C#/.NET

C#/.NET

I'm finding that learning C#/.NET is going a lot faster than learning Java and its user interface did, back ten years ago--and I don't think that I am smarter than I was back then. Perhaps it is because then I was learning a new language (Java) and a new concept (Object-Oriented Programming) and the library classes required to support a user interface.

This time, I'm only learning a new language, and while the library classes are different, there are strong parallels between the Java user interface and .NET. Even if the .NET designers didn't look at Java, this would be unsurprising, since they perform similar functions.

One other aspect that may be making this easier is that I believe that the web is a vastly richer source of examples of C# today than was the case for Java in 1998. Back then, you could find examples in Internet newsgroups like comp.lang.java, and lots of good help at the Javasoft website. Today, everyone and his brother has a website up either giving away examples, offering subscriptions services to help you (and sometimes giving enough clues that I don't have to pay), and MSDN provides a bit of useful information also.

The problem may be that I am learning all this stuff just in time for it become obsolete and irrelevant. That doesn't seem possible with C#/.NET--but hey, if an entire sector of the industry has to disappear to keep unemployed, it could happen!

More seriously, I'm putting some time into learning C#/.NET because there are jobs for it--and energy spent polishing up my Java skills is perilously close to trying to remember how the FORMAT command works in Fortran IV. (You laugh: but I first programming a computer in FORTRAN II.) I just hope that someone doesn't end up saying, "Gee, that's nice, but we don't do C#. How's your Java?"