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Then they tossed Teach Yourself ASP.NET in 21 Days and said "make us a time clock." So I struggled for over 6 months just to get .Net to fidget like I wanted it to and I almost got done with the single department timeclock. Then the said "make us a full blown enterprise application that we can keep an employee directory, company wide time clock, employee/user/group administration, all out security, full blown knowledge base." A month into it and I'm struggling to no end. I still have no clue what I'm doing 70% of the time and I'm about to tell my boss that I can't do it.
I'm frustrated to tears and don't know what to do about it or where to go from here. Oh, I'm 19, fresh out of high school and have never touched programming before this company. I feel as if when I'm trying to learn something about ASP.NET there are half a dozen, if not more, other things I have to learn first, and a half dozen other things with each of those things. To end my rant, my question/plea is this: Are there any resources out there that I can learn how to do things that is really broken down to really simple terms. Those of you that are advanced in .NET? I mean so simple that it's stupid simple compared to what you think is already simple.
If anyone can help me, it would be greatly appreciated.
They do not seem to understand the limits of your capabilities. (Everybody has limits to their capabilities, not just you).
They should be offering to find somebody to support you as you climb this steep learning curve. They should be setting the project boundaries with your agreement, not simply slinging stuff at you. They should be asking you what training courses you need to be sent on to learn this stuff.
Unfortunately not all bosses are willing or able to put in the time to support or train you, so you may have to do some of their work for them. You may have to point out that you have never tackled a project this big before, and you will require some time and training to get it done. You'll also require a bit of understanding from them as you make mistakes along the way.
Then break the project down into manageable chunks, and set to work on just one at a time. Don't worry about the whole project at once, it could be overwhelming.
You're right, learning these technologies is not easy and they can take years to master, especially if you are new to programming. Once you have one language mastered, others are much easier to learn.
I have no doubt that as long as there is good communication between you and your bosses then the project will be a success, and you'll have a major achievement under your belt.
I have final year students on projects and I throw them in at the deepend deploying Exchange server or something big to see what they are capable of.
Its much better to be given the chance to learn (with full support) than to be constrained by a rigid job description, if you dont like that style maybe you should talk to them about it, but in my experience its a good way to let people develop.
They should be asking you what training courses you need to be sent on to learn this stuff.
You should be tellng them what training courses you need and how much they will cost. Thats proactive.
One of the great benefits of a programming career is that you never know what type of challenges you'll be faced with on a day-in-day-out basis. If that sounds like something that interests you then your probably leaning towards programming.
Second I would suggest that you decide if you want to code or not. Coding and "Look and Feel" are two entirely different skill sets. I have only met two people in my life that could do both well.
Finally if you don't have an MSDN universal subscription, including Visual Studio etc. you are having to work WAY too hard to get your code out the door. I would also suggest that you look at a product called Iron Speed to pregenerate a lot of your code.
Good luck with whatever you decide.
