Friday, June 5, 2009

Quest Log: Power Overwhelming

The moment I took WPF up in hand, I was hit with a surge of power. Once I gained some control I realized there was much much more to WPF than I had initially thought. Not to mention that I also moved to .NET 3.5 SP1 which had a number of new things as well.

I had never used Routed Commands. Never heard of Dependency Properties. Had no concept of Data Templates, Control Templates, and Styles! Bindings? I will admit it was fairly difficult to completely grasp everything and I am actually still learning.

I definitely would have not been able to do it without the help of fellow bloggers, miscellaneous forum posts and one of my new favorite sites, StackOverflow. Unfortunately I do not have everything bookmarked, but here are some of the sites that were very useful.

StackOverflow

This has been the most helpful site for me. It is basically a website were users can post questions and answer questions. That's it!

Dr. WPF - Items Control Series

A blog series by Dr. WPF. It was what really helped me start to learn how WPF actually works and was the inspiration for some of the UI.

Bea Stollnitz Blog
This blog wasn't as helpful to me as some other blogs because of what I was doing, but it definitely has HQ Content (High Quality).

Official Microsoft WinForms and WPF Website
Very useful. I watched many of the videos on the site and plan to watch some more.

Some Site
I don't remember how much I used of this site, but I had it bookmarked and it looks pretty good...

The weekend I made the switch to WPF I did some major grinding. I would say that I was at it for almost 40 hours in the three days. (I had Fridays off... yes, heroes get days off.) Once I returned to the town "SJSU", I couldn't help but to walk up to all of the NPCs and tell them about WPF. But still they all repeated the same thing they always say. I suppose that should have been expected.

Needless to say, I gained a lot of XP from this...

Level Up!
Jasson grows to Level 8 Programmer.
Jasson's HP increases by 1...
Jasson's STR increases by -5... >.>;
Jasson learns skill "Basic WPF"

*saved game*

3 comments:

  1. I can't believe you have no concept of Data Templates, Control Templates, and Styles! During the Great Depression, my mother was forced to make soup out of my snowshoes, so I had to use Data Templates instead for the 10 mile trudge -uphill in both directions- to skool. Then when I got home I had to use Control Templates to milk the cows and a Routed Command to butcher a chicken. That one chicken had to feed Mom, Dad, me, and my 49 siblings for a week. Times were hard, but we loved each other and got thru it without the help of WPF, thank you.

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  2. Did your STR go up by negative 5?! Also, is STR strength? Like physical strength? ^_^

    Great blog, I wish I knew a bit more about what you are talking about :D

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  3. @Doug Yes, STR is strength (physical strength). Programming isn't too physically demanding...just works your fingers out a lot and let me tell you, my fingers are buff.

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