Recap of .NET Hands on Lab by Phil Japikse

I usually sleep in on Saturday mornings, but on this morning I woke at 6:30, got cleaned up and began my journy to the .NET Core Hands on Lab with Phil Japikse - {Cincinnati}

https://twitter.com/skimedic/status/944300358200905729

It was presented by Phil Japikse and hosted by TechElevator (@TechElevator) and Cincinnati DotNet User Group (@cinnug).

The weather was a slight rain, but the 1.5 hour drive was smooth and uneventful.  The workshop started at 9:00 and I arrived at 9:02, just as Phil was introducing himself.  I picked up a doughnut and water and got situated for a day of learning.

Phil began by introducing .NET Core and talking about the pre-reqs for the workshop.  Luckily, I have done a bit of .NET Core 2.0 and tend to keep my Visual Studio up to date, so, I didn't have to install anything in order to get started.

Phil gave us the WIFI info and his workshop GitHub repo.  I downloaded the zip, which included PDFs for all of the labs for the day and a completed workshop project.  I won't be including any links to Phil's repos or information from the workshop, because this course is actually part of a paid educational series.

Several folks were having trouble getting started, but Phil's lab assistant was able to make the rounds and get most of them up and running.  Unfortunately, a couple attendees had to do a full VS download / install.

The first set of labs were about getting our Models and Databases setup.  The PDF's walked us through the process with minimal issues.  Here's a tip:  When cutting and pasting from PDF's, Microsoft Edge tends to remove line returns.  Chrome handles this without an issue.

The day continued on with Phil speaking for about an hour and then labs for a 1/2 hour, back and forth.

Pizza lunch was at 11:30 and was right on time.  It really hit the spot.

I won't go into all of the details of the workshop, but I will say that it far exceeded my expectations.  Before the workshop, my impression of .NET Core was that it was a lesser version of ASP.NET.  Boy, did this misconception get blown away.  Over the course of the workshop, Phil was able to at least introduce every major area of .NET Core.  Wow, it's massive.  I could easily see his training material spread out over a week or 2 week long course.

The one topic, that I was concerned with, going into the lab was deployment with IIS.  It was part of the workshop, but we really didn't have time to focus on it.   I'll have to read through the workshop notes to get a better understanding.

Towards the end of the day, Phil told us that the $5.00 we each donated to Hands Against Hunger would buy around 1000 meals for children in need.  I'm glad that I could help and learn at the same time.

At the end of the workshop, I thanked Phil for presenting and helping us. I said, "this should be a book".  He said, it is a book and showed me the book he co-authored, which covers all of the details in depth.  It's titled:

Building Web Applications with Visual Studio 2017Using .NET Core and Modern JavaScript Frameworks

Here the link:  https://www.apress.com/us/book/9781484224779 or On Amazon

 

At 4:00pm I drove back to Columbus and reflected on everything I learned over the day.  When I got home, I took a nap to let my brain catch up with everything I learned that day.  Later, I ordered a copy of the book.

I really enjoyed the .NET Core 2.0 Hands On Lab hosted by TechElevator and Cincinnati DotNet User Group. $5 for breakfast, lunch, hands on lab, presentation and charity donation.  It was time well spent.

Thanks,
Doug Mair