Learning about .NET6 and Quantum Computing in Las Vegas – Hendrik’s DevIntersection recap

In December of last year, recent Exellys Alumnus Hendrik Danau attended the renowned DevIntersection conference in Las Vegas. Let’s dive into the world of .NET6, Quantum Computing and casinos.

Hendrik’s Specs

• 23 years young
• Applied Computer Science graduate
• Software Engineer & Exellys alumnus
• Has an impressive Lego Star Wars collection
• Likes to combine playing video games with an active lifestyle

Hi Hendrik, how would you describe the DevIntersection conference?

“DevIntersection is a Microsoft technology focused conference that is held twice a year in the US. I went to the one in Las Vegas in December of 2021. There were some truly great speakers there, like for example Jeff Fritz a.k.a. C-Sharp Fritz. Anyone who has ever done anything in C# has probably heard about him or has come across his talks on Twitch or YouTube. There were also the three Scotts: Scott Hunter (VP Director of Product Management for Azure), Scott Hanselman (Program Manager at Microsoft) and Scott Guthrie (Executive VP of the Cloud and AI Group at Microsoft). It was quite impressive – it’s not every day you get to listen to these guys.”

How do you survive a conference like DevIntersection? In the blogpost below we have tips & tricks that help you survive your first conference. 

DevIntersection has over 100 speakers hosting more than 200 sessions and 20+ workshops. Must be hard to decide which ones to attend?

“Well, .NET6 is out since November, as well as Visual Studio 2022, so for me it was a great time to go to DevIntersection and find out more about these topics. During the .NET6 session, given by C-Sharp Fritz, it was interesting to hear about the changes and improvements – the performance increase from .NET5 to .NET6 really is significant. For instance, they simplified the process for creating APIs and created global using statements that you can easily declare without having to declare them over again. Besides the .NET6 session, I attended some technological sessions on topics like gRPC, SignalR and Blazor, which allows you to write C# code inside your view pages. They say maybe it will one day surpass React and Angular, but we’ll see.

Out of interest, I also joined some more generic sessions. One was about Microsoft Terminal, which is a terminal for Microsoft devices that also enables you to run Linux commands in Windows. Another one was about Hot Reload, an auto compiler. When you change code in your projects, thanks to Hot Reload you don’t have to rebuild it and restart the whole process. You can just save it and it will automatically recompile. Your code changes will be immediately visible in UI.”

There were also a lot of interesting workshops to choose from. Which ones did you attend?

“There was one workshop about .NET MAUI, an evolution from Xamarin. This .NET Multiplatform App UI (MAUI) is made to build apps for iOS, Android, MacOS and Windows. I also attended a theoretical workshop about quantum computing. As you probably know, quantum computing isn’t viable right now, but major companies like Google and Meta and most governments are all investing in it because they don’t want to miss out. After all, when you have quantum computing, you can decrypt pretty much anything, every connection that we have right now, including military encryptions. An interesting fact that came up during the workshop was about cooling. To be able to operate a quantum computer, they need to have a cooling of around 0.015 Kelvin. Another interesting fact was about Qubits, the measurement of quantum computers. Right now, they can safely manage around 3 Qubits, but if you had like 53 Qubits you could crack a solution that would take a conventional supercomputer 10,000 years to complete.”

Your surroundings were also quite spectacular. Can you tell us a bit more about Vegas?

“Las Vegas is a really unique place. It took me 16 hours on the plane to get there and 14 hours to get back, but it was well worth it. It was awesome to be there, like nothing you have ever seen. I stayed in the MGM Grand, which is the largest hotel in America. It has around 6.800 rooms. When you go in it’s like a shopping mall. There are stores, restaurants, places to gamble. Fun fact: there wasn’t a clock around anywhere, not even in restaurants, with the aim to keep the people inside to gamble. There are amazing casinos everywhere on The Strip, and they all have their own theme. Like Caesar’s Palace for instance even has a replica Colosseum built, which was amazing to see. I also took a taxi to Fremont Street, which is like The Strip but for locals. It has LED panels above it and casinos left and right. The food there was also great. You can try pretty much anything there, but I just stuck with American things because it was my first time in the United States.”

Do you have any advice for Exellysts (or anyone else) who are excited to go to DevIntersection too?

“Just do it. If you have the training budget and the time, go. It’s a great experience and you will definitely learn a lot. I know with Covid it’s not easy to travel, especially outside of Europe, but if you plan it well and keep refreshing the information pages to know what is required of you, it’s actually quite easy to get there.”

Thanks for sharing, Hendrik!

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