Further Reading

Readers often ask me what books they should read next. I do not have a specific answer to this question because it depends entirely on the person asking it. Chances are, you're learning .NET for one of the following reasons:

• School

• Professional requirements

• Personal interests or as a hobby

The reasons for you learning .NET have a lot to do with where you should proceed from here. If you're just learning .NET as a hobby, take a route that interests you, such as web development or database development. If you're looking to advance your career, consider the companies you want to work for. What types of things are they doingsecurity, databases, web development? How can you make yourself more valuable to those companies? Instead of just picking a direction, choose a goal and move in the direction of the goal.

If a subject simply does not jump out to you, my recommendation is that you learn how to program databases. Get a book dedicated to your database of choice (mine is Microsoft SQL Server). Most applications these days use a database, and database skills are always a plus! Database programming and database design are really two different subjects, and if you really want to make yourself valuable, you should learn how to properly design, normalize, and optimize databases, in addition to programming them for users to access.