I have professional experience with Java and Spring Boot and want to learn C# and modern .NET quickly. I'm looking for a practical book, course, or reference comparable to Java in a Nutshell or Spring Starts Here, ideally covering the language, core .NET concepts, and current cloud or web development practices.
2 Answers
Start with Microsoft’s C# tour for Java developers. It highlights the differences in syntax, type systems, properties, delegates, LINQ, async programming, and other concepts that tend to surprise Java developers. After that, work through an ASP.NET Core tutorial or build a small Web API so you learn the framework by using it.
Modern .NET is cross-platform and widely used for APIs, microservices, and cloud applications, so you don’t need to approach it as a Windows-only ecosystem. A good path is C# fundamentals, then the .NET runtime and libraries, followed by ASP.NET Core, dependency injection, configuration, logging, testing, and Entity Framework Core. Your Spring Boot experience should transfer well, especially around controllers, dependency injection, middleware, and application configuration.
That was my experience too. The biggest adjustment was learning the C# and .NET conventions rather than the general web-application architecture, since many of the concepts map closely to Spring Boot.