Chennai .NET Developer Shares Hard Lessons from Two Years in Production

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A .NET developer based in Chennai has shared candid reflections on the steep learning curve faced after joining their first software job, despite feeling well-prepared after college. Early work on an HRMS system exposed critical gaps in writing performant SQL, handling N+1 query problems, and understanding real-world database optimization. A biometric hardware integration task further revealed that production bugs often stem from infrastructure or network configuration rather than application code. By the one-year mark, the developer recognized a clear gap between writing working code and writing good, optimized code, prompting a deliberate effort to improve skills in areas like EF Core and query performance. The account highlights how real-world software development — with its interconnected systems, legacy code, and live users — demands a fundamentally different skill set than academic projects.

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