Hi Everyone,

I'm in a strange place in the beginning of 2007. I have to change careers from what I've been doing which was PHP, PERL, Javascript, mySQL systems on Linux for the Internet to doing ASP.NET, C#, etc. Its what everyone wants where I'm from and after working with it for the last month every single day I see why. Its an awesome tool to work with and the better I get it feels like it programs itself. I'm getting pretty good at it and given a few more weeks I'll probably feel very comfortable with it.

My problem is that my on the job experience is all in non-.NET stuff so I'm looking inexperienced in development to people looking for .NET programmers. Has anyone ever switched over in their career? Any advice for landing that first job in the new area would be appreciated.

I have a bachelors in computer science and am learning C#, .NET and ASP.NET via 5 Wrox and O'Reilly books I purchased and a copy of Visual Studio 2005. If anyone has any suggestions on a better way to learn I'd love to hear them.(other resources, etc)

Just start making some asp.net sites and include those in your resume. IMO, the best way to learn is by getting your hands dirty.

I work on different projects and sometimes I use PHP and sometimes I use .Net(c#). It can be hard switching back and forth between the two sometimes, but I think its great to have varied experience.

Hi!
I've made two switches due to economic pressure. My first specialization was C/C++ on Solaris, and I moved to Java on Linux to keep up with marketing trends. More recently I've moved to .NET on Windows. Both changes were something of a slap in the face. :o

The only advice I can give is to prove that you were competent with your old area of expertise. That tells employers that you know what you're doing and have a good chance of being able to pick up new things easily. Reasonable employers don't expect you to know everything, and your ability to learn is more important than your current skill set unless you're a short term contractor.
Books and resources are for weenies. Start writing applications and make lots of mistakes. That's where you learn.

I'm joking, by the way. But the only way to really learn is to practice and get hands-on experience.

haha. Ravalon you're reply seems like you've been where I'm at. I know what you mean about the lots of mistakes because thats what I'm doing now. I'm a big fan of cookbooks and Recipe books and then using them to practice. I'm working on building a real world application right now.


ses5909 your suggestion is what I'm doing too. I've put in a request to my hosting provider to set up an ASP.NET based domain for me to begin working on.

I'm glad to hear that I'm somewhat on the right track by you two. Thanks for the replies.

I recently inherited Programming C# from the O'Reilly line, and I'm reading through it, and almost losing interest due to the fact that it looks almost identical to Java. I've programmed in Java for years, and have eventually come to not like it - not enough ways to optimize code, and maintain readability, not to mention the bazillion different methods inherited from other classes.

I'm running a Linux box, and when I get around to it, I'll get Mono for developing in C#. I left Windows programming a long tiem ago, and haven't really been able to look back. Now, in the event that you are - in a way - being forced to do Win32/Win64 programming, I wouldn't worry about not having any .NET backgrounding. The only semantics you would have to worry about are linking, and cross-linking, between .NET projects (ie. "amalgamating").

The fact that you know JavaScript, will help you out quite a bit with the C#. I - on the other hand - am not so lucky. I'm currently a part of a project where I was forced to learn Python. My main background in programming is Lisp (if you've never heard of it, definitely work Wikipedia'ing it). Lisp's syntax is all unto its own, and has no lookalikes (except Scheme, but it's a language derived from Lisp).

Switching between languages stinks, but JavaScript -> C# is a pretty good shift, I must say.