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Are you looking at all the layoffs and uncertainty going on and wondering if your company is the next to cut back? 

 

Or, maybe you're a freelancer or entrepreneur who is trying to figure out how to deliver more value to gain or retain customers? 

 

Mani Vaya joins Charles Max Wood to discuss the one thing that both of them use to more than double their productivity on a daily basis. 

 

Mani has read 1,000's of productivity books over the last several years and has formulated a methodology for getting more done, but found that he lacked the discipline to follow through on his plans. 

 

The he found the one thing that kept him on track and made him so productive that he is now getting all of his work done and was able to live the life he wants. 

 

Chuck also weighs in on how Mani's technique has worked for him and allows him to spend more time with his wife and kids, run a podcast network, and a nearly full time contract. 

 

Join the episode to learn how Chuck and Mani get into a regular flow state with their work and consistently deliver at work. 

In this episode we dig into a few technologies that can be used together to great effect. We have discussed Backend for Frontend (BFF) before but in this episode the focus is a bit different. As it turns out, an awesome acronym like BFF gets reused. Setting up a BFF works well with the new minimal APIs that were included in .NET 6. Then we tie everything together with Darker, which is similar to MediatR, but with minimal configuration and features built for BFFs. We had a lot of fun discussing this tech stack with Jonny Olliff-Lee and hope you have just as much fun listening to it. In the episode we ask our listeners to help us with the best way to say BFF. Listen to the episode and let us know on Twitter at @dotnet_Podcast.

Diyaz Yakubov comes on the show this week to talk about a few tools he's using to make his life easier at work. We talk about NDepend - a code analyser that you can use on your IDE or CI/CD pipeline to give you recommendations on your code structure and then we move onto C4Model - a new graphical notation language and SharpLab - a neat little online code playground that can convert your code to IL or ASM.

Jakub Chodounsky from the C# Digest newsletter joins us this week. We talk about why he started the mailing list and how he's managed to build up a subscriber base of over 24k. We shared why he keeps it going and the benefits he's gotten from engaging with the .NET community even though as a CTO, he may not be actively cutting code anymore. We also go into some of these recent blog articles and talk about some open-source projects that he thinks is fairly neat.

.NET has been cross-platform for a number of years now starting with the release of .NET Core. Most of the developers that we know work on Windows computers so we don't have first or second hand knowledge of using .NET on other operating systems. Today that is going to change. Maarten Merken has been doing .NET development on a Mac for more than two years and he joins us on the podcast to discuss his experience. We talk about different versions of .NET, debugging, virtualization, IDE's and more. When it comes to IDE's Maarten feels like JetBrains Rider is the best cross-platform IDE out there. Are you doing cross-platform development with .NET? If not, have you thought about trying it? Let us know on Twitter at @dotnet_Podcast.

"I thought WPF was dead" is usually one of the first things that Kevin Bost hears when discussing today's topic. WPF is not dead. In fact, WPF is supported by .NET 6 and a plethora of third-party apps, extensions and packages. Kevin has been working with WPF for a long time and has become an expert on the framework. In today's episode we discuss some of the strengths and weaknesses of WPF, competing frameworks, open-source projects and the path forward. If you need to develop desktop apps for Windows, WPF is still the most mature framework out there. Have you worked with WPF? Are you currently developing applications with WPF? Let us know on Twitter at @dotnet_Podcast.

Our jobs are hectic and there are always multiple priorities we have to stay on top of. Mohammed Osman joins us on the show and runs us through the tools and methodologies he uses to stay productive both as an individual and also on a team.

 If the title of this episode didn't give it away... we are talking about logging into and accessing the content in web applications. Albert Starreveld spends a lot of his time implementing authentication and authorization workflows for his clients. There are a lot of factors that determine how to handle these implementations correctly. Are you still using role-based authorization? What identity provider are you using? Are you using SSO? Are you using claims/scopes? Do you know how to set up claims transformations? These are just some of the questions to ask when dealing with authentication and authorization. In this episode, we discuss these questions and more with Albert. Have you had to implement auth in a web application? How did it go? Let us know on Twitter at @dotnet_Podcast.

Chris Sainty returns to the podcast to discuss the release of his book, Blazor in Action, and more Blazor goodness. We begin this episode talking about writing and publishing a technical book including what it took to get the book over the finish line. There are a lot of moving parts to a technical book especially if the book contains code samples. Next we get into specific questions about Blazor like hosted vs standalone, razor files or code behind and more. We even get into a discussion about MediatR and how it can benefit your codebase whether it is a Blazor application or not. What do you like or dislike most about Blazor? Have you read Chris Sainty's book? Let us know on Twitter at @dotnet_Podcast.

