2019 - The Year of .Net (Core) and Javascript. My New Directions for 2020
Tags: dotnet, javascript, tutorial, beginners
Published: 2019-12-30 12:03:14

My real developer journey began in March 2019, when I decided to go full time developing my business applications. Before, I was doing this in parallel with my management accountant job, which was very exhausting at times.

The transition had lots of lessons, and it's described in my posts here on dev.to, and on my blog (mostly overlap). https://mydev-journey.blogspot.com/

But as a conclusion for 2019, some big trends can be seen in my work and learning, and these are the two main directions:

**The Microsoft .Net Framework**

Being the first choice for accounting applications, as the users all operate in Windows environments, I think this was a good decision. In fact, my then partner suggested the C#/WPF/MVVM track with MS SQL database.

Later during fall of 2019, I extended this with Asp.Net Core, as you can see in my posts, and that's the direction I want to follow in 2020.

Why I chose the asp.net core world? Reasons:
<ul>
<li/> integrates well with my existing MS SQL databases;
<li/> can publish the web apps quickly to Azure or other provider via Visual Studio;
<li/> I really like the .Net Core Razor pages approach, and they are suitable for the apps I plan for 2020;
<li/> they integrate well with html/css/javascript, without the need to use a SPA;
I am currently checking an admin template, and this tutorial was a real nice example to push me towards this direction: https://codinginfinite.com/creating-admin-panel-asp-net-core-mvc-tutorial/#choosing-template
<li/> they integrate well with MS Excel, which is a primary tool for my business users, all based on Windows machines;
<li/>I plan moving to Linux hosting for my asp.net core apps, which tends to be cheaper than Windows hosting. This dev.to post was a really strong motivation to move in this direction: https://dev.to/pluralsight/build-and-deploy-a-blazor-app-without-touching-a-windows-machine-4mn
</ul>
*Some new directions for 2020 to experiment:*
- the Blazor framework, especially server-side, than later client-side.

**The Web Programming Track with JS**

As I mentioned in my blog posts, the web with Javascript was a real discovery for me in 2019. I really like the flexibility of JS and its huge impact on the front-end (plain JS, JQuery or SPA), which I try to implement in my projects, to make user experience better, and simulate a real business tool environment with grids, menus, pivot tables, charts and excel exports/imports.

*Ways to improve my JS skills and integrate them to my tools*
- find new JQuery plugins for a great business tool feel;
- maybe go deeper with SPA such as Angular (my journey began with this framework);
- researching tools/frameworks/libraries for reporting/charting/grids;

Not to forget, the topic of **database persistence**, it will probably remain the MS SQL world, using Dapper ORM  and EF Core, maybe with some experimenting with My SQL/ Mongo DB.

Another idea worth mentioning for 2020, will be a try of serverless functions from Azure.

And lastly to mention, if and when I have time, will be the Angular/Material design/Firebase world, which I really liked during my experimenting in the first half of 2019.

What do you think, would you add something different for my business app stack?