The same old question
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Greetings! I am sure many of you will read this and sigh, because this is the same question that I have seen a dozen times on here. I am going to approach this in a hopefully different way, so my simple question may be a bit longer than usual, but the core of it is "what do I do from here"? I have been on and off reading/lab programming for a while now (boardering on a year). It wasn't until a few months ago that I became a lot more serious about my intent to participate. I've started tackling the OOP understanding barrier, studying and testing ideas pretty much every night of the week. I have a non-tech degree (management) and I am a little older than the average programmer new to the field (30). I feel like my knowledge is progressing well, but I am still not quite ready yet. My language of choice is C# based on the recommendation of a good friend who is a senior programmer and a named company (I know the community is tightly tied together, so I would rather not say where). Needless to say, my best freind has become my mentor. We work on my code and dress it up so that I understand how my code can be better prepared. I feel like I will still need a year to learn up to a comprable level at the casual study rate. However, now that I am seeing a sort of path, I have found that I am programming more and more, and willingly stepping outside of the boundaries of what I know to see if I can just build random items. Here is what I know at the moment: Basic class structures, loops, arrays, and I am working on base classes in C#. This gives me the ability (tied with the VS developer) to create very simple but functional programs. I will begin to work on SQL and ADO shortly (probably another month). However, I want to really start stepping up. I think that I want to go into applications development based on the following facts: web development has a home in PHP and Javascript as well, and I am not really ready for that sort of versatility just yet. I realized that I need to keep focused on the .Net group of languages for a while. In order, I intend to expand my C# development skills much further and this is my primary goal, following with SQL(T-SQL), ADO, and then ASP in their respective .Net form. So basically I am a semi-functional beginner. But here is where I was hoping that some people could give me ideas, part of the challenge that I have discovered is that as a beginning programmer I am now stuck in a middle place. I am a little more advanced than the basic stuff like loops, so the beginn
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Greetings! I am sure many of you will read this and sigh, because this is the same question that I have seen a dozen times on here. I am going to approach this in a hopefully different way, so my simple question may be a bit longer than usual, but the core of it is "what do I do from here"? I have been on and off reading/lab programming for a while now (boardering on a year). It wasn't until a few months ago that I became a lot more serious about my intent to participate. I've started tackling the OOP understanding barrier, studying and testing ideas pretty much every night of the week. I have a non-tech degree (management) and I am a little older than the average programmer new to the field (30). I feel like my knowledge is progressing well, but I am still not quite ready yet. My language of choice is C# based on the recommendation of a good friend who is a senior programmer and a named company (I know the community is tightly tied together, so I would rather not say where). Needless to say, my best freind has become my mentor. We work on my code and dress it up so that I understand how my code can be better prepared. I feel like I will still need a year to learn up to a comprable level at the casual study rate. However, now that I am seeing a sort of path, I have found that I am programming more and more, and willingly stepping outside of the boundaries of what I know to see if I can just build random items. Here is what I know at the moment: Basic class structures, loops, arrays, and I am working on base classes in C#. This gives me the ability (tied with the VS developer) to create very simple but functional programs. I will begin to work on SQL and ADO shortly (probably another month). However, I want to really start stepping up. I think that I want to go into applications development based on the following facts: web development has a home in PHP and Javascript as well, and I am not really ready for that sort of versatility just yet. I realized that I need to keep focused on the .Net group of languages for a while. In order, I intend to expand my C# development skills much further and this is my primary goal, following with SQL(T-SQL), ADO, and then ASP in their respective .Net form. So basically I am a semi-functional beginner. But here is where I was hoping that some people could give me ideas, part of the challenge that I have discovered is that as a beginning programmer I am now stuck in a middle place. I am a little more advanced than the basic stuff like loops, so the beginn
How refreshing this post was. Coherent. Well thought out and to the point. More importantly, you laid out your skill levels well and indicated the areas where you want to progress. So how can you go about this? Well, probably the best way to do this is to go out and code. I know that this seems to be obvious, but it's surprising how few people actually think it through. Obviously, CP has so many good articles on coding that you should be downloading and playing with some of the samples. I'm going to make a really suggestion here - find a project that hasn't been touched in a while (preferably a .NET 1 article) and bring it up to date in .NET 2. Pick a project that is reasonably well written, but looks to have been left on the shelf for a year or so. What you get here is a base to start from, and you can bring your own programming personality to bear on it. If you have problems, then feel free to post questions on the forums and we will do our best to help out with this. Now - you need to learn about things like patterns. Pick up a couple of good tutorials on patterns and see if you can redo the work using patterns. I'd be surprised if you couldn't find at least a couple of patterns that you could use. If you need help on choosing a project, pick a couple that you think that you might want to take a look at and post the links. We'll take a look and say if we think that the skill level is too great. Good luck - and I hope we see more of you.
Deja View - the feeling that you've seen this post before.
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How refreshing this post was. Coherent. Well thought out and to the point. More importantly, you laid out your skill levels well and indicated the areas where you want to progress. So how can you go about this? Well, probably the best way to do this is to go out and code. I know that this seems to be obvious, but it's surprising how few people actually think it through. Obviously, CP has so many good articles on coding that you should be downloading and playing with some of the samples. I'm going to make a really suggestion here - find a project that hasn't been touched in a while (preferably a .NET 1 article) and bring it up to date in .NET 2. Pick a project that is reasonably well written, but looks to have been left on the shelf for a year or so. What you get here is a base to start from, and you can bring your own programming personality to bear on it. If you have problems, then feel free to post questions on the forums and we will do our best to help out with this. Now - you need to learn about things like patterns. Pick up a couple of good tutorials on patterns and see if you can redo the work using patterns. I'd be surprised if you couldn't find at least a couple of patterns that you could use. If you need help on choosing a project, pick a couple that you think that you might want to take a look at and post the links. We'll take a look and say if we think that the skill level is too great. Good luck - and I hope we see more of you.
Deja View - the feeling that you've seen this post before.
Will do! Thank you very much!
Beginning Programmer - Still learning as much as possible.
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Will do! Thank you very much!
Beginning Programmer - Still learning as much as possible.
I would like to report that it is going much better than it was at the time I wrote this a few months ago. But I am finding that there is still a very strong opportunity to bit off more than I can chew, as I have done with my last project (an app for work that I am doing on my own time). I don't care what anyone says, I can see the value of classes that walk you in a structured process, and you get the opportunity to learn MVCs, and controller classes, and frickin design concepts for interfaces and databases. Right now I feel like my right hand is furiously working to make my click events happen in this program and my left hand is punching me in the face for thinking that this was going to be a quick transition (if not an easy one). Much respect to those of you out there. Learning this so far has taught me that it's not just syntax. It's designing the look, and creating the framework, and syntax, and after all that testing, and retesting, and staring at the screen going "...hmmm, I wonder why it's doing that?" Oh well, at least I am getting better about asking more specific questions and being more clear as to what I need to make my programs work. Not that that is worth more than a poop in the hand right now. :sigh:
Beginning Programmer - Still learning as much as possible.