{Programming} & Life

Howdy everyone, firstly I would like to apologise for the lack of blog updates, I have seriously been flat out on development with our new online start-up, Fotochimp and have not had much time for blogging.

However today I am taking a few minutes time-out to share some links with you I found for a friend today who wished to start out learning ASP.NET web development.  I’m sharing them because I was absolutely astonished at how hard it was to find any decent, rich tutorial resources on the topic of ASP.NET and C# development.  Many of the top ranking links on Google I felt did not either start at the right place, were too complicated for beginners or was missing information, but more so I wanted to hand on a single reliable one-stop-shop link I could trust they could use to learn ASP.NET and C# development from beginner to advanced.

So after giving up on finding such a magical resource, I’ve compilation a set of tutorial links of text and video resources below which covers all aspects from beginner to advanced programming guides in respect to the the .NET Framework, ASP.NET and C#.  My goal was to try and deliver the “best bits” I could find on the net, and hopefully I have done that, but more importantly delivering these links in a logical numeric learning sequence which is the easiest and most effective route to follow.

You will see Ive started with a bit of background on the .NET Framework, which I feel is important in understanding how all the .NET framework components are glued together such as ASP.NET, and then we dive right into learning all about the C# programming language which I feel is a good precursor to ASP.NET (I recommend the C# programming language over VB.NET for .NET development, as I personally find it a more concise, elegant language, but it must be understood you can accomplish the same tasks in .NET with VB.NET as you can with C#, it’s simply syntactical differences and a true personal choice; see here and here for more info, however if you are impartial, and you need more convincing, keep in mind about 90% of examples you will encounter on the net are written in C# and not VB.NET).  The links on C# are hopefully some of the best free ones on the net and range from beginner through to advanced and there is an accompanied video series if you have the time.

Whilst I have put the C# programming language learning series before the ASP.NET web development framework, this order may not be everybody’s cup of tea.  You may wish to learn ASP.NET first and if you are feeling confident, learn C# along the way.  Understand though, it is ideal to learn the programming language of the framework you will be actually programming against, ASP.NET as it simply lessens the difficulty curve when you eventually get to the ASP.NET tutorials.  I personally am pretty impatient with these type of things and tend to through myself straight into the deep end and learn as I go (..usually learning hard lessons along the way!).  But this approach like for me, appeals to some when they can program in context against a real world framework like ASP.NET rather than focusing on the behemoth solely that can be the C# programming language.

Then last but not least, we concentrate on the ASP.NET Framework as stated, particularly; ASP.NET Web Forms (you may have heard some buzz around ASP.NET MVC, which is a very sweet framework addition, it simply is an alternative way of designing dynamic websites, but in my personal opinion, not something worth venturing down if you are a novice programmer or haven’t touched ASP.NET or OO-based languages before.  However if you’re daring, are an intermediate ASP.NET developer or have previous object-orientated or C# knowledge, check it out!) there is a great set of background info, ordered and unordered text and video based tutorial resources which contains just about everything you would need to know to get started and make a big impact in the world of ASP.NET.

So here goes.. RCMD is recommended, and highly advisable reading, OPT is optional reading,  if you have a lot of time and you want the richest understanding possible. I have numbered these in desired reading order, but it is up to you!

Firstly, resources on the .NET Framework:

1. RCMD: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/dotnet/netbasics.aspx (Seems to be the best overview, good content, good diagrams, you can always rely on CodeProject for great stuff)
2. RCMD: http://www.dotnet-guide.com/ (Good secondary overview, the first page seems useful, simplistic terminology)
3. RCMD: http://www.microsoft.com/net/overview.aspx (The official Microsoft .NET site, gives you basic knowledge, good to just have a glaze over)
4. OPT: http://devhood.com/training_modules/dist-a/intro.net/intro.net.htm (a more detailed, but harder read, uses terms which may require previous programming experience)
5. OPT: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/netframework/default.aspx (and the official MSDN Microsoft .NET Framework site)
6. OPT: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.NET_Framework (Wikipedia article giving you more detailed background and a more complex explanation and history)

