Learning C#

learn-csharp.md

If you are serious to learn C# then consider

• Pluralsight which is a paid for site with hundreds of course on C#. Start off using their AI assessment which will direct you on the proper path. Many of the courses have their own assessments too. Pluralsight makes it easy to learn from highly rated authors to accessing courses from any device e.g. laptop, phone or tablet.
• Use Microsoft Learn
• Take time to read Microsoft documentation e.g. read up on general structure of a C# Program, types operators and expressions statements various classes Object-Oriented programming to name a few topics
• During your learning try and keep things simple using either console or unit test projects, in other words separate backend learning from front end user interface learning.
• At some point in time when you feel comfortable, scope out a simple project, write out task before coding then write the code rather than thinking and coding at the same time. Thinking and coding at a novice level is simply out is a disaster waiting to happen.
• When seeking out information on the web and a solution is found do not simply copy and paste, examine the code, try and figure out what it's doing first before using said code.
• Learn how to use GitHub in Visual Studio to backup and version code. Suppose you wrote code and broke it, with proper versioning in a GitHub repository you can revert changes and un-break code.
• Use .NET Framework Core 6, 7 or .NET Core Framework 8 rather than .NET Framework classic as there are more benefits to using .NET Core
• Use Visual Studio 2019 or Visual Studio 2022 for coding.
• If learning to work with data, start off with SQL-Server Express and install SSMS (SQL-Server Management Studio) along with learning to work with Entity Framework Core
• Create a folder for stashing code blocks you have learned from the above. Use Visual Studio Code to organize and find code. See my TechNet article

11/2023 start

There is no single roadmap that fits everyone. Everyone learns differently so the following may or may not suit you. My advice is to have the proper items.

A subscription to Pluralsight where once a member takes an AI assessment which will guide you on which courses to take. Purchase Jetbrains ReSharper which is an essential extension for Visual Studio, I do not code without this extension, check it out. If working with SQL-Server, purchase Redgates SQL-Prompt which like ReSharper will assist writing SQL in Visual Studio and SQL-Server Management Studio.

Now, my recommendation for becoming an expert first off means dedicating time (this is what I do) each day to learning something new and to understand what you learned rather than just copy and pasting code. Write articles on what you learned as teaching truly enhances learning. Lets say you have been working with data with a data provider, now learn the same thing using Dapper and EF Core.

11/2023 end

Know full well that moving slow is better than moving fast when learning any language and that nobody knows it all.

thanks for this! All of these are very helpful. I subscribed and starred this for you.

Thank you very much, Karen, for the advice. This helps me a lot!