Pro .NET 2.0 Code and Design Standards in C# helps the developer adopt code, design, and documentation standards that have been adopted by the .NET development community. The book is broken up into 3 parts:

• Code Policy Standards
• Design Policy Standards
• Pattern Standards

The best part of this book is its coverage of design patterns, which is the last part of the book. The author covers a number of the more popular design patterns: MVC, Abstract Factory, Factory Method, Singleton, Proxy, Adapter, Composite, Facade, Chain of Responsibility, Observer, Strategy Pattern, and Template Method.

The first part of the book talks a lot about coding conventions, commenting, and formatting. It introduces a number of c# keywords and concepts and discusses their preferred use. It discusses various topics like abstract classes vs. interfaces, Pascal vs. Hungarian notation, method overloading, etc. These ideas are presented in a very methodical What, Where, Why, and How style.

The second part of the book focuses on application design and architecture. It discusses various 2-,3-,4-,and 5-tier architectures, layers, object collaboration, horizontal and vertical development, as well as more on code documentation and various policies. These ideas are also presented in a very methodical What, Where, Why, and How style.

My Thoughts and Recommendations

I think developers will be better off purchasing a book like Framework Design Guidelines, which does a far more thorough and interesting job of talking about various coding conventions, styles, and design best practices.

Although the coverage of design patterns in the book is good, there are plenty of OOP and Design Pattern Books, Articles, and Resources available that focus primarily on OOP and Design Patterns.