(Part 2) Best products from r/dotnet

You sound exactly like me 10 months ago. I also took the plunge, moving from PHP/MySQL to C#/.NET. Keep in mind that I am not a .NET veteran, but I have gone from knowing nothing to developing all of my sites in it in just under 10 months.

• Object Oriented is a big part of it. If you know this from Java, great. If not, start there. I recommend Head First Object-Oriented Analysis & Design
  
  
• MVC - if you have used a PHP MVC framework you are going to have a much easier time of it. I did not, so I had to learn MVC, OOP, C#, and .NET all at once.
  
  
• Wrox ASP.NET MVC3 has been invaluable. My copy is covered in sticky notes and highlighter after reading, and I refer to it heavily.
  
  
• I just bought Pro ASP.NET MVC 3 Framework, and it also seems good, however, I like the Wrox book better.
  
  
• Pluralsight.com - A little pricey at $30 / mo, but they have a plethora of extremely high quality videos. If you have enough free time to make use of the monthly subscription, I do recommend it.
  
  
• When you come to databases, I highly recommend going the Entity Framework route. Most other things seem like garbage by comparison in my limited experience.

I think you partially need to decide what area you want to focus on. Generally if you're going to delve into more advanced materials they should also be geared towards the in depth aspects of a specific technology, methodology, or problem.

I'll add a +1 for the design patterns suggestion. The Head First book is an option, but here is the book that I've got that is quite good. There's always the gang of 4 book, and although it is the "design patterns bible" its also a bit dry.

I'm also going to suggest Mark Seemann's Dependency Injection book. Although it is about DI and inversion of control containers, he also really focuses on SOLID design that makes DI more effective.

If you don't know what SOLID design principles are, then I'd brush up on that.

Turning specifically to C#, there's Jon Skeet's C# in Depth and also Jeremy Richter's CLR via C#. Both are great books are focused on roughly the same thing, understanding some of the inner workings of of the C# language, but they each approach it in a slightly different way. Although the CLR book came out before, C# in Depth seems to be a bit more highly regarded. I'd take a look at the TOC of each and see which one interests you more.

Outside of that, I'd say make sure that you really understand concepts like generics, reflection, and maybe even dive into understanding some MSIL.

I had this same question about a year ago (I have been coding asp.net since 2003) and have read various books and video courses. I feel that learning architecture is not the same as learning to code. Converting a string to an int there is a few ways to do it but essentially there is a right way to do it. Software design and Architecture is more of an art form taking into account many factors and so to learning it is somewhat of a journey, combining new narrative to your conscious reality.




For me video does not lend itself well to this sort of learning process. Reading the way you do when studying philosophy works much better. So the process of reading a chapter of a book, taking the time to think about it, hypothesizing how you would incorporate the architecture into your current project and questioning if you really need it before proceeding to the next chapter works really well.





Architetecting Applications for the Enterprice is great, they thoroughly go through the thought process involved in choosing an architecture, be it CQRS, DDD, Event Sourcing or Transaction script. It does feel a little dated and I would like to see a 3rd edition but still very good basis.




There is some good books at .NET Application Architecture page. The Microservices & Docker one is good, specifically the chapter on Tackling Business Complexity in a Microservice with DDD and CQRS Patterns. I like how they provide links for futher readying.

Given your understanding of the problem with Js/React, I'd dive right in to C#/.NetCore. You're aware of potential pitfalls and confusion of language vs framework, but there's probably not a lot of avoiding it anyway. C# is fairly straight forward for the most part. .NetCore is fairly dominant now so starting with it makes sense.

