ASP.NET Crash Course
The shortest and most productive 24 hours of my life.
I'll be the first to admit that I am not a programmer or a developer
or software engineer. Sure, I've written fairly complex scripts using
VBScript and T-SQL and have even tried my hand at C. In everyday life,
however, I am a database administrator and network analyst who works alongside
real life developers and I am amazed at what they can do with code. I
decided to jump into learning ASP.NET because, quite frankly, I wanted
to know what all of the talk was about. I also wanted to be able to speak
intelligently about our current projects using this new environment. Like
everyone else, I knew that ASP.NET was the next almighty development platform,
poised to do away with software incompatibility by use of a Common Language
Runtime that could support a multitude of languages. I figured that a
good book would contain beginner and advanced topics but be a quick and
informative read. Teach Yourself ASP.NET in 24 Hours was just that.
I did not get a chance to hold onto the book for very long as the team
of developers that I work with hounded me to borrow it for their projects,
with comments like, "I have something due this Friday, can I borrow this
book tonight? I promise I won't spill beer on it." When I finally regained
possession of the book, I was relieved to discover that it seemed to be
directed to the beginner-level programmer with a chapter devoted to common
programming logic such as loops and if/then statements. By chapter 4,
however, the discussion of namespaces (which are an integral part of ASP.NET)
slowed me down a little because there was really no code I could reference
to follow along. Eventually I progressed on to keying in code snippets
from the book and downloading source code from the book's Web site. I
was eager to jump to the chapters that dealt with Microsoft SQL Server
database connections and XML. The book delivered on both aspects. All
of the code I downloaded worked perfectly in Visual Studo .NET. I was
able to easily modify the code to select information from a database I
had created and not just the ubiquitous Northwind, giving me that real-world
experience immediately.
I'd definitely recommend this book for neophyte programmers who have
access to Visual Studio .NET. Though many advanced topics are covered,
this book is really an introduction to ASP.NET. For me, though, it was
a great tool for quickly learning the fundamentals. After going through
each chapter, I realized that I will most likely not become a programmer
because of this book but now I can appreciate the language and be able
to hold my own at design meetings.
About the Author
Rodney Landrum is an MCSE working as a data analyst and systems engineer for a software development company in Pensacola, Florida. He has a new book from Apress entitled ProSQL Server Reporting Services.