| Have you ever found that you get to the end of a programming book and
think, “Great, now I know the syntax, but where do I actually start with
building something for real?” Have you ever tried to apply a technique
from a book and quickly discovered that things are far more complicated
when you are actually implementing code, or that the technique just
doesn’t work in the real world? If so, you will immediately understand
where the Evolution series is coming from. If not, you can appreciate the
complete application that comes with this book and is free for you to use
as the basis of your own development.
The aim of the Evolution books is to teach real-world programming techniques
in the best way possible—by looking at real applications. You
won’t find any toy samples or theoretical solutions in Evolution books—
just real code for the sort of applications that a lot of developers want to
build.
The Evolution name refers to the idea that, throughout the book, the
sample application is improved and extended. It also applies to the fact
that, when you have finished reading the book, you can take the code
provided and use it as a starting point for an online community of
your own.
Each Evolution book is based upon a single, fully working application. The
application is completely explained so that, even if you haven’t built an
application on this scale before, you will be able to understand how it
works and why it was built the way it was. This book will then show you
how to modify the application, customize it to your needs, and add
completely new features to it. By the time you finish working through an
Evolution book, you will know the sample application well enough to
make it your own. You also will have seen how a real application works,
from the user interface to the data structures.
The sample application that is covered in this book is an ASP.NET online
community application. It is designed to be flexible so that it can form
the basis of many different communities. For example, it could be used to
create a way for friends to stay in touch with each other or for related
businesses to network. (I already have two installations of the code base
running and a third on the way.) |
