In a default ASP.NET Core MVC project, you would typically find the _Layout.cshtml file in the Views/Shared folder. This shared layout file is used to define the common structure and elements that are applied to multiple views across the application.

As a beginner, you would likely start with Visual Studio Community Edition for developing ASP.NET Core applications. It provides a comprehensive development environment with a wide range of features and tools tailored for .NET development, making it suitable for beginners.

ASP.NET Core shifts from the traditional web.config to use JSON-based configuration files, typically named appsettings.json. This change provides a more flexible and human-readable way to configure application settings, and it aligns with modern development practices.

Testing a function that calculates the sum of two numbers would typically fall under Unit Testing. Unit tests focus on testing individual components or functions in isolation to ensure they work as expected. In this case, you're testing a specific function, making it a unit test scenario.

In Entity Framework Core, the component that represents a session with the database and allows you to query and save instances of your entities is the DbContext. DbContext is the entry point for accessing the database and includes methods for querying and interacting with database tables represented as DbSet.

If the 'CreateAsync' method is successful in creating a new user, it will return a result with a 'Succeeded' property set to true. This property indicates whether the user creation operation was successful.

In an ASP.NET Core application, the default route configuration is typically found in the Startup.cs file. This file contains the Configure method where you define the routing for your application, including setting up default routes.

Docker Compose is a tool for defining and running multi-container Docker applications. It allows you to define the services, networks, and volumes needed for your application in a single, easy-to-read Compose file. This helps achieve isolation and simplifies the deployment of ASP.NET Core applications with their dependencies.

The static files middleware in ASP.NET Core is responsible for serving static content like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and images to clients. It ensures that these files are delivered efficiently to improve website performance.

In Razor views, you use the @() syntax to embed server-side C# code. This allows you to mix C# code seamlessly with HTML markup. For example, @{ var message = "Hello, Razor!"; } declares a C# variable in a Razor view.