Azure & DevOps Podcast

Experienced software architect and consultant Jeremy Miller discusses open-source development, Marten, and parallelism in software. He shares insights on implementing the producer-consumer pattern, TPL Dataflow Library, and document databases. The chapter concludes with a discussion on reference implementations, IOC containers, and promotions of related products and consulting services.

Nathaniel Schutta, a software architect and advocate of polyglot programming, discusses the importance of architectural thinking and the challenges of learning new programming languages. He also explores the role of architects in organizations and the elusive nature of architecture. Other topics include designing software vs designing a car, the concept of ghost kitchens, and the fundamentals of software engineering.

Bob started as a .NET Developer back in the early days of .NET 1.1 with the goal of converting ASP pages to ASP.NET web applications. During that time, his career progressed from .NET Developer to Lead Developer, to Architect, to where he is today. As a technical director at Octopus Deploy, he helps solve complex customer problems as Octopus Deploy. As a team, we help answer both technical and non-technical questions. Bob has been a fan of making it easier to deploy software since the early 2010s, when working for a company the only time to deploy to production was 2 a.m. Saturday. That has led him down the path of CI/CD, DevOps, TDD, and automating all things. He was exposed to Redgate tooling and Octopus Deploy while working at Farm Credit Services of America and has been a fan ever since. In his current role, Bob gets to work with a variety of technologies every day.   Topics of Discussion: [1:41] One of the biggest high points in Bob’s career was being one of the champions of automating database deployments, and seeing that spread across all these other teams. [3:51] Also, he adopted test-driven development and was able to improve the speed of his application from 500 milliseconds per request to 50 milliseconds. [5:20] Bob talks about test-driven development. [7:00] The rules of thumb for people to get right to make running their software system more painless. [8:14] The problem of database management. [10:10] There are two schools of thought: state-based management and migration approach. [12:59] Distributed source control and having a build server are two of the main tools to consider. [15:28] The critical ingredients of monitoring and recovery. [22:07] The two ways to define a tenant. [24:11] One of the advantages of multi-tenancy applications is having a shared application and a shared database, where all the data of all the customers is intermingled with one customer’s data. [27:29] Managing complexity in the cloud. [33:53] I’s all about improving a little, every day, and practicing to get better just a little bit more.   Mentioned in this Episodes: Clear Measure Way Architect Forum Software Engineer Forum Programming with Palermo — New Video Podcast! Email us programming@palermo.net Clear Measure, Inc. (Sponsor) .NET DevOps for Azure: A Developer’s Guide to DevOps Architecture the Right Way, by Jeffrey Palermo — Available on Amazon! Jeffrey Palermo’s Twitter — Follow to stay informed about future events! Architect Tips — Video podcast! Azure DevOps Bob Walker Twitter Bob Walker LinkedIn Blog — Octopus Deploy Octopus Deploy   Want to Learn More? Visit AzureDevOps.Show for show notes and additional episodes.

Damian Brady is a Developer Advocate Manager at GitHub. He's a developer, speaker, and author specializing in DevOps, MLOps, developer process, and software architecture. Formerly a Cloud Advocate at Microsoft for four years, and before that, a dev at Octopus Deploy and a Microsoft MVP, he has a 25-year background in software development and consulting in a broad range of industries. In Australia, he co-organized the Brisbane .Net User Group and launched the annual DDD Brisbane conference.   Topics of Discussion: [2:12] How did Damian get into the field? [5:50] What is GitHub Copilot, and what are some of the most impressive and time-saving features? [8:38] What is the model that GitHub Copilot uses? [10:32] How have they decided what code is appropriate for this model? [12:13] Damian talks about both the prompt engineering and the server side. [17:30] How do you know if your code is good code? [19:50] Damian shares some cool prompts he has seen in Copilot Chat. [26:10] Github Copilot Voice is an experimental tool, useful for people who find it hard to type or who can’t type. [32:48] The aim of Copilot is to basically increase your productivity, but increase your happiness as a developer as well. [34:40] Will this eventually take the job of all developers? [38:14] Whether it’s GitHub Copilot or a competitive tool that does AI programming, it’s just going to be the way that you do software engineering. [43:07] The difference between junior and senior developers.   Mentioned in this Episodes: Clear Measure Way Architect Forum Software Engineer Forum Programming with Palermo — New Video Podcast! Email us programming@palermo.net Clear Measure, Inc. (Sponsor) .NET DevOps for Azure: A Developer’s Guide to DevOps Architecture the Right Way, by Jeffrey Palermo — Available on Amazon! Jeffrey Palermo’s Twitter — Follow to stay informed about future events! Architect Tips — Video podcast! Azure DevOps Damian Brady on Twitter Damian Brady website GitHubNext CoPilot for Docs GitHubNext | Copilot for Pull Requests Copilot for CLI CoPilot Voice DDD Brisbane   Want to Learn More? Visit AzureDevOps.Show for show notes and additional episodes.

