August 23, 2024

C# - tutorials

I am waiting for some C# books I ordered to arrive. The following is my running commentary on various online tutorials that I am trying out in the interim.

Microsoft

As far as I am concerned this tutorial is a complete loser. They want you to type C# into a browser windows. On top of that, you are dealing with code fragments, no complete programs. I hate this sort of thing. The Python people want you to do this, as do many of the Haskell tutorials. I want to use an editor and command line tools, and write complete programs. I refuse to start in kindergarten.

While I am complaining, I also hate video tutorials. In particular, there is no way to cut and paste from a video. I know what you will say, "you shouldn't be doing that". This is true, but, often you end up just typing exactly what you see, so you may as well be cutting and pasting.

The Yellow book

Not really an online tutorial, but you can download a book for free here, which is worlds better than a video. All the kids these days want videos though.

The kicker here (by no means unexpected) is that he expects you to use Visual Studio. He does tell you as much right up front. Note that the latest edition of the book has a piece of cheese rather than a yellow duckie on the cover, which some people may find very important. I may cave in and give this a go using visual studio.

I will point out that I learned Haskell from the online book "Learn you a Haskell for great good", and liked it so much that I eventually did buy the book. Presumably the author got some part of that purchase price and deserved it.
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Tom's Computer Info / tom@mmto.org