---
title: Developer prerequisites
slug: cms-12/docs/developer-prerequisites
docTags: 
createdAt: 2026-08-10T15:55:56.000Z
---

To succeed with your projects as an Optimizely developer, you should have a good understanding of these areas:

- [HTML](https://www.w3schools.com/html/html_intro.asp) and [CSS](https://www.w3schools.com/css/css_intro.asp)
- [C#](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/csharp/tour-of-csharp)
- [ASP.NET Core](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/?view=aspnetcore-5.0)
- A good IDE like [Microsoft Visual Studio](https://www.visualstudio.com/) or [Visual Studio Code](https://code.visualstudio.com/)
- [NuGet software installation](https://www.nuget.org/)
- [Microsoft SQL Server](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server/)

To build the best possible solution to support editors, you should also understand how editors work in Optimizely and how to use the Optimizely user interface. See [Optimizely user interface](docId\:AeMJVNNgrpmXo3PEFWSA-).

If you plan to host your Optimizely solution in the cloud, knowledge of [Microsoft Azure and its components](https://azure.microsoft.com/) is valuable to maximize your cloud investment. You can also use the Optimizely Digital Experience Platform (DXP) to manage your customer solutions.