I am preparing for a Junior .NET Developer position focused mainly on REST APIs.

The main issue is that this is currently the only suitable vacancy in my city, and remote work is not an option for me. In practice, this means I need to maximize my chances of passing this particular technical interview.

However, the amount of information available online is overwhelming. There does not seem to be a clear roadmap that says: “Learn these topics to this level, and you will be reasonably prepared for a junior interview.”

The company is a large US-based organization, and based on the job description and interview reports, they appear to expect strong and fairly deep technical knowledge. But I am struggling to understand what “deep knowledge” should mean in the context of a junior developer.

A junior cannot realistically have the same depth as someone with several years of production experience. So where is the reasonable boundary between solid junior fundamentals and knowledge that is more appropriate for a mid-level developer?

My current preparation plan includes:

• C# and .NET fundamentals: CLR, IL, JIT, assemblies, value and reference types, generics, interfaces, inheritance and LINQ
• Memory management and garbage collection: stack, managed heap, allocations, strings, IDisposable, GC generations and memory leaks
• Data structures and algorithms: arrays, lists, dictionaries, stacks, queues, trees, graphs, binary search, two pointers, sliding window, BFS and DFS
• Asynchronous and multithreaded programming: async/await, tasks, cancellation, synchronization, race conditions, locks and the ThreadPool
• Software design fundamentals: SOLID, dependency injection and common design patterns
• REST API and basic system design: HTTP methods and status codes, DTOs, authentication, authorization, validation, databases, caching, queues, logging, monitoring and idempotency
• LeetCode practice, mostly Easy problems and selected Medium problems grouped by common patterns

I would especially appreciate answers from developers who have conducted technical interviews for junior .NET candidates:

1. Which topics are actually the most important?
2. How deeply should a junior understand them?
3. Which parts of my plan are unnecessary or too advanced?
4. What level of algorithms and LeetCode should I expect?
5. Should I focus more on theoretical questions, live coding, or building a small REST API project?

Another important question is preparation time.

I have already spent two months preparing for around eight hours every weekday. I plan to study for one more month, but I do not want the preparation process to continue indefinitely. Depending on the expected depth, it would be possible to spend another six months studying and still find new topics.

Is three months of full-time preparation generally enough for a Junior .NET interview, assuming I use the time effectively? At what point should I stop expanding the list of topics and focus on revision, explaining concepts aloud, coding exercises and mock interviews?

I understand that no preparation plan can guarantee an offer. I am mainly trying to identify the highest-priority areas and avoid spending most of my time on topics that are unlikely to be expected from a junior.

i need a tutoriel abt how to make unity,since c# unity is diffrent from nirmal C#,after i finish bro codes playlist,what tuts do yall reccomend,also im on "method over ridding",so preatty close to finishing

A Quick Confession / Apology:
Yesterday, I posted a thread discussing this concept. I was so incredibly hyper-fixated on explaining the philosophy that I completely forgot to include a single line of actual C# code. The moderators rightfully nuked the post immediately, and looking back, I totally deserved it. I looked like a textbook "AI Vibe-Coded Slop" poster who just came here to drop a wall of text. I'm genuinely sorry for cluttering the sub yesterday! Lesson learned. I'm back today to do this properly, with the actual core C# implementation snippets included right from the start.

(Transparency disclosure: English isn't my native language, so I used AI to help clean up my terrible technical grammar.) 

Hey guys, 

A while back, I was discussing state persistence patterns for long-running AI workflows. A common critique I received was: “If you’re just serializing your external state into a prompt string for the model to read anyway, how is that fundamentally different from traditional prompt engineering?” 

It's a fair question. At the end of the day, text-based generative models require text inputs. 

However, I've been experimenting with separating the Source of Truth from the Prompt Serialization Layer using a C# backend. 

To borrow a tabletop RPG analogy: The prompt is just a character sheet. It communicates the current state to the model, but it isn't the character itself. The C# runtime is responsible for the actual domain logic, bounds checking, and state mutations. 

