How to learn Visual Studio 1

[tektips2006]

I would like to learn Visual Studio. What is the best wway to go about it? Where do I start

I am an Energy Engineer. I did some asp web programming to create dynamics energy reports, etc. Now I realized that I like programming. So I would like to learn Visual Studio (I guess both web and windows applications development). I learn best by examples. I guess I will need to download the free trial of Visual Studio. I went to the microsoft site, and they have some thing called VPC which would allow me to run VS in a Virtual PC. They have multiple links to dowload various stuff. And it seems that the download/installtion is huge. I guess I am somewhat confused..

Please make recommendations on where to start..What is the best way to learn?.. What do I need to download, and where do I get tutorials? Thanks

 

[RiverGuy]

Instead of downloading the trial version, I would suggest trying out the Express Editions first. They are basically a scaled back version of Visual Studio which doesn't expire like a trial version. Here is the link:

http://www.microsoft.com/express/product/

The reason why I suggest this is because Microsoft has a site for tutorials (articles and videos) for beginning developers using their Express Editions. See here

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/beginner/default.aspx.

I haven't really gone over these tutorials so I can't tell you how good they are, but they are definitely worth a look. With a quick glance, they remind me more of beginning programming courses in college rather than a technical manual--which is good for a beginner. They seem to provide a context which a non-IT professional can relate to.

Then--after you are competent in the tutorials, you can check out Visual Studio proper--either the Trial at first, or even Standard Edition--which is much cheaper than Professional Edition.