Well done!! If you got this point, I’m sure you feel accomplished. It wasn’t easy. You were probably frustrated and disheartened at times. You felt stuck and maybe even thought of quitting. But you pushed through! And now you can proudly affirm you know the basics of back-end development with C#. How are you planning to celebrate? 🍾 You deserve it!! 😁

✅ Basic C# Syntax and Control Flow
✅ Console Application Techniques: User Input and Validation
✅ Basic SQL Syntax and Crud Commands
✅ Principles of MVC Design: Models, Controllers, UI, Services, Validators
✅ Interaction with files in your file system
✅ Calling an External Api with Http Requests
✅ Entity Framework
✅ Creating and calling Web APIs
✅ Webscrapping
✅ Sending e-mails with code
✅ Fundamentals of Unit Testing

That's a lot!! Again... Well done!!!

Now that you have a good understanding of the basic principles of back-end web development with C#, what’s the next step? Well, there’s a lot to do! ASP.NET is endless, but as I said before, most of what you’ll do from now on is a variation of what you’ve already done. Calling databases, getting the user input and processing data in between.

The next steps in this program involve building full-stack applications with the following:

➡️ ASP.NET MVC With Razor Syntax
➡️ Securing Your App With Authorisation and Authentication With Asp.NET Identity
➡️ Deploying your full-stack app with Azure, Firebase
➡️ Desktop Applications With WPF and XAML
➡️ Single Page Applications with Blazor
➡️ Mobile Applications With Xamarin Forms (and hopefully with .NET MAUI)
➡️ CRUD Applications With React
➡️ CRUD Applications With Angular

But I'll be surprised if you get to the end of this list and you don't have a job yet.

Before we continue with our .NET C# program, I have to tell you. What you have done so far might be enough to land you a job. Yes, that’s right. The demand for C# developers is so high that a handful of console apps might suffice.

So while you learn everything else .NET has to offer, you’ll be also applying for jobs, with a decent chance of success. But we need to get organised first. You need a portfolio and a resume.

While a portfolio isn’t absolutely necessary to land you a job, it does increase your chances. You’ll read more about it in the Portfolio Area. So let’s get ready for our next three steps:

✔️ Creating a Portfolio
✔️ Creating a Resume
✔️ Applying for Jobs

If you don’t want to look for jobs right now, you can jump straight to the MVC Area, but I strongly recommend you still create a portfolio. Check out the portfolio project to understand why.