General Question Regarding ASP.NET and Programming

bs3ac · December 20th, 2010, 07:02 PM

Hi Imar,

May I start by saying what a great book and that it has taught me a lot!

I am currently on chapter 17 and am nearing the end. So far I haven't had any problems (thankfully) but have a general question in regards to ASP.NET and programming in a commerical enviornment.

I come from a Java background (least that was what I was taught at university). Having now migrated over the C# and ASP.NET I am wanting to ask you opinion in how to become familiar with web tasks and online programming to create solutions.

What I mean by this is that currently I feel I have a good understanding now on how ASP.NET can be used to make an intergrated website with useful features such as masterpages and themes etc.

My dilema however is understanding or creating a scenario where other codes (methods and classes etc) will be used. For example on the 'intellisense' in Visual Studios many different methods appear yet I haven't the faintest idea how to become familiar with them or gain knowledge in how to properly use them. For example say I have an idea about adding a function to a website (say as an example: I want to start creating a online trolley service for an online store) where would I begin? Where would I know what classes and method to start looking into? This is probably my biggest dilema, thinking of an idea but lacking to know how to create the solution.

I know I can read up on documentation but even this is somtimes difficult to understand due to the technical complexity of the situation. For example when we had to work around the SmtpClient problem in the book, it would have been near impossible to figure out to follow those actions to find a solution without your guidance.

What happens in the future when we come across somthing similar or have no clue where to start?

Also could you give me some idea about how ASP.NET is used in a commercial enviornment? I am thinking about making ASP.NET my career path but have no clue to how these technologies are used in a real world setting. What projects or companies use ASP.NET and how complex and difficult are these solutions? At the moment I feel I have a good foundation but also feel I lack a bit of confidence because employers will expect so much more than what I now know..!?

Once again thank you for your time and for a great book. I shall be creating another site and passing on the URL to you once complete to see what you think of it!

Regards

Bs3ac

Imar · December 21st, 2010, 04:39 PM

Quote:

May I start by saying what a great book and that it has taught me a lot!

Thank you. That's great to hear.

A lot of broad questions, which makes it hard to give a definite answer. I'll just give it a shot, and then you can post more detailed follow up questions.

I see three main topics in your question:

1. Where to go if you know what to do
As I mentioned in the book. Google or Bing is your friend. Want to learn the technical details of the CreateUserWizard control class? Type

CreateUserWizard class MSDN

and the first hit will likely be the API documentation on the MSDN site. Same goes for other stuff like properties, methods and so on.

2. Where to go if you don't know what to do.
Again, Google is your friend. For example:

send mail ASP.NET ssl

gives you a lot of articles / information on sending mail with ASP.NET and using SSL. Just an example, but the concepts apply to many other areas of .NET.

Of course books are useful too. If you want to dig deeper into ASP.NET, consider getting a copy of Professional ASP.NET 4 from Wrox. Or, if you want to dig deeper into programming, Professional C# 2010 or Professional VV.NET 2010 are worth checking out.

3. ASP.NET in commercial environments
With regard to technical complexity: I don't think ASP.NET is used for "lesser" sites than, say, PHP. I've built some very complex sites with ASP.NET including on-line ticket booking systems, ecommerce environments, and a lot more. So, I guess it comes down to demand. If you want to know if you can get a job in ASP.NET, look at the on-line job sites in your area and see if ASP.NET is in demand.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Imar

Old Pedant · December 21st, 2010, 05:06 PM

May I chime in and second the suggestion that MSDN is usually your best source for documentation?

MicroSlop seems to have a penchant for reorganizing MSDN every couple of year, so all your bookmarks are then toast, but thankfully it's not too hard to find them again...*AFTER* you figure out how the docs are organized. Let's face it, there is so much material there it could take you a lifetime to thoroughly learn it all. So what's important is to get a feel for the overall layout, so that you can begin to make educated guesses as to what query will work best.

A good starting bookmark is here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/w0x726c2.aspx
(But, again, watch out for it moving on you!)

Anyway, once you are in the library section of MSDN, if you use the search feature there it works pretty well. For example:
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Sea...eateUserWizard

It's rare that an answer can't be found somewhere in MSDN, but when it's not...well, that's what forums are for. <grin/>

Imar · December 21st, 2010, 05:18 PM

Quote:

seems to have a penchant for reorganizing MSDN every couple of year

They seem to have come up with a structure some time ago that *should* be future proof.

But that's why I typically use Bing or Google for this; I don't care about URLs on the MSDN site, as long as the search engines can find them and take me there asap... ;-)

Imar

Old Pedant · December 21st, 2010, 05:46 PM

Ehhh...it's just that once you found some page that was not at all obvious and bookmarked it...kablooey! The bookmark is no good. And I *REALLY* dislike the new organization of the SQL Server docs. Ugh. Fortunately, the docs for SQL Server 2000 are still there in the old style, so I use them when possible.

Imar · December 21st, 2010, 06:02 PM

Bookmarks are soooo 2007 ;-)

Imar