Top 10 C# conference talks 2019–2022

Unicorn Developer
4 min readMay 10, 2023

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Original: pvs-studio.com

Here’s a small compilation of curious talks at C# and .NET conferences over the past few years.

Every year IT conferences bring together a diverse group of people from the IT industry. Although the number of conferences is enormous, getting to some events can be challenging, and tickets can be quite expensive. Sure, nothing can replace real-life communication and experience sharing with your fellow developers, but you can certainly view some great conference talks at home — on YouTube.

By the way (in case you don’t code in C#), you’re welcome to another digest of conference talks, this time for C++ devs.

NDC Conferences

N1. The functional journey of C# — Mads Torgersen — NDC Copenhagen 2022

Mads Torgersen, the lead designer of the C# programming language at Microsoft, has been working on C# for more than 15 years. In the talk, Mads speculates on the reasons why almost every new version of C# borrowed concepts and features from functional programming, despite C# being the object-oriented language. This talk takes you on a journey from the past (C# 1.0) to the future, with a thorough dive into the language features along the way.

N2. Programming’s Greatest Mistakes — Mark Rendle — NDC Copenhagen 2022

An entertaining talk on a broad topic (but C# code is covered there too!). Mark Rendle tells us about the worst programming mistakes in history. Everyone makes mistakes in code, and that’s ok. Some bugs stay local and unnoticed, others bankrupt companies and make web development a living hell for millions of devs. When you’re done watching the video, dive into the comments where users share their bug stories. By the way, here you may find a few more tales about the notorious bugs.

N3. Functional Programming with C# — Simon Painter — NDC Porto 2022

Let’s discuss functional programming once again within the comfort of a familiar language. Simon Painter will tell us how to use familiar features available in out-of-the-box C# to implement some of the most powerful patterns and techniques from the world of functional programming.

N4. Correcting Common Async/Await Mistakes in .NET — Brandon Minnick — NDC Oslo 2019

In the talk, Brandon Minick analyzes common async/await mistakes in .NET. We will see how to fix these errors, thereby significantly optimizing the asynchronous code of the application. We will learn how to best use async/await in C# by analyzing how .NET compiles our async code.

Dotnetos

N5. Adam Furmanek — Hacking C# from the inside — Dotnetos Conference 2021

C# is compiled to a strongly-typed intermediate language that collects garbage. However, have you ever wondered how you may leverage its features to your advantage — how you can “hack” C# from the inside? Let’s see how “one hacky line” saves us hours of debugging. Adam Furmanek, the developer and the author of Applied Integer Programming and .NET Internals Cookbook, explains us in detail what goes on “under the hood” of C#.

.NET Conf

N6. Let’s design a new C# language feature! — Jared Parsons — .NET Conf 2022

Every version of C# gets new features. Jared Parsons will discuss the challenges developers face in implementing new language features. The C# compiler dev lead will raise the curtain and reveal the inner workings — the path from the idea to the implementation of a new function in the language. The talk explores the implementation of a real feature in C# 11 — File-local types.

N7. .NET at Stack Overflow — Roberta Arcoverde — .NET Conf 2022

You regularly visit Stack Overflow, but have you ever wondered how things work there? Roberta Arcoverde, director of engineering at Stack Overflow, will give insights into the platform’s inner workings: what’s inside Stack Overflow, the technologies it employs, and how the world’s most popular Q&A website for coders actually works. By the way, did you know that Stack Exchange hosts over 180 question and answer sites, and that the pioneer, Stack Overflow, recently celebrated its 15th anniversary? This talk is a great chance to learn more about such a vital platform.

N8. What’s New in C# 11 — Mads Torgersen and Dustin Campbell — .NET Conf 2022

Well, speaking of the ‘agenda’. :) Of course, it’s unlikely that you’re still unfamiliar with C# 11’s features five months after the release. However, listening to people who are directly involved in language development is always good. Mads Torgersen and Dustin Campbell will go through C# 11’s new features.

Update Conference Prague

N9. Solving .NET performance issues — Adam Sitnik — UCP2019

Your .NET app/library/service has suddenly slowed down and you don’t know why? Adam Sitnik will explain where to start and how to solve the most frequent performance issues. You will learn more about the concept of profiling, see the most popular profilers and find out how to identify performance issues.

DevTernity Conference

N10. The Clean Architecture — Ian Cooper — DevTernity Conference 2019

In the talk, Ian Cooper, the developer with more than 20 years of experience, will not only talk about the clean architecture and its benefits but also show how to implement the clean architecture in .NET from the first steps to fully working code.

Conclusion

I hope you find something of interest in this compilation of conference talks. Although listening to speakers on YouTube is enjoyable, I believe that attending a conference would be even better. You can even address your question to the speaker.

If all of a sudden you decide to attend an upcoming conference, make a keynote speech or simply hang out with other developers, you can easily find the event to your liking. The calendar of IT events compiles all of the noteworthy events for developers, meetups, and conferences. You won’t have to scroll through endless lists of conferences on multiple websites — the calendar sorts the events by category, country, and event type.

Have fun attending conferences and listening to great speakers. That’s all folks!

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Unicorn Developer

The developer, the debugger, the unicorn. I know all about static analysis and how to find bugs and errors in C, C++, C#, and Java source code.