It feels like it’s taken me forever, but I finally finished one of the two .NET Core Web API courses I’ve been taking on Pluralsight. Building a RESTful API with ASP.NET Core is a fantastic display of how to build a REST based API using .NET Core. All of the common API features are covered in addition to some not as common ones including versioning, caching, and logging. The course even covers HATEOAS for media type calls. There is a ton of content to unpack here. One thing the course doesn’t cover, but is coming in a follow-up course, is security and authentication of the API. The Implementing and Securing an API with ASP.NET Core has an example of how to do this, so until the next course is released, I will use that course to supplement security information.

Outside of the RESTful API course, I raced through Using Visual Studio Code for ASP.NET Core Projects. It serves as a quick look into some of the integration features of .NET Core and Visual Studio Code. I’ve been using Visual Studio Code since it was first released and learned a number of new things about the editor. The segment on using databases with Visual Studio Code was the most insightful part for me. The course demoed how to connect to SQL Server, SQLite, MySQL, and Postgres. I look forward to using many of the features shown in the course. Pure Visual Studio is the best IDE but sometimes it’s nice to stay within the confines of a simple text editor. Visual Studio Code is a joy to use and offers many features beyond just the basics.

Finished

PluralSight Course(s): Building a RESTful API with ASP.NET Core, Using Visual Studio Code for ASP.NET Core Projects

Book(s): The Elements of Style

Currents

MOOC(s): Sabermetrics 101: Introduction to Baseball Analytics

PluralSight Course(s): Implementing and Securing an API with ASP.NET Core

Book(s): Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns, On Writing Well

On the Next…

After pacing through The Elements of Style this week, I’m following it up with On Writing Well. Writing is a universal skill. No matter what you do in life, writing can help you do it better. With this in mind, I want to do anything I can to improve my writing ability. That’s why I’m reading books about writing. Beyond the books, the best way to improve is to keep writing. So Dev-eryday, even though its primary focus has been to improve as a software developer, it’s also pushing me to be a better writer.

I started writing a little bit of code for IdeaListz this week. The first step is to get the most basic service up and integrate it with a simple React front end. The basic web service will be able to create IdeaLists and Ideas. It will also have functionality to get, update, and search the ideas that have been created. The plan is to get the most basic features created and then expand the service out later.