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05.14.2008 at 04:51PM PDT, ID: 23403577

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8.7

Trying to prioritize my carsh courses in new technologies

Zones: .Net Editors & IDEs, Programming for ASP.NET, Visual Studio .NET 2005

I'm a Windows developer with 4 years of experience with C# and almost 10 years experience with C++. I have been self employed for quite some time and have not been introducing myself to new technologies, given that I had a code base to support. For example, I have not yet worked with Generics, although that technoloy is already three years old.

I am looking for developer work and and am about to initiate a crash course in new technologies and technologies that will be new to me. But would like some help prioritizing them, or having someone modify my list with something which might be more relevant.

My thoughts include:

Generic collections
XML
ASP.NET
Multi-threading
Silverlight
AJAX

I'd appreciate hearing your opinion about what's most important to learn, and some ideas about how to get a snaphot for those.

I currently have Visual Studio 2005.

thanks,
newbieweb

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Question Stats

Zone: Microsoft

Question Asked By: newbieweb

Solution Provided By: naspinski

Participating Experts: 2

Solution Grade: A

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05.14.2008 at 07:15PM PDT, ID: 21570174

Rank: Guru

naspinski:

Not sure if you already know them well, but 2 relatively simple technologies you NEED to be an expert at before getting in to web-development (since that looks like where you're going with AJAX and all) are HTML/XHTML and CSS. They are the very basis of everything at the moment.

From there you can move in to Asp.Net; it is relatively straight forward and easy to use, should be easy to pick up for a programmer.

You are also going to want to learn Javascript with the recent popularization of AJAX. (AJAX isn't one technology itself, but a culmination of many).

That covers your 'front-end' technologies, now to move behind the scenes.

First and foremost you need to be familiar enough with SQL (whatever flavor you like) to be able to make/edit/delete relational databases. As most all projects will use some, if not all SQL data storage. It is also a good time to familiarize yourself with XML, as that is another storage mechanism. It is key to know when to use which technology.

Since you are already fluent in C#, Generics should not be hard to pick up (a day or two) and they are SUPER useful.

The next breakthrough tech in .Net that has revolutionized my code and productivity is LINQ... learn LINQ! it will save you hours and hours! ( I really like the book 'LINQ in action'). It is a relational data layer and it is awesome.

By this point you will have all the building blocks and you will know what you need to go to next. The AJAX Control Toolkit is a great AJAX toolset for .Net use by many. Multi-threading is pretty tough, but has it's place in *some* appplications, so I wouldn't spend too much time on it unless you know you will be using it. Silverlight is bascially MS's version of Flash, very powerful and a great community behind it.

A great site to keep an eye on .Net information is dotnetkicks.com

Hope that helps! Any questions?

Accepted Solution

05.14.2008 at 07:20PM PDT, ID: 21570199

Rank: Guru

dstanley9:

It depends on what kind of work you're trying to get. ASP.NET jobs are more plentiful but not as lucrative (generally).

Being a "know the basics first" guy, I'd go with:

Generic collections
ASP.NET
AJAX
XML
Silverlight
Multi-threading

If you're going to get into web services I'd move XML up.

Assisted Solution

05.14.2008 at 07:26PM PDT, ID: 21570225

newbieweb:

Thanks to you both, that helps a lot!

I know some HTML and some CSS. Please explain what XHTML is?

What languages make up AJAX? What's the big advantage?

I guess I'll leave multi-threading for the bottom of my list like you suggested.

Is LINQ available of Visual Studio 2005? Can I get a free copy of 2008?

I am very comfortable with SQL Express and using SQL to communicate using OleDb with Access.

thanks,
newbieweb

05.14.2008 at 07:32PM PDT, ID: 21570251

Rank: Guru

naspinski:

I know some HTML and some CSS. Please explain what XHTML is?
-XHTML is just a standardized way of writing html, basically making sure you follow correct XML standards by closing _every_ tag in html... (every <p> has a </p>, <br /> instead of <br> and so on)
http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/

What languages make up AJAX? What's the big advantage?
- Ajax stands for Asynchronous Javascript and Xm, but that name can be confusing as well as misleading. Asynchronous just means that it does not require a full page postback (page flicker) to the server for some/all commands. You use Javascript as it is a Client-side language that does not need to call the server. And the XML part just stands for 'data-interaction' basically, can be SQL, XML or even a text file. What it means is that I can click on something or make a change to a database/data file without having to do a full refresh, almost purely aesthetics.

Is LINQ available of Visual Studio 2005? Can I get a free copy of 2008?
-Yes, it is just part of the .Net Framework 3.5 (3.0 even maybe? but I would recommend just getting 3.5) which is free to download here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=333325FD-AE52-4E35-B531-508D977D32A6&displaylang=en

Good luck! It's a tough but rewarding field.

05.14.2008 at 07:34PM PDT, ID: 21570265

newbieweb:

How about WPF?

05.14.2008 at 07:41PM PDT, ID: 21570302

Rank: Guru

naspinski:

To tell you the truth, I am working on learning WPF and MVC as we speak. So I can't say too much, but it looks like it might be useful...?

05.14.2008 at 07:48PM PDT, ID: 21570338

newbieweb:

So would you put WPF below

Generic collections
ASP.NET
AJAX

I think it's going to take a while anyway for me. But should I do it serially? I want to be to many of them as soon as possible.

Maybe I could just get a taste then move onto the next one...?

05.14.2008 at 07:52PM PDT, ID: 21570362

Rank: Guru

naspinski:

WPF is simply a presentation foundation, so I would think of it as icing on the cake. It is not necessary, but a different way to do things.

I prefer to learn things in parallel that complement eachother, such as html/css/javascript and sql/xml/linq/generics etc. That way I feel I am getting more information all at once :)

05.15.2008 at 07:40AM PDT, ID: 21574138

newbieweb:

thanks for the associations of the technologies. That helps.

newbieweb

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