No API? No Problem! Building a Web Scraper

Isn't it frustrating to find a website packed with great data, but there's no official API or easy way to access that data? As a developer, you have the tools to extract and utilize this data. Of course, we're talking about web scraping.

This talk is about the tools and techniques that extract data from the public web. Do you make a fetch call? Do you need puppeteer or playwright? How about VPNs or proxies? We’ll also discuss the legal and ethical considerations of web scraping. This session includes live demonstrations using a custom-built scraper to extract data from the Roller Coaster Database.

I do this work professionally and have a learned a lot of useful tidbits.

Real-Time Revolution: SignalR in Action

Does your application render a page and then just leave it?
Do you deal with issues of the local state being out of date?
Do you wish the server could just tell all the browsers that something has changed?

If you answered yes to any of those questions, it's time to join the real-time revolution! SignalR is a library designed to help .NET developers build performant, real-time cross-platform applications (not just web apps!).

In this demo-filled talk, you'll learn about what SignalR is, how it fits into a modern application ecosystem, and how you can take advantage of it in your current or future projects.

Tactics for Building Background Services in .NET

Mature applications often find themselves in the predicament of having to do work "behind the scenes." Frequently, this could be simple tasks such as sending emails or updating statistics, or it could be something more complicated, like processing incoming files or building reports. These tasks should not impede the user experience because they can be done in the background.

But in modern .NET applications, what's the best way to implement background services? There isn't necessarily a right or wrong way, but there are ways that are "easy to write" and methods that are "easy to scale."

This talk aims to take you on a journey through several processes that allow you to work in the background. We'll cover the pros and cons of different approaches and leave you with actionable advice to apply to your projects. We'll even cover deployment strategies and how we do this with real projects today.

This talk has been updated for the 2024-2025 conference season. It will cover various ways to build background services, including IHostedService, HangFire, and Corvel.

Multithreaded Income: How Developers Can Achieve Parallel Success

In an unpredictable tech industry, job security is fragile. How can developers harness their unique skills to create a diversified, resilient professional life? This talk presents the concept of "Multithreaded Income," a strategic approach to building parallel income streams inspired by the principles of multithreading in software development.

What You'll Learn:

* Moonlighting & Side Gigs: Leverage your skills to create supplementary income streams without compromising your primary role.

* Course Building & Book Writing: Turn your expertise into educational content for additional revenue.

* Ethical Balancing & Time Management: Strategies for maintaining professional ethics and personal well-being across multiple commitments.

* Path to Financial Freedom: A roadmap for constructing a diverse income portfolio resilient to the tech industry's uncertainties.

Join us to explore a new paradigm for financial stability in your career, aligning technology's best practices with innovative career strategies.

Crazy Web Performance with Azure Static Web Apps

One of the key processes for building a crazy performant web application is to use statically generated pages. A ton of systems exist for building these types of apps: like Jekyll, Gatsy, Gridsome, and more. Even your traditionally built Angular, React, and VueJS applications can be statically generated, as you don't need to rely on server-side processing.

If you're supporting the Microsoft ecosystem though, deploying these types of applications typically happen in two ways: Azure App Services or Azure Blob Storage. Both ways work but have drawbacks for serious production site.

In this session, you'll learn about the new Azure Static Web Apps platform and how you can get the best of all worlds in terms of performance and functionality. You'll see a site created and deployed within 5 minutes, the same site updated and revised with a complete CI/CD lifecycle, and server-side API functionality injected with Azure Functions.

Dumb Mistakes I've Made with Relational Databases as a Developer

Maybe you're like me: you're a developer who has been working with relational databases most of your career, but you treat developing against the database the same way you would if you were slinging some code.

For small datasets, it's probably not a big deal. However, as my datasets have grown, I've learned that I need to change my thinking about the best approach to using a relational database. Example: MAYBE it's a poor idea to `foreach` over the 4 million rows in a table. It worked just fine when there were 4,000 rows.

My lessons were learned the hard way: doing something dumb, seeing it fail horribly in production, and then working backward for a better approach. In the end, we've been able to slice minutes (and sometimes hours) off of database interactions. We've lowered our compute, which has allowed us to use fewer resources.

Let's talk about a couple of the dumb mistakes I've made as a developer using relational databases, the impact it caused, and what the "better" way to approach the problem should've been. Feel free to come to share the lessons you learned, too!

My $8,000 Serverless Mistake

In the right circumstances, serverless technology can be a fantastic tool in your developer toolbox. There was a time when I went deep down the serverless rabbit hole with Azure Functions. It's solved many problems, and I still cannot recommend it enough. However, on my journey, I've also hit the limits of what it can do as a solution.

This talk discusses the timeline of migrating multiple services to Azure Functions and loving their flexibility. There were so many wins from making the move! But we'll also cover what went wrong, like an accidental $8,000 Azure bill because I loved them too much. What should I have done differently, and how can you protect yourself from accidentally trying to do too much with serverless?

Traits of Stable Production Applications

Being on call for an application is rarely enjoyable. Outages never seem to happen at a convenient time—they're always at 2 a.m., never at 1 p.m. when you're in the right mind to fix them. And when you're fast asleep (maybe!), database failures or stuck CRON jobs are the last thing on your mind.

The best protection against overnight outages is being prolific in battle-hardening your app. In this talk, we'll discuss traits of stable production applications so you and your team can rest well at night.

Topics include logging and telemetry, designing for redundancy, optimizing environments, enabling rapid deployments, testing, and more! For developers or SREs alike, let's talk about proven techniques that'll allow you to sleep soundly at night.