Three Books Every Windows Programmer Should Own

Today I'm going to be reviewing some of what I think are the most important books for any aspiring C/C++ Windows programmer.

Programming Windows Fifth Edition
by Charles Petzold
This book is truly the Windows programming bible. Petzold covers all the basics of a Windows application, such as, events and messages, the GDI, and dialog boxes. The book also hits on some advanced Windows programming like multiple-document interfaces, multithreading, and creating and using DLLs.

Advanced Windows Third Edition
by Jeffrey Richter
Jeffrey Richter is in the know when it comes to Windows architecture and programming. The first few chapters cover architecture topics like kernal objects, and memory architecture. The later chapters he moves on to programming topics such as advanced memory management, multithreading, structured exception handling (SEH), and many other advanced topics not covered anywhere else. This book is a must for any serious Windows programmer.
Note: There's a fourth edition of this book titled Programming Applications for Microsoft Windows that covers Windows 2000 and some 64bit programming topics. This book, however; is out of print (though I'm not sure why) and fairly expensive even on auction networks such as Ebay.

Network Programming for Microsoft Windows
by Anthony Jones and Jim Ohlund
Not a part of the Win32 API, but still very much a core part of Windows. Network Programming is the offical reference for the Winsock 2 API (besides MSDN). While I don't compleately agree with the author's writting style, or programming methods, this book provides an excelent overview.

Free Development Software From Microsoft

Didn't think Microsoft give anything away for free did you? Neither did I. That is, until I saw that you could download 'Express' versions of all their 2005 development software.

What's the catch? Well, you can only download them for free till November 2006. Also, they have a few small limitations.

So, is it really worth your time? Well, if you don't have a C/C++ Compiler already then maybe Visual C++ 2005 Express is right for you and possibly SQL Server 2005 Express. Regularly, SQL Server will cost you a pretty penny, but SQL 2005 Express is free, for life. You can also download the SQL Server Management Studio Express CTP to go with it. It's biggest limitation is the 4GB database size limit, and the lack of full-text search. Click Here for a full list of features.

To summarize, don't get the express versions unless you need them (or want the feeling of getting something from Microsoft for free at least once in your lifetime). Try out SQL Server 2005 however, because it's not entirely crippled.