Gradoid DOO

Founded an app studio with my wife Biljana.

We design, build & grow mobile apps for ourselves and the clients.

Our own apps:

1. Guess the Drawing - 10k users drawing game monetized with ads
2. Mind - bite-sized spirituality lessons app with 217K+ users and $108K+ revenue
3. Delicious - social sharing recipes app
4. Košnica - services marketplace app for web and mobile

Founder

Toptal

Built mobile apps for 10 clients via Toptal platform:

1. Android (Kotlin) Engineer for adult card game (2019)
2. Flutter Engineer for healthcare app (2019)
3. Flutter Tech Lead for FinTech app (2020)
4. Flutter Tech Lead for security app (2020)
5. Flutter Tech Lead for live streaming app (2020 - 2021)
6. Flutter Tech Lead for store management app (2022)
7. Flutter Tech Lead for FinTech app (2023)
8. Flutter Tech Lead & Team Lead for Crypto Wallet app (2023)
9. Flutter Tech Lead for Color app (2023)
10. Flutter Tech Lead for Storage Management System (2023)

Flutter & Firebase Engineer

Homemade Method

Head of Engineering

Verb Technology Company, Inc .

Mobile Tech Lead (via Toptal)

North Shore Research

Mobile Engineer (via Toptal)

Bmapp

Full Stack Engineer

Gradoid

Ellipsis Health

Full Stack Engineer (via Toptal)

Evil Studios Limited

Android Engineer (via Toptal)

Schneider Electric DMS NS

Software Developer

I help app founders make more money.

My journey:

📱 2007 - Built my first app for Nokia phones in high-school.
🚀 2011 - Launched my first startup: local places & events app.
💰 2018 - Raised VC money and participated in 2 startup accelerators.
🛠️ 2018 - Joined Toptal as Mobile Apps Engineer and built apps for 10 clients.
📈 2019 - Built an app portfolio that brought $108,596 in revenue with 214K users.
👥 2022 - Founded an app agency (3 devs, 1 designer, 1 QA). Amazing, but stressful.
👉 2024 - Shut down the agency in April, now helping app founders make more money.

Milos Jokic

Practical .NET and Software Architecture Tips | Microsoft MVP

Hi there! 👋

I'm a senior software engineer, primarily working in the .NET ecosystem.

Things I talk about on LinkedIn:
- C# and .NET ❤
- Software engineering and architecture 
- Distributed systems and how to build them
- Databases and optimization techniques
- Career and personal growth

One of my goals (i̶s̶) was to become a Microsoft MVP in Developer Technologies.
I became an MVP in March of 2023.

If this sounds interesting, let's connect!

Milan Jovanović

I upgraded my Clean Architecture template to .NET 10.

And it took only a few minutes. Here's how 👇

My .NET version is defined in one place, a Build props file. I updated to net10 and that took care of all the projects in the solution.

The next part was updating the NuGet packages.

This was equally simple with central package management. I updated the version in the Packages props file, and it was picked up by all the projects in the solution.

Here's what's inside:
- Simple domain model with Domain Events pattern
- CQRS (no MediatR) + clean use cases implementation
- Validation and logging cross-cutting concerns
- Authentication with JWT and user context
- Boilerplate for RBAC authorization
- Docker Compose orchestration
- Minimal APIs, health checks

You can get the template here: https://lnkd.in/eihaFihr

I recently found out my template is used by a local company, doing $30M+ yearly revenue.

The .sln file as we know it is finally dead.

After nearly two decades of dealing with unreadable GUIDs and painful merge conflicts, Visual Studio 2026 has introduced the new .slnx format. It’s clean, it’s XML-based, and it actually makes sense.

But that’s not the only upgrade.

In my latest video, I show you how I moved my entire solution from .NET 9 to .NET 10 in just a few minutes.

The secret isn't upgrading every project manually, it’s using a "Smart Setup" with Directory.Build.props and Central Package Management.

In this video, I break down:

- How to change target frameworks for 20+ projects instantly
- Managing NuGet versions in one single file
- A deep dive into the new .slnx format (and how to migrate)
- Handling Dockerfile updates for .NET 10

Stop fighting with your solution files.

Here is the better way to handle the upgrade: https://lnkd.in/dFgdarZe

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I failed an interview because I didn't know how locks work in C#.

Read this to make sure it never happens to you.

I've told this story a couple of times before, but it's worth repeating.

I was in an interview some 7-8 years ago, doing a live coding exercise.

