Books for software developers

There are many great books available to help with your work as a software developer.

Code complete book

Great book to learn how to create quality software. Covers tasks performed by a software developer and how to integrate quality into your projects.

The C++ Programming Language

Read this tome if you want to learn C++. Don’t use C++? Perhaps read it anyway it will make you better at higher level languages like C# once you go back to them.

JavaScript – The good parts.

Before learning TypeScript, Angular, React, Vue or anything similar I recommend learning about JavaScript first. JavaScript has it’s own set of behaviours that you wouldn’t expect compared to OO languages and this book explains some of them.

CompTIA Security+: SY0-601 Certification Guide

Complete coverage of the new CompTIA Security+ (SY0-601) exam to help you pass on the first attempt. If you are new or looking to understand cyber security this is a fairly comprehensive guide to many of the areas of knowledge required. At the time of writing 601 is the latest Security+ exam but it will get updated with newer versions over time. Other CompTIA books covering Security+ are also great.

Other books and resources

There are many great books available to learn programming. Other resources like video training are great. You don’t have to always read the books cover to cover. You can work out what you need for your project or work out new features to incorporate into your project from books like those above. A book like code complete teaches software best practices which you can incorporate into all coding and software development. The ideas in this book will help increase the quality of the final product thus saving time and cost.

Places to find programming books:

As well as Amazon I would keep an eye out on Humble Bundle. They frequently have programming book bundles with high quality books. They also donate a part of the purchase to charity.

I have purchased a Cybersecurity bundle, manning books and Sybex CompTIA certification books on there for around £20 each.

Packt is also a great subscription site if you want purely technical books.

Need anything else?

Contact us to discuss our software development solutions.

GUEST POST

Cybersecurity has been a key concern for the world for years now. Everybody, regardless of their age, profession or location, needs to be aware of cybersecurity when going online.

However, the modern student is arguably most at risk. They spend hours on the web for courses, studying and staying connected. As a new university student, you need to be aware of cybersecurity and staying safe online. 

WHY SHOULD YOU BE CONCERNED?

As a student, you’re one of the most at-risk groups for online identity fraud and theft. The reason for this is actually not what you’d expect – your lack of credit history or financial assets.

It’s easier to damage a credit score than to build up a good one – and harder to undo the damage. If somebody steals your identity online and impersonates you, to financial providers, you just look like a reckless and financially inexperienced student destroying their credit score. They have no way of knowing – and don’t particularly care – if your identity has been appropriated by a criminal.

THE BIG CYBERSECURITY THREATS

As a university student, there are a few different types of threat to watch out for. 

PHISHING

A phishing email masquerades as a reputable source or a competition. You click on the link, and your details are taken. Sometimes, these emails claim to be from your bank, asking you to take urgent action.

RANSOMWARE 

Ransomware is just another attempt to extort money or personal information from you via a “ransom” – like paying money to access your files or get your device back.

MALWARE

Malware is malicious software like an email add-on, a mobile app, or any other downloadable content. When you consent to the download, they steal your data.

Generally speaking, these are the main threats a student needs to worry about.

HOW TO STAY SAFE ONLINE

The best approach for security as a student is to be proactive. Therefore, there’s a fair bit you can do! 

Be careful with your internet usage. If a site doesn’t look safe, don’t go on it, and stick to reputable sources for research. Make sure that you avoid spam emails (it is NEVER worth it), and avoid public wifi, because it is unsecured and unsafe.

You should also make sure that you install protective tools like an antivirus software. It’s worth spending money on these kinds of things. Furthermore, make sure that you are careful with what apps you pick and save your files to places like the cloud to always have them available. Finally, consider two-factor authentication on any program or device that can use it – it adds an extra layer of security.

FINAL THOUGHTS 

When it comes to being safe online as a university student, you need to take the time to be proactive and learn to surf the web in a sensible manner. Internet safety, for the most part, is all about basic internet literacy and common sense.

How to create a .NET library accessible from MS Access (or other Office programs) using COM using C#.

I recently had a client ask for the ability to access a .NET API from Microsoft Access. The library would need to be accessible from the references window in Visual basic for applications. VBA code could then be written to call the methods of the C# library and return any values to be used in VBA. This could be useful for example for calling a third party service which returns an access code.

To create a COM visible .NET library there are a few steps:

• Create a COM visible C# interface for the method you want to call.
• Make the main assembly COMVisible
• Make the project COM visible – Register for COM Interop
• Signing the assembly
• Installing the assembly so it is visible from MS Access

A globally unique identifier (GUID) needs to be generated for the interface and the class that is being made COM visible. These can be generated using a site like https://guidgenerator.com/

Create a COM visible C# interface for the method you want to call.

Make the main assembly COMVisible – implement the interface

Register for COM Interop

Signing the assembly

To sign the assembly a certificate needs to be generated.

