I read the articles on MSDN and I can’t get the sample code to work!

Yep.  Did you know that you are suppose to know where to go to find the samples?  The magical telepathic transmitter must be down or yours is broken.

I don’t get it either, many of the “sample” code that has the infamous three dots (ellipse) that you may have thought that should have been shown on the page is actually referencing a sample that might be found at a location like (click on image):

VC++ Client based code: Learn to Program for Windows: Sample Code, use this for the series of articles: Learn to Program for Windows: Sample Code 

Azure sample: .NET StockTrader Sample Application (read down in the article for the most recent of this sample)

LINQ with articles: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb397926.aspx

Windows Phone Development: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff402535(v=VS.92).aspx

HTML, with articles: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa737439.aspx not HTML 5

CSS, with articles: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms531205.aspx, somewhat old, but good for intro