How do I figure out what I need to know?

Question

I am a novice programmer who is trying to teach myself to code, specifically in C#. I've taken on a project from a friend of mine and I am not sure what I need to know to get the project done. I suppose the issue is I don't know what I need to know to even get the project started.

I do have many of the basics of object oriented programming, classes, methods and what-not, but when I sit down to code-I don't know where to begin looking to accomplish even basic tasks. I don't know syntax or what the language is capable of with the tools provided. I have read some books, but they mostly seem to be about the concepts and theories about OOP within C# with minimal syntax.

I guess the question is where do I look to learn the syntax-is there some sort of repository of classes and methods that I am missing with examples of how to use the tools it contains? I am stuck in a place of not knowing where to go/look next.

Thanks for any help

Answer 1

Getting started with Visual C#.

Answer 2

One of the things I usually recommend to Junior Developers on my projects who are looking for a better picture of how things work is to get familiar with your F10/F11 keys in Visual Studio by stepping through open source projects written in C#.

Pick something you find interesting from Codeplex or Sourceforge or Google code (there's a topic here about good code to read) and download the source code. Open it in Visual Studio and choose "Debug -> Step Into". From there, let the debugger be your guide through the code.

F11 lets you dig deeper, SHIFT+F11 steps you back a level.

It really can teach you a lot about how functioning code is structured because it leads you through the flow and provides a pretty good tour of functionality in the code.

It also works well with books and other materials because, when you see something you don't understand, you can go looking for a better explanation.

This is something I do myself quite often to familiarize myself with a given codebase, whether it's open source or a paying project with existing code.

Answer 3

I don't use C# myself but for just getting a handle on the syntax of a language as well as basic programming techniques you almost can't go wrong with the O'Reilly books. You might want to check out their Learning C# book.

Answer 4

As a general rule, split the project into multiple task. If you still don't know how to start with each task, then further split it into smaller subtask.

Until you can say, "Ah, I can code this task", do it and move on to the next task.