When talent, skill and a desire for continuous learning come together, you know you're looking at more than 15 years of IT, embodied by someone who shares — with everyone passionate about it — the experiences and challenges of the profession he loves.
Throughout his career he has experimented with a wide range of technologies, and in this article he talks to us about .NET. Daniel Costea is a mentor for students who walk through the doors of Informal School of IT, and he helps them build a set of values to guide their professional journey.
It's not hard to write an application from A to Z.
But mastering any language or technology takes a lot of practice
1. What does .NET mean?
.NET is a framework for Windows, home to several technologies such as: ASP.NET WebForms, ASP.NET MVC, WebAPI, Azure, Xamarin, and many others. NET is synonymous with developing applications across all Windows platforms, and not only that (!). In the past year, Microsoft has genuinely managed to push past the boundaries of its own platform through .NET Core – a version of the .NET framework that makes it possible to write applications across multiple platforms. We can now write applications with the excellent Visual Studio 2017 (which is actually version 15) for the following platforms: Windows, Linux (various distributions: Red Hat, Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, Android, etc.), Mac OS X.
This can be done by writing code only once, while the resulting application, through its artifacts, runs on any of these platforms.
2. How hard is it to write a Web application from A to Z?
It's well known that C# is a kind of lingua franca for Visual Studio, but writing a web application from A to Z means a rendez-vous with no fewer than five languages: C#, SQL, HTML, CSS and Javascript. Add to that a wide variety of frameworks and technologies, but that's precisely the beauty of it: in .NET we have solutions available for any problem.
To answer the question, no – it's not hard to write an application from A to Z, because ASP.NET does its job very well and because Visual Studio is a mature development environment that assists the programmer at every step through its many features. But mastering any language or technology takes a lot of practice. Informal School of IT meets this need through its mentors, practitioners with years of experience who become mentors for students eager to build a career in the field.
Mentors give students feedback throughout their entire journey
3. What challenges will you encounter along the learning process?
The intensive pace will be the biggest challenge. Informal School of IT is a system designed to be very efficient, where every hour counts. For every session, students need to work a few hours at home to cement the knowledge needed for the following sessions.
Informal School of IT mentors go through this process together with them and guide them constantly: they give feedback throughout their entire journey — on homework and on the contribution made to team projects. At the same time, mentors also receive feedback during every course session from participants, and they continuously and immediately improve the quality of their teaching, based on students' needs.
There's high demand for .NET developers right now in the job market
4. What advantages do people who know this technology have?
There's an exceptional opportunity in the market right now, because there's high demand for .NET developers, and recruiters at IT companies can't find enough candidates to fill all the open positions. This is happening even at the company where I work. What's also curious is that demand for .NET jobs is comparable to demand for Java jobs, for example. Yet everyone is rushing to take Java trainings and courses, while .NET positions at IT companies risk staying unfilled.
There's a preconceived notion that Microsoft's tools cost money. Few people know that free versions (depending on the type of licensing) of Visual Studio, Microsoft SQL, and others exist.
You can write code tied to Microsoft's tools completely free of charge. Plus, of course, when you write code for a client, within a company, it's no longer your job to pay for any licenses.
You have the chance to start from ZERO, even if you've had no contact with IT before
Informal School of IT's programs are structured so they can accommodate any technical level you're at right now:
Introduction
For students who want to make a career change, we offer the Intro in IT program, dedicated to those who haven't had any contact with IT before. We also recommend this 40-hour program to those who want to refresh their technical knowledge.
Training
The next level is the 100-hour training program. Here there's a rich variety of disciplines, including the .NET Development educational program, focused on learning the basics of a language or technology.
Specialization
The last level of training at Informal School of IT is the specialization program, through which students continue their training toward more advanced technologies.
A message for those reading this interview:
Do you like learning new things, is technology your favorite kind of reading, and are logic and creativity among your strengths?
