Learning ASP.NET

Question

As a programmer from the Java, C#, and PHP realm, how do you go about transitioning to learning the intricate details of something as big (convoluted?) as ASP.NET? What are the most important and key things one must understand to be successful with ASP.NET?

I do not have a book as I like to do most of my research via online means but I intend on getting one someday once I learn the basics of ASP.NET. One of the first things I wanted to understand was how, why, and when each of the event driven methods were executed, such as onLoad. This helps get a basic understanding of how the entire system works. Unfortunately, after that, I really do not know what else to look up.

What are your suggestions for grasping the most important concepts of ASP.NET? What do the pros know that the new people don't?

Answer 1

http://www.asp.net has a lot of free resources and training is a large part of it!

Answer 2

Comprehensive book on ASP.Net..

Professional ASP.Net 3.5: http://www.amazon.com/Professional-ASP-NET-3-5-VB-Programmer/dp/0470187573/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1222139897&sr=8-1

Answer 3

For a broad overview, you might have a look at the approach of how some common design patterns are implemented in ASP.NET.

Try these to get started reading:

• Design Patterns for ASP.NET Developers
• Enterprise Solution Patterns Using Microsoft .NET

Also, get a good book. This is a fine ASP book:

• Professional ASP.NET 3.5: in C# and VB

And lastly, have a look at some open source ASP.NET code. Download it and get it running, step through the different parts of the lifecycle of the application. This is very instructive.

Answer 4

I would suggest starting here before the book:

ASP.NET Life Cycle

One of best articles/starting points for lifecycle.

Answer 5

Learn the basics from http://www.asp.net/learn/ and download a starter kit project from http://www.asp.net/community/projects/ and look into the source code.

Answer 6

I'd recommend checking out ASP.NET MVC - I think you will find it is pretty much PHP programming with C# instead of PHP behind you.

Answer 7

As previously suggested, the ASP.NET community website is a great resource for obtaining a grasp of the ASP.NET framework. The Learn section is very polished; expecially the videos. The videos are good use of your time, as they don't miss a beat of the development process you're interested in learning (it was from this site that I learn't ASP.NET AJAX, it is very cool ;) ).

I strongly suggest you take a look at the ASP.NET 2.0 Beginners video series, they are an invaluable asset and make me wish I learnt ASP.NET from them).

Answer 8

To understand ASP.Net development, you need to think in terms of putting pieces together to form a page, and then setting the properties of those pieces in order to make them function/appear as you want them to.

This might sound hokey, but the most important thing to do in ASP.Net is to LET GO. You're not going to control the output/behavior the same way you do in top-to-bottom stuff like PHP, classic ASP, etc. where you're specifying the exact content every step of the way.

The main idea behind ASP.Net is that it should be like putting together a normal executable Windows forms application. In theory, you should rarely have to go behind the scenes to modify how a control behaves and looks, and the Properties dialog should be your best friend. Of course, that's just theory.

ASP.Net will obscure everything from you. You will feel like you're flying blind when you first start. But if you let the framework do its thing, you'll find that you can bang out some pretty impressive sites with very little effort.

The ability to let go is especially useful when you start playing with ASP.Net AJAX. It is absolutely unlike any other form of AJAX out there, and did not make a lick of sense to me when I first tried it.