The Unhandled Exception Podcast

Agent Skills - with Matt Pocock

Fri, 31 Jul 2026 16:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I was joined by Matt Pocock - creator of Total TypeScript, and the author of the wildly popular mattpocock/skills repo of agent skills, which work with any agent or model. We deliberately agreed beforehand not to plan this one, and just let the conversation go wherever it wanted to! We chatted about his grill-me and wayfinder skills, the death of tactical programming, the "smart zone" and the "dumb zone" of context windows, whether sprints still make any sense, and the era of personal software.

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments, please see the website here

OpenSpec - with Tabish Bidiwale

Fri, 26 Jun 2026 17:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I was joined by Tabish Bidiwale, the creator of OpenSpec! As a daily user (and big fan) of OpenSpec, this was a great honour to geek-out about it with the creator, and chat in general about coding with AI agents.

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments, please see the website here

AI Panel Discussion at DDD South West 2026

Wed, 20 May 2026 18:00:00 +0100

This was another live audience recording, hosted once again at the DDD South West conference in Bristol (UK) - two years on from the first live panel we recorded there. I was joined by a panel of speakers, and this time the conversation focused specifically on what AI means for software developers. After introductions, we dug into whether AI is going to take our jobs, how much code we actually still hand-write, whether (and how) we review every line of AI-generated code, what's going to happen to programming languages, and what advice the panel had for developers just starting out.

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments, please see the website here

Simplicity First - with Chris Woody Woodruff

Fri, 10 Apr 2026 12:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I was joined by Chris “Woody” Woodruff to chat about a simplicity-first approach to software architecture. Chris has a book coming out on this topic, and we discussed why simplicity should be the default.

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments - please see the website here

The .NET Foundation - with Irina Dominte and Jonathan Tower

Fri, 27 Feb 2026 12:00:00 +0000

In this episode, I was joined by both Irina Dominte and Jonathan Tower to chat about the .NET Foundation. They both recently ran for the .NET Foundation’s board of directors, and were elected! 👏 We chatted about their experiences running for the board, what the election process was like, and their initial experiences as board members.

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments - please see the website here

Playwright - with Debbie O'Brien

Sat, 27 Dec 2025 19:00:00 +0000

In this episode, I was joined by Debbie O’Brien to chat about Playwright - Microsoft’s open-source end-to-end testing framework. I’m a huge fan of Playwright, so I was really excited to have this chat with Debbie. We covered a lot of ground, including features such as Codegen, Trace Viewer, and UI Mode. We also spoke a lot about AI - including the exciting Playwright MCP Server which enables AI agents to automate browser interactions!

Debbie has been an integral part of Playwright as a Principal Program Manager at Microsoft and has led the Playwright community, shaping much of what Playwright has become today - driving a lot of the features mentioned above. She’s also a Google Developer Expert in web technologies, Nuxt Ambassador, and is a former Microsoft Most Valuable Professional in developer technologies, Media Developer Expert and GitHub star alumni.

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments - please see the website here

AI and the Microsoft Agent Framework - with James World

Wed, 17 Dec 2025 09:00:00 +0000

In this episode, I was joined by James World to chat about AI for developers. We covered a lot of general AI chat - from using it to quickly knock up tools, to spec-driven development, and much more. We also discussed the Microsoft Agent Framework - a new open-source framework for building AI agents and multi-agent workflows.

James World is a seasoned technology leader and Solution Architect with over three decades of experience building and guiding software solutions across the financial and enterprise sectors. He’s a passionate polyglot programmer, with deep expertise in C# and the Azure ecosystem, including years spent learning and teaching at Microsoft where he was a consultant advising customers building solutions on the Microsoft stack. Outside of hands-on engineering and architecture, he loves exploring continuous learning, mentorship, and ways to help teams level up their craft - topics he’s shared on The Unhandled Exception Podcast and in tech communities around .NET and cloud computing.

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments - please see the website here

AI-driven development and DevOps - with Jeffrey Palermo

Fri, 21 Nov 2025 11:00:00 +0000

In this episode, I was joined by Jeffrey Palermo to chat about AI-driven development and DevOps. We discussed how AI is changing the way we write software, and the importance of having mature DevOps processes in place (eg. good tests, CI pipelines, and specs) before we can properly start leveraging AI to write features in a reliable and consistent way.

Jeffrey Palermo is the host of the Azure & DevOps podcast, Founder and Chief Architect of Clear Measure, a long-time Microsoft MVP, tech speaker, book author, and more!

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments - please see the website here

Oh My Posh - with Jan De Dobbeleer

Wed, 12 Nov 2025 19:00:00 +0000

In this episode, I was delighted to be joined by Jan De Dobbeleer to chat about the amazing Oh My Posh! This is something I’ve used for years, so it was really great chatting with Jan about it. Oh My Posh is a highly customisable cross-platform prompt engine for any shell. We also chatted about his experiences as an open-source developer.

Jan is a passionate software engineer with a love for creating clean, intuitive, and user-friendly tools. With a background in computer science and years of experience in the industry, he has a deep understanding of what it takes to build successful and widely-used open-source projects.

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments - please see the website here

A Microsoft AI discussion with Olorunfemi Davis

Fri, 17 Oct 2025 18:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I was joined by Olorunfemi Davis to chat about AI. We chatted about Microsoft Copilot Studio, Semantic Kernel, and AI in general.

With 9 years of experience, Olorunfemi specialises in architecting, building, and optimising secure, high-performance systems. His expertise covers the full spectrum of C# / .NET development and managing infrastructure across Microsoft Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud (GCP). He focuses on bridging Dev and Ops to drive efficiency, CI/CD Automation, and data-driven reliability, incorporating robust security features like end-to-end encryption and leveraging techniques like AI/machine learning to streamline complex workflows.

