Definitive .Net and VB.Net Links

All the sites and resources a VB.net developer needs on a daily basis.

• FAQs
• Official Samples
• Official Sites
• Excellent Unofficial Sites
• Sites to Avoid

• The Debugger Doesn't Work! What Can I do?

  There are many common problems when you first try to debug an Asp.Net solution. The answers are almost always contained in this document.

• Convert C# to VB.net

  A useful utility for turning little C# samples into little VB samples. It is good to get practice at doing this in your head anyway, but as deadlines press, there are times when you'll need a faster automated solution, so use the online converter.

• Windows Forms FAQ

  This is a brilliant resource that you *will* need if you are developing Windows Forms. Provides detailed FAQ-based help on hundreds of questions. Trouble data binding a listbox ? Can't get a column collection in a datagrid to look the way you want? Syncfusion have been there and documented the lot.

• Introduction to IL Assembly Language

  At compilation time, your high level program is converted into Intermediate Language, which is converted to machine code by the CLR at run time. An understanding of IL will give you a better feel for .Net and may help you write and understand vastly superior code.

• Visual Basic Internals

  A fairly thorough discussion of Visual Basic specifices namespaces. Helpful if you're coming from a VB6 background.

• FX Cop

  A tool for monitoring compliance with over 200 coding standards.

• Developmentor's List of .Net Tools

  Excellent .Net development tools to help with things like Serialization, Regular expressions, Thread Pools, Viewstates, you name it...

• 101 Code Samples for Visual Basic.net (Visual Studio 2002)

  These are my first port of call when using a system namespace I haven't used before. Originally provided by 3-Leaf

• 101 Code Samples for visual Studio 2003 (Visual Basic and C#)

  Microsoft's revamping of the Code Samples for the 2003 version of the framework.

• I Buy Spy (Portal Sample)

  A big, thorough asp.net sample sometimes described as a 'best-practice' example.

• Asp.Net

  Asp.Net's official home. Tutorials, extensive samples, forums; also home of the free Web Matrix IDE.

• Got Dot Net

Home of The Microsoft .NET Framework Community. Contains blogs, work spaces (open source projects in .Net, such as FxCop and RssBandit), articles, sample code.

• MSDN
  • .Net Framework homepage
  • ASP.net MSDN homepage
  • Visual Basic homepage

• CodeProject

  Very active site, featuring articles, forums and a strong community aspect. More C# focused than VB, but most information is still of relevance to a VB.net coder.

• Only 4 Gurus

  Very active site, focused on microsoft technologies, delving very deep.

• DevX
• VB Accelerator

  Good place to go for source code of controls, components... large and well worked examples.

• Planet Source Code

  A good place to get quick, simple examples. In the VB6 era, this was *the* place to go. Has been surplanted somewhat by its rivals, but I wouldn't count it out yet.

• DotNet247 (not linked for obvious reasons)

  Chronic Google* pollutant, DotNet247 is a perfect example of the proverb 'Empty Vessels Make the Most Noise'. Matt Reynolds intentions may be good, but the result is bad bad bad, causing an extra layer of misdirection between a search and the final answer.

* Google is of course the ultimate developer tool, but is too powerful to be placed alongside anything else. So I list it here for completeness.

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