With 2300 attendees this year’s NDC Oslo was a bit smaller than the one in 2023. Nevertheless, I liked it much more and think the talks were a lot better.
Only two talks I attended finished after just 40 minutes and both times I could go to another talk and still catch some helpful insights. I had only 3 talks that did not meet my expectations, the rest were good to great talks that offered a lot of helpful insights.
For once we did not have much luck with the weather at the traditional Oslo Fjord Cruise. It started with clouds and turned into a thunderstorm. Fortunately, the boat is built in such a way that you do not notice much of these conditions if you stay inside.
To RAG or not to RAG
I attended a lot of AI talks this year. They showed a lot of useful applications that used RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) to deliver the AI capabilities. Listening to these talks let me think that I should definitely go with RAG and a useful application would be only a few weeks away:
- Beyond Vectors: Evolving GenAI through Transformative Tools and Methods by Alison Cossette shows how Neo4j can add additional metadata to vectors.
- LLMs in Action: How Norkart Leverages AI for Smarter Property Development by Mathilde Ørstavik and Malte Loller-Andersen explain the hard work needed to turn planning zone regulations into a form that an AI bot can work with.
- Contextual search with vector search: exploring your options with open source tools by Olena Kutsenko shows how PGVector and other tools help you to create your own RAG.
- Use of AI in Modern Dataviz by Øystein Moseng show how Highcharts use AI to support data analytics and what can go wrong with translating text.
After the talk LLMs gone wild by Tess Ferrandez-Norlander I see a lot more challenges that needs to be addressed before we could use RAG with success. It was a good counterbalance to the other, very positive talks on RAG.
Mirror, mirror: LLMs and the illusion of humanity by Jodie Burchell goes in the same direction and explains the limitations of LLMs and why they cannot get consciousness.
From Cursed C# to Aspire
Nick Chapsas sowed in Cursed C# a lot of strange but somehow useful things that we can do with d.Net, even when we better not use it on company projects. From extension methods to operator overloads and magic was everything present to create code that behaves in unexpected ways.
With Aspire, Microsoft at last offers a fully integrated way to create cloud-native applications in an uncomplicated way. The many tools that came to .Net over the years are now finally integrated in an easy-to-use way and work with various cloud providers, languages and frameworks. I was most impressed with the thought through approach to detect performance problems in the cloud and hand them down to your IDE to fix them with Copilot. If you want to run your applications in the cloud, check it out and use its best practices as a starting point.
Most important talk
The talk with the most food for thought was Decades in the Machine – Meaning and Purpose in Technology by David Whitney. It offers a lot of important points to plan your career and will hopefully prevent you burning out pursuing a career in software development.
Conclusion
My 11th NDC Oslo was among the best I ever attended. Well organized, lots of great talks, interesting discussions and a workshop to fry your brain made it a great experience that motivates me to return next year. In the meantime, I have many ideas to follow up and build some cool things that may even be useful. Stay tuned!