We Keep Coding

C# and WCF , where to learn about it?

Its been a few weeks since I started learning C#, i know my way around visual studio, know things about classes, constructors, objects, played around with WPF and now think its time to learn some networking, say making a simple server/client application.
From what I understand winsockets are outdated and currently it is better to learn WCF ?
Maybe someone know some books, articles or tutorials about WCF for beginners where it would be explained step by stem from the ground up. :) Since all I was able to find were either rather complicated materials assuming that the reader it already a master-programmer or just coded supposed to be used as copy/paste without really explaining what it does.
Thanks! :)

In short, WCF is Microsoft's library of code to simplify the process of inter-machine and inter-process communication. Pre-WCF, there were a number of frameworks you could use. WCF gives them a consistent .net interface to simplify programming.
I recommend "Learning WCF", by Michele Leroux Bustamante. It's as thick as a Bible, but it has accessible material about the different facets of WCF with lots of code samples.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/netframework/wcf-screencasts.aspx
A very accessable group of tutorials, that cover the basics very well. Great place to start.

I would like to reccomend Pro WCF: Practical Microsoft SOA Implementation
- i've been learning with wcf with it.

I learned what I needed to know from the book Windows Communication Foundation Unleashed by Craig McMurty, Marc Mercuri, Nigel Watling and Matt Winkler. It has good examples that you can use to produce your own web services and such. It requires some knowledge of C#, which you seem to already have.

Go to MSDN my friend,If you have the patience to read the tutorials/articles in MSDN you can learn WCF very well.

Here are some good beginner tutorials from MSDN
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms735119(VS.90).aspx

where does a novice begin with error logging in asp.net c#?

i'm a novice teaching myself asp.net in c# via trial and error learn by doing, unfortunately this means lots of errors!
i have a custom errors page now that is basically a 404 so that site visitors don't get that ugly application error message .NET throws, but i WOULD like to be able to see what's going wrong myself as people use the site.
so i'm looking to build or learn from a fairly basic error logging c# class, that will send the same information given in a browser when hitting a .NET error, send this into a TXT file and email me the error at the same time would be great
i don't know where to even begin, can someone give me some pointers? an open source class that does this already that i could plugin and play with would work as well. otherwise some links or guidance on where to start reading would be great too.
i sort of have a mental block on understand msdn info-dump pages though, i'm hoping to find some articles on real people talking about implementing the same thing themselves or something like that
please note i'm not looking to use some extensive or complicated third party service for this, i'm hoping to learn from the process of implementing a concise customized one

There are many logging frameworks, but I recommend you use log4net for code-driven logging and ELMAH for ASP.NET logging. Scott Hanselman's ELMAH blog posting is a great introduction to this fantastic tool.

I recommend starting with ELMAH. Here's an overview from Scott Hanselman.

What's a quick way to familiarize myself with C#, .NET framework, etc?

I just graduated college and will be starting working in about a month and I was asked to familiarize myself with C++, C#, .NET framework for NT Services and web services.
I'd appreciate recommendations on how to familiarize myself with these topics (books? internet links?) in a short time span. I don't expect to be an expert on it in a month but I don't want to be clueless either. I already know C++ and I consider myself to be fairly proficient in it and I know the basics of C# even though I haven't used it all that much. For C# I do own a book called O'Reilley Programming C#.
Thanks!

I would start by pulling down Microsoft's Visual Studio Express products. Your O'Reilly book is a perfectly good book to start with.
Start reading blogs and listening to podcasts, to begin to familiarize yourself with all of the technologies out there that surround c#. You will be very excited about what you can learn. Here are some of the better ones:
http://www.hanselminutes.com/
http://www.dotnetrocks.com/
http://channel9.msdn.com/
http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/
http://weblogs.asp.net/
In addition, the MSDN library is an invaluable resource. You can almost always find what you need there. This is where the reference for the entire .NET framework lives.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/default.aspx
Happy hunting!

Nothing beats actually using the language. As much as some of the information sources already quoted would be very useful to check out, I'd say make sure that you at least try and write some concrete C#.
The best place to start might be a non-trivial-but-not-too-large application that you have already written in something you know, and try to convert it to C#... even better if you can get somebody proficient in C# to peer-review your results to make suggestions where you could make better use of the language-specific features that may be new to you.
Fundamentally, if you just read books and watch videos, you may feel like you actually know it, but it is nothing like doing it yourself (as my Uni maths classes taught me... a good teacher can make the impossible look trivial on a blackboard).

That is a huge surface area. Pro C# 2008 and the .NET 3.5 Platform by Andrew Troelsen is a good place to start.
These are good podcasts that will give you an overview:
.NET Rocks
dnrTV
Herding Code

Microsoft Labs and Webcasts

Here's a good SO thread with lots of resources. I recommend you check out MSDN Virtual Labs. They have lots of great training that let's you get your hands on the technology, in particular, check out the C# ones.

I was in the same situation in late November 2008.
If you are familiar with IDEs and another programming language, download Visual Studio Express and start playing with it. It's free :)
http://www.microsoft.com/express/
And I always recommend this webpage:
http://www.java2s.com/Tutorial/CSharp/CatalogCSharp.htm

You can select the relative topic you are interested on this stackoverflow site based on the tag name, and read through some posts, it will give you a good feeling what are common issues/challenges people face in day-to-day programming.

One way is listening to podcasts. We do one called Deep Fried Bytes that contains a variety of topics on any and everything.

How to stop worrying about using the best materials and just start learning .Net?

