Michael Richard Murphy

Last week I finished one of Citigroup’s Online Learning Courses and got certified in “Upgrading Web Development Skills from ASP to Microsoft® ASP.NET”

They made the mistake of giving me access to their entire online learning catalog (which is like giving a kid free reign in a candy shop) so this week I’m starting an introduction to C# course.

I also received a trial “ASP.NET Using Visual C# 2005 ” training CD-ROM from www.appdev.com so I need to try that out.

It feels good to finally be learning .NET/C# after putting it off for so long. Or not necessarily putting it off but finally making it a priority and being able to cross it off my To-Do list. Hopefully you’ll see me posting some .NET-related Brainbench certifications here in the next few months before my subscription there expires in November.

Ajax freaks working in the .Net environment should run right out and download Atlas, a new development framework from Microsoft. I said run.

Atlas integrates client-side script libraries with the server-based services of ASP.NET in order to create some really rich, interactive UIs. I watched a demo in which Microsoftie Scott Guthrie created a simple to-do list with tons of functionality in less than 20 minutes. The mini-application let users sort by task status, insert new tasks, and modify existing tasks all without page refreshes.

Scott also used some new, cool ASP.NET 2.0 methods that make handy things like pagination and alternating row colors super easy. There’s also another new method that makes it easy to display update statuses. As interfaces use page refreshes less and less to fetch data, letting the user know what’s going on becomes more important. Scott demonstrated this new method makes that as simple as drag and drop from the tool palette. Cool.

I bit the bullet and bought Visual Studio 2005 Professional. It came today. Now that ’ve literally made the investment in it, hopefully I’ll find the time to sit down and get some .NET experience.

Although it’s been put on the back burner many times over the last few months years, I’ve committed myself to learning .Net. After talking with quite a few people, I decided that C# would be my best bet.

So I bought myself a book and compiled a list of online resources. The next step would be the IDE. Visual Studio is anywhere between $500 and $2500 depending on the version. Ouch.

I don’t remember how but luckily I stumbled upon the Express area of Microsoft’s web site. As the name suggests, they offer Express (read free) versions of quite a few of Microsoft’s development products such as Visual Studio and SQL Server to name a few. While I’m not sure about SQL Server, the drawback of Visual Studio Express is that only one programming language is supported per version. I’m sure it’s short on other features as well but that seems to be the main difference. There isn’t anything preventing someone from downloading an Express edition for each of the programming languages they develop in but I imagine they’d quickly tire of switching back and forth and pony up for the commercial version which supports all of them under one IDE.

An added bonus (in addition to the free part) is that registering the product grants the developer access to another area of Microsoft’s site where you can download two dozen or so free icons from IconBuffet, about 250 royalty-free images from Corbis, and development related ebooks. Not a bad deal.

I imagine that as I get more into developing in C#, I’ll spend the big bucks for the commercial product. Until then, I intend to post here about my development progress and what I think about Visual C# Express.

I freely admit that I’ve been lazy. I’ve had years to learn .Net, I’ve even had a book for years, but never quite got around to it. .Net is in, VBScript is has been out. Citigroup’s best practices recommend .Net and C# and after another discussion last week, I decided that’s my best course of action at this time.

I think I might actually be looking forward to it. I enjoy learning new things, and in a sick twisted way, the frustration of grappling with a problem and the satisfaction of coming up with a solution.