Beginner Developer Learning Center

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I can remember when I first started programming - I was about 11 years old, my father bought me a Commodore 64 and I took on the challenge of learning BASIC. At the time, the only documentation I had to help me in my learning process was the manual that came with the computer, and the monthly copy of Compute magazine I would receive in the mail, with pages upon pages of source code I had to type out and debug to get a simple game or application up and running.

Luckily today, we have websites and a whole bunch of resources to help out beginners. In fact, yesterday we announced the Beginner Developer Learning Center that has useful information for people with little or no computer programming experience. The learning format is a bunch of multimedia tutorials that walks through step by step on how to develop Web sites and Windows applications.

Let's face it - we don't learn in the same way. For example, I am more of a visual learner. The smart people at the Beginner Developer Learning Center have updated the site with forty five lessons and thirty one how-to videos in different formats including text, video and audio with different levels of difficulty. So if you ever wanted to learn how to program and didn't know how and where to start, this is the place!  

Here is the link to the website:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/beginner/

My colleague Paul Laberge also pointed out that there is another learning site that is available if you are interested in designing Web sites. It has resources for beginners and those who are familiar with PHP and ColdFusion: https://www.learn2asp.net/campaign.aspx

Here are some other useful related links:

https://coding4fun.com/ 
- A casual programming website with games and other types of fun projects

https://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/ 
- Download site for versions of Visual Studio you can download at no cost

Are you starting out with programming? Feel free to contact us and let us know what you think of the Beginner Developer Learning Center.

*Updated - Link fixed (thanks Luciano)