I’m in a very excited, creative mood these days, as a result of stuff going on at work. As you know, I work as a contractor for the city schools, developing Web and Intranet applications. We’re in the process of upgrading our development platform to ASP.NET 2.0/Visual Basic.NET 2.0, and it’s the most kickass web application platform I’ve ever seen. I can see all kinds of ways to improve some existing programs I’ve been working on at the city schools, and I also see a lot of potential for taking consulting jobs on the side, once I master ASP.NET 2.0.
A lot of the tools I want to explore fall outside the scope of work, though, so last week I bought an additional GoDaddy.com hosting account with Windows Server, ASP.NET 2.0, and SQL Server, so I have a sandbox to play in, a place where I can try things out without messing up any of my existing websites. Since then I’ve had a really cool business idea, to be set up on the new hosting account… gonna keep it a secret for now, but I’ll be talking more about it in the coming months.
If there are any programmers who want to learn ASP.NET 2.0, I recommend two resources: First, ASP.NET 2.0 Unleashed by Stephen Walther, a massive 2,000 page hardcover book that threatens to break my back when I carry it around in my backpack. It’s clearly written, thorough, and the examples work well to illustrate the new technologies in 2.0. Examples are in VB.NET, but if you’re a C# person, they have examples in that language on the CD included with the book. I’ve been through the first five chapters and already feel like I’m on my way to mastery. (By the way, I love Amazon.com. 40% off the retail price of the book, no sales tax. They estimated a ship date of October 24, but the book was waiting outside my door when I got home October 20.)
Second, I recommend this set of data tutorials on www.asp.net. They cover 2.0’s new structures for pulling data from a database and displaying it on a page. There are 35 tutorials in all (with code in both VB.NET and C#); so far I’ve done 10, and again, I feel like I’m on my way to mastery. Take advantage of these two resources, and you’ll be on your way to becoming an expert in ASP.NET 2.0.
I’m also teaching myself to write Blogger templates. By the end of the next month, I’d like to have my own, custom template, rather than relying on ones other people have created. And yes, I promise I’ll use a larger font when I do my template, so this blog will be easier to read.
Sorry for the nerdy post with all the techno-jargon, but that’s the main thing that’s been going on in my life this weekend. I have an answer to the Asian question, but I’ll do that in a separate post since the computer talk has probably chased away 80% of my audience by this point.