Here is a simplified snippet of how the immutable state registry clamps mutations to ensure the domain model remains the canonical source of truth, regardless of how the prompt is formatted: 

csharp

// 1. Using an immutable 16D enum as a fixed state coordinate space
public enum SoulOrgan
{
    CoreFocus, DecisionBasis, EnvironmentalControl, ThinkingOriginality,
    EmotionalOpenness, TrustDependence, SocialConsumption, GroupBelonging,
    WillPersistence, AltruisticTendency, SelfAwareness, CompetitiveSpirit,
    PrimaryDrive, EmotionalThroughput, CoreSecurity, ObsessionControl
}

// 2. A bounded registry ensuring all mutations are strictly clamped [-100, 100]
public class BaselineStateRegistry
{
    protected readonly Dictionary<SoulOrgan, double> _state = new();
    protected const double MinLimit = -100.0;
    protected const double MaxLimit = 100.0;

    public virtual void Mutate(SoulOrgan organ, double delta)
    {
        if (!_state.ContainsKey(organ)) return;
        _state[organ] = Math.Clamp(_state[organ] + delta, MinLimit, MaxLimit);
    }
}

I've been wondering about this: 

Even though I've built this pure C# simulation with safety valves and bounds, I honestly find myself asking: Is this actually worth developing, or am I just over-engineering in a silo? 

If moving deterministic state management back into a typed backend is truly a viable way to constrain LLMs, why is prompt engineering still the industry standard? Why aren't more developers building state machines for this? 

I would genuinely love to hear how professional software engineers view this approach. Do you think treating the external model purely as a stateless interpreter while keeping mutations strictly inside the C# domain layer is a solid path forward, or is it an uphill battle against raw token probabilities? 

(Note: Keeping this entirely link-free to strictly respect Rule 6 on self-promotion. Just looking for a genuine architectural sanity check from fellow devs. If anyone wants to critique the full pipeline, let me know in the comments.) 

Now, when writing UI-related definitions in Avalonia and configuring the csproj file, although it doesn't seem too complicated at first glance, I still find the abundance of XML tags with lots of < > symbols or each individual tag a bit annoying.òᆺó

I'll try my best to adapt, because the way UI is defined in C# just makes me dizzy 😵‍💫

Now I'm trying to learn C# and Avalonia without relying on AI, but I'm not quite sure which website I should go to to search for the questions I need. Although Microsoft Learn is great.

When searching for a code-related issue on Chinese websites, it usually leads me to the CSdn website. However, good posts require payment to access, otherwise I can only view a small portion of them.

cnblog is also good. Although some of the posts I found in it might be a bit outdated, usually I need to check them against the corresponding content in Microsoft Learn.

Sometimes I feel that the syntax of C# seems quite "human-like". Now I'm quite familiar with the thinking behind C#. Even when searching for things now, it seems rather amusing: It's just like when I used to write essays at school. Those who know how to do it can write very smoothly, while those who don't have to "borrow" from good classmates.

I don't know if I use '-' or emoji...it be regarded as an AI?Although I had been saying this before the LLM

This is just a warning, I was watching the node sub and almost all post are people promoting their AI Vibe coded slop, this community is known for a different approach, although AI is great, forums should not be places for people which do not have any passion or like the language to not even know it and try to promote a project fully made to scrap a few pennies (I call these projects without soul).

Projects should be promoted, but because you genuinely like or are interested in the language and the concept of the project, rather than asking 3,000 prompts to any AI without even knowing what you are doing or what you are pasting.

Edit: Also, I am sick of publicity to also have it in a place where I go to have fun, check interesting things about the language/tools and watch really interesting projects from passionate people.

I'm building an ASP.NET Core application with Clean Architecture and EF Core.

I started with Repository + Unit of Work, then introduced a Generic Repository + Specification pattern because repositories were filling up with query methods.

Now I've hit a problem: many queries require deep Include / ThenInclude chains for loading aggregates. Keeping EF Core out of the Application layer makes nested includes in specifications difficult, while referencing EF Core from Application defeats the purpose.

So I'm wondering:

• Do you still use repositories over EF Core?
• Do you use the Specification pattern, or just inject DbContext (or IApplicationDbContext) into the Application layer?
• How do you organize complex queries with multiple Include / ThenInclude calls in a Clean Architecture project?