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments - please see the website here

Goals and time management - with Gui Ferreira

Fri, 11 Jul 2025 09:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I was joined by Gui Ferreira to chat about one of my favourite topics - life productivity! Where we talked about goal-setting, time management, and productivity in general. We also chatted a bit at the end about testing and AI.

Guilherme Ferreira, also known as Gui, is a Minimalist Software Craftsman, passionate about simplicity and continuous learning. Gui is a Microsoft MVP for Developer Technologies, a Tech Speaker, a YouTuber, and a .NET content creator. With over 15 years of experience in software development, Gui went from Startups to Tech Giants. Along his journey, he got to know several hats, including Software Engineer, Architect, CTO, and Developer Advocate, gathering a diverse and invaluable skill set.

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments - please see the website here

Shawn Wildermuth

Tue, 01 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I was delighted to be joined by Shawn Wildermuth. We chatted about software development in general, careers, AI, and more!

Shawn Wildermuth is a software development consultant, Microsoft MVP, Pluralsight author, and speaker with over 30 years of experience in the industry.

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments - please see the website here

.NET Aspire - with Maddy Montaquila

Mon, 12 May 2025 06:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I was honoured to be joined by Maddy Montaquila to chat about the amazing .NET Aspire! We covered a lot of stuff in this episode - from what Aspire is, and its features - to various stories about the decisions made and the future plans for Aspire. We also took a few tangents, chatting about AI and vibe coding! It was such a fun conversation!

We also talk about my new Dometrain course on .NET Aspire, which can be found here.

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments - please see the website here

The Outbox Pattern - with Tomek Masternak and Szymon Pobiega

Mon, 31 Mar 2025 19:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I was joined by Tomek Masternak and Szymon Pobiega from Particular Software (NServiceBus) for a technical discussion about the Outbox Pattern! The pattern is designed to improve reliability of messaging by storing outgoing messages in a database table (the “outbox”) as part of the same transaction that modifies business data - allowing a separate process to read and publish those messages to a message broker.

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments - please see the website here

The Uno Platform and Hot Design - with Jérôme Laban

Fri, 28 Feb 2025 12:00:00 +0000

In this episode, I was joined by Jérôme Laban, the CTO of the Uno Platform. We chatted about the Uno Platform itself, which is a cross-platform framework for building single-codebase applications that run on Windows, iOS, Android, macOS, Linux, and the web via WebAssembly. We also discussed a new Hot Design feature, which is a designer/builder that during development, becomes part your application at runtime, so you can live build/edit your UIs with an easy drag and drop interface, whilst your application is running! Given you’re building your UI at runtime, the designer UI also has access to your real data and its properties for databinding, and renders them as you edit!

Jérôme Laban is the Chief Technology Officer at Uno Platform. With over two decades of experience in software development, Jérôme is a recognized expert in cross-platform development, .NET technologies, and has been awarded Microsoft MVP award for many years. At Uno Platform, Jerome leads the technical vision and development of the framework, empowering developers worldwide to create rich, performant applications across all platforms. A passionate advocate for open-source and community-driven development, Jerome frequently shares his insights at global conferences, webinars, and on Twitch.

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments - please see the website here

Upgrade your Brain's OS - with Rob West

Mon, 18 Nov 2024 11:00:00 +0000

As developers, we’re always looking for ways to improve and optimise our code. Yet we often neglect our body’s hardware and software. In this episode, I was joined by Rob West, to chat about how we can use mindfulness, nutrition, and exercise to upgrade our brain’s operating system. A large part of our discussion was about our ability to focus, why are brains naturally struggle with this, especially in the modern world - and techniques to help us with this. We did, of course, also chat about coffee! ☕️

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments - please see the website here

Unhandled Exceptions - With Callum Linington

Tue, 15 Oct 2024 18:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I was joined for a second time by Callum Linington - this time to discuss exceptions, which is quite fitting given the show’s name! We chatted about why you should avoid using exceptions for your main business logic and control flow, and explored better ways to handle errors. And I’m afraid the “monad” word got thrown in too! 🙈

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments - please see the website here

GitHub Actions - With Scott Sauber

Mon, 16 Sep 2024 19:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I was joined by Scott Sauber to chat about GitHub Actions. Before that though, we chatted about the differences between ‘Continuous Integration’, ‘Continuous Delivery’, and ‘Continuous Deployment’. Then we delved into the world of GitHub Actions, and how they can be used to automate your workflows.

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments - please see the website here

Naming things is hard! - with Nick Cosentino

Wed, 28 Aug 2024 06:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I was joined by Nick Cosentino (DevLeader on the socials) to chat about refactoring code. We also discussed various other things, like automated testing, and how AI might affect us as developers, and much more!

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments - please see the website here

The Umbraco CMS and Community

Tue, 06 Aug 2024 19:00:00 +0100

In this group episode, I was joined by Carl Sargunar, Lotte Pitcher, Carole Rennie Logan, and Callum Whyte, to discuss the Umbraco community and CMS! We chatted about the amazing community around Umbraco, as well as the features of the CMS itself. It definitely made me want to reach for Umbraco next time I need a CMS!

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments - please see the website here

Modular Monoliths - with Steve "ardalis" Smith

Tue, 09 Jul 2024 18:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I was honoured to be joined by Steve “ardalis” Smith to chat about Modular Monoliths! We discussed the benefits of going down the Modular Monolith route instead of moving to microservices. We also chatted about how MediatR can help with this, and also about creating online courses.

