[.net] What is a .NET developer?

I have been noticing that some software engineering jobs are asking for .NET developers, but I have never been given a definition (formal or informal) of what experience is required to be able to call yourself a .NET developer.

I have taken a couple classes where we needed to make Windows Forms every other week using Visual Studio, but I am pretty sure this is not sufficient. I'm assuming you need to be familiar with most if not all technologies on the .NET Framework Developer Center , but I could be wrong, which is why I am asking. :-)

So, what skills do you need to be able to market yourself as a .NET developer? Or more specifically, what do employers expect you to know if you market yourself as a .NET developer?

Most .NET jobs I've run across also either explicitly or implicitly assume some knowledge of SQL-based RDBMSes. While it's not "part of the description", it's usually part of the job.

Though I consider myself a .NET developer, I don't prefer calling it that way. c# developer sounds much better and is a much clearer message: it says that I understand both C# and .NET (because C# and .NET are tied together). I could call myself a VB.NET developer, same story there.

What is a .NET developer? I don't know, because you cannot develop with .NET, if develop is a synonym for programming. .NET is the environment, the libraries, the languages, the CLR, the CLI, JIT, the LR, the BCL, the IDE and the IL. I find it a poor job description, but it may also mean that they don't really care: either you are an F#, a C#, an IronPython or a VB.NET developer, they're all implicitly and secretly .NET developers.

What do you need? A solid understanding why ".NET" is a poor job description and ask for a more precise one. Nobody can know everything of .NET, it is simply too wide. Orientate yourself to all sides of it and do both ASP.NET and WinForms. Don't forget Silverlight, WPF etc and two or three .NET languages.

In other words: know the forest by knowing what trees and flowers it habitats and specialize in knowing a few beautiful and common ones well.

I'd say the minimum would be to

• know one of the .Net Languages (C#, VB.NET, etc.)
• know the basic working of the .Net runtime
• know and understand the core parts of the .Net class libraries
• have an understanding about what additional classes and functions are available as part of the .Net class libraries

CLR, BCL and C#/VB.Net, ADO.NET, WinForms and/or ASP.NET. Most of the places that require additional .Net technologies, like WPF or WCF will call it out explicitly.