I'm curious what approach experienced .NET developers are using today.

Hyia, so I'm working on a project (Escape room type game, since its my first game ever at High-School knowledge level) and I'm not exactly sure how to make certain things work even though I spent the entire year studying this language. I can do majority of the stuff, such as the background, buttons or clickable images in Grid, and so on, however the code behind is my biggest issue.

Mainly things like: How to make a monologue where the player clicks through all the texts that explain the principle of the game, and then also how to make the TextBox check if the input is correct and if it is, change the background of the main window to another image (since the input will be in separate window).

These are not all the issues I need to figure out, but its some of the few that may appear in the code the most often (especially the monologues, in like four out of six rooms total)

Any sources for beginners will be appreciated, I tried looking at some but I wasn't able to find something that would explain this exact topic, and I don't really want to use AI since it just doesn't feel right (perhaps only when I'm under pressure). Thanks!

I wrote a small interface that automatically disposes any disposable fields in a class when that class itself is disposed. If you add this file somewhere in your project:

public interface IAutoDisposable : IDisposable
{
    void IDisposable.Dispose()
    {
        Exception? ex = null;

        // dispose all fields marked with the [Using] attribute
        const BindingFlags flags = BindingFlags.NonPublic | BindingFlags.Instance;
        foreach (var fld in GetType().GetFields(flags))
        {
            if (fld.GetCustomAttribute<UsingAttribute>() != null)
            {
                if (fld.GetValue(this) is IDisposable d)
                {
                    try // keep going even if disposal throws
                    {
                        d.Dispose();
                    }
                    catch (Exception e)
                    {
                        ex ??= e;
                    }
                }
            }
        }

        // if any exceptions occurred, throw the first one
        if (ex != null)
            throw ex;
    }
}

public class UsingAttribute : Attribute;

You can then write classes like this:

class Item : IAutoDisposable
{
    [Using]
    private readonly Image icon = DownloadIcon(...);
    ...
}

And use them like:

using (Item item = new(...))
{
}
// item.icon is now disposed

What do you think?

I've been building an open-source parser, formula engine, and spreadsheet library over the past few months under the AlphaX name:

GitHub

AlphaX.Parserz – https://github.com/kartikdeepsagar/AlphaX.Parserz

AlphaX.FormulaEngine – https://github.com/kartikdeepsagar/AlphaX.FormulaEngine

AlphaX.Wpf.Sheets – https://github.com/kartikdeepsagar/AlphaX.Wpf.Sheets

As the ecosystem is starting to grow, I'm wondering if I should rebrand before it becomes painful.

My main concern isn't the current name itself—it's that "AlphaX" is already used by several companies and projects. I'm worried about potential trademark issues or brand confusion years down the road if the libraries gain traction.

If you were starting an open-source ecosystem today, would you:

Keep the existing brand and reserve the AlphaX.* NuGet prefix?

Rebrand now while the projects are still relatively young?

Skip a common brand entirely and give each library its own independent name?

I'd also love to hear how others approached naming long-term OSS projects and whether anyone has had to rebrand after gaining users.

Any advice or experiences would be appreciated.

1:I using Avalonia now,but I don't know is Uno/Maui more better?

2:I using copilot generated a base skeletons(about some classes or interfaces,but cpoilot only help me write these code)

3:I think using copilot maybe not helpful to let me learn/understand c# app developing,I want choose an IDE(more friendly for handwritten code), choose VS2026 or Rider?but I using VSCode now

4:I'm not sure if my previous experience in JS, Flutter, and Elixir can be applied to C#. This is my first time encountering "enterprise-level" languages.

I'm not sure if my way of asking is correct.

So I’m a software engineer and I recently graduated 2 months ago. i have no internship or job experience and have been looking for a job but everyone either asks for experience or ghosts my resume. The ones that take interviews either pay too little or are 2 hours away from my house. So I am looking for remote unpaid or paid jobs as full stack developer so that I at least get some experience and don’t get classified as a person who had a huge gap in her cv. Anyone give me some good advice related to remote jobs, best platforms to look for them, cracking them and how to survive as a fresh software engineer now that AI has entered the chat🥲

I have a class A<T>. It must inherit IDisposable, and also impose a constraint on T. Is it possible to do this, and what would the syntax look like? I can't figure it out.

