.NET Rocks! Use What Works with Dylan Beattie
May 14, 2026
Dylan Beattie, consultant, .NET developer, and creator of the Rockstar language, champions the Use What Works movement. He explains why preferring well-maintained OSS and buying proven tools beats rebuilding everything. He discusses open source sustainability, how AI affects rebuilding decisions, and when rebuilding is useful for learning rather than shipping.
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Cloud Hosting Broke The Free Software Assumption
- Open source sustainability problems emerged when cloud providers monetized running free projects and maintainers lacked funding models.
- Dylan explains Redis' license changes and cloud vendors offering hosted Redis as the tipping point for debate about "free" software.
Buy Proven Infrastructure Instead Of Reinventing It
- Prefer proven, maintained solutions over building your own to avoid long-term maintenance and security pitfalls.
- Dylan cautions that homemade auth systems look easy at MVP but fail on two-factor, timing attacks, backups, and GDPR obligations.
Learn Complex Systems Without Deploying Them Immediately
- Valuable engineers accumulate knowledge they must resist applying until necessary; knowing complex systems helps you choose when to adopt them.
- Dylan teaches distributed systems for pattern recognition, not immediate workplace rewrites.