.NET Developers

[LA_MERC_goose]

Got any?

[LA_MERC_DocSparky]

That's a pretty wide open area of development, but yea I do some .NET dev. What type of dev are you referencing?

[LA_MERC_goose]

I'm self learning some new stuff in the event my current job decides to turn south. I've been tinkering with some ASP.NET stuff and I like the C# code base, it's really close to the Panther language I've been using the past few years. Any suggestions on areas I should focus on?

[LA_MERC_DocSparky]

I'm not a full time .NET programmer. I used c# to build our timesheet application since the QuickBooks API was natively supported. This was a desktop application, but I've been learning to build mobile apps as well since I really wanted to round out my resume. One thing that you'll want to be familiar with is Linq. I found it to be a very powerful way to manipulate collections in C#. With the Model-View paradigm being in vogue, it's kind of a core technology. I'm personally not that crazy about ASP.NET, but I do see it a lot out there. Perhaps it's best use would be in building web services.

As far as non-work learning, I've been spending some time tinkering/learning about Win8 Store apps. You can grab the Visual Studio Express version for free and learn some of the new concepts for both the new modern UI and mobile apps. Of course the web services mesh well with these types of apps.

I'm not working in an all Microsoft shop, so perhaps there may be others that would have a better idea about what's hot in the IT areas.