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Renegade:
I'm not sure I follow you there. You can get all the documentation from the MS site. You don't need an MSDN subscription.

I actually have found the MSDN documentation to be much better and easier than other languages/SDKs/APIs.

Want a nightmare? Go try something with the Facebook API. Good f**king luck.
-Renegade (June 26, 2011, 01:03 PM)
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No thank you - I don't need any more nightmares either.  Maybe it is just that I don't know where to look/how to search for the proper API's then.  I just know every time I looked for different information on various classes, method, whatever; I could never find them and when I asked other developers I work with, they always say you have to look it up in MSDN.  When I tell them I don't have a subscription, they always told me they couldn't help me then.  Guess I should have known better and asked here instead  :-[  When I go to change languages to C#, I will definitely know who to ask if I get stuck trying to find documentation  :Thmbsup:
-steeladept (June 27, 2011, 12:29 PM)
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I hear you about not needing more nightmares~! :) (Facebook has been driving me nuts with it's almost complete lack of documentation.)

If you're looking for resources on C#, here's where to go for fast answers 95% of the time:

1) MSDN
2) The Code Project
3) StackOverflow

If you can't find answers there, then most likely you're going to need to delve into the deep dark world of developer blogs. However, at that point you won't be looking for answers about C# or .NET, you'll be trying to solve other problems that aren't really language dependent, and are really just topical problems.

Here's an example of the kind of thing I mean:

http://cynic.me/2011/06/22/logging-out-of-facebook-with-c-sdk/

That's about Facebook, and solving a problem there, but the problem isn't limited to C#. So it's those kinds of things where you end up needing to really dig for answers.

Oh, and some of the abstract concepts in computing -- MSDN covers them, but it's so massive that you quite often end up missing them, looking at the method/class documentation, and missing it, and ending up finding an answer elsewhere.

I can't possibly express how valuable the Code Project and StackOverflow are. You'll find all manner of problems solved there.

After those, then there's Codeplex, Github, etc. But then you're basically looking at implementations of solutions there, and not getting much "educational" value out of them without diving into the deep end of the code. With the Code Project, I find I can get answers with explanations, which is always valuable.

Renegade:
Oh, I should point out this guy's blog at MSDN:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/astebner/

A WEALTH of information. I find I can just read and read there.

But other MSDN blogs are similarly good. And the MSDN forums, though quite often I end up only finding a teaser of an answer in the forums.

And Channel 9 too. Lots there. :)

Have fun~! :D

steeladept:
I guess what I was looking for was something like the JavaDocs.  You know you want to implement a class to generate a random number, for example.  You then go and find it is in the Math class (or whatever, not going to look it up now), but then what method do you use to impliment it?  What are the parameters that need to be provided (if any), simple stuff like that.  As I recall, when I went to look for something like that on MSDN, it would say "Random library - usage: install .dll into the standard library to use."  Something totally useless like that.  Perhaps it has changed, or as I said, perhaps I just didn't know how to use it.  Either way, I found Javadocs much easier to navigate for a total noob like me.

When I try my hand at C# again, though, I will definitely be looking for some help from the likes of you guys and girls if I run into similar issues again.  At least the coding logic and format of C# and Java are almost identical ;)

EDIT - I got curious since, and went out to MSDN again, just after writing that, and found it has changed...A LOT!  They have it a little more obscure than the Javadoc is, but that appears to be more because there is just flat out more there to document.  With the new Bing Search there, I was able to quickly find a class implimentation I might concieveably want to use (such as my random example above), complete with usage, samples, parameters, and even a tab for .Net implimentations in each of the .Net languages, not just C# or VB.Net, but also F#, C++, and JScript.  WOW, that has changed!  Thank you for getting me to look at it again.

BTW:  Just for reference, if it matters, the last time I looked at it was when I choose to study Java instead.  That was around 2007/2008 timeframe.  These changes are drastic and significantly better since then - either that or like I said, I was looking in the completely wrong place.

f0dder:
steeladept: even around 2007-2008, iirc online MSDN documentation was just fine - it's built-in search used to be very very sucky, though. To the point where I'd use google when searching for API information, and tack on a "site:msdn.microsoft.com" :)

Once you're "in there", it's always(*) been easy enough to navigate around, though.

(*): always in the developer sense, meaning ~5 years or whatever ;)

40hz:
Ok, Go is now 'real' according to Heise Online's H-Open website (link here)

Now everyone can use Google's Go language on the company's App Engine cloud platform as the company has announced that the Go runtime, which has been in development since it was announced at Google I/O, is now generally available. Developers who have been creating Go-based applications can publish them using the latest version of the App Engine SDK.

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Looks like Google is quite serious about this project after all.  8)

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