Glenn Burnside is the Principal Engineer at Skimmer. For 11 years, he was the Executive Vice President at Headspring until they were acquired by Accenture. Before that, he held a number of development management positions as well as leadership roles in the Boy Scouts and other community roles. Glenn holds an Executive MBA from Quantic School of Business and a Computer Engineering degree from Texas A&M University, where he held leadership positions in the Corps of Cadets, Company B-1. You can find more about Glenn at glennburnside.com.   Topics of Discussion: [3:48] Glenn shares a funny story of threatening to quit if he became a manager, and what it feels like to bug people about filling out their timesheets. [5:13] What Glenn realized about software team management and paving the way for others to grow. [9:03] Glenn talks about his thought process of adding someone to the team, whether it’s from scratch or adding someone to an existing team. [10:08] A concept from The Ideal Team Player, of finding someone that is humble, hungry, and smart. [13:14] Why Glenn asks to look for demonstrated ability or demonstrated actions from their prior history rather than answering a hypothetical question. [14:05] The STARR method: Situation, Task, Action, Resolution, Retrospective. [17:44] The importance of finding someone that can improve with you and learn as they go. [19:46] The younger generation of developers has skills but lacks confidence. [21:54] Gathering data points of the industry as a whole from outside your inner circle and place of employment. [23:07] You’ve got the great people on your team, now how do you get them to stay? [25:02] Keeping everybody aimed at the higher mission. [31:11] Having respect for the whole team, not just thinking of yourself as an individual player.   Mentioned in this Episodes: Clear Measure Way Architect Forum Software Engineer Forum Programming with Palermo — New Video Podcast! Email us programming@palermo.net Clear Measure, Inc. (Sponsor) .NET DevOps for Azure: A Developer’s Guide to DevOps Architecture the Right Way, by Jeffrey Palermo — Available on Amazon! Jeffrey Palermo’s Twitter — Follow to stay informed about future events! Architect Tips — Video podcast! Azure DevOps Glenn Burnside on LinkedIn Glenn Burnside   Want to Learn More? Visit AzureDevOps.Show for show notes and additional episodes.

Dennis van der Stelt is a Software Architect who loves building distributed systems and the challenges they bring. To be better than the day before, he continuously searches for new ways to improve his knowledge of architecture and software development. What he learns he tries to share via numerous articles, presentations, and posts on his blog. If you want to chat, feel free to ping Dennis on Twitter at @dvdstelt.   Topics of Discussion: [3:07] How did Dennis get into distributed systems? [5:24] Helping customers with building distributed systems. [7:00] Dennis describes the essence of distributed systems. [9:07] The role of asynchronous messaging between components in distributed systems. [12:38] Dennis shares a story about a panicked CEO when the database went down, and the lessons learned from the experience. [14:44] Starting with synchronous distribution, and then moving to asynchronous when you find the benefit. [16:05] The downsides of using asynchronous communication. [17:28] Who decides what happens when things go wrong? [22:34] What Amazon does right. [27:18] Microservices and event-driven architecture — Jeffrey has yet to find a microservices expert! [35:48] Thinking more about the domain model in vertical slices.   Mentioned in this Episodes: Clear Measure Way Architect Forum Software Engineer Forum Programming with Palermo — New Video Podcast! Email us programming@palermo.net Clear Measure, Inc. (Sponsor) .NET DevOps for Azure: A Developer’s Guide to DevOps Architecture the Right Way, by Jeffrey Palermo — Available on Amazon! Jeffrey Palermo’s Twitter — Follow to stay informed about future events! Architect Tips — Video podcast! Azure DevOps Particular Software Dennis on Github Dennis on Twitter Dennis van der Stelt   Want to Learn More? Visit AzureDevOps.Show for show notes and additional episodes.