Installing the assembly so it is visible from MS Access

The assembly can be installed into the global assembly cache (GAC) 

Another way to register the assembly at its location on the hard disk drive using the TLB register command.

.NET Framework/.NET

There are different versions of .NET that can be used to create *.dll files accessible from MS Office.

.NET Framework 4.8 is the last version before the newer .NET Core (now named simply .NET) became the main version.

Creating a library with .NET Framework for COM access is more straightforward as it generates the *.tlb file which is required to register the assembly and make it visible to VBA.

To create a library using .NET (formerly .NET Core)

With the latest versions of .NET a TLB file is not generated when a COM visible library is compiled or published.

A TLB library would need to be written.

There are further details here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/desktop/automat/creating-a-type-library

One  way involves using the MIDL compiler. This can be found by installing all of the C++ tools using the Visual studio installer.

This is advanced and beyond the scope of this article but can be done if you really need a type library (TLB file).

One thing to note is that I found it not possible to call static methods from COM. So for example if you are using a 3rd party NuGet package that has static constructors or methods you may not be able to call it from COM.  It is worth checking the source of the libraries you are calling first to check.  

Then you can save a lot of time by not building something that won’t work. Or save time by planning a workaround.  This applies to some cryptography libraries like generating JWT tokens using the Microsoft libraries. One way would be to write your own JWT token generation code.

Xonsole application

One way I found around having to generate a TLB file was creating a .NET console application with console app arguments.

The console app could then be called from VBA – passing in the parameters to the console app.

The console application output could then be read and returned as a value to the VBA code.

Another step was to set the console app compilation as self contained in the compiler settings. This meant that the outputted *.exe would have all of the *.dll file references required. This makes deployment to customer systems easier.

.NET developers need a way to host their sites making them available to end users.

Options like Azure app service are an option to minimize the following steps.

Sometimes you want flexibility or may have an existing server.

Steps to test on localhost

1. Enable IIS on Windows server or Windows 10/11
2. Create a web app in IIS – Create a new folder and point to it in IIS
3. Install the .NET 7 hosting bundle https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/host-and-deploy/iis/hosting-bundle?view=aspnetcore-7.0
4. Create and publish a .NET web application
5. Copy the published files to the folder
6. Start the site

Steps to add a domain

1. Select the site and click bindings on the right hand side
2. Add binding
3. Select Type https and the domain on the server. For the hostname add the site domain
4. Login to your domains DNS and add an A record pointing to the server IP address selected above
5. Select a development SSL certificate (details on adding a free SSL certificate below).

Steps to add an SSL certificate

There a few ways to enable SSL for your site on IIS

You can buy one from your hosting provider. This may require converting it to a format compatible with IIS. A good tool for this is the Digicert SSL tool.  You can add the SSL by clicking on the main server root in IIS and adding via SSL certificates. This guide does not show this in detail. Searching install SSL in IIS would provide more detail.

The way explained here is to use LetsEncrypt to generate a free SSL certificate. Use the win-acme program to generate an SSL certificate.  

“This is a ACMEv2 client for Windows that aims to be very simple to start with, but powerful enough to grow into almost every scenario.”

Download: https://www.win-acme.com/

Run and follow the instructions to automatically install an SSL cert in IIS.

If you require any help setting up SSL certificates for your web applications get in touch with Black cat computers at [email protected] or ‪call 01480 757691

This article describes how to setup Visual studio and create the most basic app and write a line of code in C#.

“.NET (pronounced as “dot net”; previously named .NET Core) is a free and open-source, managed computer software framework for Windows, Linux, and macOS operating systems. It is a cross-platform successor to .NET Framework.”

The main tool for developing .NET software applications is Visual studio. There have been many versions of Visual studio from 2005, 2008, 2010 up until 2022.

Visual studio used to be a paid for tool but you can now get most of the same functionality with the community edition.

This can be downloaded from here: https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/community/

When installing you can select the workloads to install.

 You can read though and select the workloads to install or select them all.

If you are interested in web and desktop development try the following:

.NET desktop development

ASP.NET and web development

Commonly selected visual studio workloads

 Creating a project and writing C# code.

As this is a beginners post to get setup I will only show how to create and run a simple desktop application.

Click create a new project

Scroll down and selected Windows Forms app. Click next, next until the project is created.

The toolbox will take a while to initialise on first open.

 Drag and drop a button from the toolbox onto the form.

Double click the button. This will open the code editor.

Write the following code:

label1.Text = “Hello world”;

Press F5 or the green play button to run the app.

Click the button to see the label text change.

Why .NET?

The main programming language used by .NET is C#. There are many other languages with VB.NET being another one.

Both languages have been used a lot in commercial environments. If you become a .NET developer using the C# language there are plenty of places that need these skills.

If you are a complete beginner but are interested in a career in Software development and would like to arrange training get in touch.