.NET Rocks!

How do you manage APIs to GenAI, and how can GenAI help with API management? Carl and Richard chat with Andrei Kamenev about the latest features coming to Azure API Management. On the one hand, there are Copilot tools to help craft and understand APIM policies, which can get very complex. Then, there is the provisioning of access to GenAI-related APIs like the Azure OpenAI service, which utilize t...

How can .NET Aspire help you get into containers? Carl and Richard talk with Jiachen Jiang about her experiences working with .NET Aspire. Jiachen talks about the power of .NET Aspire to help lead developers to utilize cloud native architecture efficiently. A key part of the equation is containers, and Jiachen talks about how relatively rare containerized .NET apps are - because in many cases, it...

What if you want to build your own copilot? Carl and Richard talk to Vishwas Lele about his new startup, which is focused on using Azure OpenAI tools to help automate the government RFP writing process. Vishwas discusses the complexities of proposal writing, how specific and complex rules exist for each part of the proposal, and the challenge of getting the software to do an excellent job on the d...

What are the basics of building a decent user interface on a web page? Carl and Richard talk to Hilary Stohs-Krause about her experience helping folks build websites - you don't have to be a designer to make something useable! Hilary talks about steering clear of more complex UX libraries unless you know the site owner prefers them. Keeping things simple and consistent is best! The conversation al...

What's happening with WPF? Carl and Richard talk to Joseph Finney about the news from Build about WPF - it's back, baby! But did it ever go away? Joe talks about how WPF was made open source in 2018 and how minimal development was done there - enough so that the community started building frameworks to support it, including WPFUI and ModernWPF. But at Build, Microsoft announced a new focus on WPF,...

Multi-modal is here and ready to use! Carl and Richard talk to Veronika Kolesnikova about what she has seen in the latest OpenAI model. Multi-modal refers to GPT-4o's ability to work with text, audio, images, and more and respond in kind! Veronika talks about tackling interesting visual problems with GPT-4o - like summarizing graphs or creating new data visualizations. The conversation digs into s...

CosmosDB makes ChatGPT fast! While at Build in Seattle, Carl and Richard chatted with Mark Brown about CosmosDB's role in AI. Mark talks about how ChatGPT switched over to CosmosDB early on - when the number of users started to climb, database performance became essential, and CosmosDB was there. Today, many AI-centric CosmosDB features exist, like vector storage, indexing, and search! The convers...

What's up with MAUI and Blazor? Carl and Richard chat with Beth Massi about the latest MAUI, including the new webview available on GitHub that lets you embed an existing web page into your MAUI app. Beth talks about making apps the way you want to - with a mobile, web, or desktop focus - or making them all! Mixing Blazor and MAUI means you can steer clear of XAML if you prefer. There's no right w...

GitHub is about so much more than source control! While at Build, Carl and Richard chatted with Damian Brady about all the great things coming out of GitHub over the past few years, including Copilot and now Copilot Workspaces. The conversation digs into how large language models are changing how you write code and some idea of what things could be like in the future. Damian also digs into the mor...

Chatting with the leaders of C#! While at Build in Seattle, Carl and Richard sat down with Mads Torgersen and Dustin Campbell to discuss how C# continues evolving into version 13! With new versions coming every year, Mads talks about how complex features can be developed over several versions of the language - while also being able to get feedback from regular developers. So, what comes next for C...

It's episode 1900! While at Build, Carl and Richard recorded a milestone episode with Scott Hanselman. Scott talks about his goals in the later stages of his career, the ideas and origins of all the podcasts, and what is important to him today. In the second half, Carl pulls out a quiz show for Scott with quotes from shows going back 20 years! Lots of great stories of different conferences, podcas...

The Nomadic Developer returns - and is working on AI technology! After fifteen years, Aaron Erickson returns to .NET Rocks to talk to Carl and Richard about his nomadic adventures. Aaron talks about the twists and turns of moving from consultant at Thoughtworks to leadership in a tech company, leading a startup, and now being part of the team at nVidia exploring the potential of machine learning a...

