learning at home questions

A long time ago I took a few very basic programming courses. Never did anything with it. I'm a stay at home mom with 2 very young children.

If I learned Alice, could i just go and learn .NET and than would I have any chances of possibly finding a job (without learning C++ and some of the other languages). Is there any programs/tutorials that I can teach myself .NET after I've accomplished learning Alice?

I do also understand basic vb scripting, batch files and html. Once again, all on the basic side.

I can't go back to school now, but I do (minues one class) pretty much have a bachelors in Business with minor in IT and have been a senior technical support representive for 10 years now for a server/client based software company. I am a very good problem solver.

I'm sure you are already aware of this but .NET is not a language, it is a framework that defines the environment for languages such as Microsoft's C#, Visual Basic, etc. .NET basically allows M$ languages to cross-communicate, i.e., 'talk to each other', using the Common Language Runtime (CLR) service.

Learning Alice would definitely be a step forward in achieving your goal. One of the current uses of Alice is as an introductory programming course. Alice is meant as a pre-cursor to a computer science course in the language of Java. (You can even change the TextEditor to immulate Java syntax by making a simple change in Alice's Preferences menu.)

As a "...stay at home mom" you might be interested in taking a look at some of the on-line courses Piedmont Community College is offering (https://www.ed2go.com/cgi-bin/oic3/n...s.cgi?name=pcc) each 12 week course is relatively inexpensive ($55). They even offer two courses on 'learning' Alice ! They also offer courses on M$'s .NET languages.

Good luck in your endeavor,

I guess I'm looking for classes (including Alice) to put under belt that would allow me to possibly get a job some day...without having to take a million programming courses. Ok so that's an exaggerations.

I like that site.

I noticed it has 2 C# Programming courses. I think that is C Sharp
and 2 Visual Basic .NET courses.

Would it make more sense to take the Visual Basic .NET courses or the C Sharp courses? I'm guessing it's probably best that I take all 4 coures.

Will I be limiting myself if I don't take the C++ courses offered. Or should I really think about taking Alice, the C sharp courses, the C++ courses AND the Visual Basic .NET coures? WoW that's a lot of courses.

Originally Posted by legend_018

I guess I'm looking for classes (including Alice) to put under belt that would allow me to possibly get a job some day...without having to take a million programming courses. Ok so that's an exaggerations.

I like that site.

I noticed it has 2 C# Programming courses. I think that is C Sharp
and 2 Visual Basic .NET courses.

Would it make more sense to take the Visual Basic .NET courses or the C Sharp courses? I'm guessing it's probably best that I take all 4 coures.

Will I be limiting myself if I don't take the C++ courses offered. Or should I really think about taking Alice, the C sharp courses, the C++ courses AND the Visual Basic .NET coures? WoW that's a lot of courses.

Before spending money on any courses, you might want to take a look at http://www.dickbaldwin.com/toc.htm

I forgot to mention Dick Baldwin's F-R-E-E Alice tutorials - I use them from time to time for their "in-depth" detail coverage of Alice. However if you're intent is to use Alice as a springboard for a quick overview of programing in order to prepare yourself for serious study of some of the more popular programming languagues, then I still would recommend spending the $55 for the online course (You may find that ed2go.com is still offering two 12 week courses for the price of one. At least they did this summer.)

If you still wish to enroll then I would suggest you start slow, i.e. take the 1st Alice course to ensure you are comfortable with how the course is presented and then proceed from there.

Just for info, I fractured my leg over the summer and to relieve the boredom I took the two Alice courses offered and in tandem I took the two VB courses just to refresh my memory of the languague. I'm currently enrolled in their Python course.

As for what commercial language to persue, depending upon the day of week, time of day and what phase the moon is currently in some say that Visual Basic is the most widely used language for creating Windows applications. (In reality you use the language that accomplishes the problem you need to solve!)

And C# is indeed C sharp.

Good luck and I admire anyone with two kids who continues their education. And my apologizes to Dick for initially forgetting to mention his excellent material on Alice.

Originally Posted by lanceA

I forgot to mention Dick Baldwin's F-R-E-E Alice tutorials - I use them from time to time for their "in-depth" detail coverage of Alice. However if you're intent is to use Alice as a springboard for a quick overview of programing in order to prepare yourself for serious study of some of the more popular programming languagues, then I still would recommend spending the $55 for the online course (You may find that ed2go.com is still offering two 12 week courses for the price of one. At least they did this summer.)

If you still wish to enroll then I would suggest you start slow, i.e. take the 1st Alice course to ensure you are comfortable with how the course is presented and then proceed from there.

Just for info, I fractured my leg over the summer and to relieve the boredom I took the two Alice courses offered and in tandem I took the two VB courses just to refresh my memory of the languague. I'm currently enrolled in their Python course.

As for what commercial language to persue, depending upon the day of week, time of day and what phase the moon is currently in some say that Visual Basic is the most widely used language for creating Windows applications. (In reality you use the language that accomplishes the problem you need to solve!)

And C# is indeed C sharp.

Good luck and I admire anyone with two kids who continues their education. And my apologizes to Dick for initially forgetting to mention his excellent material on Alice.

Lance: No apology needed :-)

However, just for the record, I will point out that in addition to my Alice tutorials, the link that I provided contains more than 500 free programming tutorials on many different languages including Java, C#, JavaScript, XML, Python, Scratch, and of course, C++ (but none on VB). There is even material there on DSP in case anyone is interested in such topics as Fourier transforms, spectral analysis, convolution filtering, etc.

Here is a set of links copied from that page.

The New Face of Computer Science Education - The Scratch Generation

Introductory Java Tutorial
Intermediate Java Tutorial
Advanced Java Tutorial
Test Your Java Knowledge
JavaScript Tutorial
XML -- eXtensible Markup Language
Python Programming Tutorial
C# Programming Tutorial
Digital Signal Processing

Object-Oriented Programming Fundamentals using C++
Object-Oriented Programming Fundamentals using C++ (Practice Tests)
Object-Oriented Programming Fundamentals using C++ (Slides)

Advanced Object-Oriented Programming using C++
Advanced Object-Oriented Programming using C++ (Practice Tests)
Advanced Object-Oriented Programming using C++ (Slides)

Graphics Programming with Allegro and C++
Graphics Programming with Allegro and C++ (Slides)

Wireless Networking Lab Projects
Learn to Program using Alice
Computer Programming for Homeschool Students and Other Beginners

Dick... YOU REALLY ARE MY HERO THIS TIME, I just bookmarked your page hahaha i didn't know it had all that, that will definetely come in handy this semester


I am taking Advanced Java, Advanced VB, Advanced C++, Database Management, Software Engineering, and Web Design this semester lol


Not to mention my baby classes... "Calculus 3"

Thanks so much everyone!!! I'm currently checking out Dicks Alice tutorial.

Originally Posted by lanceA

As for what commercial language to persue, depending upon the day of week, time of day and what phase the moon is currently in ...

... In reality you use the language that accomplishes the problem you need to solve!

I think LanceA forgot to add what year it is and the astrological sign of your boss - or in your case, your children.

Seriously, LanceA did get it right with his second comment. I've personally participated in or managed over half a dozen major software projects and don't think any of them used the same language (counting C and C++ as different). In one case (for the 777) - two copies of the code were actually written in different languages (Ada and C++ as I remember) and then run using redundant, cross-checking computers.

In another case, we had to use three different languages to support the different needs of the customers operating divisions - one financial, one scientific and one heavily database oriented.

Although there are obviously differences between languages, they are not that hard to figure out. What is really important is to learn the basics of how to write (and test) good, useful and reliable code regardless of the language.