6 replies to this topic

[acrimon]

Can anyone recommend a good starter book to learn C# for someone who has absolutely no experience with programming?

And assuming I spend a few hours each day learning, how long do you think it will take me to get the hang of it?

[scottk]

That is impossible to tell -- that all depends on your aptitude with programming. I know you asked for a book but codeproject.com helped me a lot when I was starting out. They write articles of how to go about doing things and publish them with full source code so you can follow along the article while developing and check the source code if you can't figure something out.

[njr1489]

It really depends on a lot of things. As long as you have a book that describes programming at the very basics and provides examples you can type yourself. I started in my first programming class Microsoft Visual C#.NET, and it took me about three to four weeks to "click", but that's just me and my learning environment. The only thing that I stress you do is whenever you read an example, write all of the code yourself, don't copy and paste. It's the fastest way to learn, and in the case you do make a mistake typing, you'll look at your code and check to see what's wrong. Also, save your sources somewhere you convenient so you can constantly look at it.

[Siten0308]

i agree with njr1489, thanks to looking at a couple of books such as wrox C# visual 2008, and C# visual 2008 in 24 hours, i learned and lot, but this website below taught me in plain dumb english on whats up with C# from the ground up with C# language and objects, loved the website. hope this helps, but as njr1489 said, do all the examples or as many as you can, dont be hesitant to ask WHY or WHAT that is as this will help you learn, it helped me so much such polymorphism, static methods, inheritance and more!!

Visual C# .NET for Complete Beginners - a free programming course

[purplesunrise]

Well, right now I am reading Managed DirectX9 Kickstart by the Designer and Development Lead of the Managed DirectX team himself. It is a pretty good book. Though it pretty much teaches you only 3D stuff. But, hey, it teaches you how to make a voice chat application. Big Smile I would also recommend Game Art for Teens. Even if you're not a teenager, this is pretty good for all ages. It even teaches you how to model a person! I would recommend this art book if you're going to be making a game by yourself.

[Hignar]

purplesunrise said:

Well, right now I am reading Managed DirectX9 Kickstart by the Designer and Development Lead of the Managed DirectX team himself. It is a pretty good book. Though it pretty much teaches you only 3D stuff. But, hey, it teaches you how to make a voice chat application. Big Smile I would also recommend Game Art for Teens. Even if you're not a teenager, this is pretty good for all ages. It even teaches you how to model a person! I would recommend this art book if you're going to be making a game by yourself.

I'm really not sure that Managed Direct X is appropriate for a complete beginner. I'm also fairly certain that all the code is in managed c++ anyway, not c#.

I'm a huge fan of the O'reilly "Learning" series. I've got Learning C# and it's well structered and deals with most things in what I would consider the correct order.

Having said that the link posted above by Siten0308 should be more than enough to get you going.

[sindy55]

Thanks for all the info.