Giorgi Dalakishvili is a software developer with more than a decade of experience. He works mainly with C#, ASP.NET MVC/ASP.NET Core, REST, WCF, Xamarin, Android, iOS, Entity Framework, Azure, SQL Server, and Oracle.   Giorgi is an open-source author and contributor on GitHub and a member of the .NET Foundation and InfoQ Editor.   Topics of Discussion: [3:33] Giorgi has worked with all the frameworks and libraries that Microsoft has come out with over the past 10‒15 years. He discusses using Entity Framework and starting his small speaking engagements. [5:12] Sessionize is a website where you can put out some different topics that you’d be willing to speak on, and just reach out to different user groups to take the plunge and do some public speaking for the first time. [6:03] Other types of data with Entity Framework beyond relational data, such as hierarchical data type from SQL Server. [8:49] How it simplifies your life. [9:28] What about JSON? Are there any limitations on the back-end database? [13:00] Is the support in EF Core 7.0 good enough to give a try if you’re going against SQL Server? [14:09] What other types of data are interesting to work with with Entity Framework? [14:36] Using geospatial data. What does it even look like? [18:30] Full text search, and how it’s different from a regular text search. [23:20] There are a lot of features to uncover in relational databases that we aren’t even aware of yet. [26:22] There are some problems and some tasks that are better solved with non-relational databases, but the majority can overlap between the two systems.   Mentioned in this Episodes: Clear Measure Way Architect Forum Software Engineer Forum Programming with Palermo — New Video Podcast! Email us programming@palermo.net Clear Measure, Inc. (Sponsor) .NET DevOps for Azure: A Developer’s Guide to DevOps Architecture the Right Way, by Jeffrey Palermo — Available on Amazon! Jeffrey Palermo’s Twitter — Follow to stay informed about future events! Architect Tips — Video podcast! Azure DevOps .NET Giorgi Dalakishvili   Want to Learn More? Visit AzureDevOps.Show for show notes and additional episodes.

Mitchel Sellers is globally known as a 15-time Microsoft MVP, an ASPInsider, a DNN MVP, an MCP (Microsoft .NET, ASP.NET, and SQL Server), and CEO of IowaComputerGurus Inc. Sellers has a deep understanding of software development and, when speaking, focuses on proper architecture standards, performance, stability, security, and overall cost-effectiveness of delivered solutions. This message and his abilities resonate in the technical war room as well as the executive board room.   Mitchel is a prolific public speaker, presenting more than 400 sessions at user groups and conferences globally, such as DevUp, SDN, and Code PaLOUsa. Sellers has been the author of multiple books and a regular blogger on technology topics.   When Mitchel is not working in technology, you will find him flying his airplane, teaching others how to fly, or spending time with his family. He is also actively involved in the Open Source Community working diligently to further the movement.   Topics of Discussion: [3:02] Congrats to Mitchel on his election to a leadership position at the .NET foundation. [3:41] What is the .NET Foundation? [5:58] What about .NET Maui catches Mitchel’s attention, and is it really ready for us to go for it? [6:40] Official support for Xamarin Forms is going to be ending officially in early 2024. [8:48] The .NET Maui Blazor hybrid model. [10:22] What has been Mitchel’s experience pushing Maui applications to the various app stores? [13:00] The most applicable patterns when you are laying out the spread of a Maui application. [16:10] The preference for a centralized location. [21:49] The tendency to overlook analytics. [22:57] What does the analytics and telemetry suite look like, and what are the users doing with the application? [25:01] Tools like App Insights from Azure can be awesome, but they can also get very expensive. [27:10] What is the DevOps story for Maui applications these days from continuous integration and automated testing to deployments and versioning? [31:12] Using GitHub actions, which of the steps require certain operating-system-hosted agents? [34:37] What is next for Maui, both traditional and using the Blazor hybrid? [37:40] Where can we find Mitchel next?   Mentioned in this Episodes: Clear Measure Way Architect Forum Software Engineer Forum Programming with Palermo — New Video Podcast! Email us programming@palermo.net Clear Measure, Inc. (Sponsor) .NET DevOps for Azure: A Developer’s Guide to DevOps Architecture the Right Way, by Jeffrey Palermo — Available on Amazon! Jeffrey Palermo’s Twitter — Follow to stay informed about future events! Architect Tips — Video podcast! Azure DevOps .NET Mitchel Sellers .NET Foundation Architect Forum Clear Measure Way GitHub Mitchel Sellers .NET Maui + GitHub Actions Mobile Sync   Want to Learn More? Visit AzureDevOps.Show for show notes and additional episodes.

