Learning Programming
-
Indeed, there needs to be a solid understanding of the fundamentals first, including some GUI stuff (that keeps interest piqued). I took me years to learn programming and the rest of that stuff. It seems a bit ambitious to teach it all at once.
Thanks for your input. I think you're all missing something here. I didn't say that this would all be taught at one time. This all would be a learn-as-you-go kind of thing. No schooling is ever going to teach you what your own studying and experimenting will. This outline was simplu a guide to ensure that the important topics are covered in the right order. There is no timeline, and indeed, this would all take years to master.
Everything makes sense in someone's mind
-
Not sure if this is appropriate here. If not, feel free to move it. Since I spent considerable time teaching C# full time, I have been asked to help with mentoring here at work. We have someone at work with no programming experience who wants to get into C# programming. One objective would be to have the student actually build a working app tailored to what we do here at the office. Since there's not an established program or course, what would be the recommended path he should take? My suggstion would be: 1) Intro To Visual Studio - Show the basics of VS. Keep it simple. Just the major parts. Overview of Solutons and Projects. Explain the various project types. This is a one session lession. 2) Introduction to the .Net Framework. 3) C# Programming I. Basics of programming. Maybe something like this: http://www.csharp-station.com/Tutorial.aspx[^]. This would provice the basic building blocks of C# programming. 3) Intro to SQL. Databases, tables misc DB objects. Stored procs. Transact SQL. 4) C# Programming II. - ADO.Net - Linq To SQL - Interfaces - Threading - Reflection - Interop - Intro WPF - Intro WCF - Intro Silverlight - Intro ASP.Net 5) Courses specific to WPF, WCF, Silverlight, or ASP.Net I'm open to suggestion. Thanks
Everything makes sense in someone's mind
-
Thanks for your input. I think you're all missing something here. I didn't say that this would all be taught at one time. This all would be a learn-as-you-go kind of thing. No schooling is ever going to teach you what your own studying and experimenting will. This outline was simplu a guide to ensure that the important topics are covered in the right order. There is no timeline, and indeed, this would all take years to master.
Everything makes sense in someone's mind
Kevin Marois wrote:
This is a one session lession
I think that's what threw me off. Strange you would mention a single-day (assuming session means uninterrupted time period) activity and then other activities which may take years.
-
Ah, Boulder, Colorado - One of my favorite places in the world. You're really lucky if that's where you live... Really miss the Flatirons and the clear Colorado air...
1f y0u c4n r34d 7h15 y0u r3411y n33d 70 g37 14!d Gotta run; I've got people to do and things to see... Don't tell my folks I'm a computer programmer - They think I'm a piano player in a cat house... Da mihi sis crustum Etruscum cum omnibus in eo!
-
Ah, Boulder, Colorado - One of my favorite places in the world. You're really lucky if that's where you live... Really miss the Flatirons and the clear Colorado air...
1f y0u c4n r34d 7h15 y0u r3411y n33d 70 g37 14!d Gotta run; I've got people to do and things to see... Don't tell my folks I'm a computer programmer - They think I'm a piano player in a cat house... Da mihi sis crustum Etruscum cum omnibus in eo!
Totally agree, Its an awesome place to live/visit. I live in Thornton.
-
Kevin Marois wrote:
This is a one session lession
I think that's what threw me off. Strange you would mention a single-day (assuming session means uninterrupted time period) activity and then other activities which may take years.
No, I meant that you could do a brief overview of VS2010 and the .Net framework in one sitting. As I said in my post, I taught for a college for a while, and this was one of those topics that we breezed right through, because you're going to get immeresed in them by nature of learning and working in them. At this point, it's more of a starting point.
Everything makes sense in someone's mind
-
Totally agree, Its an awesome place to live/visit. I live in Thornton.
Right next door. I'm envious. I lived for a short while in Boulder, and if I should ever go to live anywhere in the States again, that would definitely be where I would want to be.
