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system designintermediate 18m2026-06-10

From Novice to Fluent on the Modern Microsoft Web Stack — 22-Chapter Self-Study Plan

An opinionated 22-chapter self-study plan from zero to fluent on the modern Microsoft web stack: PowerShell + .NET + ASP.NET Core + React + TypeScript + Azure + KQL + Polly + Bicep — with hand-built HTML diagrams per chapter.

From Novice to Fluent on the Modern Microsoft Web Stack

A complete, opinionated 22-chapter self-study plan that takes you from total novice to fluent on the modern Microsoft web stack — the kind shipped inside Microsoft product teams and by every enterprise running ASP.NET Core + React + Azure today.

Each chapter is a self-contained deep-dive (~30 minutes reading + a weekend of exercises). This hub is the map.

The whole production system in one picture

Client
Browser
React 19 · TS
Edge
Front Door / CDN
TLS · cache · WAF
Host
App Service
Linux · Kestrel
App
ASP.NET Core API
min APIs · DI
Data
Cosmos · Azure SQL
primary store
Identity
Entra ID
tenant · app reg
Secrets
Key Vault
refs · certs
Auth
Easy Auth · MI
headers · IMDS
Analytics
Kusto / ADX
KQL queries
Observability
App Insights
logs · traces · metrics
BrowserFront DoorApp ServiceAPIDB · KQL · AI

The whole production system, in one picture. Every chapter teaches one slice.

What each chapter delivers

Pick your cadence

The 22 chapters

Capstone — Analytics Dashboard

Once chapter 17 lands, you have everything you need to start the capstone: a small but production-grade web app that exercises most of the stack together.

1 · User
Browser
2 · Edge
Front Door
WAF · TLS
3 · UI
React SPA
Vite · TS · TanStack
4 · API
ASP.NET Core
min APIs · Polly · cache
5 · Identity
Entra ID
OIDC · Easy Auth
6 · Metadata
Azure SQL
queries metadata
7 · Analytics
Kusto cluster
KQL · time-series
8 · Ops
App Insights
traces · logs · metrics

End-to-end correlation via operation_Id across SPA → API → SQL → KQL → AI.

Capstone architecture — one resource group, eight services, every pattern from chapters 1–22 in one repo.

Stack ingredients (all introduced above):

The capstone post (linked at the end of chapter 22) walks through repo layout, Bicep module structure, the pipeline YAML, and how each pattern from chapters 1–21 shows up in the codebase.

How to use this hub

Start here

➡️ Chapter 1 — Developer tooling

Or jump to any chapter: