Dustin Metzgar - .NET Core in action

Software developers keep learning throughout their careers. Its part of the appeal of the field. The more I learn, the more I discover how much I dont know (the known unknown). The times when I learned the most were the times when an unknown unknown became a known unknownwhen a whole category of development was revealed to me that I hadnt heard of before. Subjects such as performance profiling and localization never even occurred to me when I started out. Yet they have an important role in professional software development.

With so much information available through blogs, tweets, Stack Overflow, conferences, and online documentation, some may wonder if physical books can still be relevant, especially with a subject like .NET Core, where the book may be outdated by the time it reaches print. I believe the true value of a book, what gives it lasting impact, is the revelation of the unknown unknown to the reader. The book should cause you to ask questions you havent asked before and provide new context and ways to process the avalanche of information out there on a particular topic.

While this book is about .NET Core, a lot of the concepts have been part of the .NET Framework for years. By opening .NET Core to other platforms, Microsoft hopes to reach a new audience of developers. Im fortunate enough to be in the right place at the right time to write a book that introduces not only .NET Core but also some important aspects of software engineering and how theyre accomplished in the .NET ecosystem. Its my goal with this book to make you a better developer and pique your curiosity about aspects of software engineering you may not have thought about before.

A significant portion of my career has been spent on .NET. My introduction to .NET happened while I was working as a consultant for enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. A salesman for the consulting company didnt know (or care) that our web ERP portal product was written in Java. The customer liked the portal but wanted to customize it and to use .NET. We worked to rebuild the portal in .NET in a few months and collaborated with the customers development team on their customizations. That turned out to be my favorite consulting job. Years later, I was fortunate enough to be hired by Microsoft and work on the .NET Framework itself. I got to work with many talented developers and wrote code now used by countless applications.

When .NET Core started, I was excited about its potential and got involved early. An editor at Manning saw some of my early work and gave me the opportunity to submit a proposal and table of contents. Id always wanted to write a book, so I jumped at the chance. It takes a special kind of navet to think you have time to write a book after the birth of a child and after taking a larger lead role at work. Not only that, but .NET Core was a moving target in the beginning, which resulted in my having to throw out or rewrite finished chapters and parts of the table of contents.

This book took way longer to write than I expected. But I learned a lot along the way, and Im pleased with the result. Im also proud that I was able to deliver most of the ambitious table of contents I originally planned. I hope you finish this book not only with the ability to write and publish libraries and applications in .NET Core, but also with a desire to learn more.