What do you want the last chapter of your software development career to look like? Carl and Richard talk to Shawn Wildermuth about life as a 55-year-old software developer. Shawn talks about being an independent software development consultant for the past twenty years and considering what the next ten should look like. The conversation digs into what's fun and valuable and what you want to achie...

How do you build cloud-native applications in Azure? Carl and Richard talk to Scott Hunter about how Microsoft tooling is evolving to develop cloud-native applications - starting with the vital idea that all cloud-native apps are multiple applications! Scott talks about how most development tools focus on individual applications and how dealing with multiple applications, including cloud apps, can...

Six years later, how has antifragility thinking changed? Carl and Richard talk to Barry O'Reilly about his ongoing work on building highly reliable software. Since Barry's last appearance six years ago, he's returned to school and is writing a PhD thesis on antifragility. Studying complexity theory, Barry approaches software architecture with a minimalist view - you only add architecture when you...

How do you debug your EF queries? Carl and Richard talk to Giorgi Dalakishvili about his open-source Visual Studio extension, EFCore Visualizer. Giorgi talks about bringing together the EF rendering of the query with the database query plan to ensure you retrieve data from your database as efficiently as possible. The conversation ranges over a number of tools Giorgi has built over the years, incl...

Can speech become part of your development workflow? Carl and Richard talk to Karl Geitz about his use of NaturallySpeaking to create software in Visual Studio. Karl talks about using voice to write better, longer comments in his code and also helps to navigate the features of Visual Studio itself. The effort started when dealing with Repetitive Stress Injury but has now evolved into his most prod...

How do you manage your DNS? Carl and Richard talk to Anthony Eden of DNSimple about his latest product, the Domain Control Plane. Anthony talks about how everyone has DNS—and usually in more than one place. Getting a common view of all your DNS entries, no matter where they are, is valuable, but being able to automate changes is even more important, especially as things scale up! The conversation...

GitHub Copilot has been out for a few years now - how is it going? Carl and Richard talk to Michelle Duke about what's been happening with GitHub Copilot. Michelle discusses the new features in GitHub Copilot, including Chat, which gives you more of a ChatGPT-like interface while still being focused strictly on code, including your code! Then, the conversation digs into the broader ideas around la...

Do you understand how your APIs are being used? Carl and Richard talk to Anthony Alaribe about his experiences dealing with poorly documented APIs that need updates - but no breaking changes! Anthony tells a story about missing a use case for an API that cost a lot of money, which started him down the path to making APItoolkit.io. The toolkit allows you to see how your API is being used and any ex...

How has Aspect-Oriented Programming changed? Carl and Richard talk to Gael Fraiteur of PostSharp fame about his new tool, Metalama. Gael talks about being able to move out of IL and into Roslyn Analyzers to help you get rid of boilerplate code and focus more on the value your application brings. The conversation dives into how AOP can help build higher quality code, to the point of being a testing...

It's 2024, how is Azure doing? Carl and Richard chatted with Magnus Mårtensson about his work with customers migrating and operating in Azure. Magnus talks about the waste many organizations have in cloud resources, often by provisioning services with too many resources or failing to shut down things they no longer need. The conversation digs into today's excellent tooling, including Azure Migrate...

Modular Monoliths strike the middle ground between monoliths and microservices! Carl and Richard talk to Steve Smith about his work striking a balance between the simplicity of a monolithic set of services and the complexity of breaking everything into microservices. Steve discusses the performance and simplicity advantages of monoliths and only breaking out services with specific needs into separ...

Has observability hit a tipping point? Carl and Richard chat with Steve Gordon and Martin Thwaites about the various products and technologies today to make observability a vital part of a successful application. Steve talks about telemetry support hitting a tipping point where most vendors have products working with OpenTelemetry. Martin digs into the many places you can send telemetry to increas...

Another version of CSLA? Yes! Carl and Richard talk to Rocky Lhotka about his work keeping CSLA up-to-date with the latest .NET features. And now, with .NET 8, CSLA 8 has strong support for Blazor! Rocky talks about getting deep into Blazor for CSLA, the power of rendering the client or server side, and whether or not mixing the two is smart. Lots of great thoughts from one of the original .NET ed...