Learning to develop applications...

[alunr]

I've spent years fiddling around with programming and can do all sorts of wonderful things but I wondered if there were any books or courses that basically took you from average joe through to top programmer by means of developing an application.

eg a sales ordering program where there is some reading/writing data rather than the usual hello world rubbish

[TheGroover]

alunr said:

I've spent years fiddling around with programming and can do all sorts of wonderful things but I wondered if there were any books or courses that basically took you from average joe through to top programmer by means of developing an application. eg a sales ordering program where there is some reading/writing data rather than the usual hello world rubbish

The SAMS "Teach yourself xxx in 21 days" are quite a good starting point. Though they do start with the "Hello world" stuff.

[Plotloss]

You actually want to be a developer?

Best way I reckon is to write a simple file maintenance front end.

The write a classic parent child application such as an Order Header - Order Detail update function. Think invoice.

Then go back to the simple file maintenance suite and make it generic so it can work over any file specified by the user.

By the time you have done only those 3 things you will well on your way to what a developer does every day...

[alunr]

I don't WANT to become a developer its just something thats cropping up fro time to time (I'm one of those horrible multi-skilled lot). I've written a great Access App for one of my customers which looks after all his billing/time recording/maintenance etc but I'd just like to go to the next level and use VB.Net or something to create nicer apps. I also code a lot in ASP/VBScript but it isn't quite the same.

So where does one go to learn to write "a simple file maintenance front end" etc?

Plotloss said:

You actually want to be a developer? Best way I reckon is to write a simple file maintenance front end. The write a classic parent child application such as an Order Header - Order Detail update function. Think invoice.