Not exactly breaking news, but the second edition of Krzysztof Cwalina and Brad Abrams‘ Framework Design Guidelines book has been released by Addison-Wesley Professional. This book falls into the “must read” category for any .Net developer, whether they are a member of a large or small team, working on client or server code.

The Guidelines have evolved over time as Microsoft itself has been laying out the .Net Framework, its assemblies, namespaces, classes and other such material. As such, it serves on several levels. First, it provides valuable insight into how and why things are organized the way they are in the .Net framework. Second, it provides invaluable guidance to .Net developers based on lessons learned “in the real world” as to how to approach the layout and content of your own code, not only for intra-team collaboration and external publication, but also for future understanding and reuse of your own code. Not many developers get to work on projects with the size and scope of the .Net framework, so this kind of insight and transparency is rare and extremely valuable.

The book is well written and includes advice in the form of Do, Don’t, Consider, Avoid, etc. with examples mostly in C# but also some VB.Net and other languages mixed in. Also notable are sidebars from various prominent members of the development community adding to the explanation of a presented topic.

My only criticism of the second edition is that the editing process was not thorough enough. Several section references and “later content” descriptions are built around the layout of the first edition of the book (the technical content itself appears complete and accurate.) If you are reading it and appear to have gotten lost when looking for some referenced content, consult the TOC or the Index and the correct information should be easy enough to locate.

The book can be ordered here.