I am absolutely thrilled with the new SharePoint Guidance that has been released from the Patterns and Practices group. It covers the following areas:
- Creating a SharePoint Development Environment
- Overview, walkthrough, deployment, and upgrading a sample application that is provided
- Best Practices on development activities
- Technical Guidance
- Quickstarts
If you are getting ready to start a SharePoint project or have one (or many) going right now, you should stop what you're doing right now and go read over these patterns and practices.
Here is the link to the SharePoint Guidance Center.