Barret Blake
Architect
Barret has nearly 20 years of professional experience in the Microsoft & web technology stacks, including .NET, SQL Server, Azure, JavaScript, and Power Platform. He is a Microsoft MVP in the Power Automate and .NET areas. He is a blogger, content creator, and an active speaker and volunteer at conferences and user groups across Ohio and the US. He is an advocate for mentorship in the developer community and the need to build up the next generation of developers. When he's not doing all that he enjoys spending his time with family, LEGO, D&D, model railroading, and personal projects.
Posts
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February 24, 2026There are many different approaches to software development. In the earliest days, there was the “Test Last” or “Code First” approach. A …
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February 19, 2026Aspire has basic support for OpenTelemetry out of the box. But what about when we're ready to do more.
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February 05, 2026It's inevitable that production will fail. Your ability to respond quickly greatly depends on being able to determine what went wrong.
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January 12, 2026Sometimes it can be really useful to add commands to your Aspire dashboard. It's easy to do and amazingly useful.
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January 06, 2026One of the greatest features of Aspire is how easy it is to set up, configure, and work with databases.
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December 15, 2025C# 14 now lets you use a null-conditional operator on the left side of an assignment
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December 10, 2025With the arrival of Aspire 13, Aspire now provides an MCP server that your AI coding agent can access to see the logs of your running Aspire application.
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November 17, 2025The Aspire CLI provides a quick and easy way to access and work with Aspire from your command line.
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September 05, 2025Let's take a step back and talk about why .NET Aspire is relevant to today's developers, why they should care, and how to take an existing app and Aspire it.