>The day came when I had to make the decision about replacing VFP. My marketplace, payment processors, banks, etc., made the decision for me and it is . . .
>
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> . . . . . . . . (open the envelope please) . . . . . . . .
>
>
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>C# / Silverlight / Winforms / SQL Server.
>
>
>Recommendations appreciated as to the most effective way to start climbing the learning curve?
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>I have 1 to 2 years before I have to be fully productive, but would like to do something productive while learning. For that I have an old dBase-V application (yes dBase, circa 1985) I can migrate. It's fairly simple and much of what I do can be applied to payment processing. In the meantime, if (when) I do something stupid with the old app it won't be the end of the world.


Starting place for C#:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vcsharp/default.aspx

There are tons of getting started materials there including videos.

and for Silverlight:
http://www.silverlight.net


www.learnvisualstudio.net

is another video source for C#.

Book recommendation (I have read version 3.0 of this):

http://www.amazon.com/C-4-0-Nutshell-Definitive-Reference/dp/0596800959

You can download VS2010 RC today and read my blog for Linq from a VFP programmer's viewpoint.

Literally there thousaqnd of sources for C#/SL/WPF/WCF/...

Cetin