Into to programming C#

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I've just started an Introduction to Programming C# class. I notice that there are occasional posts from people that are looking to start learning some programming and wanting some guidance so I thought I might post something about my experiences and may also need some guidance myself.

The course consists of one lecture class per week and about 2 hours worth of online lecture content consisting of mp3 lecture with power point presentations. It's the first time they have tried the course in this hybrid manner at the university. the book we are using is this http://www.amazon.com/Visual-2008-H...r_1_17?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1275064648&sr=8-17 seems like a book that would be very good for self study as well.

The IDE we are using is Visual Studio C# Express 2010. So far I've gone through a few chapters of the book and been to one class that consisted of mostly just .net framework basics and a bit on algorithms.

If anybody has any tips for someone just starting on this track please feel free to offer it!

 

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I guess I haven't had much more to say about this! we are more than halfway through the class and have gone over things like loops, conditionals, functions mainly the basics of console programming I suppose. Right now we are studying classes and things like properties, inheritance, and constructors. The first things in the class that is taking a bit of effort to wrap my head around. We'll go over arrays which I've looked at a little bit then we'll do a bit of GUI application work and the .Net Framework and then the class will be done.

The book is not an easy read and would take quite a bit more effort if I did not have the lectures to reinforce the material. Someone could definitely use the text for successful self study though. One tip that I would give is to get in the practice of using algorithms and psuedocode form the very beginning of learning it will be invaluable as the applications get more complex.

 

Most people start off with procedural console based programs, which I think is a good approach.

Then people tend to learn OO later and possibly some GUI event based programming.

Psuedocode is pretty overated now we have expressive high level languages.

What you can do instead is flesh out your code starting with the class design on paper, then create the classes, then add the main functions, then put single line comments throughout your method instead of code / psudeocode.

If you're a test driven type you can now create failing tests in something like NUnit, then you can go off and implement code and make your tests pass. Its an iterative process so then rinse and repeat as necessary.

Algorithms tend to get overlooked nowadays as so many come built into frameworks like .NET, mention Bresenham's line algorithm, the Rijndael cipher or the Quicksort algorithm and a lot of VB .NET programmers will give you a blank look.

Robert Sedgewick's books are excellent introductions to popular algorithms. Algorithms are often inextricably linked to datastructures.

 

Lol