You could start with this book if you wanted:

https://www.amazon.com/Programming-Language-Covering-Microsoft-Development/dp/0321741765

Its starting to show some age, but it is where I started. It does do a good job covering stuff like value vs reference types, nulls, basic operators, special types like string, structured exception handling, etc. that could be valuable, but you can probably infer most of it if you have learned any sort of OO before. There's some stuff in there that's simply out of date, and glaringly no coverage of async/await. There are a bunch of newer language features such as string interpolation that may be better or more accepted ways to handle things these days.

edit: this is also popular, but still only up to date on C# 5.0:
https://www.amazon.com/C-Depth-3rd-Jon-Skeet/dp/161729134X

There are all sorts of resources as you have found out. I see you say 'GUI based database app' - are you talking about a desktop application or a web application? I would recommend a web interface as it is cross-platform and doesn't require install/local database/etc. Right now the newest thing (and easiest IMO) is Asp.NET MVC: http://www.asp.net/mvc I recommend this book: http://www.amazon.com/Pro-ASP-NET-MVC-Framework-Second/dp/1430228865/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278940788&sr=1-3 (I did not read this edition, but the 1.0 edition).

You don't necessarily have to use LINQ, you can use older ADO, stored procedures, or any combination of the above, but in my opinion, LINQ-to-SQL is the easiest to work with. This is the first explanation I read of it back in the day, and it was easy to understand and got me underway: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2008/01/07/dynamic-linq-part-1-using-the-linq-dynamic-query-library.aspx
There are also some good video tutorials here under the 'data' section:http://www.asp.net/web-forms
I also really liked this book when learning: http://www.amazon.com/LINQ-Action-Fabrice-Marguerie/dp/1933988169/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278941155&sr=1-1

As a shameless plug, I also have a video course on learning how to do this at http://c-sharpener.com - but that is Asp.Net WebForms and not MVC (just another way of doing it).

If you have any more specific questions, please ask! I hope I made some sort of coherent sense?!

For a quick reference, I like this list of 101 LINQ samples. For something more extensive, Pro LINQ is a little old but still pretty good. Also, C# in Depth is a great all-around C# book and has a few chapters devoted to LINQ.

I haven't read any real thorough comparisons between LINQ methods and their corresponding SQL keywords, but, most of the important methods are named identically to their SQL counterparts (with a few exceptions like Take() instead of TOP). I tend to stick with the standard method syntax and lambda expressions over query syntax most of the time, although the query syntax is sometimes more readable for groupings.

I use LINQ to Objects all the time, and LINQ to XML has come in handy on more than one occasion. If your intention is to use LINQ as a replacement for ADO.NET (i.e. accessing a relational database), then you'll probably want to look into Entity Framework and LINQ to Entities (the LINQ to SQL approach has been deprecated for a few years). Whether or not you should actually do this is debatable, but that's a whole other conversation.

You sound like you are already at entry level dev level already. If you published the repos here we could provide additional insight.

The biggest thing you seem to have is the right attitude. You know there’s more to learn, that you don’t know all the right answers and you approach things of okay it is working how can I refactor the code to make it better. These are huge skills that we look for.

I second the recommendation of reading books. SOLID is a really important principle for hiring today and I think think is a good easy to understand introduction to it: https://www.amazon.com/Adaptive-Code-principles-Developer-Practices/dp/1509302581

Unfortunately a lot of places have that college degree requirement, so that will be an inhibitor but please don’t let that discourage you. Some of the best devs I have ever worked with didn’t have a college degree and honestly the best companies I have worked for were always willing to hire without a college degree.

What area of the world are you in?

Hello,
Based on the comments until now i understand that you trying to learn asp.net core 2.
When i started my journey on asp.net i started with Professional ASP.NET MVC 5 great book.

For Asp.net Core i started with: Pro ASP.NET Core MVC its a nice book for asp.net core 1.

for asp.net core 2 i would suggest the Pro ASP.NET Core MVC 2 but with a slight hesitation because asp.net core 2 at the time of the publishing was still new.

Also this MVA course could help you.

If you need more info and tutorials - courses. Comment bellow and i will try to help you find the best courses for you.


Thanks.

Isn't that book a bit deep for a newbie?

On topic: I'd go for something like Visual C# 2010 step-by-step, it's an easy read and covers everything you need to know.

