First Language: C# - Where do I start?

[Keller]

'ello. I've made up my mind on what programming language i'll start with - and that's C# - but the question is where should I start? I already have Visual Studio. The thing that pushed me over the fence is that all mobile platforms support C# in one way or another and it has pretty far and wide capabilities. The thing is, every time i've tried to learn a language, I get distracted too easily and/or am overwhelmed by resources, in turn making me quit and forget about it.

[jonny888]

Printing "Hello world" to the terminal is generally the first place to start

[Marooned]

Get a well rated beginning level book from amazon (read comments also) and read it. Its best way to learn a language

[Purenight]

Printing "Hello world" to the terminal is generally the first place to start

/clap

that was my first program I ever wrote

[Keller]

/clap

that was my first program I ever wrote

I believe that's everyone ever's first program .
The thing is there's hellovalot more then that in a programming language.( Unless the goal is to display it in the most fancy way possible)

[Deleted]

For myself, to learn a new programming or scripting language, I need a project. I can not stay focused without it.
Come up with some kind of useful tool you would want to make, then using different sources, figure out how to make it.

Hack it together as well as you can, and once it work, start cleaning it up. Once you are done, you have made something (hopefully) useful, at the same time as the original hacking phase taught you the basics of the language, and the cleaning up phase taught you how to code proper.

For me, when I learned my first programming language I made a simple automatic updater program that synced and updated information between a web server and the local computer, just as an example.

---------- Post added 2012-09-24 at 10:42 PM ----------

Get a well rated beginning level book from amazon (read comments also) and read it. Its best way to learn a language

If you want to die out of boredom and never pick the book up again.
It may be the best way to learn a language for you, but many of us can't learn from books. We need to make stuff, and figure it out "by ourselves".

[Keller]

For myself, to learn a new programming or scripting language, I need a project. I can not stay focused without it.
Come up with some kind of useful tool you would want to make, then using different sources, figure out how to make it.

Hack it together as well as you can, and once it work, start cleaning it up. Once you are done, you have made something (hopefully) useful, at the same time as the original hacking phase taught you the basics of the language, and the cleaning up phase taught you how to code proper.

For me, when I learned my first programming language I made a simple automatic updater program that synced and updated information between a web server and the local computer, just as an example.

---------- Post added 2012-09-24 at 10:42 PM ----------



If you want to die out of boredom and never pick the book up again.
It may be the best way to learn a language for you, but many of us can't learn from books. We need to make stuff, and figure it out "by ourselves".

I guess i'll go with this approach since that's what i've been doing on my hardware projects.

Thing is though, although there's tons of gits, there's too many gits and I'll end up overwhelmed, on top of that, To make it work, i'll probably have to look up every function ever. Any way to avoid that or is it a given ?

[Nemean]

Start small, i recommend starting with learning variables (String, int, double, boolean, ect.) and how to manipulate them. Then move onto learning the basics of arrays. From there you can start to make simple applications. Like reading and writing to a text file. Remember that there is api out there for every built in method and class. It is your friend so be sure to use it. It will also help you better understand the method, as it should break down the method so that you can understand it.

Also it would not be a bad idea to go and buy an intro to c# book if you are really interested in it. It should help you get started and then you can move into more complex stuff.

Btw on average it takes a year to learn your first programming language, half a year for your second, 3 months for your third, ect...

[Xuvial]

The furthest I went with C# was making a simple pocket calculator.

I can tell you right now it took me a fuckload more time to code it than I thought it would, because while it did the job of solving math sums fine, stuff like mashing random buttons would quickly create a exception/handling errors and show my professor how easily breakable my program was :P

Basically do what others have said, grab a Programming in C# book (soft or hard copy) and go from there. It should take you from the basics of C# programming (terminology, variables, etc) and guide you through simple projects starting from Hello World all the way to the more Intermediate/Advanced stuff. It's really fun, one of the only damn subjects I actually enjoyed as part of my degree!

[Twoddle]

My first program.

10 PRINT "HELLO"
20 GOTO 10

Btw on average it takes a year to learn your first programming language, half a year for your second, 3 months for your third, ect...

You got to be joking, it took me a week to learn BASIC inside out from a public library book with no previous knowledge of computers at all.

For learning C# checkout the Soup to Nuts series webcasts for an express course, it's awesome, you'll be up and running in a few hours.

A good book is C# for Programmers by Deitel.

Your first program in C# will be something like designing a window with a Button and responding to its Click event by writing "Hello" on the screen with MessageBox.Show or changing the Text property of a Label. It all springs from there really.

[Skippy88]

Take a course and learn the basics. As my old professor said once you learn the basics you should be able to use any language. Check with your local college/university or even your local high school.

But it sounds like it's more like the toy syndrome with you where you play with a toy for 5 minutes, get bored and you move on to the next toy. I can't help you there as I have the same problem and I don't have a solution. lol.

[Badpaladin]

I can tell you right now it took me a fuckload more time to code it than I thought it would, because while it did the job of solving math sums fine, stuff like mashing random buttons would quickly create a exception/handling errors and show my professor how easily breakable my program was :P

Try a fully programmable scientific calculator! Mwahaha.

On the on-topic though, while C# is a great language I would recommend something like Python if you're learning to program. You can get so much more done with Python with more limited knowledge of the language and computer science in general than you can with pretty much anything else, and there's the added benefit of Python being used very widely in the industry. You could probably start from the bottom up on how to create a simple game and get it done pretty quickly.

You got to be joking, it took me a week to learn BASIC inside out from a public library book with no previous knowledge of computers at all.

There's a difference between memorizing a few commands and knowing a programming language. And honestly I'd say it takes more than a year to truly know the inside and outside of a programming language. It should take about as much as Nemean said if you want to learn it to be able to effectively use it as a tool for CS.

[Deleted]

These were fairly useful when I started learning C#.
Otherwise pick up a book. If you search the CompSci department pages of Universities you may find certain professors host .pdf files of their books or first year material.

[Ijoemomma]

http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudi...press-products
start there. download the tools and look there also for examples and tutorials. There's tons of stuff

[jmacphee9]

www.codeacademy.com if you dont need c# for your first language, this is the easiest way to get used to coding hands down IMO, although it only supports java, and python in beta. python is easy to learn though as its possibly the closest to a human(high level) language.

[gibbie99]

For myself, to learn a new programming or scripting language, I need a project. I can not stay focused without it.
Come up with some kind of useful tool you would want to make, then using different sources, figure out how to make it.

Hack it together as well as you can, and once it work, start cleaning it up. Once you are done, you have made something (hopefully) useful, at the same time as the original hacking phase taught you the basics of the language, and the cleaning up phase taught you how to code proper.

For me, when I learned my first programming language I made a simple automatic updater program that synced and updated information between a web server and the local computer, just as an example.

---------- Post added 2012-09-24 at 10:42 PM ----------



If you want to die out of boredom and never pick the book up again.
It may be the best way to learn a language for you, but many of us can't learn from books. We need to make stuff, and figure it out "by ourselves".

Both methods work. Nowadays I get far more from asking questions in stackoverflow than I do from reading books. I hardly ever actually read books nowadays