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments - please see the website here

Live Panel Discussion at DDD South West 2024

Sun, 12 May 2024 12:00:00 +0100

This was the first episode we’ve done which has been recorded live with an audience! It was hosted at the DDD South West conference in Bristol (UK), and I was joined by a panel of speakers. After introductions, I kicked off the conversation with a question about AI - and then we went from there, taking further dev-related questions from the audience.

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments - please see the website here

Serverless, AWS, and .NET - with James Eastham

Thu, 14 Mar 2024 06:00:00 +0000

In this episode I was joined by James Eastham to initially to chat about AWS and Serverless with .NET… but we ended up covering a whole lot more! We chatted about OpenTelemetry, Kubernetes, Rust, and our Dometrain courses too!

James Eastham is a Senior Cloud Architect at Amazon Web Services and content creator. He has over 10 years of experience in software, at all layers of the application stack. He has worked in front-line support, database administration, backend development and now works with some of the biggest companies in the world architecting systems using AWS technologies. James produces content on YouTube, focused on building applications with serverless technologies using .NET, Java, and Rust.

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments - please see the website here

C# and Blazor - with Mads Torgersen, Dan Roth, and Scott Hunter!

Sat, 03 Feb 2024 15:00:00 +0000

In this episode, I was honoured to be joined by Mads Torgersen, Dan Roth, and Scott Hunter!!! 🤯 We chatted about Blazor in .NET 8; C#12 interceptors, C#13, C#36 (you have to listen 😉), source generators, discriminated unions, AOT, and Stephen Toub’s performance blog posts!

Mads, Dan, and Scott all work for Microsoft, and are heavily involved in .NET. Mads is the Lead Designer of C#, Dan is Product Manager on the ASP.NET Team for Blazor, and Scott is the VP of Product, working on the Azure Dev Experience team.

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments - please see the website here

GitKraken - with Justin Roberts and Eric Amodio

Fri, 12 Jan 2024 07:00:00 +0000

In this episode, I was joined by Justin Roberts and Eric Amodio to chat about the GitKraken Git client. We chatted about its features, and also what it’s been like working on it. We also spoke about the GitLens VS Code client.

Justin is the Senior Director of Product at GitKraken, and has been leading the design of the GitKraken Git Client. Eric is the CTO, and also the creator of GitLens for VS Code, and previously a VS Code developer at Microsoft.

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments - please see the website here

Chocolatey - with Gary Ewan Park

Wed, 20 Dec 2023 19:00:00 +0000

In this episode, I was joined by Gary Ewan Park to chat about Chocolatey, and what it’s been like as a developer working on it. Chocolatey is a package manager for Windows, and it’s a tool that I’ve used for many years - so really enjoyed chatting with Gary about it!

Gary is a Principal Software Engineer at Chocolatey Software and Microsoft Visual Studio and Development Technologies MVP and GitHub Star.

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments - please see the website here

Speed mentoring and the power of Community - with Mia Gordon

Mon, 11 Dec 2023 20:00:00 +0000

In this episode, I was joined by Mia Gordon to chat about speed mentoring! I was recently invited to a speed mentoring event that she organised, and it was such a fun event and great idea and concept - that I invited her onto the show to chat about it! We also spoke about the power of community, and how big a difference it can make to your career and life.

Mia is a Full Stack Developer at Ministry of Justice Digital and Technology. She’s an ex event-manager, who then switched careers to software development. So she has tons of experience in organising events like these speed mentoring sessions!

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments - please see the website here

Platform Engineering and IaC - with Shahid Iqbal

Mon, 04 Dec 2023 19:00:00 +0000

In this episode, I was joined for a second time by Shahid Iqbal, this time to chat about Platform Engineering and Infrastructure as Code! We discussed what Platform Engineering means, and also different IaC tools. And Shahid’s undying love for Pulumi! 😂

Shahid is a Principal Platform Architect at Auror based in Auckland NZ, and is also an Azure MVP.

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments - please see the website here

.NET Conf 2023 - with Scott Hunter

Tue, 14 Nov 2023 18:00:00 +0000

In this episode I was honoured to be joined by Scott Hunter to chat about the announcements from .NET Conf 2023! The main areas we discussed were C#12 features, the new .NET Aspire, C# Devkit, Native AOT, and also touched a bit on Blazor. As always - it’s an exciting time to be a .NET developer!

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments - please see the website here

Hexagonal Architecture - with Valentina Cupać

Tue, 07 Nov 2023 05:00:00 +0000

In this episode, I was joined by Valentina Cupać to chat about Hexagonal Architecture. We discussed what Hexagonal Architecture is, how it can help us build better software, and the difference between it and other similar architectures, such as Clean and Onion Architecture.

Valentina is a Technical Coach at Optive, helping development teams deliver quality software with TDD and Clean Architecture. She also the runs the Tech Excellence community.

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments - please see the website here

Dometrain - with Nick Chapsas

Sun, 29 Oct 2023 15:00:00 +0000

In this episode, I was joined for the second time by Nick Chapsas! This time, we chatted about his new Dometrain teaching platform. Nick started off creating courses on his own website, nickchapsas.com, which he’s recently rebranded to Dometrain and reached out to other authors to also create courses - myself included! I’ve recently released a Docker course on Dometrain, and we chatted about my experience doing this, as well as Nick’s story and motivations behind building Dometrain.

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments - please see the website here

.NET and Podcasting - with Jamie Taylor

Tue, 17 Oct 2023 19:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I was joined by the host of The Modern .NET Show, Jamie Taylor to chat about both .NET and podcasting! We also chatted about various other things like productivity, remote working and life balance, supporting junior developers, and plenty more!

