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Dynamics 365 Community / Forums / Small and medium business | Business Central, N... / New Developer - Where ...
Small and medium business | Business Central, N...
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New Developer - Where to start, C/AL or AL?

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Posted on by GBFServices 15

I've been a functional consultant for MS Dynamics NAV and Business Central for 3 years. I want to gain more technical knowledge and transition into development and I figured Quarantine would be a great time to do that. I know that BC is written AL while NAV is written in C/AL. I don't know the differences in the two and I am unsure as to where I should start. 

As a consultant, I know that I will work in both programs so I need to understand both languages but should I start with C/AL or AL, SQL or something all together different?

I am self teaching, so any tips, tricks, resources that you use are also beneficial. I'm open to paid and free resources.

  • Daniel Rimmelzwaan Profile Picture
    Daniel Rimmelzwaan 3,485 on at
    RE: New Developer - Where to start, C/AL or AL?

    I would say focus on AL, but also get yourself a book from Packt publishing called 'programming Microsoft dynamics NAV' by Dave Studebaker, I think the NAV 2013 one is the most recent one but browse around on the Packt website. It doesn't really matter which edition, because the difference is not that great. In fact I was one of the technical reviewers for two or three versions of that book, and one time the only difference was refreshed screenshots.

    I've taught hundreds of people AL development, what you learn about AL will be very familiar in C/SIDE and vice versa.

  • GBFServices Profile Picture
    GBFServices 15 on at
    RE: New Developer - Where to start, C/AL or AL?

    I think that’s hard to determine. My main client this year was a new company that went straight to BC but after that, I worked with people in older versions of NAV. Some planned to upgrade to BC but many planned to upgrade to a newer version of NAV. It seems like I’d need both regardless of where I start.

  • Daniel Rimmelzwaan Profile Picture
    Daniel Rimmelzwaan 3,485 on at
    RE: New Developer - Where to start, C/AL or AL?

    Depends on the work that you'll do I suppose. If your clients are all NAV clients, you would need to learn about that. Assuming that your work is on current versions though, you would obviously need to start with AL.

    Here's a playlist of about 20 hours of free dev training: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9rRz0l0Guc&list=PL1FESh9FqyhQxkZXYYp1X1tTpXf3-9iSR

  • Suggested answer
    Marco Mels Profile Picture
    Marco Mels on at
    RE: New Developer - Where to start, C/AL or AL?

    Hello,

    Please do consider to join the ready to go program which is probably what you are looking for:

    docs.microsoft.com/.../readiness-ready-to-go

    Thanks.

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