The Old Joel on Software Forum: Part 3 (of 5)

Moving to .NET

Cheers all,

I'm a Java/Perl/PHP programmer moving to the .NET family of languages, and was wondering whether you all know which sites/books are worth learning from. The book 'Effective Java' stands out to me as the sort of quality "skip hello-world and get down to business" references that I'm looking for. A focus on both VB and C# is also ideal.

.Newbie
Saturday, October 25, 2003

For web resources, you can't go wrong with the Microsoft sites:

msdn.microsoft.com
gotdotnet.com
codeproject.com

Unfortunately, .Net publishers usually publish separate VB and C# books. (Often with the same content repackaged as a VB.Net book and a C# book.) If you become familiar with both languages, though, it's easy to translate an example in one language into code for the other.

One decent VB book is Gary Cornell and Jonathan Morrison, "Programming VB.Net: A Guide for Experieneced Programmers." (The books from this publisher, Apress, generally have a pretty high quality.) If you're familiar with Java and OO design, it should be an easy read.

Robert Jacobson
Saturday, October 25, 2003

O'Reilly's Programming ASP.NET contains both c# and VB.NET examples

Matthew Lock
Saturday, October 25, 2003

I'll second the recommendation for the APress book by Cornell and Morrison, as well as the sentiment about the general high quality of APress publications.

Ian Olsen
Saturday, October 25, 2003

http://www.LearnVisualStudio.net

Sunday, October 26, 2003

Solid recommendations for pretty much any book published by Apress or Addison Wesley.

Brad Wilson (dotnetguy.techieswithcats.com)
Sunday, October 26, 2003

Yeah, what Brad said.

Full Name
Sunday, October 26, 2003

Here's an answer you didn't expect--don't buy any books.

I've been working in .NET for almost two years. I get everything I need off the web and MSDN online. It's all out there.

sdl
Tuesday, October 28, 2003