Ready for a chat with the creator of Node? Carl and Richard talk to Ryan Dahl about his work creating NodeJS in 2009 and how he moved on after a few years, leading to the creation of Deno, an opinionated approach to building web applications. Ryan talks about the challenges of simplifying web development by combining all the important things into a single set of tools—saving you the effort of assembling those things yourself. The conversation also digs into how web development has evolved and one of Ryan's current efforts - convincing Oracle to surrender the JavaScript trademark to the world!

Debbie O'Brien, a Playwright expert at Microsoft, dives into the latest developments in Playwright, an open-source testing framework for web applications. She discusses the new Playwright Testing service on Azure, which simplifies infrastructure management. Key topics include the benefits of automation, visual regression testing, and user-oriented strategies for consistent UI. Debbie emphasizes the importance of community involvement and the versatility of Playwright across multiple programming languages, making it a crucial tool for developers.

How simple can you make software development? Carl and Richard talk to Mark Rendle about his focus on simplicity in building software - as simple as possible. Mark talks about the tendency of developers, sometimes through no fault of their own, to use what is new and cool in development, regardless of how practical or necessary it actually is. The conversation digs into the ongoing battle around cloud-native development using technologies like Kubernetes. You can be cloud native with more straightforward approaches! The same applies to web frameworks - there are lots of choices. Build as little as necessary!

Billy Hollis, an expert in software design, shares insights on how thoughtful design can save time and money in development. He emphasizes the importance of understanding stakeholder needs to avoid costly code rework. The conversation touches on the challenge of institutional knowledge loss as employees retire, which could necessitate modernization efforts. Hollis advocates for adaptable user interfaces and better data visualization in apps, highlighting design's evolution from an afterthought to a critical component in enhancing user experience.

Can you do mob programming remotely? Carl and Richard talk to Ulrika Malmgren about mob, or team programming - where three to five developers work together on the same problem, rotating keyboard control and collaborating to write the best possible code. Modern tools like Teams and Zoom make it easy to do the same programming style with everyone remotely! Ulrika talks about how team programming becomes the standard approach to development - as opposed to solo programming, where everyone works separately and then has to spend time sharing what they've done! Good team programming results in higher-quality code in less time - and more happiness!

Malte Loller-Anderson from Norkart specializes in machine learning for geospatial data, while Mathilde Ørstavik focuses on automating the identification of buildings in aerial imagery. They discuss how their models streamline the mapping process by recognizing structures in challenging environments, such as snow and mountainous landscapes. Malte highlights their decision to use in-house nVidia L40 processors instead of cloud solutions, optimizing training times for complex models. Their insights illuminate the future of geospatial technology in urban planning and environmental monitoring.

What do Domain-Driven Design and event sourcing have to do with each other? Everything! Carl and Richard chat with Anita Kvamme about her experiences applying DDD, and specifically event storming, to developing applications using event sourcing. Anita talks about building applications that have many sources of events—from users and elsewhere—and needing to manage that complexity without slowing down development. Event sourcing also means keeping a source of the truth - all events leading up to a practical business benefit. And that can be hugely helpful in analytics as well!

How can a low-code solution help you deliver a .NET app? Carl and Richard talk with Serge Sarafudinov about his Xomega project. Serge describes how Xomega uses models and templates to generate .NET code for applications for Blazor clients, WPF, and even ASP.NET Forms and TypeScript! The conversation also digs into rehabilitating existing .NET applications where new features can be added with Xomega, and then gradually convert the existing application into the model approach - and then you can change out the client if you like! There are free and paid versions of Xomega; take it out for a spin and see if you can't deliver solutions faster!

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 tokens - and those tokens mean money, so they need to be controlled. The GenAI Gateway provides the ability to rate-limit token issuing and all the other capabilities you expect from APIM. Prompt caching is in preview and can decrease the cost of repeated use of the same prompts. Many of the features are new, and more are coming!

Jiachen Jiang, a product manager on the Azure Container Apps team with a rich background on the .NET team, dives deep into the benefits of .NET Aspire for entering the world of containerization. She explains the challenges developers face when adopting containers and how they can add valuable cloud-native features. The conversation covers the importance of telemetry, orchestration, and navigating the complexities of microservices. Listeners gain insights into effective development practices and the evolution of .NET within cloud environments.