Tools and Skills for .NET 10
Description
Key Features
Coverage of key .NET tools and skills, including refactoring, source code management, debugging, and more
Practical guidance on using code editors effectively and implementing good practices
Explore cutting-edge techniques like cloud native development with Aspire and containerization
Free with your book: DRM-free PDF version + access to Packt's next-gen reader
Book Description.NET is more powerful-and more complex-than ever. As the ecosystem evolves, so do the expectations from developers. Mastering the tools and patterns of professional .NET development can be the difference between simply shipping code and delivering resilient, scalable software. Tools and Skills for .NET 10 is a practical guide to leveling up in today's .NET world, offering both hard technical skills and career strategies to help you thrive. Inside, you'll learn how to manage codebases with Git and implement debugging and memory analysis techniques that save hours of guesswork. The book also covers best practices for writing and maintaining documentation for your code, services, and APIs, which is crucial for team collaboration. You'll explore cryptography for securing data and concurrency for building responsive apps. Further chapters explore dependency injection, testing for performance and reliability, and packaging your apps in Docker containers. By the end of this book, you'll be equipped not only with technical skills but also with the confidence to apply them in real environments. Whether you're aiming for a promotion, switching jobs, or preparing for technical interviews, you'll have the skills and the language to present yourself as a capable, well-rounded .NET developer ready for anything the industry throws at you.What you will learn
Make the most of code editor tools for efficient development
Explore advanced debugging techniques and troubleshooting strategies
Understand how to protect data and applications using cryptography
Build responsive, high-performance projects using multitasking and concurrency
Discover how to master dependency injection
Optimize performance through benchmarking and testing
Delve into cloud-native development using Aspire
Advance your career with advice on job readiness and interviews
Who this book is forThis book is for .NET professionals seeking to enhance their expertise, as well as aspiring developers aiming to advance their careers in the field. This book caters to individuals eager to master essential .NET tools, refine their development practices, explore advanced techniques and cutting-edge tools, and prepare themselves for job opportunities and interviews in the competitive landscape of .NET development.
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Content
Introducing Tools and Skills for .NET
Making the Most of the Tools in Your Code Editor
Source Code Management Using Git
Debugging and Memory Troubleshooting
Logging, Tracing, and Metrics for Observability
Documenting Your Code, APIs, and Services
Observing and Modifying Code Execution Dynamically
Protecting Data and Apps Using Cryptography
Multitasking and Concurrency
Dependency Injection, Containers, and Service Lifetime
Unit Testing and Mocking
Integration and Security Testing
Benchmarking Performance, Load, and Stress Testing
Functional and End-to-End Testing of Websites and Services
Containerization Using Docker
Cloud-Native Development Using Aspire
Design Patterns and Principles
Software and Solution Architecture Foundations
Your Career, Teamwork, and Interviews
Epilogue
Appendix A: Answers to the Test Your Knowledge Questions
Appendix B: Setting Up Your Development Environment
1
Introducing Tools and Skills for .NET
In this first chapter, the goals are understanding the tools and skills that you will learn in this book, setting up your development environment to use Visual Studio 2026, Visual Studio Code, or JetBrains Rider, and then setting up a database and projects to use in the rest of the chapters. Throughout this book, I will use the names Visual Studio, VS Code, and Rider to refer to these three code editors respectively.
I use the term modern .NET to refer to .NET 10 and its predecessors like .NET 5, which derive from .NET Core. I use the term legacy .NET to refer to .NET Framework, Mono, Xamarin, and .NET Standard. Modern .NET is a unification of those legacy platforms and standards.
Every chapter in this book introduces some tools and some skills, but some chapters are more focused on a particular tool or a particular skill.
This chapter covers the following topics:
- Introducing this book and its contents
- Setting up your development environment
- Setting up a database and projects for this book
- Making good use of the GitHub repository for this book
- Where to go for help
- Using future versions of .NET with this book
The GitHub repository for this book has solutions using full application projects for all code tasks: https://github.com/markjprice/tools-skills-net10/.
After going to the GitHub repository, simply press the . (dot) key on your keyboard or change
.comto.devto change the repository into a live code editor based on VS Code using GitHub Codespaces. VS Code in a web browser is great to run alongside your chosen code editor as you work through the book's coding tasks. You can compare your code to the solution code and easily copy and paste parts if needed.
Free Benefits with Your Book
Your purchase includes a free PDF copy of this book (containing Appendix A, B, and C), along with other exclusive benefits. Check the Free Benefits with Your Book section in the Preface to unlock them instantly and maximize your learning experience.
Introducing this book and its contents
Before we dive into an overview of this book, let's set the context by understanding that this is one of four books about .NET 10 that I have written, covering almost everything a beginner to .NET needs to know.
