• Coding

  • Getting starting with C# for web

Hello,

I come from a PHP background. I've done things the PHP way, for a long time.
In PHP you basically write your code in whatever editor you want, then feed it to the web server (Apache + mod_php, usually) and see what comes out. Simple.
ASP.NET seems to be a little more complicated.

Anyway, I've managed to set up Visual Studio Express 2013 and IIS express, somehow. Without making comments about the install process, I have a file in VS and can press F5 and have it run in ISS and see the result in a browser.

Now what?
What exactly do you need help with?

If you are asking about what you should learn now, if you are already comfortable writing C# code I would say go to www.asp.net and get started with ASP.NET MVC and Web API.

Enjoy.
I am not comfortable with writing C# code, that's what I'm trying to achieve.
I tried to download MVC but I'm not sure how that went, then I figured I should learn plain C# first.

I'm asking for any pointers or tips on how to go from here, to learn C# for building websites.
20 days later
I'm sorry for the late reply, but I was in your exact situation! My server-side skills mainly involved PHP, I found the language very error prone and messy to use. I recently took up an internship with 0 experience in C# and ASP.NET. I was recommended two readings, first was "C# Coding Standards for .NET" by Lance Hunt, it goes over many of the language's features and conversions which are VERY straight forward and support many paradigms. I was reading the book while tampering around the template ASP.NET MVC in Visual Studio. Then I started reading "Professional ASP.NET MVC 4" which is a great book that goes over each and every feature of ASP.NET MVC and although it may seem like you need prior experience in asp.net, it does not require any. Developing ASP.NET MVC in Visual Studio is breeze, the framework itself has many conversions that won't only organize your modules, but also make your solution much more maintainable and expandable. The template language they use for Views is Razor, which is basically regular C# code within an HTML template. VS also has many macros and shortcuts to do mundane tasks that make you a much more efficient programmer.

If you want SQL support in your application look up Entity Framework. It abstracts the way you communicate with your DBMS, and combined with LINQ (syntax for writing SQL statements on the fly in C#) it is very very powerful.
Thanks for the interesting info and references @mmk92.
I would recommend after reading some C# books to start with video tutorials, and especially from channel9
this will help you a lot!
Thanks for all the answers, now I have more options to start with.