Over the past year or two I had to assist quite a few people in getting started with .Net development.
This post is all about the resources, where to find them and what’s important to know in the Microsoft app dev world.
The 1st thing is to get a Microsoft account, it opens up a whole new world, you can get one by going to http://account.live.com/
Here are a list of websites to know about, that will assist you during your day to day development as well as some interesting reads:
- http://www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com/
- Official MS training website
- http://msdn.microsoft.com
- Lots of development resources for .Net
- http://www.hanselman.com/
- Awesome blog to follow, Scott is always on top of everything new at MS
- http://channel9.msdn.com/
- Lots of interesting videos to watch
- http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/
- Another good blog to follow
- http://azure.microsoft.com/blog/
- Official Microsoft Azure hosting and cloud blog
- http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/
- The Azure cloud website, there is also a lot of documentation
- http://www.nuget.org/
- NuGet package manager site, no use to reinvent the wheel, just add a package
- http://www.codeproject.com/
- Lots of tutorials and examples
- https://www.codeplex.com/
- Open source projects and code examples
- http://stackoverflow.com/
- MS support forum, just ask someone, they are all very friendly
- http://blogs.msdn.com/b/southafrica/
- Need to know what is happening in SA, just follow this blog
- http://www.asp.net/mvc
- Asp.Net MVC official website
- http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/
- Win 8 app dev website
- https://dev.windowsphone.com/en-us
- Win Phone app dev website
And then a few must read books that I found very helpful. Books are good for you, and the more you can learn, the better you will be. Always try to learn more.
- Pro C# 5.0 and the .NET 4.5 Framework
- Introducing Microsoft SQL Server 2014
- Developing ASP.NET MVC 4 Web Applications
- Pro ASP.NET MVC 5 Platform
- JavaScript Step by Step, 3rd Edition
- Programming in HTML5 with JavaScript and CSS3
- Programming Microsoft LINQ in .NET Framework 4
- Pro Team Foundation Service
- Pro NuGet 2nd Edition
- Pro HTML5 with Visual Studio 2012
- Pro Asynchronous Programming with .NET
Enjoy the learning!!!
