Ben Sampica

We've built good software that went nowhere, and SendTrucks is probably the best example.

Introduction # I have been writing software for years and, for much of that time, I treated the act of writing code as an important gateway to the understanding of the problem.

The Story # I recently migrated off of using a MacBook for reasons that are irrelevant to this post but I moved back to Windows.

I recently had a conversation with a good friend of mine who seemed to be struggling with mixed messaging between what their employer was telling them was a leader and what they had an innate sense of what a leader was.

Introduction # Learning is the work.

Introduction # There is a part one using TestContainers and XUnit, which also explains why containers can improve many aspects of local development and testing.

Introduction # Containers have become a key part of modern software development, offering a consistent and isolated environment for building, testing, and deploying applications.

Introduction # Starting with Entity Framework Core 7 (.NET 7), you can now add interceptors.

Introduction # I have seen a ton of articles on working with .NET 8's TimeProvider - specifically, how to use the date and time piece of it in order to test out things like making sure dates and times are expected values.

Introduction # Note This post has been updated for .NET 9.

The Story # I have been working a lot with cloud platforms - needing ephemeral resources that spin up (or delete) at the drop of a hat.

Introduction # You will have to excuse the hyperbolic title but I think there's no fewer words I can use to accurately sum up the features of Azure DevOps (AzDo) compared to GitHub.

Introduction # If you've talked to me for more than five minutes, I've probably mentioned that I am a fanatical Dungeons & Dragons game master because I really like making shit.

With the release of .NET 8, you can now add Keyed Services to the service provider via builder.Services.AddKeyedSingleton<T>().

My (current) manifesto on what quality code is… Code that solves a problem with the lowest complexity and simultaneously providing the highest value to everyone involved, be they the ones writing it, reviewing it, or receiving it.

The Story # I've been doing a lot of cloud infrastructure recently in Azure for systems that are entirely internal but need to be able to talk to each other.

Introduction # I've been following the Clean Architecture principles for years.

Introduction # I'm a huge sucker for having conversations.

Introduction # During my career as a software developer I've run into a lot of folk who have differing 'opinions' on what Agile is.

Introduction # My background is in ASP.NET, specifically MVC.

Introduction # If you don't have time to do it right - you never had time to do it at all - Robert Martin Comments are a integral part of documenting your code.

Introduction # Any fool can write code that a computer can understand.

Introduction # Having recently started a new job, I've been working on a product at work that utilizes Blazor Server and has the traditional trappings in the .NET Stack such as Entity Framework Core.

Introduction # I recently just finished Implementation Patterns by Kent Beck.

Introduction # A coworker and I recently presented this at our bi-weekly technical talk internally and I thought I'd share it as well.

Introduction # Like many of my stories, I saw a post on Reddit showcasing a special 'hidden' feature that GitHub had added to their users' repository list - the ability to make a personal readme that displays on the front page of your GitHub.

Introduction # At my current position, we use Entity Framework Core every single day.

Introduction # Fluent Validation is a .NET library for creating strong-typed, fluent validation rules.

Introduction # A post a couple weeks ago on Reddit in the r/dotnet subreddit caught my eye and the user asked about developing .NET Core applications inside of Visual Studio Code.

Introduction # I've recently been helping some good friends of mine create a fantasy football wrapper around the Yahoo Fantasy Sports API.