Although my knowledgeable programmer friends seem to have known about this book for awhile, I discovered Joshua Bloch’s book “Effective Java” just recently.  This book is chock-full of great advice that applies not just to Java but also C# and the C family. If you read just one book about programming, I recommend this one.

I have heard, and strongly suspected myself, that C# is just a layer on top of Microsoft’s old implementation of Java. So it’s well-worth understanding Java even if you consider yourself dedicated to C# (which doesn’t seem sensible to me, but you may have your reasons).