WPF 4 Unleashed is also a must have, amazing book. Once you get to the WPF section of step-by-step transition to this one. The step-by-step book admits its WPF section is minimal and encourages you to look elsewhere.

Once you finish those then I'd pick up a more in depth one like Professional C# 4.0 and .NET 4 if you like.

EDIT: Just to add, I didn't use the eBook editions of WPF Unleashed or Professional C# 4.0 (hardcopy) so can't vouch for the quality of those, I have read all 3 though and own Step-By-Step as an ebook.

I own all of Robert C. Martin's books, except for UML for Java, as well as Martin Fowler's Refactoring (the white one), PEAA, DSL and Analysis Patterns. I also have Refactoring to Patterns, Code Complete and Design Patterns (aka go4) and a few others.

I would suggest Refactoring to Patterns is the one you are looking for, but that expects you have a working knowledge of what the patterns are already (likely with your experience though you may not know them by name). I don't think that is strictly necessary but it will help you understand why you might want do do things the way being suggested in the book. The examples are in Java, but they apply to C# just as much. His site is here: https://industriallogic.com/xp/refactoring/ and he has the code up behind an online course / paywall (I have not looked into this).

In a greenfield environment, tdding up an application from a blank project Uncle Bob or Fowler's pattern books are probably better, but from the perspective of an existing codebase I think Kerievsky's Refactoring to Patterns and Fowler's Refactoring are best.

Hahahaha. Indeed I am. :)

I still have my original Pro ASP.NET MVC 1 book on my bookshelf: https://www.amazon.com/Pro-ASP-NET-Framework-Steven-Sanderson/dp/1430210079

What was remarkable about this book was it covered:

• MVC
  
• Dependency Injection (IoC containers)
  
• Unit Testing and TDD
  
• n-tier Architecture
  
• ORMs
  
  All in 1 book in a current and relevant topic. It's one of the best books in software engineering that I've ever read. And the irony is that it wasn't trying to be a software engineering book, but the author did a really great job of covering all the bases well.

As a personal choice I'd recommend Essential C# 6.0. I purchased this a month or so ago and since then I've found it to be an excellent resource. The examples are clearly explained and references are also made to previous iterations of C# where applicable. I've certainly found it to be a great learning tool.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Essential-6-0-Addison-Wesley-Microsoft-Technology/dp/0134141040

For learning, I use plural-sight courses and/or use specific books.

This seems like a good course Outside-In Test-Driven Development. You can sing up for 10 days trial and see if you can learn something from it.

This is also good book Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests Paperback– Oct 12 2009

by Steve Freeman (Author), Nat Pryce (Author). But it's bit outdated with the project and technology. The key concepts is there which is get a walking skeleton done and than use TDD to add features and refactor along as you go.

Also don't get bogged down with details in the beginning; otherwise it will be never end journey. Before you try anything you should ask your self how is going to help me be a better developer.

I am not sure what your experience level is so can't say much.

​

While reading this book I've found the website from the authors of this book which has some tips on how to make a good resume, and they also offer a resume review service, but I personally haven't used that so far, so no comments on that one. I also find these tips from ex-googler and ex-microsofter pretty useful. But I'd also like to hear some experiences from anyone who used those resume writing services, my experience is getting close to 10 years and I'm starting finding it a bit troubled to highlight everything important in one-two pages.

If you are open to it, here are a few good reads to help you on your way. The legacy code book may pay dividends quicker given your situation.

Clean Code: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0132350882/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_ruhyybGGV0C34

Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code https://www.amazon.com/dp/0201485672/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_gwhyyb1VRNSKK

Working Effectively with Legacy Code https://www.amazon.com/dp/0131177052/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_0whyyb3Y604NJ

Continuous Delivery: Reliable Software Releases through Build, Test, and Deployment Automation (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Fowler)) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0321601912/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_JxhyybA08ZQF8

This book: https://www.amazon.com/Pro-ASP-NET-Core-MVC-2/dp/148423149X