Antifragility in Software with Barry O'Reilly

What do you want the last chapter of your software development career to look like? Carl and Richard talk to Shawn Wildermuth about life as a 55-year-old software developer. Shawn talks about being an independent software development consultant for the past twenty years and considering what the next ten should look like. The conversation digs into what's fun and valuable and what you want to achieve before retirement. One thing is for sure - there is no one right way to have a career - but making a plan is important!

How do you build cloud-native applications in Azure? Carl and Richard talk to Scott Hunter about how Microsoft tooling is evolving to develop cloud-native applications - starting with the vital idea that all cloud-native apps are multiple applications! Scott talks about how most development tools focus on individual applications and how dealing with multiple applications, including cloud apps, can be challenging. Cloud apps need telemetry, resiliency, and service discovery - which brings the conversation to tooling like .NET Aspire, designed to lead developers down the path to cloud-native applications with all these features and more. And this is only V1 - Scott discusses many more features that could make it easier and easier to make great cloud-native applications!

Six years later, how has antifragility thinking changed? Carl and Richard talk to Barry O'Reilly about his ongoing work on building highly reliable software. Since Barry's last appearance six years ago, he's returned to school and is writing a PhD thesis on antifragility. Studying complexity theory, Barry approaches software architecture with a minimalist view - you only add architecture when you see the application needs it. This leads to ideas around residuality - and a progressive way to build software that yields amazing results!

How do you debug your EF queries? Carl and Richard talk to Giorgi Dalakishvili about his open-source Visual Studio extension, EFCore Visualizer. Giorgi talks about bringing together the EF rendering of the query with the database query plan to ensure you retrieve data from your database as efficiently as possible. The conversation ranges over a number of tools Giorgi has built over the years, including EF Framework Exceptions, DuckDB.NET, and more!

Can speech become part of your development workflow? Carl and Richard talk to Karl Geitz about his use of NaturallySpeaking to create software in Visual Studio. Karl talks about using voice to write better, longer comments in his code and also helps to navigate the features of Visual Studio itself. The effort started when dealing with Repetitive Stress Injury but has now evolved into his most productive approach to coding - one hand on the mouse, the other on function keys, and voice instead of typing!

How do you manage your DNS? Carl and Richard talk to Anthony Eden of DNSimple about his latest product, the Domain Control Plane. Anthony talks about how everyone has DNS—and usually in more than one place. Getting a common view of all your DNS entries, no matter where they are, is valuable, but being able to automate changes is even more important, especially as things scale up! The conversation ranges over development, cloud, scaling systems, and some old-fashioned geekery!

GitHub Copilot has been out for a few years now - how is it going? Carl and Richard talk to Michelle Duke about what's been happening with GitHub Copilot. Michelle discusses the new features in GitHub Copilot, including Chat, which gives you more of a ChatGPT-like interface while still being focused strictly on code, including your code! Then, the conversation digs into the broader ideas around large language models and the perception of artificial intelligence affecting the entire world. A lot is going on!

Do you understand how your APIs are being used? Carl and Richard talk to Anthony Alaribe about his experiences dealing with poorly documented APIs that need updates - but no breaking changes! Anthony tells a story about missing a use case for an API that cost a lot of money, which started him down the path to making APItoolkit.io. The toolkit allows you to see how your API is being used and any exceptions that are happening. It will also generate tests to validate that your new version won't cause problems! Check it out!

How has Aspect-Oriented Programming changed? Carl and Richard talk to Gael Fraiteur of PostSharp fame about his new tool, Metalama. Gael talks about being able to move out of IL and into Roslyn Analyzers to help you get rid of boilerplate code and focus more on the value your application brings. The conversation dives into how AOP can help build higher quality code, to the point of being a testing platform for code compliance for your organization - used right, metalama can make your code reviews smoother! There's a lot of power inside metaprogramming; it's worth trying to understand what Metalama can do for you.

It's 2024, how is Azure doing? Carl and Richard chatted with Magnus Mårtensson about his work with customers migrating and operating in Azure. Magnus talks about the waste many organizations have in cloud resources, often by provisioning services with too many resources or failing to shut down things they no longer need. The conversation digs into today's excellent tooling, including Azure Migrate, Advisor, and Monitor. All tools can help you right-size and control your cloud spend. And AI is coming to make those tools even better!