I would pay money for Charles Petzold's version of the phone book. He is incapable of a dull sentence and always has some insight to offer. I have not yet been paid to write C code but will still read anything he cares to write about it. What I admire is that he is a craftsman.

There have been only a handful of tech books that have had as much impact on me as his first Windows book. Another, closer to home, was the black and red "FoxPro Codebook" by Alan Griver. That one literally did change my life. I was looking to transition out of the mainframe world -- hard core assembly language -- and port an inventory control program to the PC. I had no clue how to market a commercial product but in the process I did learn FoxPro. The breakthrough was the Codebook. I devoured half of it on one plane flight from Denver to Chicago. By the time the plane landed at O'Hare I knew this was a tool serious programmers could use seriously. Thanks, YAG.


>Yes, there are some exceptions. Petzold's WPF book is one example, but overall, I usually avoid MS Press.
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>>MS Press books are certainly "hit or miss". There are a few good ones Dino and Itzik and others, but sometimes it's like wading through a cesspool to find a water lilly. APress, O'Reilly, and Addison Wesley are the three kings right now.
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>>KG