On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 1:09 AM, Lorin Rivers <lriv...@mosasaur.com> wrote: > The number of people that can write code better than I can is close to the > number of people who CAN write code…
Let me share an anecdote from where I work. One of the IT staff here fiddles with VB from time to time. He does consider himself an intermediate programmer. So he comes to me from time to time to ask for advice on how to do this or that. And each time, my first response is: "Try to google out a library that does that." It almost always turns out that there is (a) no such library shared on the net, or (b) you have to pay for it. That's the kind of eco system he's in. We all know how beautifully different that is with open-source software. So, it's not just writing code. It's about "I'm not the brightest kid on the block, and there might be others, who are smarter, and have maybe shared their smarts with the rest of us." And you download that lib, and you learn the API, read the source, and learn a thing or two. So you don't always have to write better code than others. Having said all of above... I've tried Ruby, Erlang, VB, Python, a little bit of C. You always learn a few things by just trying to get something working in any environment, and you can use that knowledge to advance your understanding of the tool you chose. In other words, a little experimenting with .NET won't hurt you a bit. If I'm not mistaken, there's "express" version of whatever tool Microsoft offers, and you can use that to educate yourself. See how it works and define your arguments against it with something to back it up. And MSDN is a fine piece of knowledge base, too, just to be fair. I've learned a lot from it alone back when I didn't know how to google for stuff. -- Branko Vukelić bg.bra...@gmail.com stu...@brankovukelic.com Check out my blog: http://www.brankovukelic.com/ Check out my portfolio: http://www.flickr.com/photos/foxbunny/ Registered Linux user #438078 (http://counter.li.org/) I hang out on identi.ca: http://identi.ca/foxbunny Gimp Brushmakers Guild http://bit.ly/gbg-group
