Introduction

If you’re a new or experienced C# developer, obtaining a certification can be a valuable addition to your resume. It can demonstrate your commitment to upgrading your skills and make you more attractive to potential employers. Additionally, it can provide a sense of accomplishment and pride in your work. And you'll get that certificate, completely for FREE! 🤓

I was scrolling on X (Formerly known as Twitter), and I stumbled upon a post from .NET about a new certification announcement, a collaboration between Microsoft Learn and FreeCodeCamp, which is a large community that offers tons of programming courses with certificates all for free.

The course was announced on September 8th

The certificate comes with a 35-hours long course that you can follow through on your own pace, and at the end of the course, you'll get a professional certificate all free of charge. The course is simply Foundational C#, it's not an advanced course, but both newcomers to C#, and experienced C# devs can take advantage of it.

What does the course cover? 🌟

As I said earlier, the course is a foundational course, so you get to dapple with variables, data types, control structures and object-oriented programming principles, there's also more than that like some best practices, how to debug and review your code.

💡If you want to view the full curriculum and take the course, head to this link: https://www.freecodecamp.org/learn/foundational-c-sharp-with-microsoft/
If you want some tips and my take on this course, stick around!

How to take full advantage of the course 🧠

If you're new to programming, or you still haven't built some practice projects, then now it's your chance to do so. The course has some practice projects that you will build along the way, all of them are console applications though, but the UI doesn't matter as much as grasping the core concepts, so if you want to make the most out of your time studying this course, I highly encourage you to follow these tips:

1: Jot down notes with pen and paper 📝

Writing things down on a piece of paper with your own handwriting is more likely going to be cemented, trying to rephrase the explanation in your own words too will also help significantly.

2: Build mini projects 🏗️

If you're learning about if statements, build couple of mini projects where you put the concept into practice, by concentrating on one piece at a time, you'll grasp the concept thoroughly, and repeat the same process with every new idea, building those mini projects will get you hands on with the information and it's more practical to do things than it is to just read the theory. If you can't think of new ideas, read the next tip.

3: Make use of existing tools ⚙️

Bing Ai, ChatGPT and all of these Ai tools are a great way to find inspiration and ideas for your practice projects, with a simple prompt, you can collect plenty of ideas that you can practice on your own, and in case you get stuck on something, these tools can aid you.

💡 NOTE: Using Ai to help you gather ideas and solve some of your problems is cool, but don't get too comfortable giving AI all the work, this way you won't learn effectively as you're not writing the code yourself, so just ask for solutions if the problem persists and seems insurmountable after a few shots at it.

My Take On The Course 🥸

I looked at the curriculum and I believe the content is simple and straightforward, I've been using C# for a year and a few months now, even though I'm sort of experienced with it, I'll still take the course myself as there's certainly a benefit in getting a refresh, in addition to a free certificate, so if you want to learn C# as a beginner, or you're somewhat experienced, you could freshen up your C# skills with this course!

If you've already started with the course, please tell me your thoughts on it in the comments down below!