Yesterday I went out to my first ever User Group meetup as a developer.

It was an event where we all got together to watch the livestream of the .NET Conference Keynote, eat some pizza, talk, and win some prizes. Fun was had by all. Beyond being a good time, it was also a huge success for Microsoft in terms of hooking me to their future plans for .NET.

So who am I?

I'm a nobody. I'm just a guy changing careers in his 30s and finishing up his last semester of a computer science degree at a community college. I'm pretty much anyone looking to get into the development game right now. I have a bunch of general knowledge, but little practical experience and what professional experience I do have is spread out across JavaScript, C#, .NET, and a host of other technologies.

Why might a nobody be important?

Because for all the reasons above, I'm a pretty good amalgamation of what represents a growing number of young programmers. There is an ever increasing amount of development jobs out there and not enough seasoned developers out there. That means that more and more businesses are going to have to start sucking up the cost of initial training. Microsoft and the people developing .NET are offering a toolset that has transferable skills and full-stack solutions.

As a budding developer, I appreciate that .NET can potentially give me a skill set that tracks across desktop executables, to web, to mobile apps. The skills I develop working in one area will transfer to the others with minimal adjustment. So yeah, congrats Microsoft, you sold me on your platform?

What's next? What are you doing?

This last semester of school is significantly less challenging than any before it and you can only spend so many hours a day dedicated to the job hunt. I was just watching cartoons, but that's not going to help me develop the skills or generate attention to help me get a job. To help fill my time in a productive manner, I am going to start a new .NET Core 3 project. Specifically, I am going to transform my boring old, basic HTML personal website into a boring, over-engineered SPA site using all the fancy tricks now available with the launch of Core 3.

Along the way, I'm simply just going to give my feedback and insight as a fresh out of college junior developer taking the time to learn these new tools and designs.

Why are you doing this?

Basically because I was going to do it anyways, so I might as well share the experience? Maybe it will help or inform others? Also I'm looking forward to getting feedback. At times, I might ask people reading for feedback on what I should do next or where I should look for a solution. Also, I'm just kind of bored.

Is this a tutorial?

Absolutely not. I am a professional idiot and this should be taken into account when reading my opinions, ideas, and theories during this project. I don't feel comfortable putting myself forward as any sort of expert and don't want people to think otherwise.

I will post some screenshots and example of my own code. I will probably upload the whole thing as a repo in case anyone is really THAT interested. Doing so shouldn't imply that it's good code/design or should be copied/emulated.

That said, I will regularly try to link to tutorials, documentation, and other resources that I happen upon during my own research. However, I would challenge to check out my sources and not just assume they're valid. That's just good practice.

Why are you making me ask you so many questions?

1. I'm using it as a narrative device to tie this whole post together.
2. it's a subtle trick into hopefully making you feel engaged with the post.
3. it's a power thing.

When should I expect the first official post in this series?

Hopefully by the end of this week. I have homework, job interviews, etc. This is a personal project, so development might be inconsistent, but I'll do my best to post something at least weekly to get this started.

Thanks for reading.