Why should .NET developers build Power Apps? Carl and Richard talk to April Dunnam about the latest in Microsoft's Power Platform and why .NET developers should get involved. April talks about the fusion development methodology, where domain experts use the Power Platform tools alongside .NET developers using Visual Studio to build line-of-business apps. There are many opportunities in the cycle of building Power Apps where your skills as a .NET developer can make the process go faster, more reliable, and with more features! Also, check out April's upcoming workshops on building Power Apps online at https://aka.ms/PowerDNR and at the DevIntersection conference in Las Vegas in December!

Are your APIs vulnerable to hacking? Carl and Richard talk to Dana Epp about how APIs have become the focus of black hats today. Dana talks about tooling you can use to look at your APIs the same way the hackers do, and find potential exploit paths for impersonating users, stealing data, and otherwise exploiting your system. There's an OWASP list specifically for API security - spend some time with it!

How do we make open source work for everyone? While at NDC in Oslo, Carl and Richard talked to David Whitney about his experiences working on open-source projects, and the challenges of making them sustainable. David talks about how many projects start with an individual making something for themselves, which then evolves into many people utilizing the project, but not contributing to it. And when companies depend on that software, the pressure on the creators gets serious - but without compensation. How do we make open source better? And how do the tech giants make the situation better or worse?

What can observability do for you? While at NDC in Oslo, Carl and Richard chatted with Alayshia Knighten about her work with honeycomb and helping people understand what's happening with their applications in production. Alayshia talks about instrumenting applications to provide insight into behavior in real-time - by leveraging existing tools to provide data and reporting. The conversation digs into how sysadmins and developers see applications differently, and how standard telemetry systems make it easier for everyone to be on the same page!

Ready for a story of cloud scaling from the trenches? While at NDC Oslo, Carl and Richard talked with Meg Gotshall about her experiences scaling the Fotoware service with her team. Meg talks about the limits of auto-scaling, where all the services are scaled up, but the bottlenecks exist in only one place - and how dashboards help to provide more visibility into the problem. But even when you sense the problem, how do you fix it? The conversation digs into breaking services into their containers and AppService plans so they can be scaled independently - initially for diagnostics but ultimately for production!

How do you test your web applications? Carl and Richard talk to Debbie O'Brien about Playwright, Microsoft's new open-source web application testing tool. Playwright lets you build tests in an array of languages, platforms, and browsers. Debbie talks about how you can build atomic tests that will survive new versions, and test independently of other features. And when tests fail, Playwright generates a PWA of the test run showing exactly where the test fails!

GitHub Copilot is here! Are we all going to lose our jobs? While at NDC in Oslo, Carl and Richard talked to Michelle Mannering about how Copilot helps you write code - emphasis on help! Michelle explains that Copilot is able to take your explanations of what code needs to be written to find examples of that code for you to take advantage of. It's still up to you to break down the problem well enough, but you spend less time fussing with syntax. This is especially powerful when calling into unfamiliar APIs or coding in languages you have less experience with. The conversation dives into how the developer ecosystem continues to evolve with these new tools, so that we can do more faster!

What can AWS do for you? Carl and Richard talk to Isaac Levin about the experience of being a .NET developer working with Amazon Web Services. Isaac talks about the broader strategy of moving applications to the cloud and what Amazon offers to make your life easier, with various migration and validation tools that can help you understand how an existing application will behave on cloud services. The goal is to get beyond the virtual machine and into containers, serverless, and more!

How do you make applications that work well for the visually impaired? Carl and Richard talk to Courtney Heitman about building applications that the visually impaired can use. Courtney talks about different kinds of visual impairment including field of view, color blindness, low and no vision. There are tools to help you understand what those impairments are like and to help you test how your app will work for everyone. Then the conversation turns to screen readers - which are challenging to test with because it does take quite a bit of experience to use. There are powerful solutions, you just need to incorporate these accessibility features - sooner, rather than later!

How much do you need to know about design? While at CodePaLOUsa in Louisville, Carl and Richard talked to Kathryn Grayson Nanz about understanding application designers. Kathryn talks about knowing just enough about design to understand that, like software development, it is an iterative process, that takes user feedback and incorporates it into future designs. Oh, and we know why your custom icon sucks!