Programming Woes

Well, looks like I'm going to use this blog again after all.  Mostly though just to vent.  I'm not going to lie, we are almost a month into this semester and sometimes i feel so lost.  I blame a lot of this on my accounting class I have to take.  The business curriculum makes you take two accounting classes.  I understand, they want business students to at least understand concepts of accounting.  You would think though, that they could teach one all around class with the basics that you should know in the business world and be done.  Of course, offer the other classes for accounting majors and such that will actually use this stuff in their life but for me, I just could care less about it.  I have found myself spending more time trying to keep up and understand this last accounting class this semester, than I have in any of my other classes.  It gets really frustrating.  I hate accounting!  Okay, hate is a strong word....I hate that I am spending more time studying for this crap than I am with things that matter to me....like designing web pages.

When I am in class and sometimes when I am reading my textbooks, I feel like I understand what is going on.  Then when I try to do something on my own, I get tons of errors that I can't figure out to fix.  Either that or I can't think of a way to do something.  Take my ASP.NET class for example...  I find this one of my most interesting classes I have ever taken.  I love doing this stuff! But for the last couple of days I have gotten so frustrated with it because I can't figure out what to do, or when I do figure it out, it is after spending hours studying.

Today, I decided to go back to the basics, and this is why I decided to write this blog post.  I have decided to go back and read beginning, yet highly important things, and delve into the concepts until I understand them, and know how to use them.  Today I started out with objects.  I still don't think I fully comprehend the full power and use for them, but I get the gist.  I am also a lot more comfortable creating them.  I will continue to study this until I feel I have mastered it.  This is the only way I can think of to get me back on page.  I will post the rest of the things i plan on studying at the end of this post so i don't forget.

On a more positive note, last night, I did something that really helped my mood.  After feeling frustrated with my slow progress this week with school, I decided to browse jobs in my career choice.  I looked up ASP.NET along with selecting in the USA and entry-level positions.  It lifted my spirits to see how many jobs were available at this moment.  It lifted my spirits even more to see the some of the jobs required only the things I am studying this semester, and that starting pays were sometimes in the 80-100 grand range.  As a sole provider for my family, 80 grand sounds really really really good right now.  I couldn't believe it!  It got me excited again and I was reminded why I need to work so hard to study and understand these subjects to a "t".  This is the reason I am sitting here typing this blog and NOT watching college football right now.  (For those that know me, college football and fishing are THE hobbies in my life which i enjoy the most, so that is saying something that for two consecutive weeks I have not gone fishing, and have limited my football game to only really important ones in my book.)

Again, I blame this on accounting.  It is the bane of my existence right now.  But I have no room for failure right now so study I must.


List of things to study for ASP.NET:

1. The definition of a class and an object in object oriented programming
2. Components of a class, including:
   1. Access Modifiers
   2. Member Variables
   3. Properties
   4. Constructors
   5. Methods
   6. Events
3. Advanced class topics, including:
   1. Aggregation
   2. Inheritance
   3. Static Members
   4. Casting Objects
   5. Partial Classes
   6. Generics
4. .NET Types, including value and reference types
5. Namespaces and assemblies
6. The difference between a standard HTML element and a HTML server control
7. How to convert html elements to HTML server controls
8. The HTML Control Classes, including
   1. HTMLControl
   2. HTMLContainerControl
   3. HTMLInputControl
9. The Page class
10. Redirecting a user to a new page
11. The purpose of the Global.asax file
12. The purpose of the web.config file
13. The difference between HTML Server Controls and ASP.NET Web Server Controls
14. The basics of Web control syntax
15. Basic Web controls and their corresponding classes, including:
    1. Label
    2. Literal
    3. TextBox
    4. CheckBox
    5. RadioButton
    6. Hyperlink
    7. Button
    8. LinkButton
    9. ImageButton
    10. Image
    11. ListBox
    12. DropDownList
    13. CheckBoxList
    14. RadioButtonList
    15. BulletedList
    16. Panel
    17. Table, TableRow, and TableCell
16. Web control events and autopostback
17. The Page Lifecycle