1f y0u c4n r34d 7h15 y0u r3411y n33d 70 g37 14!d Gotta run; I've got people to do and things to see... Don't tell my folks I'm a computer programmer - They think I'm a piano player in a cat house... Da mihi sis crustum Etruscum cum omnibus in eo!
-
Not sure if this is appropriate here. If not, feel free to move it. Since I spent considerable time teaching C# full time, I have been asked to help with mentoring here at work. We have someone at work with no programming experience who wants to get into C# programming. One objective would be to have the student actually build a working app tailored to what we do here at the office. Since there's not an established program or course, what would be the recommended path he should take? My suggstion would be: 1) Intro To Visual Studio - Show the basics of VS. Keep it simple. Just the major parts. Overview of Solutons and Projects. Explain the various project types. This is a one session lession. 2) Introduction to the .Net Framework. 3) C# Programming I. Basics of programming. Maybe something like this: http://www.csharp-station.com/Tutorial.aspx[^]. This would provice the basic building blocks of C# programming. 3) Intro to SQL. Databases, tables misc DB objects. Stored procs. Transact SQL. 4) C# Programming II. - ADO.Net - Linq To SQL - Interfaces - Threading - Reflection - Interop - Intro WPF - Intro WCF - Intro Silverlight - Intro ASP.Net 5) Courses specific to WPF, WCF, Silverlight, or ASP.Net I'm open to suggestion. Thanks
Everything makes sense in someone's mind
Don't forget: No matter what you decide todo, they will definitely need books to study and consult as handbooks for their work/assignments...
1f y0u c4n r34d 7h15 y0u r3411y n33d 70 g37 14!d Gotta run; I've got people to do and things to see... Don't tell my folks I'm a computer programmer - They think I'm a piano player in a cat house... Da mihi sis crustum Etruscum cum omnibus in eo!
-
I think it's a huge mistake to teach people SQL and ADO.NET before they have a good experience and understanding of C#, including winforms or WPF, whichever they will use. You don't see many SQL programs that are not GUI based.
Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista. Read my blog to find out how I've worked around bugs in Microsoft tools and frameworks.
Christian Graus wrote:
You don't see many SQL programs that are not GUI based.
I see very few that are. But that's just me. I would definitely want to be sure that the student doesn't put data access in the UI layer.
-
Not sure if this is appropriate here. If not, feel free to move it. Since I spent considerable time teaching C# full time, I have been asked to help with mentoring here at work. We have someone at work with no programming experience who wants to get into C# programming. One objective would be to have the student actually build a working app tailored to what we do here at the office. Since there's not an established program or course, what would be the recommended path he should take? My suggstion would be: 1) Intro To Visual Studio - Show the basics of VS. Keep it simple. Just the major parts. Overview of Solutons and Projects. Explain the various project types. This is a one session lession. 2) Introduction to the .Net Framework. 3) C# Programming I. Basics of programming. Maybe something like this: http://www.csharp-station.com/Tutorial.aspx[^]. This would provice the basic building blocks of C# programming. 3) Intro to SQL. Databases, tables misc DB objects. Stored procs. Transact SQL. 4) C# Programming II. - ADO.Net - Linq To SQL - Interfaces - Threading - Reflection - Interop - Intro WPF - Intro WCF - Intro Silverlight - Intro ASP.Net 5) Courses specific to WPF, WCF, Silverlight, or ASP.Net I'm open to suggestion. Thanks
Everything makes sense in someone's mind
Kevin Marois wrote:
tailored to what we do here at the office
Do you really need another version of MineSweeper?
-
Kevin Marois wrote:
tailored to what we do here at the office
Do you really need another version of MineSweeper?
Don't be so judgmental - not everybody spends their entire time playing minesweeper! ....There's also Hearts and Freecell!
1f y0u c4n r34d 7h15 y0u r3411y n33d 70 g37 14!d Gotta run; I've got people to do and things to see... Don't tell my folks I'm a computer programmer - They think I'm a piano player in a cat house... Da mihi sis crustum Etruscum cum omnibus in eo!
