A little bit of code...

OK, if you have no interest in software programming, this will mean nothing to you, but this is what I do every day. For those who don’t know, I’m a software engineer and have a degree in computer science from BYU. Primarily what I do each day is develop web applications for companies using ASP.NET with C# that implement a certain workflow to perform document assembly with our software called HotDocs. So I thought I’d post a little info about some sites I find as useful resources when I’m trying to figure out how to do something or need a good example. So you coders out there, some of these are ones you might know and maybe some you don’t, feel free to share some of your favs as well.

MSDN Library – OK, this is dumb to post, but if you’re programming in .NET and not using this as a resource, then what are you thinking? The MSDN has a lot of coverage, but not always the greatest examples or descriptions of how to accomplish some things. But if you want a description of a class, method or property, this is the place to go.

The Code Project – This is a really good resource. They have a lot different categories and a lot of information on .NET. It is articles submitted by various users, free to join and the articles are rated, and I find the ratings to be a pretty good judge of how well-formed and useful the information might be.

W3 Schools – This one is kind of entry level, so you’re not going to get complex examples, but when you haven’t worked with a technology for a while or have forgotten some basic, this is a great resource. It’s some pretty solid documentation, and thought I haven’t used it for such, might be an easy way to learn a technology if you don’t know anything about it.

CodeGuru – I don’t use this one too much because I find the ones above a bit more reliable, but another free to join site with content submitted by users.

And a couple of blogs that I’ve run across that I’ve enjoyed:

ScottGu – This is Scott Guthrie’s blog. He’s a VP at Microsoft and does a lot of articles in the MSDN magazine and talks at a lot of the conferences. He’s pretty creative and has some good examples, especially early on of technology in development.

MattBerseth.com – This is just a blog I ran across recently as I’ve been getting into LINQ to SQL (which I’m really enjoying). He’s got some interesting posts and always has simple clear examples. He’s got some creative User Interface stuff, which is what I enjoy.

Well that’s it for now. On my next tech post, I think I’ll talk a little about LINQ to SQL, since that’s what I’m immersing myself in now.

Mark