Secondly, resources on C#.NET (C Sharp). (Be aware you can choose C#.NET or VB.NET as the official language you wish to program ASP.NET in, I personally recommend C#):

1. RCMD (TEXT SERIES): http://www.csharp-station.com/Tutorial.aspx (Comprehensive, but not a totally scary C# tutorial, follow this and you’ll be a whiz in no time!)
2. RCMD (ORDERED, VIDEO SERIES): http://idealprogrammer.com/videos/c-soup-to-nuts-22-free-one-hour-videos-from-microsoft-expert/ (Another video from the “Soup to Nuts” set, awesome video series, again need IE as it uses MS Live Meeting.)
3. OPT (TEXT SERIES): http://www.functionx.com/csharp/ (lessons on the left, looks a little more hardcore but again more detailed).

Thirdly, our beloved ASP.NET, the subset web development technology of the .NET Framework:

1. RCMD: http://www.javascriptkit.com/howto/aspnet.shtml (Good explanation, hand-in-hand with wikipedia article)
2. RCMD: http://www.startvbdotnet.com/aspsite/asp/ (Again another good explanation, good bullet points, again hand-in-hand with wiki article helps)
3. RCMD: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASP.NET (I really like this article, very comprehensive, but not as daunting as the .NET Framework Wiki article, so good reading for all beginners)
4. RCMD (VIDEO): http://www.asp.net/learn/videos/video-9638.aspx (“What is ASP.NET” short 5 minute video on official ASP.NET site)
5. RCMD (VIDEO): http://www.asp.net/learn/videos/video-9640.aspx (“Your 1st ASP.NET Application” 11 minute video)
6. RCMD (TEXT SERIES): http://www.w3schools.com/aspnet/aspnet_intro.asp (ASP.NET tutorial, very simple, but that’s always nice for starting out and a nice re-cap on the previous video)
7. RCMD (NON-ORDERED, VIDEO SERIES): http://www.asp.net/web-forms/fundamentals/ (A huge collection of official learning videos, great set, includes all ASP.NET fundamentals.)
8. RCMD (NON-ORDERED, VIDEO SERIES): http://www.asp.net/web-forms/ (Again, huge collection of official learning videos, but you will have to know what you are looking for, or view each one by one.)
9. RCMD (ORDERED, VIDEO SERIES): http://idealprogrammer.com/videos/learn-aspnet-from-microsoft-expert-26-hours-of-free-videos ( long, but awesomely comprehensive videos, might require IE as they use Live Meeting , look really good if you have the time to follow a video series, I just stumbled across it from some other recommended links)
10. RCMD (TEXT SERIES): http://quickstarts.asp.net/QuickStartv20/aspnet/Default.aspx (Use this as a final recap, the good thing about this resource is once you have learnt the basics, it has a neat “ASP.NET Control Reference” section down the bottom, so click on the control you wanna learn more about, say “TextBox” under “standard controls” and it shows you coding examples on how to use them!)
11. RCMD: http://www.asp.net/ (Official Microsoft ASP.NET site, good to have bookmarked as reference)
12. RCMD (NON-ORDERED, VIDEO SERIES): http://www.asp.net/web-forms/data/ (When you have learnt the basics and you are ready to access data (such as from a database), check out this series using Microsoft .NET’s new technology, LINQ to SQL down the bottom labeled “How do I with LINQ”!)
13. OPT: http://aspalliance.com/144 (Still haven’t got enough? Another comprehensive ASP.NET tutorial..)
14. OPT: http://www.programmingtutorials.com/aspnet.aspx (Finally, a whole stack more of external links…)

And finally, a whole bunch of books on all three topics…

• http://www.asp.net/community/books/

Now this is the link you want to give out
Hope it helps, and feel free to share this link around with others you might know wanting to learn about C# and ASP.NET Development!

Graham