A bit of background

I started coding when Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 was the best thing since sliced bread. When I initially studied programming I was forced to do VB.NET. The main problem I had with VB.NET was it was a little too unique (at least in terms of syntax). If you were an expert in VB, that was basically it. It is just too hard to transition to any other language. As part of my studies I did Java for about a year. I grew to love the Java syntax more during that year. I also learnt that Java was much closer in syntax to the C family of languages.

C#

I have worked with C# as my primary programming language for the past 15 years. The people at my very first job (Universal Information Technologies) told me I had to do C# and that was it. Luckily I had that 1 year of Java experience so transitioning wasn't too hard.

Over the years I have chosen C# as my specialty, I have focused on becoming a specialist in C#. I think I did it purely because how amazing the language is (let me not start talking about linq ). So yes, I have done ASP.NET Webforms, MVC, WPF and back-end services. That covers everything in the world of C#, except .NET Core, which I am getting to!

.NET Core

I started exploring .NET Core when Core 2.0 was just released. I thought to wait a bit and not immediately explore it when version 1 came out, as it was so new. In my experience I have learnt that new things tend to need a few patches before it is truly stable. When I joined DVT I was placed at a major television broadcaster as a consultant. There I learnt about Core WebApi and cloud technologies in the AWS space, more on this under Cloud.

Since then I have evolved into doing more advanced stuff in Core 2, like building a complete MVC website, complete with claims based login using (OWIN), even including the all powerful 2 factor authentication.

TL;DR:

• Me on MVC - EXCELLENT
• Me on MVVM Concepts - EXCELLENT
• Me on Angular - Average (As of Feb 2020)
• Me on React - No exposure (As of Feb 2020)
• Me on TypeScript - Good (Love the syntax!)

I have been doing web development since .NET 3.5 was in its infancy. The only way to build websites then was using ASP.NET Webforms and having to manage that dreadful ViewState object. Over the years I have worked with various other web technologies but the main one that stuck with has been MVC. I am a very big fan of MVC and how dynamic it is and the possibilities it brings to the web development world.

MVVM

I enjoy researching different tools in programming and, in today's world it is necessary to do it in order to keep up with trends. I have used the familiar MVVM pattern of building responsive front-ends when I was exposed to WPF for a few years and I was wondering if there was something similar in the web space. To my amazement I found out this has been a long standing trend! I then went and looked at a common and well supported library to start learning these MVVM bindings and patterns. Thats when I met Knockout.js. It was fairly easy to get used to and I have managed to build some awesomely responsive Web front-ends using it.

Angular + React

Angular and React have become so widely popular its unbelievable. With this in mind, it was inevitable for me to climb on either the Angular or the React train.

If I had to rate myself on my knowledge on Angular it would still be novice at best. As of February of 2020, I have been exposed to Angular for roughly 8 to 9 months. The main issue with regards to why I rate myself so low is I that have always been tasked with making changes to existing Angular applications. I have never built an Angular application from scratch which is, where I feel, the most hard-core exposure to a technology comes from. Having extensive experience in the MVVM way of doing things (and things like JQuery Ajax etc), the learning curve of doing Angular bindings was fairly easy.

TypeScript

Coming from a C# world where everything is neatly structured and strongly typed, it did not take me long to fall in love with TypeScript. For me, TypeScript reads a lot like those cheesy love stories my wife so loves to read, to her the stories are always so sweet even though the endings and story lines are pretty predictable. I honestly wish TypeScript will become natively supported by modern browsers.

Microsoft SQL (MSSQL)

I have been working with Microsoft SQL for probably about 90% of my professional career. This would be things like query optimization, checking clustered versus non-clustered indexes to improve database query performance, deploying DACPAC files, tweaking isolation levels when running certain operations where a dirty read is considered "ok", to creating CLR procedures to run some CLR code a little closer the database server.

Document Storage

For one of my personal projects, the client had a requirement that needed my database to house hundreds and eventually thousands of documents, I knew storing lots of files in the database would be detrimental to performance and the fact that the website would have to run on SQL Express, which has a 10 GB file limit for both the MDF and the LDF combined. Luckily though the hosting plan was to host it on a Virtual Private Server (VPS), which meant that I had control over what version of SQL would be running there. That was when I discovered the FileStreams feature in SQL 2017 and I quickly realized the benefits of using it.

Benefits of FileStreams:

• Data is stored on the file system directly which means increased I\O performance.
• Files can easily be stored across multiple storage units, again, increasing I\O. (Documents and system critical tables do not have to be on the same hard-drive, you can split them up across multiple hard-drives, which means increased performance in parallel I\O operations)

MySql

I worked with MySql for about a year and a half back in 2010 up until mid 2011. I worked on software for a big investment firm which ran on MySql. I grew to dislike MySql very quickly, but to be fair, this was likely due to the specific version of MySql I was forced to work on. This specific version did not support stored procedures and functions and the only datatype you could cast to was CHAR. This was frustrating to me as I had to adopt bad practices in order to develop on MySql.

Windows Services

Windows services was once upon a time the only way to properly run back-end jobs I have written numerous multi-threaded back-end services using timers, purely because of timers running on their own threads by design. This made multi-threading a lot easier back in the days of .NET 3.5. Times have changed a lot since then, and these days my go-to library for windows services would probably be Quartz.NET and Topshelf

Quartz (CRON) & Topshelf

Quartz is a very common library amongst developers, so I won't elaborate on it, however not every developer knows of Topshelf's existence. Topshelf makes the one pain about writing windows services so much easier - debugging. It offers seamless differentiation between running as a console application (Visual Studio) and running as an actual windows service So yes I would recommend Topshelf to any .NET developer!

SOAP and RESTful

I have created WCF SOAP services and worked with RESTful services in both .NET Framework and .NET Core (2 & 3) quite extensively, but more in .NET Core 2 than 3, purely because at the time of writing this, Core 3 was just released.

I have built a few multi-treaded desktop applications, back when windows applications were still cool. I quickly jumped into WPF which I loved. The possibility that XAML opens up when designing UI's is just incredible. WPF was the start of me learning how to create clean code to manage UI's and make them responsive.

AWS

I have been exposed to some MicroService architecture specifically in the AWS space. Using API Gateway to connect to a MicroService running a AWS Lambda Function. I was only exposed to this technology for about 7 months so I can hardly call myself proficient.

Azure

In the Azure space I have mainly worked with the Azure DevOps side of the tech. Configuring some CI (Continues Integration) pipelines, queueing builds, prepping releases, etc. I haven't worked with the more technical side of Azure (The MicroServices etc side).