-
Christian Graus wrote:
You don't see many SQL programs that are not GUI based.
I see very few that are. But that's just me. I would definitely want to be sure that the student doesn't put data access in the UI layer.
Well, you're dreaming. Seperation of concerns is a long way down the track from a basic course. Read the programming forums sometime.
Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista. Read my blog to find out how I've worked around bugs in Microsoft tools and frameworks.
-
Not sure if this is appropriate here. If not, feel free to move it. Since I spent considerable time teaching C# full time, I have been asked to help with mentoring here at work. We have someone at work with no programming experience who wants to get into C# programming. One objective would be to have the student actually build a working app tailored to what we do here at the office. Since there's not an established program or course, what would be the recommended path he should take? My suggstion would be: 1) Intro To Visual Studio - Show the basics of VS. Keep it simple. Just the major parts. Overview of Solutons and Projects. Explain the various project types. This is a one session lession. 2) Introduction to the .Net Framework. 3) C# Programming I. Basics of programming. Maybe something like this: http://www.csharp-station.com/Tutorial.aspx[^]. This would provice the basic building blocks of C# programming. 3) Intro to SQL. Databases, tables misc DB objects. Stored procs. Transact SQL. 4) C# Programming II. - ADO.Net - Linq To SQL - Interfaces - Threading - Reflection - Interop - Intro WPF - Intro WCF - Intro Silverlight - Intro ASP.Net 5) Courses specific to WPF, WCF, Silverlight, or ASP.Net I'm open to suggestion. Thanks
Everything makes sense in someone's mind
Step 3 to 4 is much too large! Your student needs to master a significant portion of the .Net Framework before tackling SQL Server in any form. I speak from experience! I would greatly fill out the students' knowledge of the controls available and best practices for using them before ever addressing databases. In fact, SQL Server should be a separate class, with C# Programming I as a prerequisite. The rest you can add as individual advanced classes, or lump them together into an advanced techniques overview course. You can't properly teach any of them except as a focused course on each technology, though they needn't be as long as the first two courses.
Will Rogers never met me.
-
Well, you're dreaming. Seperation of concerns is a long way down the track from a basic course. Read the programming forums sometime.
Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista. Read my blog to find out how I've worked around bugs in Microsoft tools and frameworks.
Hence the desire to move it up.
-
In my opinion you have a wide gorge between step 3 and 4. You might want to start out by deciding if those technologies are really necessary for the task in hand. I.e: Reflection, threading, WPF, WCF. Are they necessary? It's commendable that you want to teach the people all that, but if they're complete novices, what they really need is a grasp of basic C#, and then get some experience over time in that before they move on to these more advanced technologies. Throwing too much at people from the start can get them to give up... Just my opinion, no critscism. I think your project is very worth while...
1f y0u c4n r34d 7h15 y0u r3411y n33d 70 g37 14!d Gotta run; I've got people to do and things to see... Don't tell my folks I'm a computer programmer - They think I'm a piano player in a cat house... Da mihi sis crustum Etruscum cum omnibus in eo!
Johnny J. wrote:
Throwing too much at people from the start can get them to give up...
