For on-line Q&A / community check out: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=starting and http://stackoverflow.com/search?q=starting+programming
There are lots of free materials on-line. There are some good lists of resources on stackoverflow. http://stackoverflow.com/search?q=learning+.net Attending presentations / meetings at your local .Net community group can be good. http://ozalt.net/ From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Simon Kuldin Sent: Wednesday, 12 January 2011 4:05 PM To: 'ozDotNet' Subject: RE: Skilling Up Any particular user groups that you would recommend? As much as I would like to talk to my current employer about it, I find it very unlikely that they would be flexible. Especially considering the small size of the company. From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Stephen Price Sent: Wednesday, 12 January 2011 4:01 PM To: ozDotNet Subject: Re: Skilling Up I agree with Mike on the point of talking to your current employer. I did this 6 years ago when I was in infrastructure, and I scored myself a whole month seconded to the dev team. They were busy in a testing phase so I basically sat there for a month teaching myself VB.Net (one of those learn VB.Net in 24 hours books. Its a lie it took me more than 24 hours). The upside was I got paid while doing it and if I got stuck with anything I could ask the developers there (which, interestingly they usually couldn't help me much with my questions as they were VB6 developers and hadn't learned .Net yet) Also user groups are essential, its essentially free training, mixed in with socialising/networking with like minded people. I also highly recommend doing a presentation at a user group, there's nothing more motivating than having to present on something. Good luck! On Wed, Jan 12, 2011 at 12:52 PM, Michael Minutillo <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Hi Simon, Firstly, it's probably worth talking to your current employer to see if this is something they can help you with. Sometimes this kind of sideways change can be beneficial for both parties (especially if it means that the business can hold on to a valuable resource). Personally I don't think I'd bother with a C# course or specific certification. A copy of C# in a Nutshell (or some other title of equal awesomeness) will probably teach you as much and be more useful in the future (as you can keep referring back to it). For potential employers, I'd guess that a C# certification on your CV might not be enough to get an interview. You're far better off participating in open source projects / local community groups in my opinion. As far as the technology choices to look at, I'd consider WPF/Silverlight. Admittedly I have no idea whether or not there is a ton of work out there for these (I'm stuck in WinForms land) but they both rely on XAML (slightly different versions) and so does Windows Phone 7 so you get a toe in the web, desktop and phone development camps all at once. Given you have SQL experience I'd probably look at Entity Framework 4 as well. You might end up working on a project where you don't actually touch the UI. Hope that helps and good luck with your transition! -- Michael M. Minutillo Indiscriminate Information Sponge Blog: http://wolfbyte-net.blogspot.com On Wed, Jan 12, 2011 at 11:44 AM, Simon Kuldin <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Good afternoon everyone, I'm looking at expanding my technical skill-set for future career opportunities. My real desire is to learn Dot Net programming (as I'm a programmer by heart). My current experience is 10+ years as a Developer/Consultant for Microsoft Dynamics NAV, and I also am getting a fair bit of experience in administrating SQL Server. I want to move my career sideways to be less ERP focussed, and more overall development focussed. Any recommendations on how I would go about it? Is it worth me doing a course to get official C# certification? Would I be better off focusing on just Windows development (since that is where my skill set is mainly set around), or due to demand should I try Web development? Any good websites that provide information and little tasks for you to try to test your knowledge? I'm sorry if this is not the appropriate avenue to ask.. but I really feel like I need a change in my career, and I think I need to be more proactive in making it happen. Cheers for your help! Simon Kuldin | Senior Technical Consultant | PRISM Suite 3, 214 Bay St Brighton, VIC 3186, Australia P: +61 3 9596 8633 M: 0408 310 957 W: www.prism-solutions.com.au<http://www.prism-solutions.com.au/> [http://?ui=2&ik=d9332a1334&view=att&th=12d78552dc059e39&attid=0.1&disp=emb&zw] People. Responsive. Innovative. Simple. Methodical.
