There are many ways and venues to learn and build your professional software development skills. Not all of these are free or as good as they appear to be. If you are a beginner, or want to brush up your skills I recommend you take a look at ramp up.

What is it?

Ramp up is a free, online, community-based learning program that helps you build professional software development skills. The ramp up program was created by Microsoft, and all of its content is created by well known people, who are experts in the different Microsoft technologies. These experts include, well known authors, MVPs, and developer community leaders.

One of the most interesting things of this program is that the content is created and maintained by software experts, such as:

  • Scott Allen
  • Dino Esposito
  • Sara Rea
  • David Leblanc
  • Tom Kinser

and many more, click here to view the full list.

 

What is the format?

This program is divided into various tracks, and you can sign up for as many as you want, it is free. The available tracks as of October 2009 are:

  • Move from ASP to asp.net
  • Learn asp.net: for PHP Developers
  • Web Development with asp.net
  • Develop Windows Mobile 6 Applications
  • SharePoint for Developers (part 1 and 2)
  • Visual Studio 2008
  • Developer Basics
  • Java Developer: Learn .NET
  • VB 6.0 Developer: Learn VB 2005
  • VS 2002/2003 Developer: Learn VS 2005

You can sign up for and complete as many of these tracks as you want. Once you sign up for one of the tracks, you will have access to a page with a summary, links to the learning material and all the steps required to complete the track. The learning materials are composed of the following:

  • Word documents
  • Videos
  • Labs

As you read and complete each one of these training materials, you click on a button to mark that step as completed and then move to the next step. The Ramp up website has a very useful page to help you keep track of your learning resources.

 

How to start?

Well, as I mentioned early, it is a free program so all you have to do is sign-up for it and start completing the tracks that interest you. You learn at your own pace.

There is also a Ramp up forum where you can find answers to your questions about the Ramp up program or any other questions related to the topics in the program tracks.

 

Summary

Ramp up is a cool program, it has quality content, experienced people behind it, well chosen tracks and it is also free, it is great!