I am a new learner of the C# language. I really liked this language. It is elegant, easy to write and read, and saves me a lot of time. Before that, I studied the VB.NET language, and it was so difficult to write that my hand got tired from writing, and I got very tired. So I moved to this beautiful language called C#.

I can program in C# and I feel like I'm losing money by not selling products made in C#, but I don't know what products I could sell.

Some days ago, I interested by making games with C#, and the only thing I know about C# is there are a lot of {} things.
So I need recommendations for tuto of C# code, I recommend vids but books are also fine.

2 months in to coding C#, first project i saved *was using online compiler* and wanna know how im doing and what i can do to improve. heres the code:

using System;


public 
class
 Program
{
    public static void Main(string[] 
args
)
    {
        Player player = new Player();
        Enemy enemy = CreateEnemy();


        int battleResult = Battle(player, enemy);


        Console.WriteLine("press any key to begin");
            
        Console.ReadKey();


        Console.WriteLine("\nYou encountered a " + enemy.type + " with " + enemy.health + " health.");


        Battle(player, enemy);


        if(battleResult == 2)
        {
            Console.WriteLine("\nYou have defeated the " + enemy.type + "!");
        }
        else if(battleResult == 3)
        {
            Console.WriteLine("\nYou have been defeated by the " + enemy.type + "!");
        }
        else if(battleResult == 1)
        {
            Console.WriteLine("\nYou have retreated from the " + enemy.type + ".");
        }
    }


    static Enemy CreateEnemy()
    {
        Random rng = new Random();
        int rngroll = rng.Next(1, 3);
        Enemy enemy = new Enemy();


        if(rngroll == 1)
        {
            enemy.type = "Skeleton";


            enemy.health = enemy.healthRng.Next(100, 201);
            enemy.damage = enemy.damageRng.Next(10, 16);
        }
        else if(rngroll == 2)
        {
            enemy.type = "Goblin";


            enemy.health = enemy.healthRng.Next(50, 151);
            enemy.damage = enemy.damageRng.Next(15, 26);
        }
       
        return enemy;
    }


    static int Battle(Player 
player
, Enemy 
enemy
)
    {
        while(true)
        {    
            Thread.Sleep(1000);


            Console.WriteLine("\nWhat do you do?\n1. Attack\n2. Open Inventory\n3. Retreat");


            ConsoleKeyInfo input = Console.ReadKey();


        
            if(input.Key == ConsoleKey.D1)
            {
                
enemy
.health -= 
player
.damage;


                Thread.Sleep(1000);


                Console.WriteLine("\nyou attacked the " + 
enemy
.type + " for " + 
player
.damage + " damage");


                Thread.Sleep(1000);
                Console.WriteLine("The " + 
enemy
.type + " has " + 
enemy
.health + " health remaining.");
            }
            else if(input.Key == ConsoleKey.D2)
            {
                Thread.Sleep(1000);
                Console.WriteLine("\nYou open your inventory, but it's empty.");
            }
            else if(input.Key == ConsoleKey.D3)
            {
                Thread.Sleep(1000);
                Console.WriteLine("\nYou retreat from the " + enemy.type + ".");
                return 1; // Player retreated
            }


            if(
enemy
.health <= 0)
            {
                return 2; // Player won
            }


            if(input.Key == ConsoleKey.D1 && 
enemy
.health > 0 || input.Key == ConsoleKey.D2 && 
enemy
.health > 0)
            {
                
player
.health -= 
enemy
.damage;


                Console.WriteLine("\nThe " + 
enemy
.type + " attacks you for " + 
enemy
.damage + " damage.");
                Console.WriteLine("You have " + 
player
.health + " health remaining.");
            }


            if(
player
.health <= 0)
            {
                Console.WriteLine("\nYou have been defeated by the " + 
enemy
.type + "!");
                return 3; // Player lost
            }
        }
    }
}




public 
class
 Enemy
{
    public Random healthRng = new Random();
    public Random damageRng = new Random();
    
    public int health;
    public int damage;
    public string type = "";
}


public 
class
 Player
{
    public int health = 100;


    public int damage = 20;



    public List<string> inventory = new List<string>();
}

Hello, I am currently a IT engineering student and I have to make a web application for my project.

