language elements, programming the .NET Framework, and working with related technologies to create reliable, scalable, maintainable, and security-enhanced solutions.

About the Author

Francesco Balena is the author of Programming Microsoft Visual Basic 6, Programming Microsoft Visual Basic .NET, and Programming Microsoft Visual Basic .NET Version 2003 and coauthor of Applied Microsoft .NET Framework Programming with Microsoft Visual Basic .NET (with Jeffrey Richter), all from Microsoft Press. He is an MSDN Regional Directory for Italy; a regular speaker at US and European conferences such as VSLive!, WinDev, DevWeeks, WinSummit, and DevDays; a contributing editor of Visual Studio Magazine; and a cofounder of Code Architects Srl.

Giuseppe Dimauro is an MSDN Regional Director for Italy and a regular speaker at Italian conferences such as Windows Professional Conferences, DevDays, and other MSDN events. He teaches and consults for Microsoft Italy on technologies such as COM+, Microsoft SQL Server™, and Microsoft Exchange Server.

Product Details

Paperback: 608 pages
Publisher: Microsoft Press (March 23, 2005)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0735621721
ISBN-13: 978-0735621725
Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 7.2 x 1.5 inches
Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds

Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (20 customer reviews)

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #196,937 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)
Popular in this category: (What's this?)
#7 in Books > Computers & Internet > Microsoft > Development > Visual Basic > C#

Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

› Visit Amazon's Francesco Balena Page

Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Surprise Me!

Inside This Book (learn more)

Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Surprise Me!

What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

	81% buy the item featured on this page: Practical Guidelines and Best Practices for Microsoft� Visual Basic� and Visual C#� Developers (Pro-Developer) 4.7 out of 5 stars (20)
	7% buy Programming Microsoft� Visual Basic� 2005: The Language (Pro Developer) 4.2 out of 5 stars (22)
	6% buy Programming Microsoft Visual C# 2005: The Base Class Library (Pro-Developer) 4.9 out of 5 stars (12) $40.49
	3% buy Microsoft ASP.NET Coding Strategies with the Microsoft ASP.NET Team (Pro-Developer) 3.0 out of 5 stars (3)

Explore similar items

Tags Customers Associate with This Product

(What's this?)

Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.

best practices(4)

dotnet(4)

development(3)

quality(3)

standards(3)

visual basic(3)

net(2)

source code(1)

vsts(1)

See all 10 tags...

Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store

If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store. Learn more

Customer Reviews

20 Reviews

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

Average Customer Review

4.7 out of 5 stars (20 customer reviews)

Share your thoughts with other customers:

Create your own review

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

191 of 195 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Author replies to "Don't Waste Your Time or Money" review , April 26, 2005

By	Francesco Balena - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I think Amazon readers should know the true story behind the "Don't Waste Your Time or Money" review by Alex Papadimoulis.

The review in question was excerpted from a post in Mr. Papadimoulis's own blog. After I replied to his original post, Mr. Papadimoulis corrected some of his affirmations and admitted that his original comments were too harsh. (Quite unfairly, he didn't edit his Amazon review, though.) His review was so biased and groundless that many of his own readers complained and proved him wrong on many points.

CREDIBILITY: We authors never claimed we are in the same league as legendary scientists such as Knuth and Yourdon, but fortunately there are several degrees of credibility. Each of us has 20 years of experience writing real-world successful software apps, we work with .NET since earlier pre-beta versions, we consult for Microsoft and writes code for their largest customers in Italy. I have written nearly one hundred technical articles on magazines such as Visual Studio Magazine and MSDN Magazine, spoken at many .NET conferences in US and Europe, and authored several books (some of which are currently used in US schools and universities).

MSDN Regional Directors aren't volunteers, as Mr. Papadimoulis incorrectly writes. RDs are carefully chosen by Microsoft Corp. among the best .NET experts with the highest reputation. In fact, there are only 140 RDs in the world and we are very proud to be in this restricted group of experts. Mr. Papadimoulis's deliberate attempt to reduce the value of the RD status is representative of how biased he is.

THE "RIGHT" WORDS: Words such as "Do", "Don't", "Always", "Never", "Right", "Wrong" etc. are customary in guideline books and articles and Mr. Papadimoulis knows it, but he apparently forgets this detail in the attempt to make readers think we're unreliable. At the very least, he should reckon that we clearly state that our guidelines shouldn't be considered as valid in all cases, mention that we always explain WHY a guideline is recommended and that we often provide alternative rules and exceptions. Our book is about *practical* guidelines and our rules are much less rigid than what Mr. Papadimoulis maintains.

SPEED VS MAINTAINABILITY: Most of the examples that Mr. Papadimoulis provides are related to two contrasting techniques, for example the "as" operator vs. "is operator + casting" or "Compare" vs. "CompareOrdinal" method. It's important to notice that in all cases *both* techniques are simple to maintain and *both* are fully documented, thus recommending the faster one has no drawbacks whatsoever. (We never met a developer that would prefer to use a slow technique if there is an alternative.) Nowhere in our book do we suggest a faster technique that hampers maintainability or that is based on undocumented features.

THE THREADABORT EXCEPTION: Our guideline states that you should never catch this exception but that, if you really need to catch this exception, you should rethrow it immediately because the application can be in unstable and unrecoverable state. Our rule isn't rigid and is fully compatible with what Mr. Papadimoulis describes about cleaning up from a background thread. He either read that guideline too hurriedly or purposely omitted the exact text, in the attempt to make it look arbitrary. In either case his behavior as a reviewer is rather questionable, to say the least.

MSDN RECOMMENDATIONS: Ironically, *all* the guidelines that Mr. Papadimoulis considers as questionable are recommended by Microsoft in several MSDN articles. In other words, Mr. Papadimoulis is convinced that he knows the .NET Framework better than those who created it! I publicly asked Mr. Papadimoulis to explain this laughable contradiction but, understandably, he decided not to reply.

