What are some helpful tools, excercises, etc. to teach an apprentice C#?

Question

I'm bringing on an apprentice to help with my firm, and I'm about to start teaching him C#. I'm trying to find any tools, excercises, book, etc. that can aid in helping him learn C#. I'm willing to invest to a certain degree, so anything that is commercial may also be viable.

This is to apprentice someone who is in the college years, but not currently in the programming field, or in that school to any degree, at least not for now. He is keenly interested in helping me with my firm because he wants work and he's helped me with enough that I see some potential in him to be a good programmer.

Answer 1

Here are some good books:

• CLR via C#, Second Edition (Pro Developer)
• C# in Depth: What you need to master C# 2 and 3
• More Effective C#: 50 Specific Ways to Improve Your C#

Here are some challenges:

• Project Euler
• TopCoder

Here are some tools:

• .NET Reflector
• Visual C# 2008 Express Edition
• EQATEC Profiler

Answer 2

I might start with something like Code Complete to get familiar with some best practices.

Answer 3

I couldn't live without resharper, which is a plugin for visual studio.

http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/

Besides from that, programming is not only about learning a language,

• there are a bunch of design patterns that he should learn about (Head First Design Patterns is a great book on the subject)
• learning the in and outs of the .net framework
• knowing how to google
• ...

Answer 4

I would use

LearnVisualStudio.net a great visual resource that also teachs the IDE.

Then maybe some college course on Algorithms/Database (if you are going to need them), then some of the C# MS courses which can be done online now.

I have seen the need to, in my teams, go for understanding that software development isnt just - programming in this language, if they are new the area then I would use http://www.alice.org/

Answer 5

I thought these Virtual Labs might be helpful.

Answer 6

I also know of Coding4Fun but I've never used it. I wonder if anyone has found this resource useful.