I'm excited to announce that Microsoft and freeCodeCamp have teamed up to bring you a new free professional certification: the Foundational C# Certification.

This professional certification includes 35 hours of training from Microsoft and an online certification exam by freeCodeCamp.

By the end of this process, you'll have earned your very own verified certification that you can add to your Résumé, LinkedIn, or CV.

Microsoft-Certification-with-Sample-Watermark
A sample Foundational C# certification.

Without further ado, here are the skills this new free professional certification will teach you:

  1. Creating your first C# app
  2. Coding simple C# apps
  3. Creating methods in your C# apps
  4. Adding logic to your C# apps
  5. Working with variable data in your C# apps
  6. Debugging C# apps

Then you'll sign freeCodeCamp's Academic Honesty pledge and take our 1-hour 80-question certification exam. If you receive a passing score, you'll earn your certification.

How to Earn the Foundational C# Certification

Here are the steps for earning this certification, which will take an estimated 35 hours of studying, plus 1 to 2 hours to pass the exam.

  1. Go to the Foundational C# Certification path on freeCodeCamp. Here you'll find the training content under "Courses". Press "Expand course" to find all the modules within each course. Each module in the path correlates to a piece of C# training content on Microsoft Learn.
  2. Click on each module in the course to find the link to the training content for that module.
  3. Complete the training content on Microsoft Learn. (Note: If you have previously completed the training content, you do not need to redo it.)
  4. Once you are done with each section, complete the comprehension check question on freeCodeCamp.
  5. At the end of each course, you'll receive a Trophy on Microsoft Learn. Enter the Trophy link in the Trophy page on freeCodeCamp. Each step on freeCodeCamp will also show instructions for how you can claim and submit these Trophies.

Learn together with the Microsoft Team

In addition to providing the C# training content on Microsoft Learn, the .NET team is hosting six office-hour style streaming events to help you succeed.

These streams will be every Wednesday at 2:00 pm UTC from September 20 to October 25.

During each of these session, expert presenters will review a training course, walk you through a guided project, and answer your questions.

You can also stay updated with live and on-demand sessions via the .NET YouTube channel.

We've also published a video walkthrough for the C# certification on the freeCodeCamp YouTube channel, taught by freeCodeCamp instructor and veteran C# developer Gavin Lon.

And you can ask questions and get support on the C# section of the freeCodeCamp Forum.

This is a Dream Come True for the freeCodeCamp Community

We've long encouraged campers to obtain professional certifications from tech companies – even though many of these certifications require a credit card and an exam fee.

By making this certification freely available to everyone, we can ensure that anyone – anywhere – can earn a high quality professional certification, regardless of their ability to pay.

I want to thank Microsoft who created a grant to make development of this certification possible. And I want to thank the many developers on both Microsoft's .NET team and freeCodeCamp's instructional design team that made this a reality.

Let's go get certified, shall we? Happy coding. 🏕️