Programming in C#

Four years ago when I was graduating from the University of Virginia, I would have never imagined that I would be learning C#. The reason for this mostly being that while in college I was learning open source web development in PHP and Physics, as well as some UNIX and network systems administration. I think it’s funny that the name is C-Sharp (not C-pound as many have called it) mostly because those that don’t know music call it C-pound (as just mentioned) which leads me to think that they therefore think it’s super powerful. I’m glad that Microsoft was somewhat optimistic when naming C# for the reason that if it was going to be a dismal language they could have named it C-flat (Cb).
Needless to say it’s been interesting and I can definitely say that after learning C, C++, and Java a few years back, learning C# has been relatively easy. So what’s my suggestion you ask? Well, I like Jesse Liberty’s Learning C# as well as Programming C# and last but not least a book that he co-authored with Dan Hurwitz, Programming ASP.NET. I have yet to get my fingers on a copy of Alex Ferrara and Matthew MacDonald’s Programming .NET Web Services.
Now, you might be wondering why my sudden aversion to C#, call it technical training of sorts Additionally it’s very interesting to see how one can build custom components and what not that can be integrated into other Microsoft Software.
Trust me, I still love working in PHP (mmm, C like programming) and developing database schemas for MySQL.
Last but not least, back to my open source roots I should mention Mono, which is the open source framework that is capable of running .NET code on open source platforms — Java finally has some competition on Linux. Very cool project, for more check this out for more about the project over at Go-Mono.com or to read a Developer’s guide on Mono, click here.