[RESOLVED] It's ok if you know

[Signalman]

I have been writing by code for a long time, and with the help of this forum have manges to achieve what I want. However looking at some of my older code, it now strikes me that it some what in efficient and could be simplified. This is not because the methods and functions used in writing the code did not exist, but simply because I did not know about them.

Today, reading another post I have discovered the queue function. This is something that could be very useful. I have known about the list function for a while, but not originally. It's only through a gradual process of trying to develop code and reading this forum have I found out about them.

Is there any documentation or free on line training course that shows or explains the more complex items that are available, as I am sure there's lots of other useful features that I am not aware of. I have already done the simple course !

[jmcilhinney]

They are not functions. Queue(Of T) and List(Of T) are classes.

[jmcilhinney]

Is there any documentation

There is THE documentation. Microsoft has documented the entire .NET Framework and other APIs available. We all learn new stuff as we go and get more experienced but one of the reasons that I always bang about reading the documentation is that you will see things that you don't already know about and may be able to use later. If you had read the documentation page for the System.Collections.Generic namespace, of which List(Of T) is a member, then you'd have seen classes like Queue(Of T), Stack(Of T), HashSet(Of T), etc, and then you would be able to use them in situations for which they are appropriate.

[Signalman]

Ok, accepted the they are classes. My error.

I think you have answered the question, that there is no single course etc. It's a case of learning as you go along, which is what I am doing. I am more than happy (and will be doing) to read about System.Collections.Generic namespace and would have done previously, if only I knew it existed. - this is an example not a specific, so please do not say I should have known it existed from using other classes it contains !!!!!



Off to read some more documentation, albeit I don't find the Microsoft stuff very easy to understand.

[passel]

There are plenty of books, but when I was first starting out learning .Net, I just did a search for Tutorials. There are a number of them on-line as well.

[Shaggy Hiker]

Is there any documentation or free on line training course that shows or explains the more complex items that are available, as I am sure there's lots of other useful features that I am not aware of. I have already done the simple course !

No, and there never will be. It is relatively easy to write introductory books that cover the basics. Once you get beyond that, the potential topics expands at a hyper-exponential rate. Entire (very large) books can be written on single topics, such as TCP, threading, and so on. Having one book to cover all that would be impossible. Having a library to cover that would be nearly useless, as searching the library would be a chore in itself.

Therefore we have the internet.

[Niya]

There are plenty of books, but when I was first starting out learning .Net, I just did a search for Tutorials. There are a number of them on-line as well.

I jumped right into .Net directly using my knowledge of VB6 to be able to write code immediately in VB.Net. From there I just used the online MSDN documentation and Google to discover what was in the Framework and what the best practices were. I still remember the very first new thing I did when I first touched VB.Net. I wrote some multi-threaded code because I was so thirsty for this in VB6 which doesn't have a competent way of doing it. From there I discovered Lists and Collections, the new syntax features like single line declaration and initialization. I learned LINQ on these very forums from reading jmcilhinney's posts. Somewhere between all of this, I also learned about all the improvements made to classes that didn't exist in VB6 like inheritance, method overloading, protected methods etc. I just kept going and going. I still learn new things to this day.