C# Newcomer

[expo45]

Hello All,

Being predominantly a Perl developer on a Unix OS, I am new to C# and I am looking to get some suggestions on the most effective way to get up and running. I have been reading through some of the literature on the MS website and I would like to get some suggestions on good books, websites, etc that would reduce the learning curve as much as possible.

I am also interested in some open source projects that may be available using C# as well.

Expo

 

[JurkMonkey]

Hi Expo,

While reading is fun and all, I would recommend downloading some samples from thecodeproject.com

Try looking up MDI Forms, Custom Controls, and Custom Events. That should give you a good start of what C# has to offer.

If you need a free IDE, you can download sharpdevelop. It's free and it looks very similar to the MS IDE.

 

[damber]

MS IDE (Express version) is also free:
Free Express Edition of VS.NET 2005

As JurkMonkey mentions, getting your hands dirty with practical examples is usually the fastest road to learning something like this.

I would suggest starting with something simple that mainly works internally and interacts with the command line or a very simple windows form - that way you can learn the syntax and standard api's / classes without worrying about other stuff, just to 'see' what is happening with your internal code. Once you;ve got to grips with the syntax/structure (including the Object Oriented concepts) and the basic API's then start to externalise your program (e.g. interact with the filesystem, network communications, user interaction, windows forms, Web Forms etc).

Then simply scale everything up and work on more architectural concepts and areas like performance, resilience and security

A good start might be to take a relatively simple Perl Program you have written, and try to do the same thing in C# - that way the program 'logic' should be familiar, you'll have a direction and goal and can test the results in comparison with the existing solution.

Hope that helps.

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