Jason Amoss went to school for electronics technology, working on things like TVs, VCRs, circuit boards and robots.

After a while, Jason realized that putting computers together didn't challenge him. But he found that programming for the web did.

“You can kind of do anything on the web – you don't have to worry about what computer it is,” Jason said.

Since this realization, he hasn't looked back. Working in the industry since 1997 and in .NET since 2000, he's now the director of IT at Quality Home Systems and a Microsoft certified vb.net developer, with a primary focus in e-commerce.

 

Pluralsight authors are the difference

“Pluralsight authors are quality people who are active with the community,” Jason said, “Julie Lerman's probably the perfect example of somebody's videos I like watching because she explains everything at a really basic level. Also, she's very attentive, especially when I'm on Twitter.”

As a self-proclaimed visual learner, Jason learns best by watching someone work.

However, since he's part of a small company, and a “single-person-coding shop,” going to conferences for professional development can be a challenge. If he's out, there's no one to take his place. Pluralsight makes it possible for him to learn new technologies without leaving the office.

“Seeing somebody actually create a program in the toolset that you're using makes a big difference for somebody like myself,” Jason said.

 

Testing out new languages

Jason's now branched out to learn front-end languages. Just last year he tried working with jQuery for the first time out of the need to move from standard web forms to MVC.

“I don't do design very well. That's not what I'm good at, so I'd never touched jQuery,” Jason admits, “Without the help of Pluralsight, and a little from MSDN Magazine, I probably wouldn't be able to do it because it's so radically different from the language I code in.”

An avid Twitter user, Jason often learns about new technology from other developers' tweets. For example, he learned about Knockout, a JavaScript library that works well with e-commerce and can help to build a better user experience, especially when it comes to shopping carts. He saw Pluralsight had Knockout courses, so he started taking them to find out what all the fuss was about it.

“When I watched the Knockout course it really helped me to enhance our shopping cart,” Jason said. “There was nothing wrong with our shopping cart, it worked fine, but there were places that it could be better.”

Utilizing Knockout, Jason was able to lower customer wait time and take out page flickers.

 

Using Pluralsight to stay current

Although Jason's paid for his Pluralsight subscription in the past, his employer now sees the value and provides it to him. According to Jason, his boss now understands the cost of a subscription is greatly outweighed by Jason keeping his skills up to date.

One important value Jason finds in Pluralsight is how well it keeps his skills current. Pluralsight courses contain the most relevant skills and software workflows in the industry. Jason explains: “Colleges and schools can't keep up because they have to develop a curriculum that has to be approved by the Board of Education. By the time they get that done, they're five versions out.”

A lot has changed since Jason graduated from college. With a Pluralsight subscription, Jason's able to jump into new technologies and help keep his company competitive.

“Pluralsight certainly made it so I can do my job more efficiently,” Jason said. “We are living on the cutting edge of technology. I'm using MVC 5 and EF 6.2 and doing a lot of things that other companies just don't do because the tech is too new.”

Read more stories like Jason's here.