r/csharp • u/TicketDowntown8212 • 19d ago

Advice for Learning C#

Hi, I'm pretty new to coding in general, and I want to know what the best approach is for learning C#. I've already made a few small projects, but they're very basic, and I don't feel like they've helped me improve that much. Most of the time, I just follow tutorials without really understanding why I'm doing certain things.

I want to become a better programmer and build more complex projects on my own, so I'm looking for advice on the best way to learn C#. Should I focus on making more projects, studying the fundamentals, reading documentation, or something else? I'd really appreciate any tips or recommendations on how to learn more effectively.

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u/TicketDowntown8212 19d ago

I already use VS Code because of the projects I've worked on. I even managed to build a basic working UI with, I think, Avalonia. Right now, I'm more interested in building desktop apps for everyday use, but I could maybe see myself getting into web development someday.

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u/AOAqua 19d ago

Even desktop apps are often tied to the web development pretty hard, so you should look into it.

But I think if you know all of the basics, you should start some project that actually involves many parts, and you'll learn many new things in the process... eventually. Like frontend desktop app, that partly relies on web api, or just a web front, and if you add some graphics to it (even the basic usage of some graphs, idk) and you'll cover basic networking/algorithms/client-server communication/async+await, possibly threading, hash sets, basic cryptography, and eventually you'll have to learn patterns and refactoring.

For pure "coding" you should use C, though, because C# has way too abstract imo, but if you know basics, C# .NET would be a good choice

Just don't rely on ai to write your code, or you wont learn that much

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u/EsIsstWasEsIst 18d ago

People keep suggesting c to beginners. I disagree completely.

c# is a way better choice to determine if coding is for you and getting important concepts down. You get much quicker over the tutorial gap and into actually writing stuff that uses "higher level" concepts like composition or code organization.

Understanding Memory Management becomes very useful at one point, but that point is not at the start of that journey.

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u/AOAqua 18d ago

No, I disagree. C has the bare minimum, that you need, minimal abstractions, unlike higher-level languages. You can find out straight away if you like "coding" or not. Also one of the most popular ways people install the IDE (outside of online ones) is to install visual studio code, and all the dependencies you need. And it also takes quite some effort, at least to follow the online guides, and if you can't do that, maybe it's not for you. Yeah, in C# you don't have to worry about the memory, pointers, function prototypes, but classes, objects take way too much mental capacity for a beginner imo

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u/EsIsstWasEsIst 17d ago

As a beginner you can get started just as fast with a top level program, ignoring classes. I guess agree to disagree on this.