RELATIONAL DATABASE THEORY: I have a Computer Science degree and I am aware that Codd recommended using primary keys that have a meaning for the application. However, he did so 30 years ago, when there were no databases distributed over WANs or the Internet. This is where a book on *practical* guidelines differs from textbooks that are mostly theoretical.

The truth is, applying Codd's rules to ADO.NET and disconnected databases is often unpractical or even impossible. Even not counting ADO.NET and disconnected databases, many database experts (including Microsoft gurus) recommend using meaningless primary keys stored in 32-bit or 64-bit integer fields because they are *much* faster. This is one of the reasons why SQL Server and virtually all modern databases support primary keys of this kind. Or perhaps is Mr. Papadimoulis suggesting that we should ban these databases just because they don't religiously follow Codd's theory? <g>

I could continue with other examples on how inconsistent his criticisms are. If you are interested, you can read the entire story - his first and second post, and my replies to both - by googling for "Papadimoulis blog Balena".

Comment Comments (4) | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Excellent Reference, June 6, 2005

By	Andrew T. West - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

There are few books out there that cover what is sometimes a vague and subjective topic in such a straigtforward and clear manner. I'm always looking for consistent guidelines when constructing code.

No sensible person (ahem, Mr. Papadimoulis) would read this book feeling as though the authors were trying to set their practices in stone. The word "guidelines" is part of the title! Most of the guidelines are accompanied with clear explanations and sometimes exceptions to the rule.

Also, if I may nit-pick for a moment, Papadimoulis (a previous reviewer) states that in the book "they use a class named 'frmMain.'" which is inconsistent with the MSDN. Technically, this is a parameter name that refers to an instance and not the name of a class. I wouldn't even mention this if it were not such a beginner mistake. Especially since the naming guidelines are different.

Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Kind of Like Hints and Tips, March 16, 2005

By	John Matlock "Gunny" (Winnemucca, NV) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Most of the time there are at least two, if not two dozen ways to implement something in software. Following some sort of guidelines makes it easier to go back and look at old code that needs modifying or fixing. In this book the authors attempt to define a set of standards to be used in their company and suggest that these be the standards used worldwide.

The book starts off very simply, i.e. where to save the files you are creating. By the end of the book in the security chapter the hints and tips get more complex.

This is an intermediate level book. It is intended for the programmer who knows the language but is moving up to bigger projects. As with all of us, the authors have experience in various programming environments other than VB and C#. Sometimes these experiences come out in the form of a Practical Guideline that might not be the best way to do something. Your own experience will likewise lead you to programming methods that may differ from their Guidelines.

On the whole, any programmer reading this book will come away with some guidelines of the "Gee, why didn't I think of that," variety.

Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)

Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review

› See all 20 customer reviews...

Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars not really a .net 2.0 book
I have nothing bad to say about this book. Except I want to point out that this is a pre-.Net 2.0 book. So some tips/tricks might not be applicable anymore. (e.g. Read more

Published 11 months ago by ren

5.0 out of 5 stars This is another one for any Devs bookshelf.
This is very much guide to best practise in your dev team. It will help any team and sure helped mine.
Its easy to absorbe and it makes a different. Read more

Published 17 months ago by Douggy Fresh

5.0 out of 5 stars Awesome read
As a compendium, making for efficient reading, among the best. Definitely one of my fire exit books. Can't wait for the sequel for .Net 2.0/3.x. Read more

Published 23 months ago by Amit Kohli

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Reference Guide !
This book was referred to me by a friend that is a very talented developer. I now see why he keeps this text on his desk while developing. Read more

Published on August 31, 2007 by Mark W. Polczynski

5.0 out of 5 stars Programmer's Holly Bible
John Robbins on the foreword of this book wrote "..No matter how you use Practical Guidelines and Best Practices, it will save you a tremendous
amount of time by helping to... Read more

Published on July 7, 2007 by Gian Paolo Santopaolo

5.0 out of 5 stars A very useful book
In the [...] environment there are many different ways to accomplish the same result. This book provides information from people who are indisputably knowledgeable in the area... Read more

Published on May 1, 2007 by MICHAEL OBRIEN

3.0 out of 5 stars Average book
Although there are some good insights here and there, not too much to gain.

Published on May 17, 2006 by Ravindra Okade

5.0 out of 5 stars Good book
I am a reader of Balena's books and appreciate his writings. I have read this book and would only say that the objective of the book if not teaching theory to computer science... Read more

Published on January 17, 2006 by Techie

5.0 out of 5 stars Driven to buy by the negative review
I was driven to buy this book by the negative review of Papadimoulis. I now have the book in my hand, and I haven't been able to put it down. Read more

Published on January 6, 2006 by Dr. Peter Obiefuna

5.0 out of 5 stars Starts Slow, But Great Stuff
This book has great stuff in it. However, it starts off really slow and might tempt you to skip it. Don't! There is a ton of information for many areas of development. Read more

Published on September 7, 2005 by Randy Given

› See all 20 customer reviews...

.jsOffDisplayBlock { display: block; } .jsOffDisplayInline { display: inline; } .jsOffVisibility { visibility: visible; } .jsOnDisplayBlock { display: none; } .jsOnDisplayNoneBlock { display: block; } .jsOnDisplayNoneInline { display: inline; } .jsOnDisplayInline { display: none; } .jsOnVisibility { visibility: hidden; } .jqOnDisplayBlock { display: none; } .jqOnDisplayInline { display: none; } .jqOnVisibility { visibility: hidden; } .jqOnDisplayNoneBlock { display: block; } .jqOnDisplayNoneInline { display: inline; }