Introduction

The time that I spent working at Microsoft was an unexpectedly transforming experience. The first half of my career regularly put me and the companies I worked with in competition with Microsoft, and I was often surrounded by anti-Microsoft stories and propaganda. However, when I heard about .NET, I decided I wanted to know more and that the best way to do that was to learn at the source.

As I got into the technology and the company, what I found was more than a little surprising. The .NET Framework, the C# language, ASP.NET, and SQL Server are sophisticated and technically beautiful achievements. After working with Java for several years, which also has a definite elegance, it was refreshing and empowering to use a well–integrated ...

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