Sahil Malik, a prolific speaker, Microsoft MVP and author of “Professional ADO.NET 2.0” is holding a one-day ADO.NET boot camp in Charlotte next month. If you are in the area, I think this class will definitely give you your money’s worth. Sahil has a very unique way of teaching that is easy to follow and highly effective. If you are going to be in the area on July 21st, and want to master ADO.NET, I would encourage you to take a look at this great opportunity in the Charlotte, NC.
Free Training CDs from AppDev
AppDev is apparently giving away free training CDs. I have not personally seen the training, but free is not typically a trait in a product that I hate, so AppDev already “has me at hello” with this offer!
http://www.appdev.com/promo.asp?page=SN00009
Free Book: Microsoft VB.NET 2005 for Developers
Microsoft has a free book available for download for anyone who wants it. Download the whole book, or download it chapter-by-chapter (8 in all). Check it out at http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/learning/introtovb2005/
Debugging Resources
It is my opinion that the difference between good developers and outstanding ones are the way that they debug applications. As such, I wanted to point you to some great debugging resources to get you well on your way to standing with the outstanding developers.
First off, there is the issue of understanding Windows to begin with that get a lot of people in trouble. Many issues can be traced down to something that is “working as designed”. As such, I highly recommend the Microsoft Windows Internals book from MS Press. This book will give you a great understanding of how Windows works. Next, I would brush up on .NET debugging skills. To do so, I recommend a .NET 2003 book, but most of the debugging skills still apply to 2005, so don’t be dismayed by the title: Debugging Applications for Microsoft .NET and Windows. Once again, John Robbins from Wintellect writes one awesome book.
Well, books are great, but what about free resources? I have some of those too!
First, you can check out the windows debugging website at:
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devtools/debugging/default.mspx
Then there are a new series of webcasts that have just been released in the past week or so dealing with the very issue of debugging:
TechNet Webcast: Microsoft.com Operations Introduces Real World Debugging: Debugging CLR Internals
OK. So maybe I did not have a TON of debugging resources, but this is a great start for anyone who wants to make himself or herself into an outstanding SDE or SDET. So go work yourself into a “debugging guru”. By the time you are done, hopefully John Robbins’ new book on debugging will be out.
202 VB.NET Samples
I just wanted to bring some attention to a resource that I think is extremely valuable for VB developers (and really, any .NET developer using any other language for that matter). MSDN has a website with 101 Code Samples for VB.NET 2005. There is also another website for those of you that haven’t upgraded to 2005 yet: 101 Code Samples for VB.NET 2003. Both of these sites have very valuable sample code for doing things such as network programming, using regular expressions, executing transactions, handling/changing ACL’s on files, accessing data, performing bulk data transactions, executing asynchronous operations (one of my favorite topics), using ClickOnce, creating ASP.NET pages and more! It is a great resource for those of you that just want to get it done and don’t want to waste a lot of time reading specifications on each class in System.Net or System.Data. The samples are robust and provide some great starting points for anyone interested in the many topics available in these samples. Check them out and let me know what you think!
Pro .NET 1.1 Remoting, Reflection and Threading
I received 10 shiny copies of my new book that is now available at BarnesAndNoble.com (or amazon.com if you really must buy through them). Its a pretty interesting mix of technologies from .NET that helps bring a novice programmer up to date. While I’m much more of a C# programmer these days, based on my VB background this book was necessary. My reasoning can be found on the back cover of the book:
“Dear Reader,
Rapid Application Development has long been the purpose and strong point of a Visual Basic Developer. In the past VB versions, we had to solve more complex problems than the language designers ever intended. Of course, this fed the flames of those language elitists that said VB was an inferior language. With the introduction of .NET, many VB developers were overwhelmed with the task of learning programming in the object-oriented paradigm that was, perhaps, completely new to them; couple that with learning the .NET libraries, the CLR, and changes in the language we had been using for years, and many developers initially found it hard to shoulder the burden.
Coming from a VB background, I see firsthand how many developers barely have the time to grasp these concepts, let alone the additional intricacies of some of the more powerful features newly available to VB developers in the .NET world. Those powerful topics, as the book title suggests, are Remoting, Reflection and Threading. This book is compiled to help VB developers reinvigorate their learning by adding these powerful new skills to their tool belts. The topics in this book can help you take a standard application from satisfactory to out-standing. By adding background processing through threading, scalability with remoting, and extensibility with reflection, you can give your applications a uniquely professional touch. The details in this book will show you how to add these powerful features to your applications and will prepare you to compete head to head with other language developers.”
Anyway, I’m excited because this is my first hard cover book. Bill has already had his say on that topic. Donbt worry Bill, Ibm writing another book now in my spare time that will probably be written on tissue paper and covered with newspaper and finger-paint.
ASP.NET 2.0 Quickstarts Available
For those of you that don’t know, the ASP.NET 2.0 SDK quickstarts are available. Obviously, these are just an overview, but it helps to get yourself up and running fairly quickly with features new and old.
Check them out at http://quickstarts.asp.net/QuickStartv20
