You probably heard by now that several Microsoft products were updated to the “2008″ version a couple of weeks/months ago, and 1 is still pending. The launch campaign was called Heroes happen {here} worldwide, “Magicienii prind viata {aici}” or “Magicians come to life {here}” in Romania, for the pros community and “Ideile prind viata {aici}” or “Ideas come to life {here}” in the academic sector.

The launch started in Bucharest, hosted by a team of MVPs and MS employees, shortly followed by the “student version” in Unibuc. I say “student version” because it was hosted for the students by the students, that is by fellow MSP colleagues. Of course, events like this soon took place in every major university in Romania, hosted by local members.

Along with Adi Muresan, Cornel Rat, Ioan Lazarciuc aka ‘Cretz’ and Mihai Hudea, I had the opportunity to be part of one of these teams. Actually we were more than lucky because we got to be present in 3 other major universities in Sibiu, Brasov and Tg-Mures, we were invited by the UBB team to do a joint operation at their CS faculty and also in our home university, UTCN.

Agenda

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One of the most common question people ask me is “Where should I learn C#?” Of course, I get it from people who want to learn C#.

Although now, unlike 3-4 years ago, the web is full of tutorials, free books, webcasts, etc. (maybe too full), it’s becoming harder to find the good and really good resources. By “good resource” I understand a resource that starts with basic stuff and gradually takes the reader/viewer more in-depth, in a sustained way.

I had a list of my own containing good books, but it was getting old, so I decided to ask my MSP colleagues what books they recommend. With help from Vlad Riscutia, Mircea Cimpoi, Razvan & Bogdan Hobeanu, Alexandru Ghiondea and Mihai Tataran, I updated my list to this:

1) Beginner Level

	Deitel - Visual C# 2005 How to Program, 2nd Edition Author: Harvey & Paul Deitel & Associates Publisher: Prentice Hall, 2005 ISBN-10: 0131525239 ISBN-13: 978-0131525238
	Microsoft Visual C# 2005 Step by Step Author: John Sharp Publisher: Microsoft Press, 2005 ISBN-10: 0735621292 ISBN-13: 978-0735621299

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I should have probably announced this first, but Salo covered that [in Romanian] here and on our official MAP webpage, on StudentClub.ro.

Last October, Andrei Csibi introduced me to 3 of his coworkers: Cornel Raţ, Ioan Lazarciuc aka Cret and Adi Muresan. They were all 3rd year students at the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, Computer Science department. I’ve previously met Cret 2 years ago at a .NET Introduction course.

Adi, Cret and Cornel were interested about the Microsoft Academic Program from TUCN and from then we met and discussed different things, over coffee (coffee = fastest way to get Salo anywhere).

After some time, we received a mail from the guys, saying they would like to host a .NET Course this summer. We were glad to hear that and decided to help them.

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A couple weeks ago, my colleague Vasile Sumanschi (Schumi) and I held two presentations regarding the concurrency models in Java and .NET. This was part of the Parallel & Distributed Computing Architectures course.

Schumi handled the Java part, while I went on the .NET path. The presentations turned into a discussion and we had a friendly versus between the 2 (Java & .NET). Unfortunately the time was not sufficient for such a vast subject.

The study is a compilation of the documentation available on the MSDN Library, articles on MSDN Magazine, concurrency chapters from the books MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-536) Microsoft.NET Framework 2.0 Application Development Foundation by Tony Northrup, Shawn Wildermuth, Bill Ryan and CLR via C#, Second Edition by Jeffrey Richter, and also my personal experience.

I devised the study in two major parts, following the concurrency models:

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I’ve just completed a 3 day training on the Management of Software Projects using Microsoft Solutions Framework and Visual Studio Team System.

This training (or seminar) was organized by Microsoft Romania and it was intended for software pros from the area of Cluj-Napoca. Myself, along with a couple of other Microsoft Student-Partners, were lucky enough to receive an invitation.

The trainer was Adi Stoian from TechReady. I’ve previously met Adi last November at the TechEd Developers Conference in Barcelona.

I was really looking forward to see him in action because last spring he trained around a dozen CS students along with my MSP colegue, Mihai Hudea in an activity of the MS Center in the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca. It was a great succes!

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