LEARNING NEW TECHNOLOGIES ON THE FLY

An ASP.NET & REACT interview experience.

Last week I applied for an open role, and immediately received a link to the interview coding challenge. Due to the private nature of the interview project, I will only disclose information about the technologies used and the lessons learned from the experience.

The technologies required to build the project were: Client-Side — ReactJS, Webpack, TypeScript, and Server-Side — .NET Core Web API.

This is what I did to create the project in less than a week. I started with the server side since I was completely green about C# or ASP.NET. I took a crash tutorial on C# with Self-guided tutorials to get a grasp of the syntax.

Then moved on to Learn .NET — “Free tutorials, videos, courses, and more for beginners through advanced .NET developers” and completed the first 4 courses, to learn ASP.NET.

Lastly, I read the first 7 chapters of this book — ASP.NET Core 5 and React — Second Edition and skipped & skimmed through the rest of the chapters, since the requirements for the project were concrete and straightforward.

I know this all seems like it's going very fast. It is…, and that's because of the timeline set to complete the project and the fact that the C# syntax is similar to the Java and Kotlin syntax that I'm so familiar with.

What's more, I got to use paradigms like OOP, solid principles like Repository pattern & Interface segregation, state management using Redux, Dependency Injection, and many more that I use every day while working on android apps.

In the beginning, I was actually scared of learning ASP.NET, the name alone isn't very welcoming. As I built the project, with the help of C# & ASP.NET documentation, the front and back ends clicked into place.

I realized as a programmer, you need to understand the underlying fundamentals, paradigms, data structures & algorithms, and principles(like SOLID) of software engineering and not worry so much about learning the languages — but the syntax.

This was a very satisfying experience, that pushed me out of my comfort zone. Even though I don't get the job, I'm glad I went through with the process and submitted the project on time.

Just imagine what you can do when you set your mind to learning something new.