Welcome back 👋

Hello and welcome back, lovelies!

It’s been an incredibly busy October for me as it has been for many. October is often known as “Hustle Season” as all the conferences seem to be scheduled around this time!

October is also the lead up to the latest release of .NET which is just a few short weeks away. Therefore I have been spoilt for choice of content to share with you all - I hope you enjoy my selections.

This month, I have the pleasure to be joined by Brandon Minnick. Brandon going to chat to you about an important aspect of .NET, and that is its wonderful community and how we can better honour it.

Brandon works as a .NET Developer Advocate at AWS where he gets to work closely with the developer community and help fellow mobile app and cloud developers make 5-star apps.

An avid mobile app developer, Brandon loves to code and has contributed to and published countless apps, like GitTrends and Punday.

Brandon’s thoughts

We need to rethink our community programs.

Recently, I was kicked out of the Microsoft MVP Program because I work at AWS.

Despite creating, and continuing to lead, popular open-source .NET projects like the .NET MAUI Community Toolkit (+1.5MM NuGet Downloads) and AsyncAwaitBestPractices (+1.7MM NuGet Downloads), despite delivering .NET presentations at 15 conferences around the world in 2023, and despite me hosting the The .NET on AWS Show, Microsoft decided that I do not qualify for their MVP Program because I work for one of their competitors.

To be fair, the AWS Heroes program has a similar policy as the Microsoft MVP Program: to join the program, you are required to sign an NDA and competitor companies cannot be granted an NDA. But my question is “Why is this a requirement”?

I strongly believe the purpose of these programs should be to say “Thank You” to a member of the community for dedicating their free time to promoting the company’s products + services, and to shine a spotlight on them and their great work.

The prestige of being accepted into these programs is a big enough reward. Just by adding “Microsoft MVP”, “Google Developer Expert” or “AWS Hero” to your resume, you will get an immediate interview when you apply for a job that uses the tech stack; you will be fast-tracked for promotions, raises, and leadership opportunities internally at your company; and you will be invited to speak at the most prestigious conferences around the world.

We should not be denying devoted community experts an opportunity at this prestigious title. Personally, I would happily forgo signing an NDA with the Microsoft MVP program and miss out on the MVP Summits if I could retain the prestige of being a Microsoft MVP.

We can do better. I am currently in conversations with leadership at AWS on how we can improve our program to make it more inclusive, and I encourage all programs to do the same.

Brandon’s recommendations

• For my fellow Visual Studio for Mac users (RIP VS for Mac), I highly recommend JetBrains Rider. I’ve been using it on macOS since Microsoft announced the end of VS for Mac, and have been pleasantly surprised!

• For my fellow .NET MAUI Developers, check out these 3 NuGet Packages made by me and my CommunityToolkit team: CommunityToolkit.Maui, CommunityToolkit.Maui.Markup and CommunityToolkit.Mvvm are must-haves for every .NET MAUI app

What’s new and exciting?

• Debugging Enhancements in .NET 8 - debugging is such an important aspect of language usability. I’m excited to see the improvements we’ll be getting this release.

• Arm64 Performance Improvements in .NET 8 - .NET’s cross-platform support is vital to the growth of the eco-system, so I am pleased to read about the performance improvements to Arm64-based systems.

• Announcing .NET MAUI in .NET 8 Release Candidate 2: More Quality - the release of .NET 8 is going to see MAUI reaching maturity. Check out the quality improvements that will be coming.

What to read 📖

Anatomy of a .NET devcontainer - dev containers are a fantastic addition to GitHub codespaces. In this post, Tim Heuer covers the structure of the new .NET 8 template enabling you to get started quicker.

Building 3D Applications and Content with .NET MAUI and Evergine](https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/dotnet-maui-3d-app-with-evergine/) - in this blog, Jorge Canton introduces the 3D engine, Evergine. Jorge goes on to explain how to use the brand new .NET MAUI template that’s available in the latest release of Evergine. Bringing 3D graphics to your apps.

A History of Threddy - if you spend time on Twitter, er apologies, X, 🙄 then you may well have come across the Threddy Rex comics. This post covers some of the history of Threddy, check it out.

What to listen to 🗣

Halloween Special: A Developer’s Fright Night - Halloween is almost upon us and The Breakpoint show has a special. There are discussions of tech resurrections and the general horrors of software engineering.

.NET and Podcasting - with Jamie Taylor - Podcaster Jamie Taylor joins Dan Clarke to discuss, well, you guessed it, .NET and podcasting! There is

What to watch 📺

What’s Next in C#? - Mads Torgersen - C# lead designer, Mads Torgersen gives a tour of the latest features coming in C#12 at the Copenhagen Developer Festival.

The New Blazor in .NET 8 🔥 Render Modes, Architecture & Authentication with Identity - Patrick God goes in-depth on some of the new features coming to Blazor in the next release.

Introducing the MongoDB provider for EF Core - this episode of the .NET Data Community standup discusses the brand new EF Core provider for MongoDB, which is very exciting!

Before you go 👋

We do hope you’ve enjoyed the articles, videos, and podcasts we’ve shared with you. If you have an article you’d like us to include in the newsletter, then please complete this form.

If you have any comments or suggestions or just want to reach out, please complete this contact form to reach me, Layla.

Lastly, don’t forget to subscribe to the newsletter and share it with your friends!

Thanks for reading!

Layla.