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments - please see the website here

NServiceBus - with Laïla Bougriâ

Tue, 26 Sep 2023 19:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I had great fun chatting with Laïla Bougriâ about NServiceBus and how it can help with your distributed architecture. From its support for observability (including OTel) and dashboarding, to sagas and pub/sub. Even zombie and ghost messages! (spooky!). And as has been known to happen on this show - we did end up going on a tangent and geeking out about the awesome Jetbrains Rider too!

Laïla is a Solutions Architect and Software Engineer at Particular Software. She’s also a Microsoft MVP, and frequent speaker talking about topics such as dotnet, messaging, distributed systems, and software engineering in general.

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments - please see the website here

RavenDB Database Internals - with Oren Eini

Fri, 11 Aug 2023 17:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I had the pleasure of speaking with Oren Eini about RavenDB and diving deep into the world of database internals. We explore the intricacies of how databases work under the hood and discuss the challenges - especially around performance.

Oren Eini, also known as Ayende Rahien, is the Founder and CEO of RavenDB, a leading NoSQL document database management platform, empowering both startups and Fortune 500 companies. With over 20 years of software development experience and business leadership, Oren is an internationally acclaimed presenter, a thought leader and an author, committed to continue and lead innovation of quality software and best practices. RavenDB delivers fully transactional (ACID), smart & agile, cutting-edge NoSQL end-to-end solutions, empowering businesses in efficient data management.

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments - please see the website here

Cleaning your Big Ball of Mud using CQS - with Matt Hunt

Sat, 24 Jun 2023 11:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I was thrilled to be joined by Matt Hunt to chat about using the CQS pattern to improve your codebase quality and help avoid writing those ‘Big Ball of Mud’ code-bases that sadly we see way too often in our industry!

CQS (Command Query Separation) is a pattern that states that a method should either be a command that performs an action or a query that returns data, but not both. This approach promotes a clear separation of concerns, improves readability, and can lead to more maintainable and scalable codebases.

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments - please see the website here

We Are .NET - with Tim Cadenbach and Matthias Jost

Fri, 28 Apr 2023 17:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I was joined by both Tim Cadenbach and Matthias Jost to chat about the exciting new .NET community - We Are .NET! At its core, it’s a community portal aggregating and presenting videos, blogs, twitch, and other feeds of any creator with .NET content. However, it’s not just content aggregation though - and is becoming a rapidly growing community.

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments - please see the website here

Elastic - with Steve Gordon

Sun, 16 Apr 2023 17:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I was joined by Steve Gordon to chat about the Elastic Stack, and his work on the Elasticsearch .NET client.

Steve is a senior engineer at Elastic, maintaining the .NET client libraries. He’s a Microsoft MVP, Pluralsight author, speaker, and blogger, and user-group organiser.

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments - please see the website here

Brighter - with Ian Cooper

Wed, 22 Mar 2023 12:00:00 +0000

In this episode, I was joined by Ian Cooper to chat about the Brighter and Darker frameworks.

Brighter is a framework for building messaging applications with .NET and C#. It can be used with an in-memory bus, or for interoperability in a microservices architecture allowing out of process messaging via a wider range of middleware transports. And Darker is the query counterpart to Brighter.

Ian is a Senior Principal Engineer at Just Eat Takeaway, frequent public speaker, and organiser of London .NET user group.

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments - please see the website here

Hot Reload - with David Wengier

Thu, 02 Mar 2023 18:00:00 +0000

In this milestone 50th episode (🥳🎉🍻) - I was joined by David Wengier to chat about how .NET’s hot reload works! We covered how the metadata in dotnet assemblies work, and how hot reload manipulates this data in various ways in memory to do its thing. We also touched a bit on the whole hot-reload dotnet drama thing! 🤫🙈

We had quite a fun chat afterwards too, so decided to include that in the episode - so keep playing past my usual outro to hear that.

David is a Roslyn and Razor tooling developer at Microsoft, living in Melbourne, Australia.

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments - please see the website here

Cake 🍰 - with Mattias Karlsson

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 07:00:00 +0000

In this episode, I was joined by Mattias Karlsson to chat about Cake! Nope, not the food - something _even better_! Cake is a build orchestration tool where your builds scripts are written in C#. There are tons of addons for most tasks you can think of, and it's easy to write your own. And you can run these all locally just like you would on the build agent. I dread to think how many many days I've lost when doing CI/CD natively in YAML where I've had to push to CI/CD, waiting for a build agent to pick it up, just to find that I'd got a path or indentation wrong. Doing this locally in Cake dramatically reduces that developer cycle. And thanks to the VSCode extension adding intellisense and linting - this is reduced even further.

Mattias Karlsson is a Partner and Technical fellow at WCOMAB. He's a Microsoft Azure and Developer Technologies MVP, and is on the Board Of Directors at the .NET Foundation. He's also a conference organiser, and open-source maintainer and contributor.

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments - please see the website here

Coffee and Code - with Isaac Levin

Fri, 06 Jan 2023 15:00:00 +0000

In this episode, I was joined by Isaac Levin that chat about… way too many things to put in an episode title, that’s for sure! 😂 We decided to not have a particular topic in mind - and just chat and see where the conversation took us! We ended up talking about podcasting, working remotely and the pandemic, general career stuff, public speaking, containers, AWS, learning, mindsets, guitars, and more!

Isaac is a .NET Developer Advocate at Amazon Web Services and a Microsoft MVP. He hosts a podcast called Coffee and Open Source, where he interviews folks from across the tech industry.

