I’ve decided that I need to (re)learn ASP.NET. It’s been years since I’ve done any real web development and since I’m expected to know this stuff at work, I probably should. To that end, I’ve developed a learning plan to get me started which I humbly present.

ASP.NET Learning Plan

• Do the ASP.NET QuickStart Tutorial
• Work through book: Microsoft ASP.NET Coding Strategies
• Do the ASP.NET AJAX Tutorial
• Do the ASP.NET 3.5 MVC Tutorial
• Do the LINQ Basics Tutorial
• Do all the W3Schools XML Tutorials
• Do the XSLT Tutorial
• Read the Application Architecture Guide 2.0 (I read the first one a while back and it was worthwhile)
• Brush up on my WSS 3.0 Admin stuff so I can write the certification test
• Brush up on my MOSS 2007 Admin stuff so I can write the certification test

That’s it for starters with ASP.NET. I also have a SharePoint specific Learning Plan but I’ll hold on to that for now because it may change based on what I learn about ASP.NET. I figure it’ll take me two to three months to plow through all this stuff but it should be worth it.

The very first step in all this was to setup my dev environment which I did tonight. I have to admit that I haven’t had this much fun “geekin’ out” in quite some time. Luckily, I already had a previously built virtual image with MOSS 2007 and Visual Studio 2008 installed so I only had to apply recent windows updates, fix the networking and then set up a VPC differencing system so I can have multiple images going without chewing up all my hard drive space.

Anyway, that’s all for now. I plan to write about my adventures as I go along but you never know. I may be too busy “doing” to write about it. 

- Dave