Video Series: “Windows Phone 7 Development for Absolute Beginners”

If you’re new to software development and want to build apps for Windows Phone 7 – or if you know someone who fits this description – you should take a look at this 64-part series of short videos (none longer than a half-hour, most much shorter) titled Windows Phone 7 Development for Absolute Beginners.

When they put “Absolute Beginners” in the series’ name, they weren’t kidding. Over the series, host Bob Tabor from LearnVisualStudio.net covers such basics as:

• Installing, using and exploring Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone.
• Writing applications from the ground up: from declaring variables and assigning values to them to if statements to writing your own classes to working with .NET’s collections to exception handling.
• Taking advantage of Windows Phone features from Silverlight controls to isolated storage and tombstoning and task switching.

Phone app development is a great starting point for the beginning developer. Phone projects tend to be smaller by nature, making them perfect candidates for newbies or after-work “side projects”, and since mobile computing is all the rage these days, it’s more likely to keep a beginning developer interested enough to overcome the usual frustrations that go along with learning programming. I’ve tried out development on Windows Phone, iPhone and Android and find that Windows Phone is the fastest and easiest phone to develop for, and it’s a great environment for the budding developer. If you’re a budding developer who wants to get into the wild and wooly world of mobile or if you know one, Windows Phone 7 Development for Absolute Beginners is a great place to start!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.