u/PotatoLover400

I just landed a job as a .NET developer and I want to prepare in advance. I start in 3 months. They'll train me technically, but I learn best by understanding things myself first and then asking questions. I don't want to just go "monkey see, monkey do," ship it, and forget everything a week later.

Here's where I'm at:

• I know C# the language reasonably well, and I understand OOP and SOLID.
• In university I used C#, .NET Core, and .NET 6 at most.
• I've also worked with Java (Spring / Spring Boot) and Python for backend.
• For frontend I mostly use React + TypeScript now, but before that I built UIs with Web Forms and Razor Pages.

My actual struggle is with .NET as an ecosystem rather than the language. There are a lot of layers, and I don't know how they connect : DI, middleware, the request pipeline, EF Core, project structure, configuration, etc. I can read about each piece in isolation, but I'm missing the mental model of how it all fits together in a real application.

So my questions:

1. What's the best way to build that "how it all connects" mental model?
2. Are there resources (courses, books, repos, sample projects) you'd recommend for someone who knows C# but not the wider .NET stack?
3. What concepts are most worth nailing before day one vs. things I can safely pick up on the job?

Thanks in advance.

I just landed a job as a .NET developer and I want to prepare in advance. I start in 3 months. They'll train me technically, but I learn best by understanding things myself first and then asking questions. I don't want to just go "monkey see, monkey do," ship it, and forget everything a week later.

Here's where I'm at:

• I know C# the language reasonably well, and I understand OOP and SOLID.
• In university I used C#, .NET Core, and .NET 6 at most.
• I've also worked with Java (Spring / Spring Boot) and Python for backend.
• For frontend I mostly use React + TypeScript now, but before that I built UIs with Web Forms and Razor Pages.

My actual struggle is with .NET as an ecosystem rather than the language. There are a lot of layers, and I don't know how they connect : DI, middleware, the request pipeline, EF Core, project structure, configuration, etc. I can read about each piece in isolation, but I'm missing the mental model of how it all fits together in a real application.

So my questions:

1. What's the best way to build that "how it all connects" mental model?
2. Are there resources (courses, books, repos, sample projects) you'd recommend for someone who knows C# but not the wider .NET stack?
3. What concepts are most worth nailing before day one vs. things I can safely pick up on the job?

Thanks in advance.