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments - please see the website here

Application Security - with Tanya Janca

Tue, 13 Dec 2022 19:00:00 +0000

In this episode, I was joined by Tanya Janca to chat about Application Security (or AppSec for short!). We chatted about various topics - from security topics and training, to her book and online community, to public speaking!

Tanya is the founder and CEO at We Hack Purple, which is an online learning academy, community and weekly podcast that revolves around teaching everyone to create secure software. She’s also the Director of Developer Relations at Bright, and best-selling author of the book Alice and Bob Learn Application Security.

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments - please see the website here

Vim - with Joseph Woodward

Sun, 27 Nov 2022 07:00:00 +0000

In this episode, I was joined again by Joseph Woodward to geek out on Vim! Joe joined us on the last episode to talk about the Go programming language - and as we’re both huge fans of Vim, we decided to stay on and record a second episode chatting about it!

In it, we talk about both the Vim way of using the keyboard (Vim keybindings), and also Vim the editor and its plugin ecosystem.

Joseph is a Software Engineer at Form3, speaker, and open-source contributor. Lover of Go, OSS, Neovim and distributed systems things.

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments - please see the website here

Go - with Joseph Woodward

Sun, 13 Nov 2022 12:00:00 +0000

In this episode, I was joined by Joseph Woodward to chat all about the Go programming language. Joe has done a lot of dotnet in the past, but is now focusing more on Go - so an ideal guest to help us compare on contrast.

gRPC - with Poornima Nayar

Sat, 29 Oct 2022 20:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I was joined by Poornima Nayar to chat all about gRPC! gRPC is Google’s implementation of RPC. Since .NET Core 3.0, gRPC has first-class support in .NET and seems to be the way forward for remote procedure calls. We chatted about what gRPC is, how to use it, what usecases you’d want to use it for, and much much more!

Poornima is a .NET developer with over 10 years of experience in .NET and Umbraco. She is passionate about learning new technologies and keeping herself up-to-date with the latest developments in technology. Outside her work, Poornima enjoys music and is undergoing training in Indian Classical music. Based in Langley, UK she mothers a little girl and spends her spare time reading, cooking, and watching movies.

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments - please see the website here

Docker Demystified - with (me) Dan Clarke

Sun, 18 Sep 2022 19:00:00 +0100

This episode was a solo episode where I try my best to “demystify” Docker! A difficult task over an audio podcast, so hopefully it’s digestible! I cover the following topics…

What are containers and images?
Container registries
Use cases for containers
Interacting with Docker
Docker Compose
Volumes
Building your own images
Image layer caching
Multi-stage Dockerfiles
About Container Orchestrators
Using Docker for local development

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments - please see the website here

The Unlikely Success of a Copy Paste Developer - with Iris Classon

Sun, 14 Aug 2022 13:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I was joined by Iris Classon to chat all about her book - The Unlikely Success of a Copy Paste Developer. The book is a very fun, light-hearted, fictional novel about a software developer called Leo, and a range of very interesting characters Leo has to work with. I’ve recently read the book, and thoroughly enjoyed it. As a software developer, a lot of the stories are very relatable!

Iris Classon is an appreciated speaker, writer, blogger, Microsoft C# MVP and member of MEET (Microsoft Extended Experts Team) with a tremendous passion for programming. She has had a remarkable career path that proves that nothing is impossible - switching from being a licensed and registered clinical dietician to a software developer with a dozen certifications and a full time developer job with renowned companies.

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments - please see the website here

OpenTelemetry - with Martin Thwaites

Sun, 31 Jul 2022 07:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I was joined by Martin Thwaites from Honeycomb to chat about OpenTelemetry. OpenTelemetry (or OTel) standardises metrics, logs, and traces - allowing different systems and languages to be able to write telemetry data in a common format and be understood by any visualisation UIs that support it. This is becoming widely adopted, meaning that with minor changes to your applications - you can ship off telemetry to various combinations of providers, giving you much more choice and flexibility. And from a local development point of view - it’s also easy to spin up visualisation tools locally (eg. Jaeger), even if you’re using something different in production. Definitely something I’ll be embracing for all my projects moving forward!

Martin is a Developer Advocate at Honeycomb, o11y enthusiast, and a delivery-focused Developer from the UK. With over 20 years of experience in development in the .NET ecosystem, he’s worked with many companies on scaling up engineering teams and products. The past few years have been spent working on solving complex problems with some of the UK’s big names, including e-commerce retailers and credit lenders.

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments - please see the website here

Demystifying Messaging in Azure - with Sean Feldman

Tue, 19 Jul 2022 21:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I was joined by Sean Feldman to chat all about messaging in Azure! Starting off explaining why you’d want to use messaging in your solutions. Then explaining the difference between different types of messaging - eg. pub/sub, event streaming, etc. Then going through discussing all the different Azure services that relate to messaging.

Sean Feldman is a consulting Solutions Architect and an Azure MVP. He likes tinkering with various Azure-related services and is in seventh heaven when cloud and distributed technologies are combined. When he’s away from his computer and back on planet earth, he’s having fun with family and his Malamute.

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments - please see the website here

Windows Terminal - with Kayla Cinnamon

Sun, 26 Jun 2022 15:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I was thrilled to be joined by Kayla Cinnamon to chat about the Windows Terminal! I’m a huge fan of WT, and use it daily - so it was an honour to have Kayla on to chat about it! Kayla is a Program Manager at Microsoft, Delivering Windows Terminal and Cascadia Code. She’s also the Host of Windows Wednesday, and works on the Windows developer experience.

