Getting started with dot net on a budget

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Guest

Hi,
I am starting to use Dot Net, and thinking of eventually going for the MCSD exam, but I am a tight budget. I have a laptop with Windows XP Home and the .Net SDK installed, but I can't spend the money of Visual Studio. Is it possible to study for the exam and learn dot net like this and can any suggest ways that will help my learning with this set up.

Thanks
 
If you are some form of student, Microsoft sell a number of products at
reduced prices. I got Visual Studio 5 many years ago, don't know if the
Visual Studio is still available for studens.

Web Matrix is a free development tool for ASP.NET applications, you can
download it from www.asp.net, this provides a GUI based development
environment. Another bonus is that it contains a light weight web server
that will run on XP Home, Internet Information Server requires XP
Professional.

I bought the book "Developing Web applications with Microsoft ..." from
Microsoft Press, this contained a 60 day trial version of Visual Studio
Professional.

One advantage of only using the SDK is that you get to know all the gritty
bits of .NET, nothing is hidden by the WYSIWIG editors and wizards provided
by Visual Studio.


Chris


MicroMoth said:
Hi,
I am starting to use Dot Net, and thinking of eventually going for the
Click to expand...
MCSD exam, but I am a tight budget. I have a laptop with Windows XP Home and
the .Net SDK installed, but I can't spend the money of Visual Studio. Is it
possible to study for the exam and learn dot net like this and can any
suggest ways that will help my learning with this set up.
 
There are a number of free tools available, and some low cost ones as well.
If you are a full-time student at any institution, you probably qualify for
an academic version of Visual Studio, which is far less expensive. However,
technically, you don't need Visual Studio, although VS does handle many of
the goofy things for you (like the exact syntax of code-behind files in
ASP.NET).

See http://www.asp101.com/articles/john/codebehindnovs/default.asp

For most purposes, though, I'd recommend using a free IDE like Sharp Develop
http://www.icsharpcode.net/OpenSource/SD/

This is far and away the best way to go when you are on a budget.

--- Nick


MicroMoth said:
Hi,
I am starting to use Dot Net, and thinking of eventually going for the
Click to expand...
MCSD exam, but I am a tight budget. I have a laptop with Windows XP Home and
the .Net SDK installed, but I can't spend the money of Visual Studio. Is it
possible to study for the exam and learn dot net like this and can any
suggest ways that will help my learning with this set up.
 
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