InnerWorkings - .Net training very much hands-on
I got an email from Brian Finnerty yesterday who runs www.innerworkings.com - a .Net training site with a twist.
I've been through quite a few of them over the years..from instructional DVDs, to remote training and onto class-room training and thought at first this was yet another of the same.
But i was rather surprised when i took the trial..
First off, you download an application which contains your "courses" and you can do them at your leisure.
The first thing you get faced with a "Developer Interface":
The "Developer Interface" also syncs your results with their server, so you can keep tap on your progress through the labs you take.
When selecting the "Drill" from the list (i have one, a sample - circled with red) it'll take you to the main interface which you'll be dealing with.
Each "Drill" has a set of tasks to perform:
Once you've selected a task, you'll be forwarded to the scenario which explains what the outcome of the task is:
At the top of the Developer Interface you have three tabs:
And after you've read through the scenario you move onto the challenge which explains what the goal is, the individual steps you have to make in order to complete the task.
The problem statement sums up the issues that this task has in detail.
After reading through that there is just to open up the code/project and you're on your way.
It is extremely simple to navigate this Developer Interface and to get started. All is taken care of as it will launch Visual Studio 2005 for you, load the solution and off you go. Each task is commented in each class enough so that it's not too "easy" to engage with. Methods and Classes are comment clearly where you are expected to edit and you are to leave alone.
Once you're done you simply go back to the Developer Interface and click on "Judge Project Code" and it'll scan your solution and find out if you have successfully accomplished the task, or alternatively what you have missed or done inaccurately.
When Visual Studio loads it not only loads the solution, but it also configures your environment, tabs etc so that everything is at hand - including a "userful links" window which will take you to MSDN. Absolutely Brilliant!!!
I can highly recommend taking a look at this - www.innerworkings.com ..simply brilliant! i'm hooked that's for sure. the Drills aren't just a "copy/paste", but leaves you with enough clues and help to "figure" things out yourself.