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My Favorite ASP.NET Resources
Don Kiely sounds off on his favorite resources for ASP.NETdevelopment and helps you choose from the many options out there.
Don Kiely
October 30, 2009
6 Min Read
Around the Web
My Favorite ASP.NET Resources
By Don Kiely
As with any new, earth-shattering, rock-my-worldtechnology, information and theoretically helpful resources for ASP.NET and the.NET Framework abound - more than any super-intelligent human can make use of.To make your life easier, here is a list of my favorite ASP.NET and .NETresources - the ones I turn to first when Microsoft and the .NET documentationfail me while solving a gnarly problem- as well as the places I rely on forreading the pulse of the .NET community.
I don't include any books here and instead focus mostly ononline resources. Have a favorite online resource I didn't mention here? Let meknow at mailto:[email protected].
ASPToday and C#Today
http://www.asptoday.com,http://www.csharptoday.com
This pair of Web sites operated by Wrox Press has some ofthe best ASP.NET technical information available anywhere. I've been amazed atthe breadth and depth of technical material, so this is usually the first placeI turn for research. Both sites have a daily e-mail with the latest articleadded to each site that, as often as not, I print out to study carefully. Thearticles are not carefully edited, however, so beware of awkward language yousometimes have to muddle through. But I've never found this to be an impedimentto cracking the technical material. The biggest downside is that both arepaid-subscription sites, each costing about $100 a year, (you can get adiscount by subscribing to both sites for $150) and Wrox has been raisingprices aggressively each year.
ASPFree
This is one of my favorite sites, as much because of theinformation available as the fact that it is a labor of love by SteveSchofield. He has a day job, making what you see on the site all the moreamazing. Much of the content includes links to interesting stuff on other Web sites,but there's a forum, lots of original information, summaries of useful forumposts, and more. One cool thing is it includes demos of many programmingtechniques with live pages where you can see what's happening without having todownload and install the code on your own server. And, as the name suggests,it's all free.
ASP.NET
ASP.NET - the Web site, not the technology - is one of agrowing number of separate sites that teams within Microsoft are setting up tosupport their products. The nice thing here is that, unlike MSDN and http://www.microsoft.com, Microsoft'smarketing people seem to be left out of the loop, or at least kept to a minimalrole. The site runs a few product announcements, such as the recent release ofthe ASP.NET Web Matrix Project, but mostly it is a nice vehicle for interactingdirectly with the ASP.NET team. The group is trying to foster a communitybehind ASP.NET, so there are lots of links to other Web sites. And the price isright: free.
GotDotNet
GotDotNet is the other Microsoft-related site worthy ofcalling out. Originally created during the excessively long .NET gestation andpromotional period, it is a somewhat disheveled collection of articles, sampleprojects, conference session PowerPoint presentations, sample Web services, andprobably the best source of information about Terrarium - a game designed byMicrosoft to serve as an introduction to developing software on the .NETFramework. Look out for sample code that might be from an earlier release of.NET, but this is easy to work around. Although GotDotNet isn't my firstdestination when I'm grappling with issues in ASP.NET, it's a great place tobrowse for information, knowledge, and techniques from lots of people wholearned .NET the hard way.
Training
I'm going out on a bit of a limb here, but sometimes thebest way to get a solid foundation in a technology is to get formal training.There are many training companies out there, but these are the best that I knowof, listed in alphabetical order. And some of their Web sites have some great,free technical information. (Disclaimer: Although I write courseware andinstruct for AppDev, I still think they are all great.)
AppDev (http://www.appdev.com):With courseware authors and instructors such as Ken Getz, Mary Chipman, AndyBaron, Alison Balter - and me!- how can you go wrong? AppDev's public andonsite courses, books, tapes, and videos are all excellent.
Deep Training (http://www.deeptraining.com):Another all-star roster of trainers, including Paul Litwin, Yasser Shohoud, andBilly Hollis. Deep Training is one of the newer training companies, and it hassome of the deepest development experience any one group has to offer.
DevelopMentor (http://www.develop.com):Founded by Don Box and others (although Don has now gone to the dark side,taking a job with Microsoft), DevelopMentor has some of the most intensetraining around. It has some of the smartest instructors in the business, suchas Brain Randall, Keith Brown, and Aaron Skonnard. It also runs the best .NETmailing list around.
Wintellect (http://www.wintellect.com):Wintellect's instructors literally wrote the book in several of its specialtyfields. It features gurus such as Jeffrey Richter (C# and Windows programming),Francesco Balena (VB .NET), John Robbins (debugging anything), and Jeff Prosise(deep Windows programming).
Honorable Mentions
Here are a few sites that have a wealth of ASP.NET and.NET information, but haven't made it into my top tier of desperate, 2 a.m.,the-whole-site-is-broken places to seek help.
DotNetJunkies (http://www.dotnetjunkies.com):It has some nice subject areas and slight customizability with its MyDotNetJunkie feature.
MSDN (http://msdn.microsoft.com):I'd be afraid to develop in Windows and .NET without my MSDN Universalsubscription. It's worth every one of the roughly 200,000 pennies it costs eachyear, but the Web site simply has too much marketing fluff mixed in with themeat.
microsoft.public newsgroups: Point your favoritenewsreader to msnews.microsoft.com, select theappropriate newsgroup out of the hundreds available, and soak in the knowledge.Lately the noise-to-signal ratio has been reasonably low, and some Microsoftfolks are actually responding along with the outside experts. And if you havehours a day to spare and help out a lot of folks, you too could earn thecoveted MVP title! There are some groups I don't read every day, but simplydownload the messages - this has saved my skin a few times when I found theright answer.
A Searching Tip
If you haven't figured it out already, the MSDN searchengine is, um, cantankerous at best. All too often, it doesn't find things youlooked at five minutes ago - including KnowledgeBase articles. Surprisinglyenough, the single best search engine is Google. It even has a special link forMicrosoft site searches, http://www.google.com/microsoft.html.It's far more flexible, and you have the benefit of Google's somewhatmiraculous ranking intelligence. Also check out its customizable Google toolbar- I've taken the MSDN Search button off my IE toolbar forever.
Don Kiely is senior information architect for Third SectorTechnologies, a business and technology consultancy in Fairbanks, Alaska. Whenhe isn't living and breathing ASP.NET and XML, he is exploring the Alaskawilderness with his dog Mardy, hiking, whitewater kayaking, skiing, andsearching for true love. Reach him at mailto:[email protected].
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