Or even worse, think that everything has to be build with reflection, threading and WCF. *shudder*
-
Not sure if this is appropriate here. If not, feel free to move it. Since I spent considerable time teaching C# full time, I have been asked to help with mentoring here at work. We have someone at work with no programming experience who wants to get into C# programming. One objective would be to have the student actually build a working app tailored to what we do here at the office. Since there's not an established program or course, what would be the recommended path he should take? My suggstion would be: 1) Intro To Visual Studio - Show the basics of VS. Keep it simple. Just the major parts. Overview of Solutons and Projects. Explain the various project types. This is a one session lession. 2) Introduction to the .Net Framework. 3) C# Programming I. Basics of programming. Maybe something like this: http://www.csharp-station.com/Tutorial.aspx[^]. This would provice the basic building blocks of C# programming. 3) Intro to SQL. Databases, tables misc DB objects. Stored procs. Transact SQL. 4) C# Programming II. - ADO.Net - Linq To SQL - Interfaces - Threading - Reflection - Interop - Intro WPF - Intro WCF - Intro Silverlight - Intro ASP.Net 5) Courses specific to WPF, WCF, Silverlight, or ASP.Net I'm open to suggestion. Thanks
Everything makes sense in someone's mind
One of the things missing in .net is something like Rails that puts intro projects and real world projects together. Without something simple that just kind of works like that, databases are very hard to grasp. It would be nice if .net had more of that kind of thing easily available. My intro to computing was print statements and then drawing lines and circles etc. in basic way back when, so my experience probably doesn't apply to this all that much. :-D
-
Not sure if this is appropriate here. If not, feel free to move it. Since I spent considerable time teaching C# full time, I have been asked to help with mentoring here at work. We have someone at work with no programming experience who wants to get into C# programming. One objective would be to have the student actually build a working app tailored to what we do here at the office. Since there's not an established program or course, what would be the recommended path he should take? My suggstion would be: 1) Intro To Visual Studio - Show the basics of VS. Keep it simple. Just the major parts. Overview of Solutons and Projects. Explain the various project types. This is a one session lession. 2) Introduction to the .Net Framework. 3) C# Programming I. Basics of programming. Maybe something like this: http://www.csharp-station.com/Tutorial.aspx[^]. This would provice the basic building blocks of C# programming. 3) Intro to SQL. Databases, tables misc DB objects. Stored procs. Transact SQL. 4) C# Programming II. - ADO.Net - Linq To SQL - Interfaces - Threading - Reflection - Interop - Intro WPF - Intro WCF - Intro Silverlight - Intro ASP.Net 5) Courses specific to WPF, WCF, Silverlight, or ASP.Net I'm open to suggestion. Thanks
Everything makes sense in someone's mind
Just how many years do you have to do this per student? If 6 months or less, I would limit it to the first 3. I would cover C# first before diving into .NET. C# as a language is not that hard to grasp. The .NET framework OTOH, that can take many years to master.
-
Not sure if this is appropriate here. If not, feel free to move it. Since I spent considerable time teaching C# full time, I have been asked to help with mentoring here at work. We have someone at work with no programming experience who wants to get into C# programming. One objective would be to have the student actually build a working app tailored to what we do here at the office. Since there's not an established program or course, what would be the recommended path he should take? My suggstion would be: 1) Intro To Visual Studio - Show the basics of VS. Keep it simple. Just the major parts. Overview of Solutons and Projects. Explain the various project types. This is a one session lession. 2) Introduction to the .Net Framework. 3) C# Programming I. Basics of programming. Maybe something like this: http://www.csharp-station.com/Tutorial.aspx[^]. This would provice the basic building blocks of C# programming. 3) Intro to SQL. Databases, tables misc DB objects. Stored procs. Transact SQL. 4) C# Programming II. - ADO.Net - Linq To SQL - Interfaces - Threading - Reflection - Interop - Intro WPF - Intro WCF - Intro Silverlight - Intro ASP.Net 5) Courses specific to WPF, WCF, Silverlight, or ASP.Net I'm open to suggestion. Thanks
Everything makes sense in someone's mind
You failed to throw in the kitchen sink :) Aside from "no programming experience", what does this person know? I've had to teach people who couldn't navigate Windows, so it would be nice to know a little more before I can competently critique. I've always gone for "This is a variable" followed by "These are control structures". But then again I'm an old fogey who doesn't quite trust drag and drop programming. I like to know what's going on under the hood and clue the student into the fact that's its not just magic. When things fail, you need to know why and how to fix them. I stress "get five lines of code to work before you try fifty." So early introduction to debugging and single stepping is essential. But again, I don't know the level of competency in your student. Good luck, Mr Phelps
