Backend development is a world full of technology. Microsoft is one of the top software companies in the world and has many years of experience in creating web development platforms. This started from Classic ASP, and continued through ASP.NET and ASP.NET MVC, to today's ASP.NET Core.

In this chapter, we will get familiar with the ASP.NET Core platform and understand how to create web servers using it. We will cover the following topics:

• ASP.NET Core overview
• Creating a new ASP.NET Core project
• The Startup class
• Serving static files
• Getting familiar with the ASP.NET Core MVC Framework

Before we begin diving into the technology, let's introduce the GiveNTake application— the application that we're going to develop throughout this book.