Alex Hall: Sketching In NET

Recorded at the London .NET User Group meetup, 16 July 2024
Artists, when constructing an artwork, will often create multiple studies & sketches before committing to the final canvas; experimentation and simulation are essential. How do we do that with code? One of the reasons JavaScript and Python had such popularity is how tactile they are to newcomers with simple tools, such as REPL's. .NET, like Java, suffered from a lack of early tools to simply play with your code. However, thanks to the work of the .NET team in the last few years, we now have a stunning interactive toolset, including Jupyter Notebooks, REPL's & more, unlocking the ability for programmers to plug & play, experimenting with ease.
We'll dive into how to make best use of Polyglot Notebooks, whether for playgrounds, data science or documentation. We'll also adventure into the .NET Interactive package to figure out how one makes compiled language interpretable!
Alex Hall plies his trade as a Software Engineer at FundApps, working in and around the .NET ecosystem alongside AWS & The Serverless Framework for the last 4 years. Partial to education work and sharing useful libraries with the community, you'll find some of his work under the moniker 'Look Mum, No Handlebars!'. While software is where he hangs his metaphorical hat, Alex originally trained as a classical composer & choral conductor, with works released on NMC Recordings, and is currently musical director of the London Humanist Choir.