I was integrating with a currency conversion API and needed to add caching.

The problem was how this would scale with multiple concurrent requests.

A classic cache stampede problem.

I wanted to prevent this with locking.

Locking allows us to control how many threads can access some piece of code.

Note that I rarely worked with low-level code.

But the company I was interviewing for does.

Of course, they'd have this in the interview process.

Here's the situation:

- I knew I needed a locking mechanism
- But the method was async (oof!)
- So I tried to solve this using the `lock` statement

And that's where it all went to shit...

The `lock` statement doesn't work with async-await.

And it makes sense.

You can't guarantee which thread will complete the method.

So what's the solution?

You need to use an asynchronous synchronization primitive.

Luckily, C # has many to choose from.

Semaphore, SemaphoreSlim, Mutex, Monitor, etc.

Two important remarks:

1) Use a timeout when waiting on the semaphore
2) Always release the lock with a try-finally

Here's a tough question for you.

How would you implement a lock in a database?

If you want to find the answer, go here: https://lnkd.in/eVTMfu-y

Would you have nailed this interview?

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Talks about #csharp, #dotnet, #databases, #softwareengineering, and #softwarearchitecture

You can find security risks in your code at build time.

Here's a simple way you can implement this in .NET in a few minutes.

Imagine being able to find security risks when you build your code.

Static code analysis lets you do this.

Here's an example build error that warns me my password hashing code is insecure. 👇

Static code analysis can help you write secure and consistent code. And you can also enforce this at build, even in CI pipelines.

If you want to see how to set this up from scratch, check out this article: https://lnkd.in/dyYFpBYZ

Note that this doesn't detect every possible issue.

If you want to take this further, you can look at more powerful solutions like SonarQube.

---
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The riskiest line of code you'll write today is the one without a feature flag.

Fortunately, .NET has you covered right out of the box.

Feature flags are a software development technique that allows you to wrap application features in a conditional statement.

You can then toggle the feature on or off at runtime to control which features are enabled.

.NET already has feature flag support built in.

You can use the IFeatureManager in your code to check whether a feature is enabled.

Want to learn more about using feature flags?

Check out this article: https://lnkd.in/ddxmMg4V

There are many popular services for managing feature flags.

I've used LaunchDarkly often, and recently also PostHog (it offers many more features).

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I love working with the Service Discovery library in .NET.

It's a lightweight configuration-based approach.

This actually came out of the effort done in Aspire.

If you're new to this concept, here's a quick breakdown.

Service discovery allows developers to reference external services using logical names instead of physical IP addresses and ports.

There's a centralized store for services to register themselves.

Clients can query the service registry to find the service's physical address.

The service discovery library for .NET is simpler, though.

It still lets you use logical names to refer to external services.

However, the discovery side is "lacking".

You have to specify the physical addresses in the application settings.

Here's a step-by-step tutorial: https://lnkd.in/eX4Wy3jD

You can configure the service URLs during deployment in your CI/CD pipelines.

Or even use a central configuration store (Azure App Configuration) for service discovery URLs.

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If you're still writing five separate interfaces and classes for every single command in .NET, you need to see this.

For years, many of us in the .NET community have relied on MediatR and MassTransit for command handling and messaging. But the boilerplate is real.

I finally took the plunge and explored Wolverine, a library that claims to be the "next generation" of .NET messaging by focusing on convention over configuration.

In my new video, I share my raw, first-take as a long-time user of other messaging tools: https://lnkd.in/eDm9Aa3p

Are you accidentally crippling your EF Core queries?

Before you start bashing on EF, this is an SQL problem, not an EF problem.

But it can be problematic to find and fix with EF.

Understand the Cartesian Explosion problem and how it occurs in your queries.

I'll give you a practical solution using EF Core's query-splitting feature.

Here's the full story: https://lnkd.in/ezv5B48v

In future versions of EF, the split queries will be batched, which should significantly improve performance. 

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EF Query splitting

Stop storing secrets in appsettings.json. Seriously.

That file was never meant to hold production credentials, yet I see it in real projects all the time.

I just published a new walkthrough where I show how to secure your .NET apps with Azure Key Vault:

- Creating your first Key Vault
- The exact RBAC roles you actually need
- Storing secrets with versioning
- Authenticating with DefaultAzureCredential
- Pulling secrets directly into ASPNET Core configuration
- Loading connection strings + options without touching appsettings

It’s a clean setup that keeps your sensitive values out of the repo and follows Azure’s best practices.

