UKC

Hi,

I am looking for recommendations on .NET/C# training courses, but struggling to find many at the right level.

I am an experienced software developer in other languages, so I'm not looking for a complete novice course, but neither am I looking for anything too advanced at the moment - more of a cross-training course to get to grips with a different development environment and language.

Yes, I can Google it (and have done), but was looking for some recommendations from people that have actually done similar before I lay out options to my manager.

My company will be paying for the training, which means I don't need to go super cheap, but equally won't get away with top dollar.

I'm probably the only one that needs such a course at the moment, so I'll be looking at external courses, ideally around Reading, but will be able to travel up to a point for the "right" course. I'd prefer classroom style to online.

Thanks in advance.

In reply to LastBoyScout:

Bob Tabor's introductory course is very good:

https://channel9.msdn.com/Series/C-Sharp-Fundamentals-Development-for-Absol...

Then head over to Pluralsight where a free 6 month trial gets you to Scott Allan's courses on Linq, generics, threading etc...

In reply to LastBoyScout:

I've been a .net dev for the last 3 years moved over from c++ and never looked back. It's a great language with such a rich set of frameworks. I would recommend your employer pay for a subscription to plurasight.com. Online courses with loads of slides and exercises, you can go at your own pace and revisit.

Have fun

In reply to LastBoyScout:
I wonder if one course will work for you and would also suggest Pluralsight. I Know it's a bit boring and Billy no mates to sit there with your headphones on but it's so much better value. I took a 3 day course from Developmentor in Hammersmith and it was OK, but I would never pay that kind of money for one course again.

You sound like you need to start almost as a beginner because you are with C# so any course is going to top out early before you learn important stuff like generics, test driven development , etc.

Consider getting a Pluralsight sub, then later go to a developer conference to have a jolly.

In reply to Jimbocz:

I was trying to remember who did the course I had from work. Since it was shite. Difficult to learn a decent amount in a classroom in a sensible amount of time with people of, to put it politely, differing abilities.


You can get some reasonable trial subscriptions to it although personally I dont get on with video learning.
Sign up with safari books to get some good materials or just sign up with o'reilly and get some decent discounts of books off the bat.
First thing I would start with is signing up with MS dev essentials and play with their freebies.

In reply to LastBoyScout:
C#/.NET is an absolute joy to code with.

I learnt enough by working through the O'Reilly books (current version of http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920024064.do), then blagged my way into a developer position and learnt on the job.

Years of experience in Delphi and C++ beforehand certainly helped. It's worth being proficient in SQL even though MS have tried to abstract data access through LINQ. Some knowledge of declarative and functional programming is helpful.

Peter

In reply to LastBoyScout:

I'd also recommend pluralsight, have done some of their courses (although not c#) and they're generally great, but if you don't like them you just bin it and pick another. I used it with a three month free subscription that Microsoft were offering, if I had more time I'd consider signing up and paying.

When I was getting in to C# 8 years ago I just took "The Art of Computer Programming" by Donald Knuth and started implementing algorithm after algorithm in new for me language. That gave me a good grip on syntax and understanding of that is slow in dotNET. After few weeks of exercising read a bit about work with databases for few days and when got a job as C# dev.

Was coming from embedded C. Missing it even now, but working in C# is way much easier and cash is better! Worth to mention that C# was a first general purpose language for me.