The Code Project - Useful Reference Books

Home >> The Scrapbook >> General

Useful Reference Books
By Chris Maunder

A list of popular reference books sent in by the readers of CodeProject

	Beginner

	Posted 20 Jun 2000
	Updated 15 Jun 2001
	Articles by this author
	Send to a friend
	Printer friendly version

14 users have rated this article. result:

4.5 out of 5.

I get a lot of requests from readers about which books are best for learning MFC, ASP, ATL etc, but with hundreds of books coming out each year, and technology moving ahead in leaps and bounds, keeping up with what's best is hard. Which books have helped you the most?

Here's a list of favs sent in by readers. If you are just starting out in the industry then don't get lured into buying only books that deal with the language you are working in. Read books on how to program. You will save you and your employer a lot of stress. The "Programming Discipline and Design" section below lists a bunch of great books worth reading.

This page will be moved to a more appropriate section soon (and updated constantly) - but for the moment if you have any additional suggestions just post them in the comments section below!

Programming Discipline and Design

Writing Solid Code - Steve Maguire
Mythical Man-Month - Frederick P. Brooks Jr
Code Complete - Steve McConnell
The Art of programming - Knuth
Algorithms - Robert Sedgewick
Debugging Applications - John Robbins
Taligent's Guide to Designing Programs - Taligent
Design Patterns - Gamma, Helm, Johnson, Vlissides

C / C++

The C Programming Language - Kernigan and Ritchie
The C++ Programming Language - Bjarne Stroustroup
Effective and More Effective C++ - Scott Meyers
Inside Visual C++ - David J. Kruglinski
C++ How to Program - H. M. Deitel, P. J. Deitel
Thinking in C++ (2nd Ed) - Bruce Eckel

Windows API

Programming Windows 95 - Charles Petzold and Paul Yao
Programming Applications for Windows - Jeffrey Richter
Advanced Windows - Jeffrey Richter
Visual C++ Windows Shell Programming - Dino Esposito

MFC

Programming Windows 95 with MFC - Jeff Prosise
MFC Internals - George Shepherd and Scot Wingo
Professional MFC with Visual C++ - Mike Blaszczak

ASP

Professional ASP Techniques for Webmasters - Alex Homer

CE

Windows CE Developers Handbook - Terence A. Goggin
Programming Windows CE - Douglas Boling (Microsoft Press)
Essential Windows CE Application Programming -Robert Burdick (Wiley)

COM / DCOM / COM+ / ATL

Essential COM - Don Box
Professional COM Applications with ATL - Sing Li and Panos Economopoulos
Developing Lightweight controls using ATL - Johanathan Bates
Inside ALT - George Shepherd and Brad King
Understanding DCOM - William Rubin and Marshall Brain
Programming Distributed Applications with COM and Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 - Ted Pattison

About Chris Maunder

Chris is the founder and site administrator for CodeProject.com. He's been programming in C/C++ for 10 years and Visual C++/MFC for 4 years. His background includes pure and applied mathematics, engineering and physics, and he is currently based in Canberra, Australia.

Click here to visit Chris Maunder's homepage.

Hint: For improved responsiveness, use Internet Explorer 4 (or above) with Javascript enabled, choose 'Use DHTML' from the View dropdown and hit 'Set Options'.