Books and my brain
Let me explain my usual trip through a technical book.
- Browse the bookshelves at Barnes and Noble
- Pick up 15 books and read the back cover and intro
- Go over to the Sci-Fi section where the really good stuff is
- Come back and debate some more, and then finally purchase a book I think I can read from cover to cover
- Read Chapter 1 and start experimenting
- Read chapters 2 and 3 and start experimenting some more, as well as start digging online for more explanations
- Charge ahead leaving my new $50 book in the dust
Well, I got a free book from TODCON, and I think this is actually one that I'll be reading from cover to cover for real. Peter Ladka's ASP.NET for Web Designers. I don't really consider myself a web designer, but his writing is so accessible and uncluttered with "big programmer words" as he likes to say, that the concepts are soaking in pretty quickly. My initial experiments with .NET in DW were uninspiring and frustrating, but I'm starting to see more and more potential in the technology, and can't wait to really start putting some of this into practice.
If you're looking to start working with .NET, and either don't have any programming background, or you're like me, and have been coding in VBScript for years, this is a fantastic book.