Companion books to complete your learning journey
This book is the fourth of a quartet of books that completes your learning journey through .NET 10:
- The first book, C# 14 and .NET 10 - Modern Cross-Platform Development Fundamentals, covers the fundamentals of the C# language, the .NET libraries, and using modern ASP.NET Core, Blazor, and Minimal API web services for web development. It is designed to be read linearly because skills and knowledge from earlier chapters build up and are needed to understand later chapters.
- The second book, Real-World Web Development with .NET 10, covers mature and proven web development technologies like ASP.NET Core MVC and controller-based Web API web services, as well as OData, FastEndpoints, and Umbraco CMS for building real-world web projects on .NET 10. You will learn how to test your web services using xUnit and test the user interfaces of your websites using Playwright, and then how to containerize your projects ready for deployment.
- The third book, Apps and Services with .NET 10, covers data using SQL Server, Dapper, and EF Core, as well as more specialized .NET libraries like internationalization and popular third-party packages including Serilog and Noda Time. You will learn how to build native ahead-of-time (AOT)-compiled services with ASP.NET Core Minimal API web services and how to improve performance, scalability, and reliability using caching, queues, and background services. You will also implement modern services using GraphQL, gRPC, and SignalR. Finally, you will learn how to build graphical user interfaces for websites, desktop, and mobile apps with .NET MAUI, Avalonia, and Blazor.
- This fourth book (the one you're reading now), Tools and Skills for .NET 10, covers important tools and skills that a professional .NET developer should have. These include design patterns and solution architecture, debugging, memory analysis, all the important types of testing, whether it be unit, integration, performance, or web user interface testing, and then topics for testing cloud-native solutions on your local computer like containerization, Docker, and Aspire. Finally, we will look at how to prepare for an interview to get the .NET developer career that you want.
A summary of the .NET 10 quartet and their most important topics is shown in Figure 1.1:
Figure 1.1: Companion books for learning .NET for beginner-to-intermediate readers
Audiences for this book
This book caters to two audiences:
- Readers who have completed my book for learning the fundamentals of the C# language, .NET libraries, and using ASP.NET Core for web development, C# 14 and .NET 10 - Modern Cross-Platform Development Fundamentals, and now want to take their learning further.
- Readers who already have basic skills and knowledge about C# and .NET and want to acquire practical skills and knowledge of common tools to become more professional with their .NET development, and in particular join a team of .NET developers.
Let's look at an analogy:
- First, an amateur cook might buy a book to learn fundamental skills, concepts, and terminology that any cook needs to make the most common dishes.
- Second, an amateur cook might also buy a recipe book to learn how to apply that knowledge and those skills to make complete meals. These meals might be traditional classics loved by most people, or daring dishes for a modern audience.
- Third, to become a professional cook, they would also need to understand the roles in a professional kitchen, learn more specialized tools and skills that are needed when cooking meals for many more people in a professional environment, and how to work in a team of cooks.
These three scenarios are why I wrote four books about .NET. (The second scenario covers two types of food, mature and modern.)
The preface briefly introduces each chapter, but many readers skip the preface. So, let's now review why each topic is covered in more depth.
Tools
There are many tools that a professional .NET developer should be familiar with. Some are built into most code editors like a debugger or source control integration, and some require separate applications and services like memory analysis and telemetry.
Even beginner developers quickly become familiar with the basic tools included with a code editor like the main editing window, managing files in a project, how to set a breakpoint and start debugging, and then step through the code statement by statement, and how to run a project, so those topics will not be covered in this book. If you don't already have these skills, then I recommend that you read my book C# 14 and .NET 10 - Modern Cross-Platform Development Fundamentals.
Chapter 2, Making the Most of the Tools in Your Code Editor, is about the less commonly used tools built into Visual Studio, VS Code, and Rider. The major tools like a debugger or memory analysis tools are covered in separate later chapters. This chapter covers topics like refactoring features and how to customize your code editor using standards like .editorconfig.
Chapter 3, Source Code Management Using Git, covers the most common tasks that you would perform with Git to manage your source code, especially when working in a team of .NET developers. Git is a distributed source control system, so developers have a local copy of the entire repository. This enables offline work, fast branching, and merging. Git is the most popular source code control system for .NET projects, and there are tools and extensions available for seamless integration with all code editors and command-line tools. GitHub is a popular Microsoft platform for hosting Git repositories and collaborating on software projects.
Chapter 4, Debugging and Memory Troubleshooting, is about using the debugging tools in your code editor. You will learn how to use the built-in debugging features, how to decorate your own code with attributes to make it easier to see what's happening while debugging, and how to use tools in your code editor to track the usage of memory to improve your apps and services.
Chapter 5, Logging, Tracing, and Metrics for Observability, is about how to instrument your code to enable tracing, metrics, and logging during production, and how to implement telemetry using OpenTelemetry to monitor your code as it executes to enable observability.
Skills
As well as learning how to use the tools...
