What is the best way to start learning C#?

Question

I have a little programming experience with vb 6 and vb.net not much. Please tell me the best way to become an expert C# programmer and I know it will take a long time.

Answer 1

Think about how you learn human languages - reading, writing, speaking and listening.

• Read code. Read articles. Read examples. When you're more experienced, look at the source code for some projects that you use.
• Write code. Play with the examples you've read about. Modify them. Solve problems from Project Euler. Think of your own projects then try to solve those.
• Talk about code. Blog about it. Tell your friends about it. See if you can impress your grandmother with how good your program is. Now try to impress your professor. Learn how to communicate about programming with different types of people.
• Listen to other programmers. Many of them have more experience than you and have useful things to say that you can learn from. Learn the vocabulary they use. Discuss your ideas with them.

Practice. Practice. Practice.

Google is your friend.

Answer 2

If you're already familiar with other programming languages, the O'Reilly "In a Nutshell" books are generally a good place to start. "C# in a Nutshell" is both a good introduction and a good reference.

Answer 3

Even though I feel the other answers on this thread already well-cover the bases, in terms of replying to a pretty "nebulous," even "naive," question : I'm going to add another opinion (slightly too long to just be a comment).

I respectfully disagree with a few posts suggesting an analogy of learning a programming language to learning a spoken, or written, language. SO is not the place to discuss linguistic theory, and its relation to evolution, and cognitive structure, and the work of Chomsky, and Pinker, et. al., which suggest not only language learning's "innateness," but also how variation in "endowment" (genetic, and, yes, even "temperament"), and its dynamic interaction with environment, and "developmental windows of opportunity" at which learning can take place at phenomenally accelerated rates, contributes differentially to morphemic versus phonemic competency, etc.

But, please allow me just to register the hypothesis that there are many ways in which the analogy of learning a programming language to learning a spoken and written language is more of a "catch-all" that masks complexity, rather than a useful tool.

On the other hand, I suspect (hypothesis) that a person who has achieved mastery of more than one spoken/written language has, indeed, developed certain cognitive structures and skills that may be "useful" in learning a programming language.

To my mind the above two paragraphs are not inherently contradictory statements.

imho programming in general is also not analgous with learning mathematics or geometry which build structures up from axioms, or fundamental assumptions, into complex systems that sometimes can be "formally" proven, or validated. Of course there are some "rare birds" who start off from Knuth, or Gamma, et. al. and "Design Patterns," and "work their way down" to the "real world" :)

My "vote" goes with starting with a good book, and, as Mark Byers suggested, combining that with practice, testing yourself, taking on problems like those on the Euler project Mark mentioned, and, yes, certainly, also as Mark suggests, studying other people's code.

The question, in the beginning, though, is, imho : how to know which code is good to study.

For me the answer to that is : study the code examples provided by really good books like those by Jesse Liberty, for example : "Programming C#" latest (3rd.) edition from O'Reilly. Note : my understanding is the 4th. edition is due in March 2010.

imho Jesse has an unusual gift as a teacher of programming languages, an ability to "pace" the introduction of material in a skilfull way, to select and present the right examples in the right sequence, and remarkable gifts of clarity in his technical writing.

CodeProject articles are a great resource for code examples to study. Look for articles in areas that interest you that have a very high rating by other users, and are specific to C#.

The lesser-known book by Liberty "C# 2005 : A Developers's Notebook" is a fantastic resource (also, imho, one of the most fascinating books in terms of graphic design and book structure, ever done in any technical arena). It's a series of "exercises" that I would compare to the idea of "etudes" in music : each exercise demonstrates a topic, challenges you to understand a good example of that topic, and each topic is really something that will be useful in your "real-world" programming.

imho, once you have your "feet on the ground" with a hundred hours or so of study and practice of .NET : fly, don't walk, to the "guru-level" with Jon Skeet's "C# in Depth" published by Manning. He also, imho, is a superb technical writer who shares with Liberty the gift of selective presentation of material, and has his own special, unique, gift for "stepping out of the book to speak to you directly," addressing the kinds of concerns you are probably thinking about as you encounter more difficult material. I should note that I feel I am a long way from mastery of the content of this book, which just whets my appetite for understanding it. There's an element of wit and humor in Skeet's writing that also, in my experience, is extremely rare in technical books.

Please note : disclaimer : while I have worked as a paid consultant for Addison-Wesley on the technical editing of two major .NET books, I have never worked for O'Reilly or Manning, or received "comp" copies of their books (dammit :).

I must, respectfully, disagree with the recommendation of "C# in a Nutshell" by Albahari and Albahari (also O'Reilly; I believe 4th. edition is out now : I have only seen 3rd. edition) above : I think it would be a very inappropriate tool for a newcomer to .NET. On the other hand, when you get to studying Linq : you'll find, imho, that Albahari's website and free version of LinqPad is just the coolest thing ever done for helping you "get into" and explore Linq.

Good luck !

Answer 4

Download Charles Petzold's .NET Book Zero and read it through from start to finish, skip nothing even when you think you a fair bit about a particular area.

Answer 5

Start by downloading http://www.microsoft.com/express/ and start programming. If you don't have a project of your own or something someone else wants done, start looking up popular algorithms and implement those. Try implementing certain design patterns. This way rather then just focusing on syntax your learning a heck of a lot more about programming in general.

Answer 6

The same way you learned VB6 and VB.NET, no doubt. Pick up a book, and start reading. There's nothing radically different about it that requires any esoteric approach to learning. Just good old fashioned squatting in Barnes and Noble for a few hours before breaking down and buying a book. You could also mosey around http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vcsharp/aa336809.aspx and read up a bit.

If you've already been using VB.NET, C# should come pretty natural to you. The syntax will be different, but the objects, methods, etc will all be familiar. Check out the tutorials on MSDN for C# too: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa288436(VS.71).aspx

Oh, and welcome to StackOverflow!