I empathize with your problems with LINQ. And they don't make it any easier in that VB is slightly different from C# in what you can and cannot and should and should not do.

I would suggest:

Don't waste time with Linq to SQL. It is a dead end Learn EF.

Linq to Objects and Linq to Entities can be very useful.

Pluralsight is a great source of wisdom on all this stuff.

Consider using a lot of stored procedures for data-fetching/updating tasks. TSQL can do some amazing stuff. You may find the only time you need LINQ is when it can be useful in manipulating in-memory data with Linq to Objects. I've written a lot of .NET code that doesn't use linq.


>>But the SQL examples you give can't be used against DataTables anyway.
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>I do use it against datatables and it seems to work for me. I guess the IEnumerable is somehow implicit.
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>> Without linq all you would have is DataTable.Select to get a subset of rows or DataTable.Compute to sum things.
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>And you also have datable.copy().sort I have found.
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>All in all it's about the same functionality we used to have in DAO/ADO recordset, together with move and other.
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>>
>>Admittedly Linq to DataSet is one of the more complicated usages of Linq - but general linq usage is the same whether for this, objects, xml etc. And don't forget that a query expression can be built up over several statements for clarity.
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>Well good to know that not everybody runs when they see a LINQ statement. As I said earlier, when I grow up I wanna be a LINQ programmer.
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>Thanks and take care.