Getting started, have some questions.

[Phrozty]

Background:
I've been a professional developer for at least 8 years, love windows phone, and decided to give it a try. I've been a MS Dynamics CRM developer for the past few years, so I'm fairly used to dealing with an SDK/API with certain restrictions. I am NOT very well versed in WCF or most graphic/UI type of stuff. Most of what I did at my old company was boring business form work, and CRM requires very little UI work. I used to be quite good with CSS, but I've been out of that for quite awhile as well. So overall, my graphic side is a bit lacking.

Questions:
Right off the bat, I was wondering which type of license I should go for. I do not currently have a business, and if my company chooses to do WP apps, I'm sure it will be with a company email/account, but I was wondering if I should set stuff up so that if I ever get big into WP development I would have them under a company name? Also, I see you can use tokens as part of the sign up process, and I would think there would be SOME way for me to get one since I've been a developer for MS products for so long, I'm a Microsoft partner (though through my company email address), and this would be a new account for me. Anyone have any tips on how I could get a hold of a token?

And finally, based on my background... where should I start my learning process? I have some certifications, but having been working in the industry for a number of years, I don't really feel the learning process for certs would prepare a person much for actual development.

Looking forward to any comments, positive or negative .

 

[Catholic Tech Geek]

If you have an active msdn subscription, the dev fee might be included in it. If it's just you doing all the work, you should try to register as an individual. As part of the registration process, they will ask you for your ein (employee identification number). As an individual, this will be your social security number. Businesses have their own ein.

As a CRM developer, did you do work with C# or C++? The choice of programming language is your first step. C#, C++, HTML/Javascript, and Visual Basic are your choices (although F# might also be a choice for windows phone development). Once you decide, you can look up tutorial stuff for your chosen language. C# seems to be the most popular language for tutorials online, but you use whichever programming language you feel most comfy with.

 

[Phrozty]

I'm not sure if I have an MSDN subscription w/my partnership, but it is all through my work email anyway, which I would obviously not be using as my developer email (in case we ever start doing WP development for CRM or otherwise). So it sounds like I should go w/an individual license, and I have no problem paying for the fee, but if there are tons of ways to get tokens, it kind of seems foolish not to at least ask around.

The language will definitely be C#. I work with it all day every day, heh. Are there any good "gems" of tutorial sites out there? I've got a one note file w/all kinds of useful things for JS/plugins(C#)/SQL that I've built over the years, so if there's some trove of knowledge out there, that would be great. The majority of what I have now are smatterings of different blog sites, but like I said, I've been doing this for awhile.. so tutorials on C# aren't needed, but tutorials on WCF (if that's needed)/building graphic elements into an app... that kind of thing.. are areas I need help in.