Dan,
I disagree with your sentiments completely.
Sure I was able to figure most things out myself when I started out but it
wasn't until I picked up a book (Simon Robinsons Professional C#) that I
even realised I could use:
textBox1.DataBindings.Add("Text", obj, "Name");
Previous to that I was constantly copying the values back and forth like a
retard.
Buying that kind of knowledge IS massively useful and helps developers
become better programmers.
Are you telling me that it doesn't make you a better programmer to read
things like the Framework Design Guidelines
(
http://www.amazon.com/Framework-Design-Guidelines-Conventions-Development/d
p/0321246756/sr=1-1/qid=1161709609/ref=sr_1_1/104-1806346-1142323?ie=UTF8&s=
books)
or GOF
(
http://www.amazon.com/Design-Patterns-Object-Oriented-Addison-Wesley-Profes
sional/dp/0201633612)?
I will confess that I was shit before I started reading up on books, sure I
thought I was great at the time but that's only because I didn't realise
just how much I didn't know at that point.
I'm a contracter so I get to move from company to company and get to see a
lot of people's different work.
The amount of times i've seen all sorts of crazy ass implementations that
were devised just because someone never read up on simple standards is
astonishing.
I have not yet encountered a programmer that I admire that heavily uses the
VS designer gui without really understanding what goes on in the background.
This is made worse by VS 2005 that places the automagicality of the designer
in a completely seperate file.
I still prefer to see events hooked up in either the Ctor or a method that
is called from the Ctor, it makes the code more readable IMO.
Simon