Microsoft offers a set of certifications that validate a software developer’s expertise in Microsoft technologies. Certifications such as the Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer (MCSD) are achieved by passing a set of related certification exams, each with a different technology focus.
Learning path objective:
Prepare developers for Microsoft exam 70-483, Programming C#.
At first glance, this list of courses may seem daunting. But this is because Pluralsight’s developer courses are designed to provide comprehensive coverage of a specific programming language, developer tool, platform or service. Microsoft certification exams, however, are designed to test a developer’s knowledge of a broad set of tools and techniques spanning several different technology areas.
As a result, developers who work through every course listed here will learn far more than what is required in order to pass this specific certification exam. To learn more about the relative weight of each major topic on the exam — which can serve as a guide to specific modules within these courses that are directly relevant to this exam — consult the Microsoft exam page listed above, in addition to the information here and on each course’s home page within our library.
Target audience:
This learning path is intended for software developers who are interested in passing Microsoft exam 70-483, a component of the following MCSD certifications.
Learning path course sequence:
| Course | Duration |
| C# Fundamentals with C# 5.0 | 6h 14m |
| C# Programming Paradigms | 2h 44m |
| Introduction to Visual Studio 2012 – Part 1 | 3h 44m |
| Introduction to Visual Studio 2012 – Part 2 | 2h 43m |
| C# Collections Fundamentals | 5h 56m |
| Practical Reflection in .NET | 3h 23m |
| LINQ Fundamentals | 4h 50m |
| LINQ Data Access | 5h 40m |
| CLR Fundamentals | 4h 20m |
| CLR Threading | 2h 37m |
| C# 5 New Features | 1h 15m |
| Async and Parallel Programming: Application Design | 3h 45m |
| .NET Regular Expressions | 3h 29m |
| Introduction to Cryptography in .NET | 2h 03m |
| ADO.NET Fundamentals | 4h 06m |
| Introduction to ASP.NET Web Services | 2h 57m |
| Total | 59h 54m |
Learning path description:
To begin your journey to C# proficiency, spend a day with Scott Allen learning the fundamentals of the C# language and then the paradigms and idioms that will take your proficiency with the language to the next level.
After acquiring a firm grounding in the language of C#, Kate Gregory’s two part series on Visual Studio provides a comprehensive look at the preeminent IDE for .NET developers, covering all the basics of working with projects and solutions, navigating large projects and debugging.
The remainder of the courses in this learning path each focus deeply on a specific aspect of C# and the .NET platform, each of which appears in part on exam 70-483. Although the order shown here represents a suggested viewing sequence for developers completely new to the .NET platform, more experienced developers can use Microsoft’s exam page and their own understanding of their individual skills deficiencies to identify selective courses, or portions of courses, to watch in preparation for this exam.
Simon Robinson’s C# Collections Fundamentals provides extensive coverage of exam topics relating to CLR arrays, .NET Framework Class Library collections, collection interfaces and enumerators.
Jeremy Clark’s Practical Reflection in .NET provides in-depth coverage on one of .NET’s most powerful features: reflection, exploring both its capabilities and best practices for practical usage.
In his LINQ Fundamentals and LINQ Data Access courses, Scott Allen returns to provide comprehensive coverage of LINQ, covering exam topics relating to C# query expressions, deferred execution, LINQ to Objects, LINQ to XML, and LINQ to SQL.
CLR Fundamentals provides coverage of exam topics relating to the Common Language Runtime (CLR) including Just-In-Time (JIT) compilation, garbage collection, assemblies and assembly versioning.
CLR Threading picks up where CLR Fundamentals leaves off, and provides a firm grounding in CLR and .NET Framework support for multithreading and thread synchronization. After mastering the fundamentals of multithreading and thread synchronization, watch Ian Griffith’s C# 5 New Features course to gain a fast introduction to C# 5′s support for asynchronous programming. Dr. Joe Hummel’s course, Async and Parallel Programming: Application Design, then tackles design-level asynchronous programming concerns, as well as exam topics such as the Task Parallel Library (TPL), Parallel and PLINQ (Parallel LINQ).
Check out Dan Sullivan’s .NET Regular Expressions course for a comprehensive look at the .NET Framework’s support for regular expression processing.
Introduction to Cryptography in .NET, by Robert Boedigheimer, is an excellent introduction to the basics of cryptography, and how the .NET Framework Class Library supports cryptographic operations such as hashing, symmetric and asymmetric encryption, and the creation and use of digital signatures and digital certificates.
Finally, this learning path is rounded out by two in-depth courses on data and I/O related exam topics: ADO.NET Fundamentals and Introduction to ASP.NET Web Services.