Hello, everyone. I have just got into studying C#. I have been interested in programming for a while, and would really like to help out our developer at work work on some projects. (He writes a lot of programs to interface with a labor/food cost program we use in our restaurants as well as other business related tasks/programs)

I am using .NET v 4.0. I have a copy of Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 that I am coding in as well as writing programs in Notepad++ just to make sure I understand the relationships between everything and work on anything VS automatically codes for you. I have a book I've been working through as well as a few online sources, and it's been coming along very well thus far.

Along with my training material's exercises, I have been writing my own programs utilizing anything I've learned thus far and trying to stretch the limit of what I've learned to encompass new ideas or just look at issues in a different way and think outside of the box. I have been writing a lot of pointless programs just to work on my understanding of loops, structures, arrays etc. and it has been going well but I feel like everything I am doing is useless outside of practice.

The resources I have seen/use primarily have "do this as we do it" type exercises, which is why I have been creating my own projects. But a console program that displays a list from inputted numbers/strings doesn't apply to real world scenarios.

My question is, is there something I should be working on to help better my understanding of this language for a business environment? Any input or advice is appreciated. Thank you all in advance!