Good Books on C#

One of my friend called me y'day to get information about some good books on .Net/C# (currently working in VB and wants to move to .Net). I have always suggested "Programming .NET components" by Juval Lowy to almost anyone who is interested to get into C#. It's one of the few books out there which doesnt re-hash MSDN ;) The book is well organized and the writing style of the author is excellent. But the book is meant for developers who have knowledge of OOPS and is looking forward to get thier hands dirty on .NET with C#. The examples given in the book might not be from real life applications.. but will certainly make the underlying concept clear.

Juval Lowy is a class apart from most instructors/architects available for .Net/C#. I think that's the reason he has been crowned as one of the "Software Legends" by Microsoft.
I was reading a blog the other day that he is currently working on the second version of the above mentioned book... Let me keep my fingers crossed to see when it hits the stores... I will be one of many who would like to get a copy of the book first day :)

Improving Software Development Process using VS 2005

I have always thought that Microsoft was not doing enough for improving the Software Development Process. Visual SourceSafe the flagship product offered by them is not a very good one.. I have been hearing stories about the VSS Database getting corrupted. Currently, we use PVCS Version Manager as the Sourcesafe repository. It seems to be doing a pretty good job but I should say that the User Interface is slow & hard to use.. ( I can't expect more from an application written in Java :)

Also, Microsoft doesnt have a product similar to PVCS Tracker(tool for creating SCR- Software Change Request and easily integrates into Version Manager to associate a file to a particular SCR.)

I think my long wait might be over with the release of VS 2005.. It's going to offer tools like Work Item tracking, Unit & Load testing, Managed Code Analysis and integrated Source control (Team Foundation). Most of these features are already available to us.. but having them integrated into VS will be coool... There seems to be quite a lot of features that will help a software team to work more efficiently. But I am sure MS is gonna charge quite a lot for people who want to upgrade from VS 2003 to VS 2005...

When you get some time, take a peek at the following article written by Chris Menegay about the upcoming improvements in VS 2005.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/05/04/TeamSystem/default.aspx

Mailinator/BugMeNot

I just came across couple of cool sites

• Mailinator (www.mailinator.com) It's a no signup, anti-spam service. Here's how it works : You are on the web and someone (website) asks for your email id.. and there is a chance they might be selling your email id to spammers. Just go to mailignator and create a temporary account (remember you dont have to go thru a rigorous process of signup, personal infromation) and give that id. Go back to Mailinator and use this id to check the mails.. pretty cool.. kind of use and throw email ids :). But I think some websites have already started disallowing the entry of @mailinator for the email id..
• BugmeNot (www.bugmenot.com) You must have come across million of websites asking to enter username/password to access thier content( ex. www.nytimes.com) Most of the time I dont want to register to these sites... (alright !! I am LAZY/ scared that my email id will be sold to some spammer)... If you are someone like me then bugmenot is for you...Point your browser to bugmenot and enter the name of the website and you will be given a username/password to the website.. :)

These websites are going to stay in my favourite folder for a long time..