.NET Rocks!

How can a large language model help your organization answer government RFPs? Carl and Richard talk to Vishwas Lele about his startup pWin, as in proposal win. Vishwas talks about being a year into the startup and his deeper understanding of how AI technologies can augment skilled operators to produce better quality products in less time, including responding to RFPs. The conversation digs into tuning the LLM to focus on the data relevant to each section of the RFP so that the operator can interact with the tool and build better responses!

Can you integrate performant audio-video into your .NET application? Carl and Richard talk to Elias Puurunen about his work at Tractus Events, where he uses the NDI protocols to bring real-time audio and video streams into his C# application. Elias talks about the power of P/Invoke to access the underlying libraries for controlling video streams, including utilizing NVidia GPUs for extremely fast encoding and decoding. You could write this code in C++, but why?

Spencer Schneidenbach, a Microsoft MVP and the president of Aviron Software, dives into the world of agentic AI. He discusses using large language models to improve healthcare customer interactions, from summarizing conversations to identifying sentiments. Spencer highlights the ease of integrating Microsoft's Semantic Kernel with OpenAI models, enhancing API connections. The conversation also explores the challenges of building scalable AI solutions, the importance of effective prompt crafting, and the critical role of user feedback in AI tool development.

How do you measure the quality of a large language model? Carl and Richard talk to Dr. Jodie Burchell about her work measuring large language models for accuracy, reliability, and consistency. Jodie talks about the variety of benchmarks that exist for LLMs and the problems they have. A broader conversation about quality digs into the idea that LLMs should be targeted to the particular topic area they are being used for - often, smaller is better! Building a good test suite for your LLM is challenging but can increase your confidence that the tool will work as expected.

What are JavaScript promises, and why do you want to make them? Carl and Richard talk to Martine Dowden about all the various async options available in Javascript today, including Callbacks, Promises, Async/Await, and even ReactiveJS! Martine digs into some of the more remarkable features available, including grouping sync calls together so code is only called when they all complete, or the race option where only one needs to complete, and everything else is thrown away. Lots of power is available in Javascript today. Have you taken advantage of it?

Rob Richardson, a Microsoft MVP and software craftsman, shares his insights on building cloud applications with .NET Aspire. He highlights the powerful features of Aspire, including OpenTelemetry and containerization, and discusses the challenges of adapting .NET for cloud environments. Rob delves into resilient strategies and the latest updates in Aspire 9.1, emphasizing security and performance. He also compares infrastructure as code tools like Pulumi and Terraform, showcasing their unique advantages in modern software development.

Seventeen years of Automapper! Carl and Richard talk to Jimmy Bogard about his latest version of Automapper - and the challenge of maintaining a long-lived and much-loved open-source library! Jimmy talks about the origins of Automapper as a tool he needed for working with clients and automating the mapping of objects. Initially, he moved to GitHub on Codeplex in 2009, and as open source became more popular in the .NET community, Automapper has hundreds of millions of downloads. And now, the next challenge - how to sustain this open-source project!

Aurora Scharff, a software developer and Microsoft MVP from Norway, dives deep into React version 19's release. She discusses the transformative shift towards server components and why it's perfect for greenfield projects. Existing apps can leverage React Router V7 to bridge versions 18 and 19. Aurora also compares React's simple building blocks to Angular's rapid changes, highlighting new tooling like Vite that enhances the developer experience. Discover how these innovations are setting the stage for the future of web development!

Jeremy Miller, a seasoned software architect and open-source innovator, shares insights on vertical architecture. He emphasizes the importance of quickly delivering functional applications by taking an end-to-end approach. The discussion touches on the balance between thoughtful design and rapid execution, addressing concerns like team collaboration and duplicated efforts. Jeremy also explores the evolution of backend technologies and the challenges of transitioning to NoSQL databases, highlighting how resilience and effective communication are key to project success.

Ready to speed up your cross-platform development? Carl and Richard chat with Francois Tanguay and Sasha Krsmanovic about Uno Hot Design. First shown at .NET Conf in 2024, Hot Design brings the Hot Reload experience to UX onto your various client devices. Francois talks about the evolution of the Uno Platform into a place where you can use a variety of client libraries to build your app and deploy your client of choice. But when it comes to iterating the implementation, Hot Design speeds your dev cycle so you can get more done in less time!