If you're doing a web app, you can ignore everything to do with WebForms, WPF, WF, WCF.
If you're doing a WinForm app, you can ignore everything to do with Web, WPF, WF, WCF.
If you don't need to write to/read from text files, you can ignore System.IO.

My point, you don't need to know it all. If you try to learn it all at once, it's far too overwhelming.

When I need to do something new, I do some web searches, look at three or four examples, then get busy with my problem. I don't need to do it all to get something done.

And what's wrong with finding out what you did isn't intended for your need. You just learned something. Having lived in the US, you probably know a little bit about baseball. For a long, long time Babe Ruth held the record for the most career home runs. Guess who holds the record for the most strikeouts? Babe Ruth. Accepting failure, learning from it, and moving on should be part of what we do. I propose that trying some new technique and finding out it isn't suitable for us isn't failure. It's a success if we look at as a learning experience.


>Takes more than five minutes to find the class you want to use. You pretty much have to have some map of the inventory in your head before you start looking for anything, and then when you think you've found it, it turns out it's not intended for how you mean to use it, you have to search for a more suitable one.
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>>The .NET framework is unquestionably complex but I don't think it is bigger or more complex than it needs to be. Anyone who is going to use it day in and day out should be willing to learn at least the most important parts. The rest can be learned as needed.
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>That's the kicker, I couldn't even find which parts were important. They all seem to be, if you read their descriptions.
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>> You wouldn't expect or want a streamlined way to fly a jet, would you?
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>That's the kicker #2, and thanks for proving my point: why would I want to fly a jet? Even a simple car is hard to park in some places, and a jet only takes you to another jet-capable airport, not where you want to go.
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>>My hat is off to you for all the different languages you have used. I have worked with only half a dozen or so languages, all mainstream.
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>Being a partner in two startups here (before my US stint) I had to be the jack of all trades, just like most of the rest of us. So yes, had to do a lot of weird stuff along the way. Ah, forgot my worst offender: the command set for Olivetti document printer. That was enough to wither all the plants in your house just to find the next code you need to use, so much negative energy emanating from it :).