I was listening to show number 426 on dotnetrocks: Rob Boucher on Application Architecture Guidance! They mentioned the Patterns And Practices Application Architecture Guide 2.0, this guide is available for free on codeplex.

Although it is a Microsoft technology centric guide, there should be chapters for every developer in your group.

Here is one example from the book

Key Design Principles

When getting started with your design, bear in...

The DotNetSlackers site has a nice series of articles about design patterns. The articles were written by Granville Barnett and are a very good read. Here is what is in the first four articles.

Design Patterns – Part 1

Learn how to design more robust and maintainable code by incorporating design patterns into your software projects.

1 Introduction

2 The strategy pattern

3 Implementing our design

4 Summary

Which books should you read/buy when you are a programmer? I have listed 5 books that have helped me a lot. The books that I have chosen are not specific to any language although some of the books have examples in one language only. Design Patterns has examples in smalltalk and C++ but since the code is not very complicated you should have no problem converting it to your language of choice. I have included links to sample chapters for the books where I could find them. For some of the books I have also provided links to the author’s site; some of them have additional material so that...