Ben Hall

Iteration over perfection

What I’ve been up to

  • Lead Software Developer at Mountain Warehouse, also serving as Interim Engineering Manager across all three e-commerce web teams
  • Jan 2022 ⇉⇉⇉ Jan 2024 Principal Software Developer at a gov.uk
  • 2019 ⇉⇉⇉ … Technical Specialist & Author for ContentLab.io
  • 2018 ⇉⇉⇉ 2022 Technical Lead Engineer for C# .NET at a gov.uk
  • 2016 ⇉⇉⇉ 2018 Software Engineer at a gov.uk
  • 2008 ⇉⇉⇉ 2016 School Teacher 11-18 Computer Science ☆ Head of Year ☆ Head of Department.

Things I write about for other people

Most of what I do is 👻 ghostwritten but I do get authorship credit sometimes:

Microsoft-commissioned 3-Part Blog Series on GitOps with Terraform plans, GitHub, GitHub Actions, and Azure

  • Part 1: Introduction to GitOps (CodeProject has closed.)
  • Part 2: GitOps with Terraform and GitHub (CodeProject has closed.)
  • Part 3: GitOps Provisioning with GitHub Actions (CodeProject has closed.)

Microsoft-commissioned 3-Part Blog Series on Azure Arc

  • Part 1: Deploying to Azure Arc via Azure Application Services Part 1: Getting Started with Azure Application Services (CodeProject has closed.)
  • Part 2: Deploying to Azure Arc via Azure Application Services Part 2: Running Azure Functions Anywhere (CodeProject has closed.)
  • Part 3: Deploying to Azure Arc via Azure Application Services Part 3: Deploying a Multi-cloud Azure App Service Web App (CodeProject has closed.)

Docker

Guest post on Docker blog: Deciding Between Docker Desktop and a DIY Solution

Mattermost (2 Blog Articles)

Mattermost is the leading open source collaboration platform. I was asked to write 2 articles.

Microsoft-commissioned 3-Part Blog Series on Teams and PowerApps

  • Part 1: Build a Teams Power App for Manufacturing 1: Get Started with Dataverse (CodeProject has closed.)
  • Part 2: Build a Teams Power App for Manufacturing 2: Create the Customer UI (CodeProject has closed.)
  • Part 3: Build a Teams Power App for Manufacturing 3: Create the Manufacturer UI (CodeProject has closed.)

Some other topics I’ve ghostwritten on recently

  • A white paper on secure supply chains
  • Best Practices For Secure Development From Home
  • Distributed systems tracing with OpenTelemetry in .NET Core (with example dockerised services)
  • Caching in ASP.NET Core
  • Distributed caching (example .NET application written)
  • Breaking up monolithic applications into microservices
  • Python Flask authentication with OpenID Connect (including example application)
  • Technical debt
  • Continuous Integration and Deployment pipelines
  • Developer workspaces and ‘Flow’
  • Outsourcing testing
  • Testing low-code/no-code applications
  • Documentation for a PDF .NET library (including example application)
  • Identity Management (a paper comparing customer-facing and internal systems)
  • Integrating a leading open source collaboration platform with Jenkins and other examples

Talks and Conferences

  • Contributor, Government Transformation Summit, May 2023.
  • Guest appearance on Day Two Cloud, a Packet Pushers podcast, to talk about OpenTelemetry. Listen to it here or on your favourite podcast platform via pod.link.
  • Talk: The Modern Observability Problem and OpenTelemetry. February 2023, DevOps North East.
  • Talk: The Modern Observability Problem and OpenTelemetry. October 2022, Homes England Software Community.
  • Contributor, Government Transformation Summit, September 2022.
  • Lightning talk: Introducing Azure App Configuration. January 2020, UK Hydrographic Office

Awards

  • 1 Jan 2019 - CodeProject MVP 2019 MVA Most Valuable Author Award - ‘We recognize and value your exceptional contributions and commitment to the technical communities worldwide. By sharing your real world expertise and technical skills, you demonstrate outstanding technical community leadership.’ (CodeProject has closed.)
  • 15 Nov 2018 - First Prize: Best Article of October 2018 with A Re-Introduction to C# References Post C# 7 (CodeProject has closed.)
  • 24 Aug 2018 First Prize: Best Article of July 2018 with A Super-Simplified Explanation of .NET Garbage Collection (CodeProject has closed.)
  • 18 May 2018 First Prize: Best C# Article of April 2018 with C# Debug vs. Release Builds and Debugging in Visual Studio – from Novice to Expert in One Blog Article (CodeProject has closed.)
  • 23 Mar 2018 - First Prize: Best C# Article of February 2018 with Addressing a Simple Yet Common C# Async/Await Misconception (CodeProject has closed.)