Chris Sainty returns to the podcast to discuss the release of his book, Blazor in Action, and more Blazor goodness. We begin this episode talking about writing and publishing a technical book including what it took to get the book over the finish line. There are a lot of moving parts to a technical book especially if the book contains code samples. Next we get into specific questions about Blazor like hosted vs standalone, razor files or code behind and more. We even get into a discussion about MediatR and how it can benefit your codebase whether it is a Blazor application or not. What do you like or dislike most about Blazor? Have you read Chris Sainty's book? Let us know on Twitter at @dotnet_Podcast.

 In this episode, Caleb and Shawn discuss Playwright, an end-to-end testing framework for web apps. There are several established end-to-end testing frameworks including Selenium and Cypress but Playwright was new to us. Shawn found it while doing research for an app that he is currently working on so we decided to talk about what he has learned using Playwright so far. The framework supports multiple languages including TypeScript, JavaScript, Python and .NET. There is a lot of intelligence under the hood including auto-wait and web-first assertions. Listen in and see if Playwright could be the end-to-end testing framework that you use on your next project. Have you used Playwright before? Let us know your experience on Twitter at @dotnet_Podcast.

This is a republished episode of .NET 017 

In this episode of Adventures in .NET the panel discusses the tools and techniques they use to find their focus while developing. They begin by discussing their personal obstacles when trying to focus on their work. Some of the panelists suffer from ADD, ADHD, and OCD, they explain the challenges these problems bring to their work. They also discuss the flow state good focus can bring and what can be accomplished during that time of deep work. 

The first tool they discuss that helps them focus is music. Music can be a distraction if it is the wrong music. They discuss the types of music that help them focus. The benefits of classical music, music without words and even rock music are considered by the panel. 

Next, the panel discusses todo lists. There are many different todo list apps, the panel considers how to find the ones for you. Wai Liu advocates for the todo list and explains how he rates the completion of his todo list and evaluates it before creating his list for the next week. The panel discusses productivity apps and shares ideas of what would make a great productivity app. 

They consider the merits of meditation. They all agree that meditation has many great benefits but is also quite difficult to master. Wai shares his experience at a meditation retreat. The panel discusses procrastination and distractions both at the work office and at the home office. They consider techniques and resources that help them focus.

 

Today's episode has more Blazor goodness. The panelists discuss the differences that one little check box can make when creating a new Blazor Wasm project. Did you know that you can create a Blazor Wasm project with different setups? What are the differences? Does it change your workflow? Caleb has used both options and there are pros and cons to each one. Have you created a Blazor Wasm project? Do you prefer Hosted or Standalone? Let us know on Twitter at @dotnet_Podcast.

Dennis Doomen returns to the podcast to talk with us about open source projects. We discuss some of the latest milestones for Fluent Assertions and some of the positives and negatives of managing a popular open source project. While companies and developers benefit from open source projects they don't always view the open source community the same way. Dennis shares his thoughts on the subject and Shawn and Caleb talk about how their companies use open source. We also talk about different ways to sponsor an open source project and some of the communities that can grow up around an open source project. What do you think about open source? Have you contributed to an open source project either financially or by adding to the project directly? Let us know on Twitter at @dotnet_Podcast.

 Class Diagrams are a very great way to document your system, inspect and understand the relationships between the classes and plan refactorings and disseminate knowledge inside the team. In this episode, Edson Moisinho discusses using PlantUML - an open-source tool that allows generating many types of UML diagrams from plain text.

All frameworks have their quirks. As a framework matures some of the quirks go away but every framework seems to have one or two things that you have to work around. When writing demo or proof of concept code you may not run into these quirks. They only surface when you need to deploy your code in another environment. In this episode the panelists discuss a Blazor quirk when working with different environments. Blazor does not handle appsettings.json or ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT like other parts of .NET. Listen to this episode to find out more. What is the weirdest quirk you have had to deal with writing code? Let us know on Twitter at @dotnet_Podcast.

Today we talk with Anthony Trad - he lays his case for why layering the repository pattern over Entity Framework is sometimes not a best idea for your codebase. Depending on the context, you could well just be over engineering. After that, we tackle a couple of other patterns such as the specification pattern and the mediator pattern and talk about when it is and is not appropriate to use them.

Believe it or not, software development is not an easy job. Each business domain is different, you are constantly learning something new and it takes work to stay on top of the right patterns and practices. How do you learn the right patterns and practices though? Maybe you read a lot of books, watch a lot of videos, or you go to meetups and conferences. The thing is those resources only take you so far and you will find that there are things you still don't know. Hamed Shirbandi created TaskoMask to help him understand .NET patterns and practices and to show examples of real world challenges. In this episode we discuss how he architected the open-source project and some of the different technologies that he used. What have you had to learn by doing? Let us know on Twitter at @dotnet_Podcast.

* Contact Hamed at hamed.shirbandi@gmail.com