When the free Express editions of Visual Studio were first announced, the Microsoft .NET Development Series got quite a few proposals for books aimed at amateur and novice programmers. As Series Editor, I always had to ask how much money someone would pay to learn how to use a free development environment. My gut feeling was "nothing:" the free IDEs would need free training, meaning that the business opportunity for Express-specific books was practically non-existent.
It has been a long time coming, but Microsoft now has a site for this, the Beginner Developer Learning Center. At first examination, I'm quite impressed.
The site is divided into two major tracks, one for Web development and one for Windows development. Within each track, there are lessons in each of three tiers. Tier 1 lessons assume no prior software development knowledge; tier 1 lessons assume that you understand the foundations of .NET development. Tier 3 lessons "expand your knowledge of Windows and Web development with more advanced concepts such as data access and debugging." (Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain rolling his eyes at this last statement.)
In addition, the Learning Center has a Kid's Corner with cartoony introductions to C#, VB, and Web development. I found these corny myself, but I haven't yet tried them out on my middle-school-aged kids.
For reference, the site has video "how-to" guides to Windows Forms and Web Forms controls in C# and Visual Basic, and a video "how-do-I" series about ASP.NET. Finally, it has a "Tips and Tricks" series of assorted video and PDF guides, for things like creating templates and deploying applications with ClickOnce.
These short video guides are very much in the same spirit as the short videos we produce here on InfoWorld.com. As with our videos, the production values might not be anything to write home about, but the information presented is right on the money.
Posted by Martin Heller on March 12, 2007 06:00 AM
