I’ve “officially” begun my software development journey by starting The C Sharp Academy. I’ve dabbled off and on with C# since the amazing days of XNA Studio. After, I switched Unity when it became free and tried to continue my C# experience there. I ended up in what I now know as Tutorial Hell. Basically, I felt good about doing tutorials and seeing what I made, however when I open my IDE, my blank page crushes me and I have not idea how to start. So, I do what any normal adult would do when situations get tough; I just quit.

Later on, I started picking up HTML, CSS and Javascript. I worked on some projects with them and decided web development was where I wanted to be. I feel like the World Wide Web is the future of technology. So again, like every time before, my Javascript learning hit a roadblock (or pothole, speedbump, etc) and I was faced with the same dilemma I was in before: Tutorial Hell. So again, I quit. I shelved my projects because I couldn’t find tutorials on specific things, and figured I was not set out to learn web development or programming in general. Between work, my family, and our debt free life I’m trying to lay the foundation for, I was not prepared to learn a programming language.

Tim Corey is one of those teachers who honestly, I want to like. I sat through hours of his content and eventually bought his C# Masterclass for an undisclosed price. oof.wav. On a serious note, I tried again to learn C# this last year and said to myself “This time you’re going to learn it first before getting stuck in Tutorial Hell.” Yea, I was wrong again. I really do appreciate Tim Corey, however watching his videos for hours on end is horrendous. So I set out for FreeCodeCamp’s Youtube page and found a C# video that was about 4 hours or so long. “This will learn me.” I said.

It didn’t. It wasn’t until recently I realized that watching hours of someone else coding is actually not beneficial to me. So last week, I decided that was enough. I read an article that pretty much stated “YOU HAVE TO PROGRAM YOURSELF TO LEARN TO PROGRAM!”. So, I decided I was going to try my hand at programming C# without a tutorial. Boy was it a trip.

I tried in the past to make a web scraper and decided that was my first project. I did know about C#, I understood variables and functions/methods. I knew the concept of OOP. The application is what I had trouble with. So I found a cool Nuget package called HtmlAgilityPack. I followed their documentation on it and made a web scraper for Yahoo Finance. It told you the stock price of what stock you wanted. It was a console app and nothing fancy, but I was excited. I wanted more projects and I found The C Sharp Academy. This focused on building projects instead of holding your hand learning programming. So far, I am having much more fun and learning so much more. Currently working on their Math App while perusing FreeCodeCamps C# track.

I must say, now that I’ve learned to study, Tim Corey has some amazing resources for .NET development. I just can’t watch all his videos back to back like I’m binge watching a Netflix show. Who would have thought?