Frustration learning .Net programming Options

[ToddB]

I am a programmer by trade although my expertise lies within legacy mainframe (Cobol, JCL, etc.). I decided some time ago to go back to school and get instruction in VB & C#.Net and MS SQL. I also have available to me a lot of online classes in C#. The problem with the online classes is they are not in a progression and I do not know enough about C# to know which class to take in a logical progression. The shift from procedural programming to an object mindset has been hard for me and I am getting frustrated with my progress.

I was hoping to get some input as to the best way to “learn” a language such as C#? Would learning VB first be beneficial then C#? Should I focus initially on OOP concepts and structure before I learn a particular language? Which is the best way to learn OOP and a language “hands on” (i.e. doing) vs my online work which is just reading/listening and taking a short test afterwards. I feel these online classes could be beneficial it is just the C# platform seems so vast and comprehensive I just don’t know a logical progression to tackle it. I “think” what I am looking for is just an approach to get a solid understanding of the fundamentals of VB and C# so I able to determine where to go from there.

Any advice on a way to approach this would be GREATLY appreciated!

[appleoddity]

Look for a "Teach yourself xxx in 21 days" book by Sams Publishing. These things are awesome and will give you everything you need to know to get a strong grasp and be productive programming in any language.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url...c%23+in+21+days

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url...f+VB+in+21+days

Sams publishing is the way to go....

[AceOfBlades]

I used w3schools to learn some markup like html and css. (Their javascript tutorial isn't very good.) As far as C# went, I would recommend Visual C# Express (free) as it is a very comfortable IDE. For tutorials, there are some pretty bad ones out there. Many people tell me about TheNewBoston tutorials, and tell me how good they are. However, when I ask them about simple programming techniques, it didn't go too well. TheNewBoston really teaches GUI concepts like buttons, not physical, hard coding. I honestly found C# really easy to pick up since I had programmed in Java before, and they are very similar languages. http://www.csharp-station.com/Tutorial/CSharp/Lesson01 This link may help you. It explains the basics while actually teaching you something. (It also has support for .NET users which is good.)

This post has been edited by AceOfBlades: Mar 13 2013, 01:21 PM