I am a self taught “developer”. I use the term loosely because I only know enough to make myself dangerous. I have no theory background, and I only pick up things to get this little tool to work or make that control do what I want.
That said, I am looking for some reading material that explains some of the theory behind application development especially from a business standpoint. Really I need to understand what all of these terms that float around really talk about. Business Logic Layer, UI abstraction level and all that. Anyone got a reading list that they feel helped them understand this stuff? I know how to code stuff up so that it works. It is not pretty mostly because I don’t know the elegant way of doing it, and it is not planned out very well (I also don’t know how to plan an application).
Any help would be appreciated. I have read a number of books on what I thought was the subject, but they all seem to rehash basic coding and what-not.
This doesn’t have to be specific to VB.NET or WPF (or Entity Framework) but anything with those items would be quite helpful.
I think most people would recommend Code Complete by Steve McConnell as the first book to read on putting some good software together.