As a .NET beginner, what should I learn and where can I find open source projects? [closed]

Question

I'm beginner programmer in the amazing world named ".Net".

I've a lot of questions

• well, what I should learn C# or Vb.net
• What's the best blogs which talk about .Net technology and Open source projects
• Where can I find good tutorials, free books and ideas of projects
• how can I progress in ".Net"
• please, share your knowledge , your OPML of your favorite blogs or web sites about ".Net "

I'm waiting your advices, opinions, etc.

Answer 1

As far as which language you should learn, well what are your experiences thus far? I prefer C# over VB.NET. Though, eventually, you should be able to program in VB.NET even if you say with C# as your primary language (the same is true vice versa for VB.NET). You might want to check the syntax of each language and see which you prefer just by first glance. You will probably find that whenever code examples are provided for .NET and both languages aren't present, typically the examples are in C#. This is not a big deal though. I find C# (and similar languages) to be less verbose but that is a preference. Here are some good resources. I highly recommend the LearnVisualStudio.NET videos; start with the beginner tutorials and advance to more advanced topics.

Some great resources include:

http://www.dotnetrocks.com (podcast) http://www.se-radio.net (general software engineering podcast) http://www.haacked.com (Phil Haack's blog) http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/ (Scott Guthrie's blog)

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/551315/which-c-net-blogs-do-you-read (previous question with a good list of blogs)

http://www.learnvisualstudio.net (good place to find video courses, cheap)

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/54423/best-net-podcasts (previous question) What good technology podcasts are out there? (more podcasts)

Open Source projects:

http://www.codeplex.com is great for Open Source .NET projects.

Also:

http://csharp-source.net/ (not bad, some projects are old and not maintained)

http://sourceforge.net/softwaremap/trove_list.php?form_cat=271 C# as SourceForge

Open Source C# Opportunities (previous question with good infor)

Answer 2

Also check http://www.codeproject.com/

Answer 3

I'd start with Fabulous Adventures In Coding, which is a great blog by one of the people who actually work on C#. Then i'd also take a look at CodeProject and MSDN. Finally, you can't forget Joel Spolsky's web site!

For Regexes, look no further than here. Cosmos is a neat project though a little heavy for beginners, and DevExpress has the best VS addin this side of the earth! Personally, i don't like ReSharper but plenty of other people do.

(marking it CW so anyone can contribute)

Answer 4

Excellent suggestions so far. Another site to always keep in mind for open source code is Google Code. Plus Google has excellent search features for finding just about anything in their code base.