Learning path / 22 published lessons
From Novice to Fluent on the Modern Microsoft Web Stack — 22-Chapter Self-Study Plan
Build an end-to-end mental model of the Microsoft web stack: C# and .NET, HTTP and ASP.NET, TypeScript and React, then identity, telemetry, resilience and delivery.
What you’ll work toward
- A dashboard loads and looks correct. Which capstone questions remain before calling it a verified application?
- Explain the version and execution boundaries before applying the examples
Completion is stored on this device only. Nothing is locked; start where it makes sense.
Start this pathBefore the first lesson
- Basic programming and HTTP; follow the chapter or cloud-track sequence
These are the starting lesson’s prerequisites, not requirements for every advanced topic below.
How to practise this subject
Follow one request from browser state to authorization and storage. Specify cancellation, validation, observability and rollback contracts; distinguish documented reference fragments from compiled applications.
- 01
MS Stack Ch 1 — Developer tooling
PowerShell, Git's three trees, VS Code, browser DevTools, and the package managers that run your day. The boring tools that determine whether you'll feel fluent or fighting for the next two years.
- 02
MS Stack Ch 2 — Web fundamentals
HTTP, headers, cookies, TLS, REST, CORS, JSON — the wire-level protocol every backend and frontend bug eventually reduces to. Buy yourself fluency in the protocol and stop guessing.
- 03
MS Stack Ch 3 — C# language
C# 12 + .NET 8: the type system, LINQ, generics, async/await, pattern matching, records, nullable reference types. The language you'll write 1000s of lines of in production.
- 04
MS Stack Ch 4 — .NET runtime and async
The CLR, garbage collector, Task vs ValueTask, the async state machine, cancellation, the dotnet CLI, NuGet, global.json, central package management — the runtime your C# code actually lives in.
- 05
MS Stack Ch 5 — ASP.NET Core
Minimal hosting, dependency injection, middleware, routing, configuration, options, model binding, ProblemDetails, BackgroundService, health checks. The web framework you'll spend the next decade in.
- 06
MS Stack Ch 6 — Modern frontend baseline
Semantic HTML, ARIA + a11y, the CSS cascade + box model + Flexbox + Grid, modern JavaScript (ES2024), fetch, the event loop. The browser-side foundations every React app stands on.
- 07
MS Stack Ch 7 — TypeScript
Structural typing, narrowing, generics, discriminated unions, utility types, tsconfig. TypeScript without the over-engineering.
- 08
MS Stack Ch 8 — Frontend build tooling
Vite, HMR, Rollup, esbuild, npm vs pnpm, tree-shaking, env vars, dev proxy. Understanding what your bundler is actually doing so when it breaks, you know where to look.
- 09
MS Stack Ch 9 — React
Components, JSX, the rendering model, hooks (useState, useEffect, useMemo, useCallback, useRef, useReducer, useContext), custom hooks, error boundaries, Suspense, wrapping imperative libraries. React without the cargo cult.
- 10
MS Stack Ch 10 — Routing and state in SPAs
React Router (nested + lazy), URL as state with useSearchParams, server state vs UI state, TanStack Query, Zustand vs Redux Toolkit. Choose your state strategy deliberately.
- 11
MS Stack Ch 11 — Data visualisation with Highcharts
Highcharts options model, series types, axes, performance for high-cardinality data, theming, accessibility, exporting. A versioned charting model for enterprise dashboards.
- 12
MS Stack Ch 12 — KQL contracts, joins and telemetry
Read KQL pipelines, preserve join and time-window semantics, design bounded telemetry queries, and separate parameter binding, authorization and query cost.
- 13
MS Stack Ch 13 — Azure App Service
App Service plans, deployment slots + swap + warmup, app settings, Key Vault references, VNet integration, scale-out rules, custom domains + TLS. The Microsoft PaaS that hosts most of the stack.
- 14
MS Stack Ch 14 — Identity for cloud apps
Entra ID, OAuth 2.0 + OIDC, Easy Auth (App Service Authentication), Managed Identity, On-Behalf-Of flow, certificate-based authentication. The identity stack that lets you stop storing passwords or secrets.
- 15
MS Stack Ch 15 — Observability
Serilog structured logging, Application Insights, OpenTelemetry, correlation IDs, distributed tracing, KQL queries for telemetry, alerts, dashboards. Knowing what your app is doing in production.
- 16
MS Stack Ch 16 — Resilience patterns with Polly v8
Retry with jittered backoff, timeout, circuit breaker, bulkhead, fallback, rate-limiter, hedging — composed into a single resilience pipeline. The patterns that keep your app alive when downstream services don't.
- 17
MS Stack Ch 17 — Caching
IMemoryCache, IDistributedCache, HybridCache (.NET 9), Redis, cache-aside, write-through, stampede protection, invalidation, TTL strategies. Freshness, isolation and load control without invented speed guarantees.
- 18
MS Stack Ch 18 — CI/CD with Azure DevOps
YAML pipelines, templates + parameters + extends, agent pools, federated identity for Azure deploys, SDL gates (CodeQL, credential scanner, container scanning), multi-stage deploys, environments + approvals.
- 19
MS Stack Ch 19 — IaC and rollout orchestration
Bicep modules, what-if previews, environments, region rollouts. Awareness of Ev2 (Microsoft internal), Spinnaker, ArgoCD. The pattern for safely deploying infrastructure + apps across regions.
- 20
MS Stack Ch 20 — Security baseline
OWASP Top 10, secrets management, transport security, auth hardening, supply-chain integrity, input validation, output encoding, security headers. The non-negotiable security checklist for every web app.
- 21
MS Stack Ch 21 — Testing strategy
Unit, integration, end-to-end, contract, mutation, load — the testing pyramid for ASP.NET Core + React on Azure. xUnit, WebApplicationFactory, Vitest, Playwright, k6, Stryker, Pact.
- 22
MS Stack Ch 22 — Pro skills (the bits no one writes down)
Code review craft, on-call composure, incident writing, technical proposals, mentoring, learning velocity, knowing when to rewrite. The chapter that turns a strong engineer into a senior one.