Pluralsight Video Review - C# from Scratch Parts 1 and 2

review

C# from Scratch Part 1 and Part 2 by Jesse Liberty (3h 11m and 1h 54m)

This is the first Beginner video that I have seen on Pluralsight that I think was genuinely aimed at beginners! Perhaps not complete beginners as in, someone who has no knowledge of any programming knowledge, but someone who is new to C#. As a consequence of that, I already knew a lot of the things that Jesse covered in this video series, but that was fine because it’s all good over-learning (as they say in teaching!).

So what does he show the viewer? Well, the first video is all about the fundamentals – program flow, objects, exceptions etc. The second takes on a different pace and focus in that he tackles delegates, LINQ and asynchronous programming. It is clear that with the latter one, you need to pay much closer attention. There were a lot of good points about this course such as:

  • No special edition of Visual Studio is needed. That’s important - I am sure there are many people that need to use the Express or Community editions and this doesn’t exclude them.
  • There were hardly any instructions on how to install Visual Studio. I am sure we can all do that, especially as it feels like a lot of recent videos I have seen go into some depth about the steps required.
  • His examples. He has thought carefully about how to present the concepts in a clear and easy to understand way.
  • He doesn’t waste time typing out lots of things. Through careful editing, some of the code just appears and some he types.
  • The pace is quite slow.
    • Now, that might be a problem for some, but for me and my over-used rewind button, that was fine.
    • It gives you enough time to follow along should you want to type in the code.

Having said the above, it is worth mentioning the following:

  • He talks quite slowly and for some, that might be frustrating. Interestingly, you can play this video at 1.5x normal speed and that doesn’t prevent you from following along.
  • The depth with which he goes into things isn’t too detailed. I personally think that was fine because it’s audience are beginners and the course is only about 5 hours. As a consequence, don’t expect to leave with a thorough understanding of all the concepts (though given it’s intentions, I’d be surprised if you did!).

Overall, I really liked this over some of the other introductory C# videos I have seen and will definitely take a look at some of his other courses.

Hi! Did you find this useful or interesting? I have an email list coming soon, but in the meantime, if you ready anything you fancy chatting about, I would love to hear from you. You can contact me here or at stephen ‘at’ logicalmoon.com