Betatalks the podcast

In this episode, we talk to Marc Duiker, he is a senior developer advocate at Ably and has a strong focus on event-driven architectures in the Azure cloud and serverless technologies. He started Azure Functions University on GitHub, a free and open-source learning curriculum. He likes to create pixel art, code visuals & music, and design retro games. We talk about his job at Ably, everything you need to know about Ably and their SaaS product; real-time communication, native WebSockets, its security, and how it compares to Azure Web PubSub are discussed. And he shares what it's like to move from a consulting role in a services company to a technology company making a technical product. We dive into his hobbies of creating pixel artwork and small retro games, for example, his Azure Function logo game. How his pixel art avatars went, sort of, viral. How he even added pixel art animals to the VS Code Pets extension. And learning new techniques or languages in the process, such as TypeScript. Furthermore, Marc is probably one of the biggest advocates of Serverless and Azure Functions in the Netherlands. So, we touch upon why he thinks Serverless is so powerful, his Azure Functions University on GitHub, and creating custom bindings.     About this episode, and Marc Duiker in particular: you can find @marcduiker on Twitter, GitHub and his Azure Functions University GitHub. And, don't forget to read his blogs and his recent blog on Cloud PubSub services compared: Azure Web PubSub vs Ably. You can also find all of his links and his retro games via his Linktree.About Betatalks: have a look at our videos and join us on our Betatalks Discord channel

In this episode, we talk to Dylan Beattie, who is a Microsoft MVP and international keynote speaker. He is the director of Ursatile, the creator of the Rockstar programming language, and has performed his software-themed parodies of classic rock songs all over the world as Dylan Beattie and the Linebreakers. We talk about his programming language – Rockstar - in which he writes programs that resemble bad song lyrics. It started as a joke, but it actually worked and went viral. And how it made him use technologies like Rust, Scala and Python, or techniques like building interpreters in JavaScript, parsing expression grammar, recursive descent parsing, continuation passing, flow control, and more. We dive deeper into the fact that people do better work when they are enjoying themselves. Real software development is a craft, where we solve problems that have never been solved before. It can be a difficult and frustrating process; you get stuck and we underestimate how much time it can take. Sometimes you have to step back and do something else to get that creative process going again – tip: take a notebook with you so you don’t forget your good ideas. We also discuss the basics every developer should know, what skills a developer should have, and how there are three kinds of software that you might write. And, last but not least, we talk about how Windows as a development platform has gotten a lot better in the last 25 years, about different programming languages, especially C# and .NET, about (programming) language proficiency versus fluency, about translating programming expertise from one language to another, and his love for JavaScript. About this episode, and Dylan Beattie in particular: you can find @dylanbeattie on Twitter and GitHub. Check out his website dylanbeattie.net and The Rockstar programming language at codewithrockstar.com. And, listen to 'Dylan Beattie and the Linebreakers' music on his YouTube channel.  About Betatalks: have a look at our videos and join us on our Betatalks Discord channel 

In this episode, we talk to Scott Hanselman, who works in Open Source on .NET and the Azure Cloud for Microsoft and is a well-known – perhaps famous - face in the .NET community. He has been a developer for 30 years, has been blogging at hanselman.com for 20 years, has been podcasting for hanselminutes.com and Azure Friday for more than 15 years, and has written a number of technical books. We talk about how he creates his ‘edutainment’; providing entertainment and education, keeping it fun and yet making people think about all the possibilities. For example, by bringing old technology into the modern world, as he recently did by connecting a Commodore 64 to the internet. So it’s half fun, half getting people's brains working. We discuss why he likes to visit thrift shops and the importance of the right to repair; he does not want to be a part of the throwaway society – waste not, want not - and prefers to give away his obsolete (tech) items to someone who can use them. We also dive a little deeper into his Microsoft journey, as he received his 15-year congratulatory email this month. He recalls his collaboration with Scott Guthrie to work on Ruby on Rails and his participation in the first open-source .NET project. Especially zooming in on the change from closed-source to source-open – Rotor as Microsoft called it – to finally truly open-source. And what it entailed to get here. About this episode, and Scott Hanselman in particular: you can find @shanselman on Twitter and GitHub. Check out his blogs on hanselman.com or watch his video's on his YouTube channel. Also, don't forget to check out his TikTok and listen to his podcasts 'hanselminutes'. About Betatalks: have a look at our videos and join us on our Betatalks Discord channel 

In this episode, we talk to Frank Boucher, a Microsoft Azure professional whose expertise and bilingual service are called upon in many markets. Frank created the ‘Cloud 5 minute’ show on YouTube and writes about his experiences with Microsoft Azure on his blogs. We talk about the benefits of being bilingual in the development community, speaking French and English, and how this helps him share his technical knowledge with others. Also, we wonder what Azure services impressed him the most in recent months. What will the future bring? And what is his take on the fact that more and more new Azure products seem to be a combination of existing services with some extra sauce on top? Touching upon Container Apps, Static Web Apps, Azure Functions, and Logic Apps. And at last, we will talk a bit more about his goals with and his love for creating tech video content on YouTube, Twitch and TikTok, in both his languages, and his URL Shortener project.About this episode, and Frank Boucher in particular: you can find @fboucheros  on Twitter, and on his GitHub. Check out his blogs on 'Frankysnotes' or watch his 'Cloud 5 minute' show on YouTube. Don't forget to also check out his accounts on Twitch and TikTok.About Betatalks: have a look at our videos and join us on our Betatalks Discord channel 

