| Books by Francesco Balena: |
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| Books Co-Authored by Francesco Balena: |
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Are you looking to learn more about .NET? This is a great place to start! Meet the Expert's Expert, he has been developing with Visual Basic since version 1.0. |
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Francesco Balena
Francesco Balena is the author of several programming titles, including Programming Microsoft Visual Basic 6 and Programming Microsoft Visual Basic .NET 2003 and co-author of Practical Guidelines and Best Practices for Microsoft Visual Basic and Visual C# Developers. He has written software since the late '70s, has written hundreds of articles, is a contributing editor of Visual Studio Magazine and is the founder and Editor in Chief of the Italian Visual Basic and .NET Journal.
Francesco founded the popular .Net2TheMax
(www.dotnet2themax.com) web site and authored or co-authored several programming tools, including the award-winning VB Maximizer add-in for VB6, and Code Box and Form Maximizer for .NET. He teaches in the U.S. for Wintellect, speaks at several conferences worldwide and runs an Italian software company, Code Architects Srl.
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Francesco's favorite books: |
 CLR via C#: Applied Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Programming, 2nd Edition by Jeffrey Richter --
This is one of the first in-depth .NET titles ever published and helped me more than any other book in understanding how this new world works.
(The author's original choice was an older edition that is now out of print. This link is to the current edition)
 Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2000 by Kalen Delaney --
Every programmer working with SQL Server should be obliged to study this tome. It's huge and is not easy reading, but you can really do wonders if you grasp all the concepts scattered in these pages.
 Advanced Visual Basic 6: Power Techniques for Everyday Programs by Matthew Curland --
I am surely biased, because I had the honor of writing the foreword for this book, but even if I don't use VB6 any longer I continue to be impressed by the amount of advanced information that you can find in this book (and only in this book).
 In Search of Stupidity: Over Twenty Years of High Tech Marketing Disasters, 2nd Edition by Merrill R. Chapman --
The title says it all. You should read this book both if you are perversely attracted by someone else's mistakes and if you don't want to repeat them. Regardless of why you read it, this book gives you tons of facts and anecdotes about the crazy world of software.
(The author's original choice was an older edition that is now out of print. This link is to the current edition.)
 Programming Pearls by Jon Bentley --
Not only is this book filled with smart algorithms, insights and historical notes; it's also one of the most entertaining programming books I've ever put my hands on. It's just 250 pages and you can read it very quickly, but it can keep you thinking for months.
Algorithms (Out of Print) by Robert Sedgewick --
It's not the largest and most complete book on algorithms ever published, but it's clear and concise and contains the "right" quantity of theory that most in-the-trenches developers like me need or want. It comes with pseudo-Pascal code that can be easily translated to any modern programming language, but there are other similar titles by Sedgewick with C, C++ or Java examples.
 The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography by Simon Singh --
The author managed to transform the history of cryptography into a sort of novel that spans many millenniums, up to World War II's Enigma, public key algorithms and quantum computers. One of the best books I've ever read (not just technology-oriented books).
 Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter --
You might need a month or more to digest its nearly 800 pages, but if you like music and geometry and maths, this book is absolutely charming.
The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding by Al Ries and Laura Ries --
I bought this book in New York and had finished reading it by the time my plane landed in Rome. I am not an expert in marketing and all that stuff, but for sure this book helped me a lot in finding a place in the marketplace, for my company and me.
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