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I’ve been working (professional) almost 2 years now with (ASP).NET but so far all my knowledge is coming from self study as the projects I’ve been working on required new things. I never found myself in a position where I learned the global overview of a specific technology. This is why at this very moment, I can explain in pretty good details how the ASP.NET Security works, how you can use Http modules to plug into the request/response pipeline and how the page lifecycle works with every event that you can hook up to. But a number of features, things that every novice knows by watching some basic learning videos, such as Master Pages, Themes, Profiles, certain controls, etc, I still have no idea how to use them.
In a way, that’s fine for me. After all, I’m not (and never really will be) a full blown web client developer. I’m more towards the web application architecture and interaction with other systems than being focused on the pure client developing. Though, like it or not, it is necessary to have the knowledge before going deeper into the advanced features. This is why I decided to take as a first course, a global overview of ASP.NET in which I will (finally) touch every feature that ASP.NET has to offer. After this, I can build further my more advanced skills and learn additional technologies such as WCF and WF which are required in enterprise web-based application architecture.
The course I’m attending this week is the DevelopMentor course “Essential ASP.NET 3.5”. 5 days in which Brock Allen presents all features of ASP.NET in a very relaxed but fascination atmosphere. We just finished day 3, and though the first days where quite known features to me, the following 2 days will cover the not-so-known features for me such as the MasterPages, Themes, Navigations and a quick overview of Ajax.
Probably one of the best things as well is that I’m currently experiencing the Californian winter. And I can tell, it’s a lot different than the one we have back in Oslo. When I took the plane on Sunday in Oslo, I left a nice white winter landscape. Here in Los Angeles, I’ve been walking around all day in t-shirt and jeans jacket. The funny thing is to see all this Christmas decoration :D
Either way, I haven’t seen much of LA so far (except from LAX) but then again I’ll be staying here on “official” holiday during the next week. My first holiday of the year, so I’ll try to enjoy it as much as possible. It is also my first trip ever to the USA. So far, my first impression is that everything is so big. Especially if you come from a country as Belgium where distances are nothing. Right here, the streets are all six-laned, cars are huge and I’m still trying to figure out how the public transport works. Hopefully I’ve figured it out before Saturday when I’m planning to go downtown for the first time.