Psychosis at 10 Film at 11
-
Not sure if this is appropriate here. If not, feel free to move it. Since I spent considerable time teaching C# full time, I have been asked to help with mentoring here at work. We have someone at work with no programming experience who wants to get into C# programming. One objective would be to have the student actually build a working app tailored to what we do here at the office. Since there's not an established program or course, what would be the recommended path he should take? My suggstion would be: 1) Intro To Visual Studio - Show the basics of VS. Keep it simple. Just the major parts. Overview of Solutons and Projects. Explain the various project types. This is a one session lession. 2) Introduction to the .Net Framework. 3) C# Programming I. Basics of programming. Maybe something like this: http://www.csharp-station.com/Tutorial.aspx[^]. This would provice the basic building blocks of C# programming. 3) Intro to SQL. Databases, tables misc DB objects. Stored procs. Transact SQL. 4) C# Programming II. - ADO.Net - Linq To SQL - Interfaces - Threading - Reflection - Interop - Intro WPF - Intro WCF - Intro Silverlight - Intro ASP.Net 5) Courses specific to WPF, WCF, Silverlight, or ASP.Net I'm open to suggestion. Thanks
Everything makes sense in someone's mind
-
Not sure if this is appropriate here. If not, feel free to move it. Since I spent considerable time teaching C# full time, I have been asked to help with mentoring here at work. We have someone at work with no programming experience who wants to get into C# programming. One objective would be to have the student actually build a working app tailored to what we do here at the office. Since there's not an established program or course, what would be the recommended path he should take? My suggstion would be: 1) Intro To Visual Studio - Show the basics of VS. Keep it simple. Just the major parts. Overview of Solutons and Projects. Explain the various project types. This is a one session lession. 2) Introduction to the .Net Framework. 3) C# Programming I. Basics of programming. Maybe something like this: http://www.csharp-station.com/Tutorial.aspx[^]. This would provice the basic building blocks of C# programming. 3) Intro to SQL. Databases, tables misc DB objects. Stored procs. Transact SQL. 4) C# Programming II. - ADO.Net - Linq To SQL - Interfaces - Threading - Reflection - Interop - Intro WPF - Intro WCF - Intro Silverlight - Intro ASP.Net 5) Courses specific to WPF, WCF, Silverlight, or ASP.Net I'm open to suggestion. Thanks
Everything makes sense in someone's mind
I have spent 20+ years teaching programming. Exactly how you attack this depends on your use of technologies. First of all, make sure that whatever the student learns can be quickly and immediately useful in some way and therefore fun. This is absolutely essential to retaining the material and driving curiosity. Second, do you mostly do web applications or Windows forms applications or simply database work? Which gives the student more of a chance to actually use it for something useful to them? For web apps, go straight to simple HTML pages. Visual Studio is optional at this point. The student can make his own web pages and learn how to style them. This will be enormously useful in the future, when trying to understand and get around ASPX limitations or developing MVC apps. Once the student knows simple HTML, he/she can start learning programming with a bit at a time of Javascript on the side. For databases, I would recommend (shudder) starting with Microsoft Access, or some other platform that is available to the student, as a learning tool. Access also gives the student the ability to make some simple forms. Not only will this give the student a platform to immediately make something useful, but introduce concepts that are needed for everything else, even though the student will have to unlearn a few things afterward. If you don't use Access, but the student has access to databases that are useful, a reporting tool, such as Microsoft SQL Reporting Services, or whatever your company uses, would be a good place to start. For Windows Forms apps, you will probably need to combine that with a simple introduction to either file or database manipulation, in order to make sure that something useful to the student can be quickly constructed. Unless you have already started with databases, I would recommend file manipulation first, as being simpler to introduce. Once you have done the above, or if you do not do Windows Forms apps, you can get into developing C# web applications, using as simple code as you can get away with while still having the objective of doing something useful.