Learning VB.NET

[SoundTheSurrender]

I have a decent grasp on VB.NET but I would like to learn more. What would be a suggestion on making something useful? I was either thinking about maybe making a Wiki, or some kind of shopping website or something. I'm kind of lost.


Any ideas?

 

[Sc4freak]

If that's the kind of thing you want to make, then VB.NET is the wrong language to use. It's not a web-oriented language.

 

[WannaFly]

Originally posted by: Sc4freak
If that's the kind of thing you want to make, then VB.NET is the wrong language to use. It's not a web-oriented language.

Not sure where you got your info from, or if you might be suggesting VB.NET isnt a "web" ONLY language like php.

ASP.NET can be written in VB.NET OR C# (along with some others, i think). VB.NET is a great, easy-to-use solution for some web projects, and there are alot out there that use it - though you wouldnt know. MOST do use C#, but for smaller/non enterprise projects, there nothing wrong with VB.NET

OP: What other languages do you know? I ask because one you know the basics, the language becomes irrelevant. A project will only teach you the syntax of the language and maybe howto design an application. Example, in a wiki, you are just going to be doing the same think over and over (write to database, read to database). Yes, it could get complicated, but generally your operations come down to the same few base operations.

My Advice: write small programs to do anything you want, grocery list, calculator, maybe a parser/rss reader, contact list, maybe some graphing (for drawing experience). Yes, one large working application is neat and great to build, to see it working in the end - but my opinion is that you'd benefit more from a bunch of smaller projects.

 

[SoundTheSurrender]

As far as I know, VB.NET and C# when compiled are turned into the same .NET language so it's 99% the same once compiled.

The languages I know as far as programming and other things is

C++ - I'm ok with this, I've forgotten passing pointers and things though.
Unix CSH/BASH
CSS
Assembler - Very little, had to drop the course because it's over my head.

That's about it. I really like VB.NET because the ease of use and things are clear just reading some code for the most part.

 

[Noobsa44]

So are you primarily creating web pages or are you also interested in Windows apps. As a Windows guy, I mostly think up windows programs, however some of these could apply to both. One thing you can do is look at some open source projects and contribute to them. For example, you could work on GAmp, a very cool little media player, if I do say so myself. You can find GAmp on sourceforge at: http://sourceforge.net/projects/gampmediaplayer *FULL DISCLOSURE: This is a plug for my own program *

If working on an already created project isn't your cup of tea, then I suggest you contribute to the community by creating your own open source project. Whatever you create shouldn't be a replica of any other project but should instead provide something interesting and new, or at least combined features between other programs you use. Using my own program as an example, I created my media player with three problems in mind:
1. Be like Winamp (Winamp to me is one of the better media players)
2. Provide a way of playing video while I'm doing other stuff (thus an always on top video that I can easily move around and resize). This was to solve problems like trying to watch something while coding .
3. Provide a "save where you closed the app" ability for audio books, which I tend to listen to frequently while coding.

In the development world, these would be represented as requirements (Yes, requirements add some more complexity, but you get the idea). By developing sudo-requirements you will at least have something of a goal which you can start developing towards.

If you can't come up with a project for yourself, look at the catagories such as sourceforge and code project. Look for something you know something about, and look for what is missing. For example, I really wish their was a open source UML->VB.net/VB.net->UML generator. I know a little about UML, but I'm no expert. So, if this task is too big/hard, then scale it down. Perhaps generate a sub step of this, like Code->XML structure, which later on could be used to create the UML.

I realize, most of this comes from a windows developer view point, but I believe the concepts can be applied to the web as well. Good luck with whatever you create... Hopefully a VB.net->UML generator