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.

Related articles:
Dot Net Rookie Mistakes and Visual Studio .net IDE Tips comments

Wiki-Wiki inventor Ward Cunningham has accepted an offer to join Microsoft.

This is the latest in a series of suprising new starters for the software giant.

Their next acquisition is rumoured to be Linus Torvalds. Linus will be helping to write Microsoft's next-generation fire wall product, designed to stop the download of any malicious software.

Although Ward may have accepted a significant sum to join the mega tech, Linus will be working for free from his bedroom. Microsoft are happy with the deal.

Apparently, it's just some guy who likes to hide in spider-holes and who carries a little sample of saddam's DNA inside his mouth.

But nice try yankies.

But the guy they did find has been the most wanted man on the list of the Royal Society for the Protection of Beaver's for some time now.

The US are also supporting an urgent review of the United Nations rules on the legality of parading the head of a prisoner of war around on a stick.

A US proposal hopes to redefine a stick to exclude any non-wooden shaft-like devices. This will clear the way for Tuesday morning's planned head parade, for which a number of tickets have already been sold.

"Our folks have already authorizated the whole shindig," explained United States president G.W.Bush. "We're gonna have ourselves a genuine head on a stick parade, whether those damn Frenchies like it or not!"

In order to circumscribe the United Nations rule on the treatment of prisoners, the alleged former Dictator Saddam 'Insane' Hussein has been instructed to cut off his own head and impale it on the 'non-stick like' metal shaft all by himself.

"We have given him a knife and we have a drawn a dotted line on his neck," explained the United States Military's Chief Medical Officer. "Now it is just a matter of time."

Computer programmers may seem shy at first, but they are ultimately very stimulating conversationalists whose friendship brings tremendous rewards. Here's a depiction of what it's like to engage in a rowdy evening of lager drinking with the computer programmer in your office.

If not then you suck! And your site sucks! And your customers hate you! And you're a moron.

So download RssBandit, subscribe to a few interesting feeds and get up to date with the world. Then get your own blog and start sending out your own Rss.

Here's some nice feeds, to whet your appetite.

Strongly Recommended!

Larkware News

• A new list of interesting points each day from Mike Gunderloy.
• Mike is a great technical author with a strong VB.net focus.
• RSS

Critical Section

• Ole Eichorn gives a run down of everything new in the tech world.
• Often includes cute little pictures that make it that tad more stimulating.
• RSS

.Net with extra opinions?

• Get Frans Bouma!

• RSS

Spolsky! Painless Software Management.

• Spolsky doesn't blog until he's got something to say.
• And when he says it, it's worth reading.

• RSS

Panopticon Central

• News from the chief clever man behind VB.net.
• Interesting points such as 'why doesn't VB allow you to say X++ (for performing X+=1)?'(interesting if you're a VB geek, that is)
• RSS

Clay Shirky's Essay

• Provoking essays on software/rss/the net etc.
• They don't come out too often (which is a good thing). But when they do come out they're worth the read.
• RSS

But RSS can get too much very quickly. Here's some popular Rss feeds to avoid if you want to stay sane:

To Be Avoided!

SlashDot

How many linux trolls does it take to ruin a website?

Scoble

He blogs too often for my liking - it's a distraction. When he *does* say something of interest you'll hear it about it from someone else anyway!

Dave Winer (aka Scripting News )

Yeh, shut up Dave.

Time spent on projects that were scrapped before they reached production:

Junkets

Victories

Favourite new code:

Little Fixes that had the biggest effect

Unexpected Fads

Unemployment

Just found this at 'this is broken'

Works great for me! comments

You have to be careful how you expose your coding objects to the outside world.

Global variables are a great example of bad programming. Global functions too. Generally it is bad to expose the inner workings of your objects. Bad in the full sense of the word.

Ideally, each piece of code should be encapsulated in its own locked box, built of titanium no less than 800 millimetres thick, and buried beneath the ocean floor at its deepest point, at least twelve kilometres from breathable air. It is still possible that subterannean creatures could evolve the ability to withstand the intense presure at such depths, and find ways of penetrating the box and modifying the value of your internal variables. Wiring the titanium box with a nuclear warhead is thus considered best practice.

A One page Reference to Standard Shortcut keys for Windows. You've gotta know these. You've just gotta!

Windows Operating System Shortcut Keys

Windows Applications Shortcut Keys