Best way to Increase Programming Skills

[Ragnarox]

Hi all,

I searched through the last half year and saw nothing in regards to this so I hope it has not already been covered recently.

I have been programming in VB.Net for almost a year and know that there is a lot that I do not know. I want to take full advantage of the power of the .Net environment but do not know where to start to get the additional knowledge that I need. I am starting to feel that my abilities are stagnating due to my inability to find something that covers more advanced topics.

I have tried looking through the bookstores around town but all the books that they have are just like the ones I already own, aimed more at begining topics and not the more advanced ones. The training class outlines that I have read also seem to be aimed at begining topics and not the more advanced capabilities of the .Net environment.

The following is a short list of what I want to be able to do :

1. Create custom controls
2. Increased security in Windows database apps
3. Better explainations of Polymorphism, Inheritance
4. Use .Net functions to increase the speed and reusability of global procedures.

If anyone out there could suggest a book or training site that offers advanced topics or one that goes into more depth about the power of the .Net environment would be great.

Thanks in advance for your information,

Brian

 

[Terpsfan]

One book that may be up your alley is Professional VB.NET by WROX Press. It is designed to go beyond the foundational topics into more advanced material.

Doing a search on Amazon may help provide a list of books to do further reading on. The beginning books should have already given a good coverage of the topics you just described. However, there just aren't a lot of good .NET books out there.

Personally I have been enjoying the Murach books. They have several on .NET (Web Programming with ASP.NET/VB.NET, Database Programming with VB.NET, etc) that I have learned a great deal from. I find the Murach books get you to an intermediate level that you could use to create most applications. I find these books give me a better foundation than the others. You might want to check out their books at

http://www.murach.com.

The best thing is to skim through the book BEFORE you buy it. I have made that mistake before.

 

[RiverGuy]

MSDN.Microsoft.com has many articles up your ally for developers. Look at archives and do searches there.

 

[CajunCenturion]

You already subscribe to the VB.NET forum, so you can take the questions that people are asking, and find the answers to them, writing code to solve their problems. This is a win/win situation as you may be able to develop the solution for someone else's situation, while at the same, increasing your skills in the VB.NET arena.

Good Luck
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[SQLSister]

There are some advanced .NEt books out there, but to find them you will need to search onthe net as they usually don;t sell enough for them to make it into the bookstore. Our .NEt prgrammer had a lot of advanced topic books (I'd get you the titles but he just took a nother job and took his books with him. I think he found most of them on Amazon.


Questions about posting. See faq183-874

 

[DeanConsulting]

Wanna upgrade your skills with .Net??? We I would suggest starting to explore the wide open area of the .Net Compact Framework and Pocket PC programming.

That should keep you learning for quite sometime because alot of the stuff that can be done in .Net cannot be done in .NetCF.

It is quite a challenge but a rewarding one too.

Hope this helps ya out.


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Noble D. Bell

http://www.noblesoftware.com

 

[chiph]

Best way to increase your skills is to write a lot of code. Start with small, limited scope projects, and work your way up in terms of complexity (IOW, don't bit off more than you can chew).

Chip H.


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[keyser456]

I'm by no stretch of the imagination an expert on C# (yet anyway), but the way I got out of that rut was tackling a large project; something I knew would require me to learn several new skills rather than just the same ones over and over. I ended up scrapping my entire project and restarting at least 4 or 5 times as I learned very quickly how to write code more efficiently, and just as importantly, how not to write code. As each section of the project came up, I was forced to learn new methods and strategies. Without even trying I ended up learning how to create custom controls, and how to get them to interact properly both in the designer and during runtime. While learning GDI+ I took a short break and started learning graphics programming including DirectX (which was fun, but too much math for me!). Getting back to my project; inheritance and event handling/creation have become second nature. Since this project is data-based, I've picked up a great deal of knowledge on SQL as well.

I made the decision two months ago to walk out of my $45k / year job (not great, but it paid the bills) to start my own company. After finishing this project (maybe in the next 50 years) I plan to sell the product and then... take over the world!!! Muhahaha!!! Err... umm... Sorry, got a little carried away.

I guess I'm just saying, why spend your time making small meaningless programs when you could be making something useful AND learning at the same time? I suppose that's why I never really enjoyed the programming classes I took in college.

My .02