For the past few years whenever I learn something I tend to spend way too much time researching on the best materials for the subject than actually studying it. What should I do to get over this mentality? I am stuck. How to stop worrying about getting or using the BEST books, training videos and online materials on .net and just start learning?

Start doing a project with a deadline. You will code and learn together. If you cannot do that at work, think of a hobby project with some real requirements (like building a photo sharing site).

I completely agree on the just start coding philosophy. Another idea for a project is to go through the Project Euler exercises. They are somewhat simple math problems that get progressively harder. It is great if you can not think of a project or only have a little bit of time. Then just use a reference book, or the internet to learn what you need to about the language specifics.

Go download Visual Studio Express
http://www.microsoft.com/Express/
Go buy one of the following books:
ASP.NET 3.5 Step by Step
C# 2008 Step by Step
VB.NET 2008 Step by Step
From my experience (when I first started with .NET back in the 1.0 days) the Step by Step books from Microsoft are the best at just starting out and getting your feet wet with .NET.

1) Stop researching
2) Start programming
Seriously, the only book you need to program in .NET is CLR Via C# by Jeffrey Richter. Read it cover to cover (save the first couple chapters until you've read the rest, btw), and start coding. When you hit stuff you have problems with (Linq, WPF, source control, unit testing), come here.

Buy visual studio 08, devise a small project, and complete it.
Make a deadline for yourself and don't push it back.
Buy a basic C# book for reference, don't worry about which one.
You can do it!

Firstly, don't beat yourself up for not having done things the right way before, as I'm sure you know, there never is a right way. Also, some of that searching for the best resources will pay for itself when you have a better understanding of things than the next guy. And, as has already been said, do a project, pick something harder than the usual, trivial examples, so that you have to think and ask questions and do some research. Finally, if you have a blog then post about what you are up to, that way you'll have more of a sense of a commitment to stay working on the project rather than bailing out as it gets hard, especially as that is usually the time when you are about to actually learn something (this works for me anyway!)

There is no single best resource on anything. The best way to learn is to practice. Get any book to get yourself started. Then just start writing some code at home. Play with the language and the platform. Read blogs, browse the questions here. You will start discovering and learning nuggets of information.
Others mentioned buying Visual Studio 2008. It can be an expensive investment although it is totally worth it if you are a independent developer/consultant. However, if you just need something to get you started with coding, get the free Visual C# Express. You can always grow into the professional SKUs when you need it.

The best way is learn by doing!

When you work at a new job, you learn a lot because you have great individuals who transfer a lot of knowledge they find useful. You can review how they do things, which parts are done well and which parts are done poorly.
Learning by isolation is hard especially when there are so many resources out there.
I recommend connecting with individuals in your local community user group or an online group, or start your own group. Many of these individuals will have had real-world experience and can help direct your learning path more effectively.

Find an area of .Net you'd like to use, e.g. console Applications, Windows Applications, ASP.Net applications, web services, and just build a few little "getting your feet wet" sort of things like the basic "Hello World!" example or doing some simple computations or using an MS-SQL back-end if you do get SQL Express or the richer versions.
Don't forget that if you don't get in, some things may pass you by. How many ASP.Net 1.0 or 1.1 apps are out there using older systems that you may not be familiar with yet may be an incentive to start doing rather than trying to find the BEST that will be out of date in a few years. Take some of the ideas from a book like "Refactoring" by Martin Fowler if you want to program something a little bigger than the simple "Hello World!" program.

Download Visual C# Express 2008. Google for intro tutorials. Dig in and explore yourself.
This URL is all you need to get started with .NET:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vcsharp/aa336768.aspx?wt.slv=RightRail
If you want mastery of .NET, there a lot of different ideas, but only one official self-education track. Get the official MCTS / MCPD training guides from Microsoft Press. These are searchable on Amazon by Exam number, such as Exam 70-536. But as long as you know how to Google for questions and tutorials, you don't need much else.

Good place to start learning ASP.NET

I have a two years of experience of programming in Visual C# and Visual C++. I would like to know some good online sources to start learning ASP.NET or anything else I should/need to learn before diving into ASP.NET. I found some online videos that are proving to be quite useful. Perhaps I would like to know about some open source projects where I can have a look at the ASP.NET code directly.

Sorry, but I'm going to have to suggest the immediately obvious first:
Official Microsoft ASP .Net Site
There's a link at the top to both "Get Started" and "Learn", and I have found this site incredibly useful over the past year or so.

Speaking as a convert from WinForms to the Web, I offer the following tips
Learn the ASP.NET Life-cycle
Get to grips with the concepts of client vs server-side code; know how pages are served up etc
Don't bite off too much too soon, there are A LOT of new things to learn, and it changes very quickly. But you don't need to be writing a full-blown AJAX web app straight away.

I like http://www.asp.net/learn/ it has some great tuts and some cool videos that walk you through the processes.
Good Luck

IMHO, CodeProject (www.codeproject.com) has lots of excellent articles related to ASP.NET.
Regarding projects, there are plenty of ASP.NET applications in CodePlex (www.codeplex.com) or SourceForge.
Regarding a specific ASP.NET application, http://www.cuyahoga-project.org/ its a great application to see.
Best Regards.

https://web.archive.org/web/20211020202742/https://www.4guysfromrolla.com/
Loads of ASP.NET articles/tutorials at various levels. I found it pretty useful to get my head around some of the concepts.

Just to add, another great resource is www.learnvisualstudio.net
Its not free but it has a plethora of videos covering all aspects of asp.net from 1.1 to 3.5, AJAX, Webservices.
Programmer to Programmer style videos with great examples and downloadable source code.
Good luck :)