(Microsoft technology) How do you upgrade your knowledge (keep up to date in the new released versions?)

Question

Nowadays i'm struggling with something i didn't experience maybe 5 years ago, and i was wondering if you have experienced the same.

The problem: i don't have a good way to update my knowledge as new (Microsoft) products are released.

In the old days, say 5 years ago, when MS released a new product, it was maybe 2 or 3 years after the latest one. In that time they appearantly had the time to write MSDN books, and i bought one, read it, and i was up to date with most of the new things in the new release. It didn't cover everything 100%, but i knew what's new, and i could google for more info.

But in these days, with MS releasing more and more out of band and more frequently, the MSDN books aren't released for every new technology, and i'm a little lost for a resource where i can find the info i used to find in the MSDN books.

For example, now i'm building websites with ASP.NET MVC2, and MVC3 is on it's way. Lately there are all kind of posts about MVC3, like there were on MVC2, but the downside imo in all these blogposts is that i not only get the info very fragmented (different posts, different blogs, different writing styles) but also very different in detail. Some posts go very detailed, but some of them, even the one which get twittered by the Scott, lack a certain amount of problem description and or technical depth.

I guess what i actualy miss is that the info (about the NEW topics, not searching for a whole MSDN site, just want to be updated on the NEW stuff) is presented somewhere as a whole, and if it's possible, as a coherent story too.

What i have now is a collection of links to all kind of blogposts and video's etc.

And also, with buying the MSDN book you knew what you could expect, and it did have some quality, and i prefer buying a 60$ book that has that quality over looking at 30 video's of 45 minutes of which half of them has a disappointing quality, which you can only discover by watching it.

So, long story, are there more programmers experiencing this issue?

Michel

PS i'm not complaining about MS releasing, but i do have a problem with find good resources to keep up to date

Answer 1

Its very hard to follow every new releases of any product. Its better you can follow the official blogs of the technologies.

for ASP.Net => scott gu's blog

for c# => c-sharp team blog