Resources for C# programming

I’m traditionally a webdeveloper and have not done any windows/mac desktop programming but want to get into it.

There’s a plethora of resources online for development related to the web/iphone/android (even mac desktop) but not much related to windows desktop development.

Does anyone have a video/tutorial that guides you through the steps of how to create a small simple desktop application?

Nothing specifically, but PluralSight is a great place for MS stuff. Most of it’s subscription, but you can find the occasional free video or a trial offer.

Creating a WinForm desktop app is pretty straightforward since their tools are pretty much drag and drop, then you can easily modify the generated code to tweak it how you want it. If you’ve been doing ASP.Net for web development I’d say just jump in by starting a “Windows Form Application” project and figure it out. It’s pretty much the same thing.

Edit:

Rereading your original post, it sounds like you were doing “web development” in something other than .Net. Are you just starting C#? Which languages are you familiar with? I’m guessing PHP?

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I’ve done a lot of php/ruby/python stuff. I’m also fluent with javascript, SQL, java. I understand (more than) the basics of programming. Am familiar with OOP and many design patterns. Just need a crash course into GUI programming.

EDIT: I don’t mind paying a small fee for a subscription. Feel free to recommend me any tutorials/geides/videos that may have a small fee associated with it. (note: Not a big fan of lynda.com, what else is out there?)

I agree with @mawburn. For C# related material PluralSight is the best place to start. At the moment it’s $29 for a month.

You can also do a search on YouTube for videos. The quality is hit and miss.

Bento.io is another resource that might help you.

There are a number of conferences that put their video’s online:

ASPConf
dotNetConf
Build
NDC

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I’ve signed up for a trial on pluralsight and it seems like a lot of the courses there go through the basics of programming.

Is there something that jumps straight into building GUI and binding actions to it?

This is an Intro to Windows Forms

It does say Visual Basic, but converting VB to C# isn’t that difficult, so don’t let that stop you from watching this one.

You also might want to look at the WPF courses.

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Thanks @cpradio

Is it possible to write HTML/CSS code that renders on the desktop? For example I recently downloaded the github app for windows ( http://windows.github.com ) and it seems like they aren’t using native windows UI but rather written something with HTML/CSS/JS and is running it in some sort of wrapper.

WPF with XAML is sort of like that.

Umm… what are you using to make that assumption? I don’t see anything that seems to indicate it runs HTML/CSS/JS in a wrapper…

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It’s just an assumption. I’m not basing it of anything.

So I’m assuming they’re using WPF with XAML there?

They may be. I’m not 100% certain to tell you the truth, and I’ve been trying to research their system requirements (haven’t found any yet). However, WPF and XAML are similar to writing HTML for a windows application. You simply use custom tags to create buttons, input, etc.

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it seems like a lot of the courses there go through the basics of programming.

Yeah, that’s why I generally look up project tutorials when I’m learning something new. I get bored very easily reading beginner level material about what a variable is or the structure of an array.

When I was learning MVC2/3, PluralSight had a lot of intermediate level stuff for that. It’s been a couple years since I’ve used them, so I don’t know what they offer any more but it looks like they still list it by experience level.

Also if you know Java, C# is Microsoft’s answer to Java and the languages are very similar. C# has actually jumped out ahead as a better language over the years though, it just doesn’t have the portability Java does. The biggest hurdle you’ll probably face with C# and .Net is simply all the tools that generally come with .Net applications like WinForms, WPF, Entity Framework, LINQ, etc. MSDN documentation is great though.

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