In this episode, we talk to Dennie Declercq, a Microsoft MVP Developer Technologies. He is president and developer at DDSoft, a non-profit that connects IT with people who are less tech-savvy. Thanks to his autism, he is the right man to contribute as a volunteer in function of people with disabilities. We talk about the modern way of building websites with Azure Functions, Azure Static Web Apps and Blazor. And, how to build really affordable tech solutions that you can add into products for people with disabilities. Dennie also shares his own experiences with (non)inclusive and (un)accessible software. Moreover, we discuss how Blazor can help developers with autism because it reduces context switching. And about the future of accessibility with Blazor and Azure Cognitive Services. Furthermore, we also dive deeper into what the biggest misconceptions are about working in tech with a disability or being on the autism spectrum.About this episode, and Dennie Declercq in particular: you can find @DennieDeclercq on Twitter, and on his GitHub. Check out his website or listen to his conference presentation about 'Intro to Blazing Web Accessibility - Empowered with AI'.About Betatalks: have a look at our videos and join us on our Betatalks Discord channel 

In this episode, we speak with Laurent Bugnion, a Principal Cloud Developer Advocate for Microsoft. He is one of the foremost experts for XAML and C# based development. And, he is also the author of the well-known open source framework MVVM Light for Windows, WPF and Xamarin. We talk about the success story of his open source framework MVVM Light, its adoption by Microsoft, and his thoughts on and use of Xamarin, Blazor and Azure. We also dive into his open source project; timekeeper.cloud. This is all built on Blazor, runs on Azure Static Web Apps, and is powered by Azure Functions and by SignalR. In particular, we zoom in on the benefits of Azure Static Web Apps. Furthermore, we talk about his role and the importance of developer advocacy and creating content. Especially, his focus on his show called ‘Learn Live’. And we finish with a great story about his tattoos and heritage.About this episode, and Laurent Bugnion in particular: you can find @LBugnion on Twitter, and GitHub. Check out his Timekeeper.cloud and his show and producing Learn Live. Also, you can read his blog here.About Betatalks: have a look at our videos and join us on our Betatalks Discord channel 

In this episode, we speak with Isaac Abraham. He is the founder of Compositional IT and author of the books 'Get Programming with F#' and 'F# in Action'. We talk about programming with F# and how it compares to C#. What are their differences and similarities? We discuss why F# is not yet a widely used language. What made Isaac push through all the difficulties when getting to know F#? What advantages did he enjoy? What made it productive and rewarding? And how does it work with Unit Testing? We also share experiences about working with and switching between different languages, for example from F# to C#, or C# to Typescript. And he elaborates on the SAFE Stack initiative - Saturn Azure Fable Elmish - and the benefits of working with it. Furthermore, we talk about the value of functional programming and Azure Container Apps - the service Isaac is most excited about.About this episode, and Isaac Abraham in particular: you can find @isaac_abraham on Twitter, check out his website and find his very interesting book here: F# in action. About Betatalks: have a look at our videos and join us on our Betatalks Discord channel 

In this episode, we speak with Louëlla (Lou) Creemers. She is a web developer with a love for .NET. We talk about the tech content she creates and how she tries to bring value to the tech community through social media and by being a speaker. As a relative newcomer to Tech Twitter, how welcoming is the tech community, especially for women? Further, we discuss what the .NET ecosystem currently has to offer, if anything is missing, and if there is something she would like to change. And, we dive a little deeper into her learning journey to become the next generation web developer and how this could help other students inspire and achieve their goals.About this episode, and Lou Creemers in particular: you can find @lovelacecoding on Twitter or check out her website and definitely read her blogpost Do's and don'ts with Twitter DM's.About Betatalks: have a look at our videos and join us on our Betatalks Discord channel 

In this episode, we speak with Eve Pardi. She is a skilled Data Scientist and AI Engineer, the owner of AI42, and a board member of Global AI Community. Eve explains why she started AI42, what their mission is, and how AI is still something new and magical to most engineers. How there's still a disconnect between AI engineers and "normal" developers. We talk about the importance of understanding and controlling AI systems.  So we wonder, how can we understand AI in general? What should we keep in mind when using NLP? How can we create fair, unbiased, and non-discriminatory intelligent models? And how you need to ask yourself: am I really able to tell what my model is doing? Furthermore, there has been a lot of buzz around GPT-3, so we ask Eve why it's a big deal and what we can expect in the future.About this episode, and Eve Pardi in particular: you can find @EvePardi on Twitter or check out her website codewitheve.azurewebsites.net.About Betatalks: have a look at our videos and join us on our Betatalks Discord channel 

In this episode we speak with Henry Been, in a busy period where it seems that all the in-person events are planned right before the summer. We share our experiences and opinions about developer productivity and the fact that "doing nothing" is necessary sometimes. Because Henry literally wrote the book 'Azure Infrastructure as Code', we dive into everything Azure native around infrastructure as code such as Bicep, ARM and even Deployment Stacks which is still in preview.About this episode, and Henry in particular: you can find Henry on Twitter at @henry_been or at henrybeen.nl. For information about the book 'Azure Infrastructure as Code' written by Henry Been, Eduard Keilholz, and Erwin Staal visit this link. About Betatalks: have a look at our videos and join us on our Betatalks Discord channel