Mike Brind spent the first 20 years of his working life in a series of successful sales and marketing roles, towards the end of which he was introduced to HTML and databases. A dormant inner geek took over and Mike became very much more interested in developing websites than selling advertising space on them.   As well as books such as those in the Wrox Beginner series, Mike became reliant on the enormous amount of free help provided by online communities while he learned his new craft. Mike is now one of the all-time leading contributors to the official ASP.NET forums at http://forums.asp.net and is also a moderator there.   As a result of his contributions to the ASP.NET community via the forums, and through his technical article site at http://www.mikesdotnetting.com, Mike received the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Award for ASP.NET from 2008 to 2018. Beginning ASP.NET Web Pages with WebMatrix is Mike’s first book.   Topics of Discussion: [3:06] How did Mike decide to leave school to become a programmer? [5:42] Jeffrey and his son are programming their own video game! [7:17] What sparked his interest in Razor and writing his new book, ASP.NET Core Razor Pages in Action? [9:51] What is the framework that Mike uses in his day-to-day job? [10:37] How would Mike classify the types of websites or web applications that are perfect for Razor pages, and maybe had some difficulties with other frameworks? [14:16] Are there any commonalities that you lose if you do the application with Razor pages and not MVC? [16:32] How does Mike organize his feature folders? [18:12] How Mike organizes test libraries and test cases. [20:06] What has been Mike’s experience with Playwright? [21:02] What’s coming in the future of Razor and Blazor? [24:39] The modernization jump for people who have old classic ASP applications is Razor pages.   Mentioned in this Episodes: Clear Measure Way Architect Forum Software Engineer Forum Programming with Palermo — New Video Podcast! Email us programming@palermo.net Clear Measure, Inc. (Sponsor) .NET DevOps for Azure: A Developer’s Guide to DevOps Architecture the Right Way, by Jeffrey Palermo — Available on Amazon! Jeffrey Palermo’s Twitter — Follow to stay informed about future events! Architect Tips — Video podcast! Azure DevOps .NET ASP.NET Core Razor Pages in Action Learn Razor Pages   Want to Learn More? Visit AzureDevOps.Show for show notes and additional episodes.

Brian Lagunas is a Microsoft MVP, a Microsoft Patterns & Practices Champion, leader of the Boise .Net Developers User Group (NETDUG), board member of Boise Code Camp, speaker, trainer, and Pluralsight author. He can be found speaking at a variety of developer events around the world. His talks always involve some form of markup (XAML or HTML), as well as how to build well-architected applications with Prism. In his spare time, he authors courses for Pluralsight, blogs, livestreams about various technologies, and manages the Prism Library. The easiest way to find Brian is on Twitter at @BrianLagunas.   Topics of Discussion: [2:21] High points in Brian’s career that have shaped his way of thinking about software, including starting his career at a global infrastructure company construction company. [5:22] The mentor that taught Brian about the importance of getting your foundation right. [7:11] How today’s development mindset is different. [8:40] How does Brian balance or reason those competing pressures from the outside? [9:52] Delivering quality first and creating a long-term plan for the team. [12:43] Fixing problems with the software versus working on new capabilities. [15:56] Brian’s approach when he took the team over, and how he handled any resistance and pushback by showing his team firsthand better efficiency and productivity. [16:26] How Brian measured actual progress. [21:02] The value of having a subjective opinion. [22:30] What quality controls does Brian put in place? [25:42] The issue Brian and his team found. [27:51] What kind of skills did Brian have to employ to make this level of testing possible? [29:15] The importance of everyone being open to helping and learning from each other and helping out where they can. [29:50] How Brian thinks about pull requests. [32:14] Stay tuned for Brian’s thoughts on static analysis. [33:41] The emotional side of things and how people feel about their work when they are focused more on development and spending less time fighting fires.   Mentioned in this Episodes: Clear Measure Way Architect Forum Software Engineer Forum Programming with Palermo — New Video Podcast! Email us programming@palermo.network Clear Measure, Inc. (Sponsor) .NET DevOps for Azure: A Developer’s Guide to DevOps Architecture the Right Way, by Jeffrey Palermo — Available on Amazon! Jeffrey Palermo’s Twitter — Follow to stay informed about future events! Architect Tips — Video podcast! Azure DevOps .NET Brian Lagunas — Ep #228 Improve Pull Request Descriptions Using Templates Continuous Integration: Improving Software Quality and Reducing Risk, by Paul M. Duvall, Steve Matyas, and Andrew Glover   Want to Learn More? Visit AzureDevOps.Show for show notes and additional episodes.