Topic: Recommendations for C# learning

[nobody]

Just looking for a good book to start learning.

Thanks!

[hugha]

It's far more instructive to learn as you work on a project as the IDEs are very helpful once you are over the initial confusion any new interface presents.
Fan out from here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/library/vstudio/z1zx9t92
M$'s Express editions let you learn for free as you hop into your first exploratory project:
http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/eng/downloads#d-2010-express

There's good introductory material at the Autodesk site and their SDKs contain much that can be studied and tweaked.
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=2484975
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?id=1911627&siteID=123112

Try the videos.

I'm not against books but simply reading C# 4 dummies or Learn C# in 24 hours etc doesn't actually make the material stick no matter how interesting or well-presented.  Books can OTOH, cover useful material that you would never stumble on.
A similar question elsewhere:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/46048/what-is-the-best-book-to-learn-c
suggests Charles Petzold's free online book  is the standout if you've experience in C or C++:
http://www.charlespetzold.com/dotnet/index.html

- and there is MUCH on this board worth reviewing.

hth,

Hugh Adamson
www.cadro.com.au

[nobody]

Thanks for compiling all that Hugh. Very thorough.  I really appreciate it. I agree with you 100% books are difficult to learn with, but I'll suffer through.

I'm on chapter two of "Beginning Visual C# 2012 Programming"...so incredibly boring... but the contents of the following chapter look promising. 

I just don't want to frustrate volunteer members here with stupid questions.

[hugha]

I see you have found this board's book thread.  :kewl:

If you've never coded then the primers can be of immense help to get a handle on the various moving bits like variables, operators, functions, classes, references et al. But once you are reasonably fluent from practice they'll gather dust as you'll find most answers come from the help supplied by the IDE F1 key or Intellisense or by googling error messages. Google is often a better souce of answers than an f1 search anyway particularly if you're knee-deep in your favorite package's API.

There's scads of code on this board focussed on CAD which makes it a pretty rich resource in terms of how to get  CAD humming for you.

Further:

http://spiderinnet1.typepad.com/blog/2012/04/create-autocad-net-c-addin-in-visual-studio-2010-using-acadnetaddinwizard.html

http://docs.autodesk.com/ACD/2010/ENU/AutoCAD%20.NET%20Developer's%20Guide/index.html

http://through-the-interface.typepad.com/

[cnicho]

Hi
I'm quite new to C# too.
I started with Visual C# 2010 Step By Step (ISBN-10: 0735626707) and the C# 5.0 In a Nutshell (ISBN-10: 1449320104). I do like the 'Nutshell' book but its' a big nut!
Also, if you are starting out take a look at this series of videos : http://channel9.msdn.com/Series/C-Sharp-Fundamentals-Development-for-Absolute-Beginners
and then AU has some good C# best practices presentations.
Craig

[Keith Brown]

Don't forget about Norman Yuan's site.

http://drive-cad-with-code.blogspot.com/

It has some very nice material on it also.

[Jeff H]

I would recommend  C# Unleashed

[CADbloke]

Did you look through the pinned thread at the top? .... http://www.theswamp.org/index.php?topic=32381.0

You've inspired me to update my post in that thread.

I recall reading Illustrated C# as  noob and it making sense. I'd be inclined to try Tekpub, Pluralsight and Channel 9 etc. to watch it in action to get an idea of what goes on. Don't worry if a fair bit of the content is over your head - it makes more sense as time goes by and you use it more.

[nobody]

Thank you everyone! Really appreciate the info.