Newbie with tools and no clue how to start.

[followmetofenway]

Hi all,

First time poster here. I have a really good friend that's been doing
VB and Java dev for many years, and he recently sent me SQL Server
2005, Visual Studio 2005, and the Visual Studio Team Suite. I'm
writing to see if I can get some general pointers about getting
started with these tools. I'd really like to dive right in and put
myself on a schedule where I work 3 or 4 hours a day on developing
skills in these areas, particularly with VB. My experience is in
networking rather than programming, but I do have at least moderate
SQL skills (in an Oracle environment, so I'm totally new to SQL
Server, too).
I've also studied a bit of PL/SQL and, back in the day, I had a COBOL
class!
That's about it, though.


What should I do to make the most of these programs I was lucky
enough
to get my hands on? Can anyone recommend a strategy in terms of what
to install, what books would be the most helpful, and what tasks
would
be good to assign myself starting out?


Thanks so much!


R.G.

P.S. I originally posted this message in another VB group, and it
immediately caused a discussion about the dangers of pirating MS
software. To avoid another such tangent here, I will state, upfront,
that I have purchased original copies of this software from my friend.

 

[Lloyd Sheen]

On the MS site there are lots of tutorial videos. Depending on whether you
want to do Windows Form or ASP (web dev) there are different videos. I
would suggest looking at those since they give a good grounding on how both
the Dot.Net framework and the tools work.

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vbasic/default.aspx

The above link is a good starting point.

Lloyd Sheen

 

[jeff]

you could download the lite version of these programs for your purposes ...
plus, I do not think that license can be sold by 3'rd party companies for
these team products. Why not do a bit of research on the ms site and find
the appropriate 'free' versions of these tools.

as for you question...

what do you want to do with these programs? until you know that, I would
strongly recommend not touching and not installing them.

Do you want to develop database driven applications?
Do you want to develop winforms applications?
Do you want to develop webform applications?
Writing a crack program to pirate software ;-)


Do you want to learn VB as a language or do you want to learn programming as
a profession?

If the former, jump right in...and ask away. If the later, I would strongly
recommend reading a few general programming books in order to better
understand the fundamentals of programming

 

[rowe_newsgroups]

Hi all,

First time poster here. I have a really good friend that's been doing
VB and Java dev for many years, and he recently sent me SQL Server
2005, Visual Studio 2005, and the Visual Studio Team Suite. I'm
writing to see if I can get some general pointers about getting
started with these tools. I'd really like to dive right in and put
myself on a schedule where I work 3 or 4 hours a day on developing
skills in these areas, particularly with VB. My experience is in
networking rather than programming, but I do have at least moderate
SQL skills (in an Oracle environment, so I'm totally new to SQL
Server, too).
I've also studied a bit of PL/SQL and, back in the day, I had a COBOL
class!
That's about it, though.

What should I do to make the most of these programs I was lucky
enough
to get my hands on? Can anyone recommend a strategy in terms of what
to install, what books would be the most helpful, and what tasks
would
be good to assign myself starting out?

Thanks so much!

R.G.

P.S. I originally posted this message in another VB group, and it
immediately caused a discussion about the dangers of pirating MS
software. To avoid another such tangent here, I will state, upfront,
that I have purchased original copies of this software from my friend.

Personally, I have always been a friend to free stuff, so I would
recommend going to your local library's website and reserving some of
the books they have available. Then if it is a must have you can go to
an actual bookstore and purchase it - that way you don't have to fear
dropping 50-60 dollars on a book that is useless (been there, done
that ). Unfortunately, I can't recommend any "beginner" books as I
started out with Visual Basic 6 and then moved to VB.Net.

One thing you might try is to think up some sort of task you would
like to accomplish, and then search www.codeproject.com to find an
article on how to accomplish that task. Most code project articles
have the source code available for download, so you can step through
the code one line at a time and, with the help of the article, figure
out how to accomplish that task. For example, suppose you want to
enable/disable your wireless internet connection. You could do a
search on codeproject and turn up the following article -
http://www.codeproject.com/useritems/toggleNetworkConn.asp (how
shameless). Then all you have to do is copy the code into Visual
Studio or download the sample project and start walking through it. If
you have any questions can usually be answered by searching this
groups archive at http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.dotnet.languages.vb/topics?lnk=sg&hl=en
or if you don't find the answer there feel free to post and we'll try
to help out!

Thanks,

Seth Rowe

 

[Smokey Grindel]

team suite? sheesh... wish someone would just send me that expensive piece
of software... we looked at that at work and cringed then went looking for
cheaper alternatives while using SQL Server and VS2005 as our main
software...

 

[Chris]

Just so you know I'm a beginner myself and still on my journey to becoming a
respectable .NET developer.

My Advice:

Go to Microsoft's Beginner developer website. They break things down into
Tiers/ levels of difficulty.

Start Here at Tier 1. If it seems too basic then just jump to Tier 2:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/beginner/windows

Go through the Absolute Beginners Series (12 videos with source code and a
workbook) here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/beginner/windows/tier2/ it starts
at Tier 2 and finishes up at Tier 3 where you build your own RSS Reader
application.

After Tier 3 I suggest you check out http://www.learnvisualstudio.net/ and
possibly sign up for a membership. When I signed up it was a steal of a deal
at $99 for a lifetime membership. Currently the lifetime membership fee is
$199, but they also have a yearly membership for $69. Over the past 2 years
they have added many videos. Here is a list of the topics the videos cover:
http://www.learnvisualstudio.net/AllVideos.aspx. There are currently over
500 videos.

Bob Tabor, the owner of learnvisualstudio.net is the person that made all of
the free Absolute Beginner's Series tutorial videos. He instruction is
extremely clear and understandable.

You might also want to check out my .NET links page at
http://web.njit.edu/~cja5/DotNetLinks.htm. It contains links to popular
podcast, screencast, books, blogs, communities, magazines, and tools--all
about .NET. There are also some links to Computer Science video lectures so
you can learn about deeper and broader programming concepts.

Hope this helps,

Chris

 

[followmetofenway]

Thank you all very much for the helpful suggestions. I really
appreciate your taking the time to reply!