what to study next?

Question

I have been looking into c# for a while. and covered all the basics.

What should i look into next?

Linq to Objects/SQL ? Entity Framework ? WCF?

What are your recommendations and resources (books?) ?

i work on middle tier and systems development, neither web applications or desktop, i just use plain good old c# with nosql db

Thanks.

Answer 1

It depends on what you want to do. For example:

Web applications might need WCF and Linq.

Desktop applications might need Linq and the Entity Framework.

So let the projects you want/have to do guide you.

Answer 2

You could start with LINQ to Objects by looking at 101 LINQ samples. Knowledge of LINQ will be useful no matter what projects you work on in the future. Even projects without any database access can still benefit - there are a lot of times when querying an in-memory collection with LINQ is easier and cleaner than the traditional imperative approach.

And once you understand how LINQ works it is a smaller step to move to LINQ to SQL, Entity Framework or some other persistence framework.

Answer 3

One thing that may be interesting to study, and at the same time involve yourself with the development community around it, is the state of dynamic languages in .NET. Things like IronRuby have been set back lately and they could definitely use more community support. If you're just looking for something to learn/do, it might be pretty interesting.

Answer 4

How about studying applications instead of language features? The language features are just tools; great to know, but in and of themselves not very useful. The problems that they help us solve are the important bit. What kind of programming do you like? What do you want to accomplish?

For example, I am a systems guy, but until recently did not have much experience in motion control. I liked the idea, so I bought a few simple stepper motors, a motion control card, and started hacking away until I had a little robot.

In the course of that project I picked up skills that I previously did not have. This is the kind of thing I would recommend focusing on, not specific language features. Learning the language will come naturally as you solve new and interesting problems.