Pragmatic Architecture in .NET Core Workshop

Building or refactoring large projects can be a daunting task. This course will help you understand the basics of software architecture and how to apply them to your .NET Core projects. We will cover the basics of software architecture, how to structure your application, and how to coordinate the components of your application. We will also cover monitoring distributed applications and how to act on problems when they arise.

Prerequisites
Before taking this course students should have some familiarity with .NET and C#.

What You will Learn?
- Learning the basics of software architecture
- Monoliths, microservices and everything in between
- Components of a distributed application
- Messaging between components
- Monitoring distributed applications

Diversity for Better Software: Pragmatic Reasons to Have Diverse Teams

In my past few years, I’ve been investigating and interviewing a series of developers about the problems of diversity in software. Both women and people of color still represent a smaller share of developers than they should. In this keynote, Shawn will talk about pragmatic reasons to diversity and add inclusion to make software better, not just for the social justice reasons.

Lock It Down: Using Azure Entra ID for .NET APIs and SPAs

.NET developers are thrown a lot of jargon when it comes to securing REST APIs: Identity, OAuth, JWT, OpenID, Cookies, and more. But for many of us, we just want a way to protect our Azure apps to well-known users inside and outside of our organization. That's where Azure Entra ID (formerly Azure AD) comes in.

What if I told you that it wasn't that hard? Would you really believe me? In this talk, I'll walk through adding Entra ID to a Vue App and the backend .NET API server.

Aging in Software Development

As I enter late middle age, I am starting to think about my role in software development. Questions like: "Am I as sharp as I used to be?", "Can I compete with younger developers?", and "Do I want to do more than coding?" haunt me. But I feel like I might be turning a corner to see how my experience can be an asset to any team. The trick might be just believing in my self.

In this talk, I'll talk frankly about what it is like getting older in tech. How can I future proof my life in this last chapter of my working life. And, how I can actually enjoy where I am at instead of just fearing the future.

This could be a session or a keynote.

Aspirational Distributed Applications: Using Aspire to Simplify Development of Complex Applications

When I heard about Aspire, it took me a while to really get my head around what the .NET team is trying to do. While there have been existing ways to deploy complex connected applications (e.g. microservices, serverless, hybrid, and modular monoliths) like Kubernetes, Docker Compose and Podman. These are all great to use, but are not that friendly to .NET developers. This is where Aspire attempts better enable you to make cloud native applications in a more comfortable environment.

In this talk, I'll add aspire to an existing application that uses a mix of .NET and non-.NET components to see how it works!

Software Architecture in the Time of Claude

The last five years of AI has gone very fast. We've gone from suspicion to over-enthusiasm. While we can generate a lot of complex code, ultimately we're still responsible for the state of our systems. In this talk, I explain some techniques for keeping control of your systems and architecture without avoiding AI code generation.

While this talk uses Claude as an example, the techniques aren't Claude-specific. CoPilot and other tools would be similar.

Miniservices not Microservices in Azure

For small and medium sized businesses, the complexity of setting up and maintaining Kubernetes cluster or even Container Services (ACS) is not necessary. In this talk, I'll introduce a middle ground of using Azure's databases, AppServices, Azure Functions and ServiceBus to build out simplified architecture without resorting to full-blown microservices.

Herding the Cats of Enterprise Configuration

Centralized configuration and protection of secrets are key to large systems. Azure provides many ways to help, but knowing how it all works can be daunting. Technologies like KeyVault and AppConfiguration can simplify and secure your configuration. This talk will explain the difference between configuration and secrets as well as how to secure them with System and Managed Identities.

This is an Azure talk but uses C# as the example language. I can present this with TypeScript if I have enough notice.

Architecting Solutions with AI

AI can write code fast. It can also help you design systems that stay correct as they grow - if you know how to work with it. AI makes it easy to build the wrong thing quickly. In this talk, you will learn how to plan for system architecture, not just service generation. This includes service design, API design and deployment plans.