Where to start developing?

[mikefeero]

So I want to dive into writing programs for wp8.

I got a subscription to the developer center and downloaded visual studio 2012 and am following the tutorials there. Im mainly just curious if anybody has a tip as to where I should really start, in terms of learning code and actually understanding it. I have a burning desire to learn this stuff.

Any and all help would be highly appreciated!

 

[AR2186]

Me too, bought a book on C# today on Amazon

 

[drbanks]

The language is easy enough, but I'd see the major hurdles as:

1) learning the framework and more importantly, what you can and can't do, and how to do it. WP8 has a pretty restrictive and interesting security model

2) learning the xaml based UI. Any mvvm reference could help, but depending on your experience writing windows based UIs, that could be the deep end

3) learning the app states, tombstoning, activation and deactivation

4) asynchronous programming techniques are a plus. The new C# async/await keywords are your friends

If you're just looking to write a tip calculator, it shouldn't take too much longer than a hello world app, but as soon as you start dealing with media files and/or background tasks, things can get complicated quickly

 

[mikefeero]

I appreciate the info. Im looking to tinker a bit for now, mess around with just learning basics. Then I have some ideas for blog apps, storefront apps and a few others. I realize im far from being able to do these things, just looking for a springboard.

 

[drbanks]

Well, the new project templates in Visual Studio can get you from zero to functioning demo app pretty quickly, so start with one of those and see how far you can get tinkering with it.