Which ASP book?

[Piyono]

Here's a list from Amzon.ca:

http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/search-handle-form/702-1030340-9142450


I'm a complete and utter beginner.
Recommendations?


Piyono

 

[Piyono]

Hmmm... Link doesn't work, but what ASP books would you recommend, anyway?


Piyono

 

[Mercutio]

Do you already know some kind of scripting language? Javascript or Perl or PHP or something?

 

[Fushigi]

Active Server Pages?
Application Service Provider?

- Fushigi

 

[Piyono]

Do you already know some kind of scripting language? Javascript or Perl or PHP or something?

If I strain really hard and make the veins in my forehead pop out I can decipher some basic JavaScript.


Piyono

 

[Mercutio]

The documentation/tutorials that come with Visual Interdev are a great place to start.

Those can be accessed through technet as well.

Assuming you're targetting a fairly modern platform and have some working knowledge of programming, I'd suggest O'Reilly's book (Current edition is Learning ASP.NET. It's HUGE for an ORA programming book). Combine that with some online ASP tutorials and you'll probably be OK.

I'd suggest avoiding things like "Learn ASP in 24 hours" or whatever. Those are lousy for refrence purposes and don't take you far enough down the path.

Microsoft books are dry as hell,and technically accurate.
Pearson/Que/Sams/New Riders are books by commitee. Chapters tend to be held from one published title to the next, and the quality of the material is disjointed depending on the author.
Sybex has the same problem, but it's a different company.
Addison-Wesley seems to usually have a good balance. There are some really well-respected AW computer titles.

Another option would be to look into PHP. PHP fills the same niche and is pretty easy to learn.

 

[Handruin]

I had good luck with "Beginning PHP4" by Wrox. If you're interested, they may also have books on ASP and ASP.net. My knowledge of scripting was very small and this book helped me to get started.

 

[e_dawg]

Two of my favourite beginner/intermediate level computer book series are "Beginning ____ " by Wrox Press and " _________ : The Complete Reference" by McGraw-Hill Osborne. IMO, these two series are, book for book, better than most of the _____ for Dummies, _____ in 24 hours, and other Que and Sybex books mentioned by Merc.

In your case, I might suggest:

Beginning ASP.NET

ASP.NET: The Complete Reference

Indeed, as Merc suggests, ASP how-to's are so prevalent online that you can learn quite a bit online with a good book as a complement. Remember that ASP usually has to be combined with a scripting language like JavaScript or VBScript to do anything useful and SQL to interface with your database back end. So, in essence, you'll have to learn three things if you don't know a scripting language and SQL yet.

 

[e_dawg]

More links

http://www.asp101.com/

http://www.wrox.com

http://www.osborne.com

 

[Handruin]

Another reason why I like the wrox book which covers PHP4. In this bvook they cover some basics of MySQL along with PHP4. They give examples that over the interaction of PHP4 with MySQL.

As you mentioned e-dawg, using ASP will require the additional books to create the "full package". (unless you find an ASP book which covers the basics of SQL Server)