- Posted by Ian Suttle on November 27, 2007
- Filed under Books | .Net Framework
A couple of months ago I purchased Framework Design Guidelines: Conventions, Idioms, and Patterns for Reusable .NET Libraries (Microsoft .NET Development Series)
by Krzysztof Cwalina and Brad Abrams. There have been some mixed review on the style in which this book was written so here's my opinion: I recommend it.
The writing style is interesting... basically the authors put together their chapters and sections, then shared their writings with a select few coworkers at Microsoft. The coworks provided responses to the recommendations and it's all documented in this book. So you don't just get one lonely opinion; you may get four or five, all of which may be a bit different, and all of which are from qualified individuals! I love that!
The other day I was working on improving download security for Direct2Drive and I wanted to throw exceptions if various cases occurred such as not logged in, lack of permissions, etc... fairly typical right? The question I kept asking myself is if I wanted to throw custom exceptions or those already existing in the framework. I went to the book to see what it had to say and got a pretty clear answer... if the exception fits, wear it, or something like that. My gut told me that was the right answer, and the authoritative text confirmed it.
Sections of Framework Design Guidelines include: Qualities of a Well-Designed Framework, Framework Design Fundamentals, Naming Guidelines, Type Design Guidelines, Member Design, Designing for Extensibility, Exceptions, Usage Guidelines, Common Design Patters, Coding Style Conventions, and a piece on FXCop.
I'm buying copies for everyone on my team. It's a great reference.
Check out Framework Design Guidelines: Conventions, Idioms, and Patterns for Reusable .NET Libraries (Microsoft .NET Development Series) on Amazon.