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments - please see the website here

.NET MAUI, IoT, and Handy the bionic Arm - with Clifford Agius

Tue, 07 Jun 2022 20:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I was joined by Clifford Agius to chat about both .NET MAUI, and also developing for IoT. (These were separate topics - not specifically IoT on MAUI). Clifford is an airline pilot who’s also a freelance .NET developer who regularly blogs and speaks at conferences around the world!

MAUI (Multi-platform App UI) is a new .NET framework for building multi-platform apps - both mobile (iOS/Android) and desktop (macOS/Windows) using C# and XAML in a single codebase. It also supports Blazor components for those that prefer that over XAML.

We also chatted about an incredible life-changing project that Clifford has worked on, building a 3D-printed prosthetic arm, which has helped turn a young boy’s life around.

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments - please see the website here

Microsoft Build 2022

Wed, 25 May 2022 20:00:00 +0100

Microsoft have just had their annual Build conference - which comes with a whole host of exciting announcements and discussions about hot programming topics in the Microsoft developer space. And each year, I long for a podcast episode to come out straight after Build, overviewing them! Well, this year - this podcast aims to do just that! In this episode, I was joined by both Scott Hunter and Gaurav Seth to chat about various topics. Check out the links below for a guide to what we discussed.

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments - please see the website here

Andrew Lock - ASP.NET, Blogging, Kubernetes, and more!

Mon, 02 May 2022 14:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I was honoured to be joined by Andrew Lock, who is probably best known for his amazing ‘must-subscribe’ blog - andrewlock.net. He’s also the author of the Manning ebook, ASP.NET Core in Action, Second Edition. We covered a lot in this episode - from the different flavours of ASP.NET, to Kubernetes, Blazor, gRPC, testing, Minimal API, MediatR… and more!

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments - please see the website here

MiniHack - with Paul Michaels and Kev Smith

Mon, 25 Apr 2022 19:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I was joined by Paul Michaels and Kev Smith, to chat about their monthly online meetup they both run.

MiniHack is an online tech-agnostic monthly meetup, where teams of between 3 and 6 people compete to produce the best solution to a given problem. In their own words - “Where we meet monthly to come up with cool solutions to pointless problems”.

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments - please see the website here

Geeking out on .NET with Nick Chapsas

Thu, 31 Mar 2022 07:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I was thrilled to be joined by Nick Chapsas! If you’re a .NET developer - then his YouTube channel is an absolute must! Given all the amazing topics he covers on his channel - it would have been a shame to just chat with him about a single topic! So we decided to do a few lightning topics instead! Here’s what we geeked out on…

.NET 6 Minimal API
The outdated opinion of some non .NET developers on C# and .NET
GitHub Copilot
MediatR
Open Source

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments - please see the website here

Razor Pages - with Mike Brind

Sat, 19 Mar 2022 11:00:00 +0000

In this episode, I was joined by Mike Brind to chat about ASP.NET Core Razor Pages. We also spoke about his Manning MEAP book, ASP.NET Core Razor Pages in Action.

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments - please see the website here

Technical Leadership - with Jess White

Sun, 06 Mar 2022 09:00:00 +0000

In this episode, I was joined by Jess White to chat about technical leadership and how to support teams and manage people. Jess provides tons of advice and insights into what makes teams both happy and productive.

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments - please see the website here

MassTransit and Open Source - with Chris Patterson

Wed, 16 Feb 2022 20:00:00 +0000

In this episode, I was joined by Chris Patterson to chat about the open-source distributed messaging framework, MassTransit. We also spoke about open-source, event-driven architecture, docker, k8s, testing, Rider, and more!

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments - please see the website here

Developer Productivity with (me!) Dan Clarke

Sun, 09 Jan 2022 16:00:00 +0000

Developer productivity is something I’ve been really interested in for quite a few years. So I decided, rather than having a guest on for this topic - it’s one I wanted to cover myself. So in this first episode of the year - I’ve gone solo, and talk about the things I find have made a big difference to my productivity over the years. Also why I think this term “10x developer” is a big understatement!

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments - please see the website here

Snapshot Testing with Simon Cropp

Fri, 26 Nov 2021 14:00:00 +0000

In this episode, I was joined by Simon Cropp to chat about a form of testing called Snapshot testing! Simon is the author of Verify, which is a library that I’m quickly discovering is going to save me a HUGE amount of time when writing tests in dotnet! We chatted about snapshot testing in general; the various helper extensions that Verify has, which adds support for lots of different technologies; and also about testing in general. If you’ve ever felt that you spend too much time writing asserts in tests - then this is the episode for you!

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments - please see the website here

UX with Jessica Engstrom

Wed, 03 Nov 2021 07:00:00 +0000

In this episode, I was joined by Jessica Engström to chat about UX! A topic that most developers (myself included) need to be more aware of when building UIs! Jessica is also a fellow podcast host, co-hosting the awesome Coding After Work podcast!

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments - please see the website here

Visual Studio 2022 - with Kendra Havens

Sun, 24 Oct 2021 14:00:00 +0100

Not long to go until the release of both .NET 6 and Visual Studio 2022! But if you can’t wait that long - the preview releases of both can be downloaded right now! In this episode, I was joined by Kendra Havens to chat about what’s new and coming! Kendra is a Program Manager on the .NET and Visual Studio team, and we also chatted a bit in this episode about what software development is like internally at Microsoft, and learn that Microsoft face the same struggles as most other companies! We’re all human after all!

