.NET Rocks!

Oren Eini, also known as Ayende Rahimi, is a renowned expert in database technologies and the mind behind RavenDB. He delves into the captivating world of data sharding, explaining how it enhances database performance across multiple servers. Oren discusses the benefits and potential downsides of distributing sharded databases, even across different locations. He emphasizes that while sharding might not be essential for everyone now, it's a powerful tool to have for when data demands grow.

How do you make Kubernetes easier to use? While at the Copenhagen Developers Festival, Carl and Richard talked to Annie Talvasto about her work with Kubernetes and the Cloud Native Compute Foundation. Annie talks about the easy and hard ways to work with Kubernetes and why you might choose either approach - it comes down to how much control you want. The CNCF supports many tools for Kubernetes in various stages of development to make your life easier to orchestrate containers at scale - when you need them, you'll really need them!

Azure and GitHub - better together? While at the Copenhagen Developer Festival, Carl and Richard talked to April Edwards for a special .NET Rocks Live. April talked about how Azure and GitHub work well together, discussing Azure DevOps and GitHub Actions on the CI/CD pipeline side and how other services can interact. Lots of laughter and great questions from the live audience!

Grishma Jena, data scientist at IBM, discusses the integration of data science and UX design. Topics include analyzing application telemetry to predict customer abandonment, using machine learning to analyze quantitative data, and improving UX with data.

What can you do with a Particle Photon? While in an aluminum Airstream trailer in a thunderstorm at the Copenhagen Developers Festival, Carl and Richard talked to Colleen Lavin about her work with the Particle Photon IoT device - and its many maker possibilities! Colleen talks about making it easy to start building a device - but the struggle with so many choices to actually pick a project. The conversation also digs into making production versions of your device so that they are smaller, cheaper, and very reliable - it's a fun time to be a maker!

Jimmy Bogard, creator of MediatR, talks about how the mediator pattern emerged from his work with customer applications, breaking down blocks of code into manageable chunks. He discusses the challenges and reflections of software evolution, open source projects, and the boundaries of appropriate use.

How can a large language model help your application? Carl and Richard talk to Brian MacKay about his work with large language models, including ChatGPT - and others! Brian talks about how LLMs continue to evolve and the limitations they have. But identifying language inside your applications can be powerful, and Brian talks through a few scenarios his company uses in production today. Work could you be taking advantage of today!

Jeremy Miller, expert in minimal architecture and creator of Wolverine and Marten, discusses the benefits of a clean architecture, challenges of open source projects, and bloat in code. He also touches on starting a new company and the future plans for his product.

How is Chocolatey evolving? Carl and Richard talk to Gary Ewan Park about the latest with the open-source Windows package management solution. Gary discusses some of the differences between the various package managers for Windows these days, including WinGet. Each product has its niche, and Chocolatey has done a good job of evolving into a broader product, including Chocolatey for Business, to allow a view of applications installed across all your machines - and being able to push updates out to them.

How's your architecture game? Carl and Richard talk to Thomas Betts about being a better architect. Thomas focuses on the key aspect - communication! An effective architect can talk to all the stakeholders in the language of the stakeholder, whether that's speaking business with business stakeholders, coding with developers, and understanding the needs of the security and operations folks. All those aspects (and more) go into an effective architecture and then come the changes as the implementation challenges happen. The conversation also digs into the importance of documentation to know why decisions were made and how to change them as you respond to changing needs and landscapes.