<AaronSprague/>

I think one of the hardest parts of becoming a successful and educated programmer (besides just sitting down and coding) is finding good tools and resources to learn from and use. I put a lot of effort into finding these. In order to find these tools and recourses I look toward programmers I consider successful, most of which are listed under the Developer and Technologist Journals on my site. So far I have found frequent references to the following books and tools, these are on my to read/buy list.

Book Wish List

• Hitchhiker's Guide to Visual Studio and SQL Server(7th Edition)
• Joe Celko's SQL for Smarties: Advanced SQL Programming
• Pragmatic Programmer
  
• Building Object Applications That Work
• Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture
• Design Patterns
• Refactoring
• Refactoring to Patterns

Tools Wish List

• Developer Express - Code Rush
• ReSharper
• Design Patterns Framework

Tools and Resources I Own & Recommend

• Reflector for .NET - Reflector is the class browser, explorer, analyzer and documentation viewer for .NET. Reflector allows you to easily view, navigate, search, decompile and analyze .NET assemblies in C#, Visual Basic and IL.
• Visual Basic 2005 Cookbook: Solutions for VB 2005 Programmers.
• Head First Design Patterns:  I got this book for Christmas, thank you Minette and Jesse, it is an entertaining read and easy to understand.