Moving from legacy(COBOL) to Enterprise .net

Question

I have worked as a developer/analyst for 10 years primarily in OpenVMS COBOL and SAS. I have been given the oppurtunity to "dabble" in asp.net as well as other things such as Informatica. But everything has to fit in within the scope of my current duties. I would say that actual development work takes up about 70% of my time while the rest is dealing with internal customers and other business related issues.

I tinker with .net at home but that is a far cry from the environment at work which consists of a n-tier framework in.net 1.1 to WCF applications in 3.0.

My problem is making the transition from "legacy" to Enterprise .net application developemnt as well as modern development practices. Im not a dummy but the learning curve seems straight up with a limited amount of time that I have to work on it. Any advice would be appreciated.

Answer 1

You've passed the first hurdle which is trying to improve. However the only real way to get to enterprise level coding is to code some enterprise level applications.

Focus on database and web services. The learning curve here is not too steep. Write a web service which reads from a database then create a web app that calls your web service. That's a good simple application to write and you can really build on that using LINQ or plugging into legacy applications if you want.

From there I'd check out some open source projects to see if anything grabs you where you can apply your skills. WCF really is quite tough to get your head around so it might be worth staying with core .NET 2.0 stuff then make the jump when you're ready.

Answer 2

The first big hurdle you'll face is to adapting to object-oriented programming. Find a good book on it (ask here, I guess?) and read through it until you understand it completely.

After that, keep practicing. Look up some code katas on this site, build a family website or blog, and do whatever else you can to keep working at it.

Finally, I agree with @robboblob -- database and webservices, and open-source projects.

Answer 3

Thanks...I appreciate the suggestions. I will keep plugging away. :)

Answer 4

Well, this is sure to get voted down, but what about Access and Excel? VBA is object oriented, and working with them will get you used to the MS-style IDEs and GUIs. At least, I come from a SAS background, did that and it did help me become more comfortable with .net and Java. They connect up to SAS (or they can with the right products) and then you can pass data back and forth in familiar ways.

I'm thinking of features like forms, controls, objects that all exist within VBA but not SAS. And I know I had a lot of trouble just with using the IDE efficiently at first, I'm used to working at the command line.

I would say, don't stay too long with VBA, but it might be helpful as an intro to the full .Net object oriented experience.