A New Year’s Resolution for Aspiring Programmers: Learn C# and UWP Development
- Paul Thurrott
- Jan 13, 2017
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46
Microsoft this week is promoting two free video learning series that will help you learn the C# programming and Universal Windows Platform (UWP) app development, respectively.
Both are presented by the amazing Bob Tabor of Developer University, whom I’ve recommended in the past—in The Best Way to Learn Windows 10 Development and Microsoft Posts Developer Videos for Windows 10 Version 1511, among others—and if I understand what’s happening here correctly, it looks like these two new series are updated from previous talks.
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The first is called C# Fundamentals for Absolute Beginners and is aimed at true beginners, especially those that either don’t know C# at all or are, perhaps, just new to software development. Microsoft hasn’t yet announced the second, UWP-themed course, though they will do so very soon.
The C# Fundamentals for Absolute Beginners video series offers the following 25 episodes:
1 | Course Introduction
2 | Installing Visual Studio
3 | Creating Your First C# Program
4 | Understanding Your First C# Program
5 | Working with Code Files, Projects, and Solutions
6 | Understanding Data Types and Variables
7 | The if Decision Statement
8 | Operators, Expressions, and Statements
9 | for Iteration Statement
10 | Understanding Arrays
11 | Defining and Calling Methods
12 | While Iteration Statement
13 | Working with Strings
14 | Working with Dates and Times
15 | Understanding Classes
16 | More About Classes and Methods
17 | Understanding Scope and Accessibility Modifiers
18 | Understanding Namespaces and Working with the .NET
19 | Creating and Adding References to Assemblies
20 | Working with Collections
21 | Working with LINQ
22 | Enumerations and the Switch Decision Statement
23 | Gracefully Handling Exceptions
24 | Understanding Events and Event-Driven Programming
25 | Where to Go from Here
That looks really thorough. But Mr. Tabor also offers a variety of classes through Developer University that go well beyond that content.
For example, his C# Fundamentals class is over 30 hours long and takes the student far beyond the other C# courses that he created for Microsoft. “You’ll learn C# using ASP.NET to create dynamic web applications,” the course description notes. “Many people learn a programming language but never learned how to decompose problems into solutions using code. This course focuses on using the language to solve real business problems by building your problem-solving muscles one coding challenge at a time.”
Developer University also offers a number of other Bob Tabor classes that might be of interest, among them:
.NET Core 1.0. This 2+ hour course gets you quickly up to speed with foundational .NET Core concepts. It covers installation considerations, using the Command Line Interface Tooling to scaffold new projects, adding dependencies, compilation, packages, and much more! LEARN .NET CORE
Entity Framework Core 1.0. This 20 lesson course (in progress) mixes hands-on code & lectures covering Entity Models, work flows, ORMs, architecture, DbContexts, DbSets, Code First Workflow, Migrations, LINQ queries, conventions, and more. LEARN EF CORE
Thinking Like an Object Oriented Programmer. Object Oriented Programming is more than just learning about Classes, Objects, Properties, Methods and so on. It’s a programming philosophy, a “religion” filled with tenets, idioms, best practices, patterns. This course makes it simple to learn. LEARN OOP
And many more, as they say.
As you may know, I spent much of the second half of 2016 learning Android programming via a Udacity nanodegree program. And while I’m not quite done yet, that should be wrapping up soon. And when it does, I think I’ll be looking into some form of C#/Windows programming class next. The Developer University stuff looks inexpensive: You can access all of the site’s content for one year for just $100. (I pay more than that each month for Udacity.) Or you can enroll for a lifetime ($250) or pay per-course (That C# Fundamentals via ASP.NET Web Applications class is $50, for example.)
Conversation 46 comments
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<blockquote><em><a href="#36513">In reply to </a><a href="../../users/mrdrwest">mrdrwest</a><a href="#36513">:</a></em></blockquote>
<p>The problem is that the only viable platform for UWPs so far is full Windows. Windows RT devices are gone, WP isn’t a viable market, XBOX hasn’t proven it drives app adoption and HoloLens isn’t even available in a consumer version yet. </p> -
8578
<blockquote><em><a href="#36355">In reply to </a><a href="../../users/Athena">Athena</a><a href="#36355">:</a> One person’s safe environment is another’s weak environment. In UWP can you automate the modification of all Office documents residing in a particular folder from the outside (i.e. without embedding macros inside the documents)? The interaction between tools and applications wasn’t created to introduce vulnerabilities but rather because the capability is extremely useful. </em></blockquote>
<p> </p> -
8578
<p>If the goal is to just learn programming concepts and program fun projects than UWP is fine, but if the goal is to learn something that leads to a job, there are much better alternatives. I say this not because UWP is a bad platform but because the market has largely rejected it. Independent developers rarely are able to support themselves through app development no matter which platform they choose, but at least there are employers who are interested in hiring Android and iOS developers. For the most part this isn’t true for UWP. </p>