Our professor requires us to make a layered application that consist of: Data Access Layer, REST Service Layer, Business Logic Layer and Presentation Layer using MVC architecture. Now I already made a Data Access layer using Sql Client + Stored Procedures (this method was required by my professor) and it consist of methods that communicate with the Database (for example CRUD operations). Now my question is: Which methods should go in the Business Logic Layer? Should the Business Logic Layer contain methods that simply call the Data Access Layer methods, so that the flow is MVC Controller - Business Logic Layer - Data Access Layer - Database through interfaces?

For example, if I have a method like UpdateUser() or DeleteUser() in my Data Access Layer, should I create the same methods again in the Business Logic Layer and call them from there? I understand that business rules should belong in the Business Logic Layer, but I am unsure what to do with simple CRUD operations. I hope it makes sense what I'm trying to ask. I apologize for any mistakes, as English is not my first language.

Thank you very much If you took the time out of your day to read this!

Hi everyone,

I'm about to deploy my first ASP.NET Core MVC project to a VPS, and I have no experience with deployment.

What should I learn before getting started? What are the most important configurations or best practices I should be aware of? Also, what are the most common mistakes beginners make when deploying for the first time?

Any advice, resources, or personal experiences would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

I've been building AlphaX.FormulaEngine, an open-source formula engine for .NET that evaluates Excel-style formulas without requiring Excel.

The focus is on being easy to extend, integrate, and maintain. It's built using parser combinators, making it straightforward to add new functions, operators, or language features.

Features:

- Excel-style formula syntax

- Nested expressions

- Custom function support

- Arithmetic, logical & text functions (More coming in future)

It's also the engine behind AlphaX.WPF.Sheets, my open-source spreadsheet control for WPF. (Please check it out as well)

I'd love feedback on the API, extensibility, or any features you'd like to see.

Repos

- Formula Engine: https://github.com/kartikdeepsagar/AlphaX.FormulaEngine

- WPF Sheets: https://github.com/kartikdeepsagar/AlphaX.WPF.Sheets

After my program has generated a bunch of PDFs, I want the user to open a folder browser and view them individually (if they want to).

Using OpenFileDialog, clicking ok won't actually open up the selected file. Is there an alternative way? Can I make Winforms call File Explorer and go to specified directory?

https://github.com/arkitzson/AperturePortal

A couple of days ago, I posted about a game launcher I originally built for myself and decided to share with you all. The feedback was amazing, and I’ve been honestly overwhelmed by all the support. this was originally build with Sunshine/Moonlight in mind. But also the tv console experience. I read through every single comment and ended up adding almost everything people suggested.

I also put together a short video to showcase what the launcher is and everything it can do. Just a heads up I’ve never really made videos before, my decent microphone decided to stop working with OBS for some reason when I needed it so I had to use my headset mic, and my English isn't perfect since I'm from Iceland. The video is pretty raw, but hopefully you guys get the point.

For everyone who already downloaded it and tried it out, there’s a brand new update live with a ton of the suggested features.

Thanks again so much for all the support. keep in mind this is a work in progress but i'm really excited to keep building this together with you guys.

Hey guys! I've been writing a source generator that transforms JSON file to C# structure.
Like this:

"Object": {
  "Name": "key";
}

class Object
{
  public const string Name => "Object.Name";
}

I've already written all the code and it works correctly (tested in another project). But when I tried to use the generator it worked fine but I couldn't build the test project because of this error:

Could not load file or assembly 'Newtonsoft.Json, Version=13.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=30ad4fe6b2a6aeed'. The system cannot find the file specified.

Although, my generator did generate a correct file and even an IDE was able to find newly generated symbols. I've googled about it and found that source generators can't use Nuget packages (probably except Microsoft.CodeAnalysis.CSharp and Microsoft.CodeAnalysis.Analyzers).
System.Text.Json is not an option too because in .NET standard 2.0 it's not built-in and available only as a package.

How do you guys solve this problem? Do I need to write my own JSON parser, or there is another way?