Reviewing my old .NET web app

Arabic Learning Institute

One of the earliest lessons I adopted from networking with others was to focus on one, over many little ones, to achieve quality and depth. I have built a couple of web apps by the time I arranged a meeting with one of my senior brothers, Khalid (who went on to work at Microsoft). I asked eagerly for advise on how to tackle the overload of information I was facing from .NET and having to balance between two paths: React and Javascript, vs .NET and C#.

Khalid told me to focus on one project per path and build out things step by step. Just keep on adding features from the perspective of a user one by one, and you’ll be surprised by how many technical things you learn organically.

I kept to this advice, and continue to do so today. I had two projects:

YouTube Playlists Organiser, now renamed Mira. Focused on React, Node and JavaScript and all of modern Front End development. Used MongoDB.
Learning Arabic Web, for a hypothetical Arabic Learning Institute client. Focused on C# and .NET, along with EF Core, and MySQL. Entirely focused on Back End development.

Unsurprisingly, Learning Arabic Web (which I shall be reviewing) was paused sometime after I became focused on being a Front End developer. The responsibilities — both personal and professional — just overpowered my capacity to dig for solutions to problems unguided.

Intention for starting Learning Arabic Web

New to the industry, need to enter the industry professional via C# & .NET
Need to showcase application of knowledge to potential employers
Need to convince myself that I indeed learnt something and can walk alone (without tutorials)
Need to become comfortable with what I acquired
Need to save time and gain the most depth

Lessons learnt

You can only go so far in learning alone
You can’t build the best if you’ve never worked with others, those who know better than you.
It is one thing to read a manual, and another to implement
You can’t keep up the same energy for something that can’t be validated
You will encounter plenty of errors which introduce new areas of awareness for you
You build something better than 100 broken pieces
You expose yourself to plethora of tools and concepts, that you’ll encounter in the future
You will have an easier time picking up terminology and will have a lot of Aha! moments
You will make mistakes, like posting env secrets to GitHub!
You will become proficient in the tools: IDE, source control, deployment hosts etc

Technical review

It is a .NET Core MVC project with a mishmash of packages, libraries, patterns and youthful ignorance spread across the codebase.
It comprises of:
- Authorization (with email, google, okta) through OpenID Connect protocol
- Sql Server (incorrectly uses it), and sql commands all over the place
- EF Core but doesn’t use it correctly
- Repository pattern or what appears to be like it
- Mixture of Api and Page Controllers
- Accidental commit leaking GoogleOpenID credentials
- A littered startup file
- No sign of implementing any Clean Code techniques
- Inadequate usage of Dependency Injection, especially with regards to DB connections
- A lot of wild guesses

As much as I want to be kind to myself, this project is far from being clean, and straightforward. You’ll see good things but also things that are half-baked, spaghetti code in the making. At the end, you just think — what did you expect from a newbie with no one to guide them in a structured manner? Spaghetti code is the best result.

To the credit of my younger self, this project does make my journey towards becoming a full-stack developer quicker and smoother - I have a reference point for things I may have done wrong or struggled to understand. Which other newbie has a past history with the thing they are trying to learn?

Off we go 🚀