Visual Studio / C# / WPF Tutorials

Mark Erbaugh

Years ago, I programmed in C and C++, I've never used C# or WPF. I've downloaded and installed the free version of Visual Studio 2013 and have been able to compile and build the latest FlexLib API, but I'm pretty much stumbling through things. Can some of you recommend a good tutorial for getting starting into writing my own WPF applications in C# / Visual Studio. Free online would be fine, but a physical book is okay.

Peter K1PGV

Unless you're a designer, you'll find it easier to create a visual application using Windows Forms than WPF... though WPF is the "newer" interface (and the one SSDR uses).

The MSFT online tutorial isn't bad:

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd492132.aspx

Once you've started to play with C#, I think you'll be hooked.  It's soooo easy to create a GUI program it's almost scary.

For help with the FlexLib API, just come here and we'll help you out!

Peter

K1PGV

Richard G7EIX

The Big Yellow Book of C# is where I started with C#

http://www.robmiles.com/c-yellow-book/

Direct link....

http://www.robmiles.com/s/Rob-Miles-CSharp-Yellow-Book-2014-m2e4.pdf

And.... here are some WPF Books - not sure of the legality of this site, but I normally download them from Amazon and pay for them if a book good enough.    Don't like taking food out of a good authors mouth! :-)

http://it-ebooks.info/tag/wpf/

Regards

Richard W4/G7EIX

Steve-N5AC

Mark,

When we started there were a lot of good books.  We bought some and passed them around the office.  I would just go to Amazon or Nerd Books and see what has high marks today and buy one.  WPF is quite a bit trickier than Windows Forms for several reasons.  You really should spend a little time studying the MVVM (a.k.a. MVC) pattern and internalize it before you start coding in WPF.  Understanding XAML (pronounced "zamel" and rhymes with camel) is also important, but you can get by at the start without too much knowledge of XAML.

The world of software has transitioned to this model with UIs for IxD, reusability and separation of concerns reasons and I would recommend investing the time in WPF if you want to understand this new world.  The applications look better and you'll be up with current technology.  It would be tough to convince me to do much of anything in Windows Forms today.

Steve

Mark Erbaugh

Steve, Thanks. I am familiar with MVC programming, so that should help me. I'm not interested in getting back into programming professionally, been there, done that, but I would like to be able to write some little utility type apps for my Flex.

N7CXI

Mark, coming from a similar background I found that the language syntax itself isn't that big a leap from C/C++, but the object model and some of the built-in's are very different. GL !

Mark Erbaugh

Peter,

Thanks. I just worked through the tutorial.  I've already been messing the FlexLib API using Python, so I'm hoping that it will be easy to transfer what I've learned to C#.

Do you know of a similar tutorial for WPF? I looked through the other tutorials at Getting Started with Visual Studio (where this tutorial is) and they are all Windows Forms based.

Mark Erbaugh

Richard,

Thanks, I've loaded my iPad with several books.

Mark Erbaugh

Jim, Thanks for the encouragement

Martin Monsalvo

Too bad Flex Radio used C# and WPF. That's the root cause of all the problems and inestability SmartSDR has.