Paul Stovell says…

Last week I delivered Readify’s Professional .NET training course to a company in North Ryde, Sydney. The group was made up of a range of experiences in VB6, Java, and InterSystems products. By the end of the week I was feeling pretty worn out, but I was rewarded with some nice review scores from the group: five 10/10’s, four 9/10’s and one 8/10

Here’s a short list of resources I put together for developers just starting out with .NET:

Tutorials and Videos

• WindowsClient.net, the community for Windows Forms and Windows Presentation Foundation. Check out the Get Started and Learn tabs for good videos, labs and tutorials.
• ASP.NET, the community for ASP.NET development. Again, check out the Get Started and Learn tabs for some good resources. Also checkout the AJAX tab to get started with Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX.
• LearnVisualStudio.net, loads of downloadable videos on Visual Studio, ASP.NET and Windows Forms.
• Binding to DataSets, and Binding to Objects, the two screencasts I created to teach Data Binding.

Tools

• Reflector, the most important tool for a .NET developer. Allows you to view any compiled .NET assemblies in a language of your choice.
• Visual Studio Express editions - If you don’t have access to the full-fledged Visual Studio, give one of the Express editions a go.
• Hawkeye, a tool that attaches to Windows Forms applications and allows you to experiment with modifications at runtime.
• Ethereal, a packet sniffer. Useful when working with Remoting, WCF or direct socket coding.
• Fiddler, for analysing HTTP requests, helpful when debugging with ASP.NET and Javascript. Easier than Ethereal when just dealing with HTTP.

Blogs

• First, grab yourself an RSS reader. What is RSS?
  • I use Google Reader. Bloglines, RSS Bandit and SharpReader are also popular.
• Then subscribe to the following feeds:
  • Scott Guthrie
  • Scott Hanselman
  • Jeff Atwood’s Coding Horror
  • Phil Haack
  • Readify Bloggers
  • TheDailyGrind
  • Steve Pietrek’s .NET links

Podcasts and Audio Shows

• The Polymorphic Podcast, mostly centered around ASP.NET and AJAX
• .NET Rocks!, for all things .NET related
• Hanselminutes, by Scott Hanselman, covering most most anything computer related
• ASP.NET Podcast
• SQLDownUnder, if you’re also dealing with Microsoft SQL Server.

Mailing Lists and Forums

• AUS-DOTNET, a mailing list for Australian .NET developers. Sadly, it’s started to develop a pretty low signal-to-noise ratio lately.
• MSDN Forums
• Connect, the place to report bugs to Microsoft

Images and Icons

• The VS 2005 Image Library, a collection of free XP and VS-like icons that you’ll find under C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\VS2005ImageLibrary
• FamFamFam, some of the most popular free web icons.

What other links would you give to developers setting foot in the .NET universe?

Filed under: C#