Best resource for learning Visual Studio 2005?

[presidentender]

Title says it all: I'm a decent (yeah, right) developer, but need to learn VS2005, specifically .NET and C#. Where's the most productive place to start?

 

[Crusty]

The first step would be to get Visual C# Express from Microsoft, it's totally free. After that, since you say you're familiar with programming but don't mention what languages or environments it's kind of hard to give some pointers.

My experience with C# has been really pleasant, but I came from a C/C++ and Java background though.

 

[postmortemIA]

using MSDN integration with VS2005 should be sufficient, along with reading articles of interest from codeproject.com

 

[Markbnj]

Yeah, really everything is there at your fingertips. The IDE will generate a skeleton app for you in C# at several levels of complexity, from a simple console app with just a main() entry point, to a DLL, a COM object, a web service, a database app, etc. Looking through these and following some examples on codeproject or elsewhere will teach you the fundamentals of how .NET programs are structured, and what language features they have. Then just experiment. You can look up any function in any class library right from the IDE, so the whole reference environment is immediately available. If you aren't good at self-starting then you might want to consider a 3-day class. Companies like LearningTree offer them, and you can probably get into one for less than a grand.

 

[nordloewelabs]

if you already have some programming skills, you can try videos.



- go to MSDN and click on "Microsoft Visual C#" or "Visual Studio 2005". note: IE6 required.
http://www.microsoft.com/events/series/default.mspx

- or you can buy video tutorials from companies like:
http://www.appdev.com/visualstudio2005.asp
http://www.learnvisualstudio.n...ion_for_beginners.aspx
http://apex.vtc.com/cnet.php

- the companies below also have tutorials, but they are older:
http://www.cbtnuggets.com/webapp/product?id=218
http://www.keystonelearning.co...sharp_net_programming/

 

[clamum]

When I was hired on to my current job (Visual Studio .NET development) I had not written a line of VB.NET or C#. I came from a Java background and just picked it up on the job and it was easy. So just watch some videos but I don't think you'll have much a problem picking .NET up, it's a great development framework.

 

[JasonCoder]

Why start with 2005/2.0? Jump into 2008/3.5 That way you don't have to unlearn things like anonymous methods, etc. and can get going with lambdas right away. LINQ has significantly changed the way XML, collections, etc. are parsed. It's worth a look.