For a full list of show notes, or to add comments - please see the website here

Event Sourcing and Event Driven Architecture - with Callum Linington

Fri, 15 Oct 2021 05:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I was joined by Callum Linington to chat about Event Sourcing! Events over time are how the world works - so shouldn’t we be leveraging that in our architectures? As quite often happens, we also went on one or two tangents, and covered a ton of other related including MediatR, CQRS, F#, DDD, Rx, Redux, and more!

For a full list of show links, see the website here

NDepend with Patrick Smacchia

Sun, 03 Oct 2021 15:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I was joined by Patrick Smacchia, all the way from the beautiful island of Mauritius, to chat all about NDepend! An amazing tool for analysing .NET projects and displaying tons of useful information to help improve code quality. From scanning for code quality issues, to showing plenty of dependency graphs and code visualisations.

For a full list of show links, see the website here

Dependency Injection in .NET with Steve Collins

Sat, 18 Sep 2021 20:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I was joined by Steve Collins to chat all about dependency injection in .NET. We (well, Steve!) demystified terms such as dependency inversion and inversion of control containers, and then delved into the world of dependency injection in .NET, covering scopes, and much more…

For a full list of show links, see the website here

Git - with Jesse Liberty and James World

Sat, 11 Sep 2021 20:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I was joined by Jesse Liberty and James World to chat about a topic I'm also personally very passionate about - the Git source control system.

Jesse is a fellow podcast host, as well as an author of a book about Git.

James is a Solution Architect who has done many a talk on Git and likes to delve a bit deeper into what goes on under the hood (as you'll see in this episode!).

For a full list of show links, see the website here

Jetbrains Rider, Code With Me, and more!

Sun, 22 Aug 2021 14:00:00 +0100

Everyone who knows me, knows I'm a massive fan of Jetbrains Rider! So it was about time we had an episode on it! In this episode, I was joined by both Maarten Balliauw and Kirill Skrygan to chat all about it. We discussed the Rider architecture, Code With Me, Remote Development; and also the awesome power of keyboard shortcuts!

For a full list of show links, see the website here

Azure Bicep with Alex Frankel

Thu, 12 Aug 2021 20:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I was joined by Alex Frankel to chat about Azure Bicep! Bicep is a new DSL that transpiles down to native ARM templates. Except that it greatly improved upon the very hard to read and write ARM templates, making Infrastructure as Code in Azure a far nicer user experience. We delved into the Bicep language, the tooling, a bit of the history - and even geeked out a bit on how awesome .NET has become!

For a full list of show links, see the website here

Mark Rendle's Stream of Consciousness

Thu, 22 Jul 2021 09:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I was joined by Mark Rendle to chat about his experiences live-coding/streaming on Twitch! Warning: We went on a lot of tangents during the conversation! It’s all good though - as they were all awesome tangents! We not only talked about streaming, but also Blazor, C#, Unity, the rate of tech advancement, teaching kids to code, and much more!

For a full list of show links, see the website here

Blazor with Chris Sainty

Tue, 13 Jul 2021 06:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I was thrilled to be joined by Chris Sainty to chat all about Blazor! Blazor is a new .NET technology allowing you to build SPA-like frontend web UIs in C#! Very focused on developer productivity and componentisation - Blazor is certainly going to become my go-to for frontends moving forward! And chatting with Chris in this episode, has shown me even more reasons why Blazor is becoming so immensely popular!

For a full list of show links, see the website here

Mutation Testing in .NET with Stefan Pölz

Fri, 18 Jun 2021 11:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I was thrilled to be joined by Stefan Pölz to chat about Mutation Testing! I had seen a lightning talk by Stefan last year about this, and was fascinated by the concept. So it was great to have him on the show to chat about it!

For a full list of show links, see the website here

TDD with Ian Cooper

Fri, 28 May 2021 20:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I was joined by Ian Cooper to chat about Test Driven Development (TDD)! We discussed pain points that a lot of people hit when attempting to do TDD, and how to avoid them.

For a full list of show links, see the website here

Learning and Self Development with James World

Sun, 02 May 2021 15:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I was joined by James World to chat about learning! We covered an incredible amount in this episode - from certifications, to books and reading, interviews, what it means to be a senior developer, and much much more!

For a full list of show links, see the website here

C#9 Source Generators with Jason Bock

Fri, 09 Apr 2021 15:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I was joined by Jason Bock to chat about the new C#9 source generators! Writing code that writes code! We covered a ton of content, covering Source Generators, the Compiler API, Syntax Trees, Semantic Models, Expression Trees, and much much more!

For a full list of show links, see the website here

Spectre Console and Cake with Patrik Svensson

Wed, 24 Mar 2021 08:00:00 +0000

In this episode, I was joined by Patrik Svensson, creator of both the Cake Build System, and a .NET library called Spectre.Console. We mostly chatted about the Spectre Console library, which adds AMAZING functionality to .NET console apps (grid, charts, images, and much more!). We also touched on Cake and Cake Frosting.

For a full list of show links, see the website here

DevOps with Dushyant

Wed, 10 Mar 2021 12:00:00 +0000

In this episode, I was joined by good friend and ex-colleague, Dushyant Priyadarshee to chat about devops! We covered a lot of ground, from what devops is, to infrastructure as code deployments, to exams and certifications! Dushyant is a Senior Platform Engineer at NewDay.

For a full list of show links, see the website here

Kentico Kontent Headless CMS and JAMStack - with Matt Nield

Sat, 27 Feb 2021 19:00:00 +0000

In this episode, I was joined by good friend Matt Nield, who also co-runs the .NET Oxford user group with me. We chatted about the Kentico Kontent headless CMS, static websites and the JAMStack - plus much more!

