Learning C#, ASP.NET 3.5 - what order should I learn in / what to skip?

Question

There's a lot to C# & ASP.net. Where should I start? What should I not bother focusing on?

Should I learn Winforms then WPF? Ditto for webforms / Silverlight? Should I learn ASP.MVC or classic ASP.NET? If both, which first?

In the either/or cases - which will make more sense having known the other first?

What major .NET feature(s) should I learn upfront that will open the doors of understanding to what lies ahead?

I am deliberately not mentioning fundamentals like value / reference Types, Classes, object-oriented concepts, etc since they should come first, before specifics. Here, I am interested in specifics.

[edit - added detail of what my goals are] Good points raised - "what do I want to write"?

Basically, an intranet application that monitors a set of documents and implements a workflow as a change control process. The app will also audit the documents and report problems, self-correcting common errors. A lot of the parameters will need to be end-user definable and pluggable. The document format needs to be adaptable to different proprietary formats although they are fundamentally the same. The app will be very modular.

I'm leaning towards a web interface because the client specs & admin rights will vary - a browser is really the only thing I can count on.

As you can see, it's a bit of everything.

Answer 1

I would recommend learning whatever you are interested in. Pick a "pet project" and try to create it using one of the technologies you listed. If you enjoy making windows desktop style applications, then go with WPF or WinForms. If you enjoy the idea of making rich desktop style applications on the web, then go for Silverlight. There will be a ton of overlap.

But in terms of core .NET Development, if I were starting off fresh, I'd recommend learning ASP.NET MVC first, as it will give you a good basis for things like: Designing for Testability, coding without ViewState, SEO-friendly URLs, etc..

Answer 2

What do you want to write? If you want to write a Windows client-side app, look into WinForms and WPF (no real need to learn WinForms before WPF, other than the way that a lot of tutorials/books will probably compare WPF concepts with WinForms concepts). If you're looking at a web app, then ASP.NET or ASP.MVC - I don't know whether you really need the "normal" ASP.NET before MVC.

Silverlight is a bit of both, in a way - rich client probably talking to a server for interesting data etc.

Before learning any of these though, I suggest you learn the fundamentals which are one step up from the topics you mentioned - things like how text works in .NET (including encodings and regular expressions), I/O, perhaps threading. Oh, and LINQ :) There are a few books which are very good on this front:

• C# 3.0 in a Nutshell
• CLR via C#
• Accelerated C# 2008

Answer 3

It depends (awful response, I know, but let me explain)

Are you going to do any windows forms development? You mention C# and ASP.NET, so to me it sounds like you are doing Web-based programming. If so, skip Winforms and WPF for now.

Silverlight is worth checking out, but it is still fairly new so I'd make it a 2nd priority.

Now to the MVC or Web forms question. MVC gives you total control over the HTML, CSS, and Javascript that is emitted, but requires more work, whereas Web forms gives you ease of development but without 100% control over the markup that is emitted. You can do lots with Web forms and the introduction of MVC doesn't threaten the future of Web forms. MVC is very new so things are changing but eventually I see them both living happily side by side.

Regarding learning .NET in general, I've heard great things about a book called CLR via C# which will go over all the fundamentals and inner workings of .NET.

Answer 4

Definitely learn the fundamentals (like you already mentioned) like how the CLR handles types, garbage collections, security, "AppDomains", threading, etc.

For ASP.NET, learning the "page life cycle" and "control life cycle" are essential. Also, session state and data binding are probably good things to understand.

I wouldn't worry about WinForms, WPF, or Silverlight for now. They won't directly help with ASP.NET and are relatively easy to pickup after you've learned the CLR and .NET Framework fundamentals.

Answer 5

What is your primary objective - learning for fun or hireability? If you're a student and years out from worrying about a career in programming then I will strongly echo the idea of picking a project about something relatively simple that you're interested in and then just doing it.

Say you want to create an application that will track your video games collection. First you'll need a way to store the information - this will be a combination of c# and some persistence strategy like mySql or SQL Server or XML.

Then you'll need a way to present your collection and interact with it - adding, deleting and editing objects and persisting the changes. In this step, use every presentation technology that you're interested in - WPF, WinForms, Asp.net, asp.net with MVC, Silverlight - whatever you're interested in. As you learn to do one, you'll learn techniques you'll need to use in the next.

Don't pick just one - play with all the ones you have any interest with at all.

Now, if you're primarily interested in what skills will get you hired the quickest, I'd say look at your market, but it's probably going to be straight ASP.Net skills that will be the most in demand - or at least that's what it looks like from my perspective. In a couple of years it may well be ASP.Net MVC skills. In some markets though you'll have an easier chance of getting VB6 work. It all depends on where and when you're looking.

Answer 6

I had the same question when I moved from Classic ASP to .NET 2.0... .NET is huge: so where should I start?

What i did was put my hand dirty and started slow, take a project (in my case was a very important project - a finance web app that would cover and automatize all 4 persons work) and start to implement, every time I didn't know how to accomplish something or I had an idea in ASP but not in ASP.NET I would go to www.asp.net or 4GuysFromRolla website and search for examples, copy/paste, understand what I was doing and ... continue to the next wall.

Took me 6 month to have everything up and running but was worst it! now that passed almost 3 years I know I did the right choice but back then ... I was scared!

now... you refer .NET 3.5, it has a bunch of new things like extensions, linq, etc... I would go by the simple part and when the times comes, "maybe I can use LINQ here, let me search how to use it on this part"

hope you follow your own path and buy some reference book so you can read something new and have a reference whenever you need "ahhh, I read this somewhere in the book, let me search... where was it?"

I bought Professional ASP.NET from Wrox as a reference book, and even today I go there to see new things, even when I'm started to use .NET 3.5, the idea is there, there is only a new way to accomplishing it.

Answer 7

I highly recommend the following books, for learning about whats new in ASP.NET 3.5

• ASP.NET MVC 1.0 Website Programming
• Professional ASP.NET MVC 1.0
• ASP.NET 3.5 Website Programming

Answer 8

Sometimes videos might help. I learnt everything I needed to know to start off with from a set of video tutorials from Total Training which is here. Pricey if you buy the disks but there is a cheaper online only option.

Answer 9

Hi I am a guest user, i ve done a project for an MNC in .net 1.1 and after that i've moved to banking domain (functional) and gor brief product knowldge.now i wanted to return to .NET technology ...i wanted to do a course in .NET 3.5.So as a a beginner in 2nd round .. Can anyone help me which is best version for my level to learn .NET ( either 2.0 or shall i start directly 3.5 )

i am looking for a job in .NET too.

PLs suggest me at job point of u ..