1 Hour Coder

I spent a solid 2 hours (and an equal number of benjamins) on some books I bought today, hedging my bets on a well-reviewed book, Linq in Action.  I can agree with the other reviews I’ve seen, it really is a great book to start picking up Linq and some of the newer concepts in 3.0/3.5 … and I learned that you can even use Linq in VS2008 while targeting 2.0.  That would’ve been good to know on a project I’m finishing up.

Time Spent: roughly 2 hours
Net gain: learned about Linq basics, extension methods, lambda expressions, and how lambda expressions work using anonymous delegates.  Also learned basics of Linq to XML and Linq to SQL.
Repeat This Approach? Hell yes, this was time well spent.
Sources: Linq in Action, one book.

I started learning about 2008 the same place any good developer worth her/his salt would start: the help files.  Not only do I have the conquerable challenge of re-acquainting myself with C#, but a sizable one beyond that, learning about the new stuff: lambda exprs, extension methods, etc.

Everything has its place, and naturally most of the new functionality revolves around being able to implement ideas like LINQ and so on.  Other tidbits like setting up objects without constructors rocks like Whitesnake, as well as automatic get/set building properties.  Good to remember on the latter: if you need attributes on a property, you need to use the LEGACY (yeah, I said it) approach to building a property.  I also perused some good links, albeit not for beginners, on lambda expressions and LINQ in general, which I’ll have to update in the evening.

Time spent: about 40 minutes
Net gain: scratched the surface of some conceptual items, able to dive into easier features, nothing useful
Repeat this approach?  Yeah, gotta start somewhere, but maybe with different sources.
Sources:
- MSDN online
- Links below