Jerry Nixon: .NET Aspire and Databases - Episode 345

Apr 14, 2025

In this engaging discussion, Jerry Nixon, a Principal Program Manager on the SQL Server team and a professor, shares unique insights into the intersection of parenting and engineering. He emphasizes the crucial role of community and networking in career growth, comparing pivotal moments to pearls on a necklace. Nixon also explains how .NET Aspire simplifies container-based development and enhances database interactions, while offering a fresh perspective on developer conventions at Microsoft. Plus, he delves into the evolving landscape of GraphQL and the importance of community feedback on tools.

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ANECDOTE

Career as Pearl Necklace

Jerry Nixon describes his career as a pearl necklace with distinct meaningful moments separated by quiet times.
Many key career turning points came from interactions with people rather than technology.

ADVICE

Never Eat Alone Advice

Build genuine connections by helping others without expecting anything back.
Success in technology careers comes significantly from community and relationships.

INSIGHT

Parenting Mirrors Engineering Leadership

Managing engineers closely resembles parenting due to high passions and strong personalities.
Skills from parenting translate well into effective engineering leadership.

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Jerry Nixon is a Principal Program Manager on the SQL Server team focused on the Data API builder. He’s also a fanatic for #CSharp, #StarTrek, and Etymology. He also serves as a professor at Colorado Christian University.

Topics of Discussion:

[3:34] Why Jerry describes his life as a pearl necklace.

[5:15] Jerry recommends the book Never Eat Alone and the importance of community.

[6:01] How engineers and parenting are aligned.

[7:02] Jerry reflects on Microsoft’s history of evangelism, the rise of “opinionated” frameworks, and how .NET Aspire revives a form of proven prescriptive guidance. [9:35] Prescriptive guidance.

[12:03] The inevitable evolution of .NET Aspire and how it simplifies container-based development by handling orchestration behind the scenes.

[16:56] Paying more attention and awareness to the developer community.

[18:30] How GraphQL fits into the Data API Builder experience, giving developers flexibility without needing to write complex backends.

[21:40] Jerry talks about community feedback on Data API Builder and how real-world use cases help prioritize features and fix gaps in tooling.

[31:02] Jerry’s perspective on building container-based solutions.

[32:15] Data API Builder’s community involvement and upcoming features.

[36:15] Docker Desktop.

[38:58] The architectural concept of Data API Builder.

[44:42] C# coding conventions at Microsoft and the friendly battles over things like naming, underscores, and formatting styles across internal teams.

Mentioned in this Episode:

Clear Measure Way

Architect Forum

Software Engineer Forum

Programming with Palermo — New Video Podcast! Email us at programming@palermo.net.

Clear Measure, Inc. (Sponsor)

.NET DevOps for Azure: A Developer’s Guide to DevOps Architecture the Right Way, by Jeffrey Palermo

.Net Aspire and Data API builder with the Community

Jerry on LinkedIn

Jerry Nixon Github

Colorado Christian University

Data API builder for Azure Databases samples

Common C# code conventions

What is Data API Builder?

Quickstart: Use Data API builder with SQL

Want to Learn More?

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