dotnetsheff

• Google Maps: https://maps.app.goo.gl/7BigFQzWAbBXbRUW6
• ** Parking**: The APCOA car park on Eyre Street is a five-minute walk.

Agenda:

• Pizza/Drinks (18:15 - 18:30)
• Introduction (18:30)
• Playing With AI Locally (18:35ish)
• Social @ Pub (after the talk)

Playing With AI Locally
In this session, we’ll step back from hype and explore what’s really happening when you run a language model locally. We’ll look at how modern LLM runtimes expose simple HTTP endpoints, what “tokens in, tokens out” actually means, and why interacting with a model from C# is far less mysterious than it sounds.
From there, we’ll examine the architectural shift from “chatbot” to system component. What is an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server? Why would you build one? And how can a language model act as a decision engine that selects structured tools while your .NET application remains firmly in control?

• Google Maps: https://maps.app.goo.gl/xm9z5Wr97QbefVCP7
• Parking: Sheffield Tech Parks have limited parking, however provide free parking to our guests! Once at the barriers phone 0114 221 1800 and they'll let you in.

Agenda:

• Pizza/Drinks (18:15 - 18:30)
• Introduction (18:30)
• Avalonia UI
• Building Developer Tools in the Open
• Social @ Pub (after the talk)

Avalonia UI
TBC

‍ Building Developer Tools in the Open: Lessons from PayBridge & CronCraft
Building a developer tool is one thing; building one that others actually adopt, contribute to, and integrate into their own production systems is something else entirely. In this talk, Babatunde will take you behind the scenes of two open-source projects: PayBridge.SDK, a unified .NET payment gateway abstraction adopted by developers across the .NET ecosystem, and CronCraft, a background job scheduling library that has been integrated into larger production projects and gained significant traction on GitHub.

He will unpack the full lifecycle of building developer tools in the open, from the initial problem-solving itch that sparked each project, through the painful API design decisions, versioning challenges, and documentation trade-offs, to the community dynamics that determine whether a library quietly fades or genuinely takes off. He will also explore what happens when your tool gets adopted by a larger project, and what that teaches you about writing code for an audience you'll never meet.

Whether you're thinking about open-sourcing your first library or you're already maintaining one, this talk will offer honest, practical insights into the craft of building tools that earn the trust of other engineers.