Playing around with ASP.NET

I am an aspiring web developer. The last several months I've been learning C# and working my way around the .NET framework in order to get promoted to work as an automation engineer.

Turns out I can get going on the web stuff with my newfound C# skillz! Visual Studio is an excellent tool that isn't very hard to learn and it turns out ASP is built right into it to churn out quality websites.

For those not familiar with ASP.NET let me tell you what it is. It is an open source and server-side web application framework. It is designed for web development and you can make a wide variety of web pages/applications with the various frameworks. This solution comes from Microsoft.

My limited experience learning ASP.NET helped me realize something important. Web development, and development in general often involves taking a framework, adding your components, and tweaking the things that are already there. 

I've often envisioned software development starting out by staring down an empty IDE and building something from scratch. I'm sure many successful projects start out that way. But the many tools at our disposal often build out common parts of our application so we don't have to. Kinda cool!

While building a website I knew that I'd like to give users the ability to create their own accounts with an email and a password. Not only that, I wanted to add an email verification step to the registration process. Turns out all of that is already built into ASP.NET!

MSDN has a lot of resources to help you get up and running. Although a lot of tools are offered, there is a great deal of flexibility in how you would like to build out your web app. Do you want two-step verification? What methods do you want to provide a user to recover their account in case they forget their password?

I'll share the website on here when I'm happy with it. For now, let me drop some of the resources I've been using.

-Get Started with ASP.NET

-Get Started Developing with Visual Studio

- Create a secure ASP.NET Web Forms app with user registration, email confrimation, and password reset 

These are all straight from the source. MSDN is an excellent resource for everything in the .NET framework.

Vidya Gaemz

The year was 1999, I was eight years old, and it was bedtime. My dad was tucking in the sheets when he mentioned "at work we're making a new game console." I had no idea what he was talking about. 

"What is a console?" I asked.

"It's like a new Nintendo." He explained.

My eyes lit up. Instead of demanding the usual bedtime story I unleashed a barrage of questions. I was practically obsessed with my Nintendo 64 and it seemed almost too good to be true that my dad was helping make the next one.

He was talking about the Xbox.My family moved to the Seattle area when my dad took a job at Microsoft in 1995. He opted to join the Xbox team a few years later even when most of his coworkers thought it was a doomed project. He is especially skilled in 3D graphics programming and turns out they use quite a bit of that in vidya gaemz.

Over the next few years I fell in love with not only the Xbox but video games in general. I always held several gaming magazine subscriptions. Every weekend was spent playing Halo split screen with my friends. I was hooked.

Video games are still my passion today. I own a Wii U, Xbox One, and Playstation 4. I'd like to build a high end gaming PC one day. My life changed that night when my dad tucked me into bed.

Why am I sharing this? I honestly think video games are a huge reason why I am interested in programming and learning how to code. Ever since I was little I wondered how developers could bring these characters and stories to life by writing lines of code. 

I've heard discouraging accounts of what it is like to work in the video game industry as a developer and because of that I'm not necessarily interested in pursuing a career there per se. I do have tremendous respect for those who do follow their passion and put in the work to make it happen. I've always looked up to my dad for the really cool work he put in on both the original Xbox and Xbox 360.

How have video games or other forms of media influenced your decision to learn how to code or eventually become a developer? Do any readers currently work in the video games industry? Tell us what it is like.

Thank you vidya gaemz for helping inspire me to learn how to code.