For a full list of show links, see the website here

LINQPad with Joseph Albahari

Sun, 07 Feb 2021 07:00:00 +0000

In this episode, I was joined by Joe Albahari, author of one of my favourite software development tools - LINQPad! This is a tool that I use on a daily basis, and it saves me so much time! So I especially enjoyed chatting with Joe about the many features of LINQPad, his experiences when developing it, and also future plans.

For a full list of show links, see the website here

F# and Functional Programming

Sun, 24 Jan 2021 15:00:00 +0000

In this group episode I was joined by Scott Wlaschin, Isaac Abraham, and Ian Russell - to talk all about F#! This is .NET's functional programming language, and we discussed functional programming, and the benefits of using a functional programming language like F#, whilst also comparing it to other languages like C#.

For a full list of show links, see the website here
(there were too many links to include here!)

Functional Programming in C# with Simon Painter

Sun, 03 Jan 2021 13:00:00 +0000

For this very first episode of 2021, I was joined by Simon Painter to talk all about Functional Programming in C#! We spoke about functional concepts, plus terms such as Options, Maybes, and even tried to explain what a Monad is! As usual, there were a few tangents, and we also touched on topics such as React, TDD, and much more!

Links from the show

Simon’s social links:
- Twitter
- Website
Book: Functional Programming in C# by Enrico Buonanno
Recording of Simon’s ‘Functional Programming in C# talk (thanks to .NET Sheff for this, as we didn’t record his talk at .NET Oxford)
Scott Wlaschin - Railway Oriented Programming video
Ramda JS
Dan’s ‘Writing More Succinct C#’ blog post
React
ML.NET
DevTip links

Identity with Christos Matskas

Sun, 20 Dec 2020 20:00:00 +0000

In this last episode of the year, I was joined by Christos Matskas to talk all about Identity! Christos is the Program Manager for the Microsoft Identity Platform, so obviously the conversation was slightly biased towards AzureAD and B2C as an identity provider - but we also tried to cover some common identity topics, and demystify terminology such as OAuth, OpenID Connect, scopes, claims, and more! We even went a bit off-piste at the end and chatted about public speaking, languages (not programming languages), and even touched on speed reading!

Links from the show

Christos’s social links:
- Twitter
- 425 Show
OAuth
OpenID Connect
Microsoft Identity Platform documentation
Azure B2C
JWT.MS / JWT.IO
Upstream vs downstream Twitter poll

WSL2 with Stuart Leeks

Thu, 10 Dec 2020 17:00:00 +0000

In this episode, I was joined by Stuart Leeks to chat all about WSL2, and his new book, WSL 2 Tips, Tricks, and Techniques! We also covered plenty of other topics, such as public speaking, Windows Terminal, standing desks, and much more! Stuart is a Principal Software Development Engineer at Microsoft.

Links from the show

Stuart’s social links:
THE BOOK!
WSL2 homepage
Dr Michelle Dickinson:
Stuart’s WSL2 .NET Oxford Lightning talk
Visual Studio Code
- Remote-Development:
Windows Terminal
Windows Terminal marketing video
dotfiles project on GitHub
Some of Stuart’s related projects:
- stuartleeks/devcontainer-cli: CLI for working with Visual Studio Code devcontainers (github.com)
- stuartleeks/wsl-clock: A utility to automatically correct clock drift in WSL 2 using Windows Events to detect points where clock drift may have occurred (github.com)
Standing desk: Part 1 - Initial thoughts - Dan Clarke
Traveler Guitar
XKCD: Compiling

The DDD Conferences!

Sat, 05 Dec 2020 10:00:00 +0000

In this episode, I was joined by five awesome guests to chat all about the DDD conferences! This was such a fun episode, where we chatted about both organising and speaking at the DDD conferences, plus a few other bits and bats along the way!

Guests

Links from the show

Kubernetes with Shahid Iqbal

Sun, 29 Nov 2020 20:00:00 +0000

In this episode, I was joined by Shahid Iqbal to chat about Kubernetes. We covered containers in general, Docker, Docker-Compose, Kubernetes, Helm, Istio, and much more! Shahid is a Microsoft MVP and user-group organiser, specialising in Azure and Kubernetes.

Links from the show

Teaching Kids to Code with Pete Gallagher

Sun, 22 Nov 2020 18:00:00 +0000

In this episode, I was joined by Pete Gallagher - Microsoft MVP, Pluralsight author, speaker, user-group organiser, and huge fan of IoT devices and STEM. We had great fun chatted for over an hour about various topics - mostly themed around technologies helping kids get into coding - but with many tangents thrown into the mix!

Links from the show

Steve Gordon

Mon, 09 Nov 2020 20:00:00 +0000

In this episode, I had a fascinating chat with Steve Gordon. We covered tons of topics - from his experience in being a Pluralsight author, to performance, productivity, organising user-groups, public speaking, audio editing, and much more!

Links from the show

Steve’s social and content links:
User-group links and mentioned events:
Blog posts:
Dev Tips:
- Git Erroneous merge commit blog post
Others:

Derek Comartin - CQRS, MediatR, and more!

Wed, 28 Oct 2020 11:00:00 +0000

In this second episode, I’m thrilled to welcome Derek Comartin (also known as CodeOpinion) onto the show to talk about CQRS and MediatR! We ended up recording over two different sessions and covered lots of different topics, including functional programming and remote working.

Links from the show

Hello World!

Sat, 10 Oct 2020 14:00:00 +0100

In this very first episode, I introduce the podcast and what it's all about! This is a short 6-minute episode talking about the focus of the podcast, who I am, and also a bit about the .NET Oxford user-group I run.

Links from the show