Learn more here: https://lnkd.in/eU4mUKnY

If you want to upgrade how you handle secrets in .NET, this one will help you get it right from the start.

I like my API endpoints "thin".

If I can have controllers (or Minimal APIs) with 4-5 lines of code, that'd be best.

Here's why you should implement this.

The API endpoint's only responsibility becomes:

1. Accepting a request
2. Constructing a command/query object
3. Sending it to the respective handler and getting a result

The best part?

You don't need MediatR.

With it going commercial, I'm sure many people will switch away.

I implemented my custom solution with <100 lines of code.

Here's how: https://lnkd.in/dURSP2Bc

What do you think about this approach?

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I rewrote a 40-year-old APL system to a modern tech stack.

It powers a $10M manufacturing business with 460+ database tables.

Here are 5 lessons I learned in 4 years:

1. Start with core business logic first

2. Modular architecture is worth the investment

3. Data sync is harder than you think

4. Balance technical needs with business pressure

5. Document institutional knowledge before it's gone

Want the full story of our legacy migration journey?

Check out my blog post: https://lnkd.in/eacxqj7z

This project taught me so many things about enterprise architecture.

I think you'll learn a few things too.

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Looking for a simple message bus in .NET?

I recommend taking a look at System Threading Channels.

You can implement a simple in-memory message bus using Channels in .NET.

Channels implement the producer-consumer pattern:

- Producers asynchronously produce data
- Consumers asynchronously consume that data

A channel has a Writer and Reader, that you can use to publish and consume messages. respectively.

Here's how you can use this to implement a simple message bus: https://lnkd.in/ekfJZd5n

Remember that this is still an in-memory bus, so it's not reliable.

You can implement resiliency around this, but it only goes so far.

---
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Clean code tip:

- Merge nested IF statements into one condition

I often make this simple change to improve code readability.

Clean code principles will make you a better developer.

But what is clean code in the first place?

Clean code is code that's:

- Easy to read
- Easy to maintain
- Easy to understand

Writing clean code is a skill.

It's a skill you can learn and improve with practice.

In the initial example:

- Nesting increases complexity
- Nesting makes the code harder to reason about

The solution is to combine the nested IF statements into a single IF.

Three ways you can do this:

- Write an inline boolean expression
- Expose a method with the expression
- Create a variable with the expression

But this is just the start.

Here are 8 more clean code tips: https://lnkd.in/dt84mr9J

Which solution do you like better?

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We all know the pain of code reviews.

You open a Pull Request (PR). You wait. And when you finally get feedback, it’s just nitpicks about formatting or style.

That doesn't help you ship better software. It just slows you down.

I’ve been testing out 𝗔𝘂𝗴𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗖𝗼𝗱𝗲 and their new Code Review feature. I have to say, it feels different.

Most AI tools only look at the few lines of code you changed. They act like a basic spellchecker.

Augment acts like a Senior Engineer.

I typed auggie review on my PR, saw the little 👀 emoji pop up, and waited. Here is what surprised me:

1. 𝗜𝘁 𝗸𝗻𝗼𝘄𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘄𝗵𝗼𝗹𝗲 𝗽𝗶𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲: It looks at your entire repository, not just the file you touched. It caught a breaking change I made that would have broken a different part of the app.

2. 𝗡𝗼 𝗻𝗼𝗶𝘀𝗲: It didn't nag me about style. It focused on real logic bugs and security risks.

3. 𝗜𝘁 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻𝘀 𝗺𝘆 𝗿𝘂𝗹𝗲𝘀: You can add a simple YAML file to teach it your team's specific guidelines.

It helps you catch the bad stuff, like edge cases and logic errors, before you merge.

If you want an AI that actually understands how you build software, give this a try.

Check it out here: https://fandf.co/4phaDOt

𝗠𝘆 𝗮𝗱𝘃𝗶𝗰𝗲: Don't skip the custom code review guidelines file. If you take five minutes to list your team's specific rules, the AI stops guessing and starts reviewing exactly the way you want it to. It saves you from repeating the same comments over and over.

Huge thanks to Augment Code for collaborating on this post with me.

We’ve been faking left joins in LINQ for over a decade.

EF Core 10 finally adds native LeftJoin and RightJoin operators.

No more GroupJoin + DefaultIfEmpty just to express something every SQL dev understands instantly.

In this video, I break down:
- Why left joins in LINQ were always awkward
- What EF Core 10 actually ships (and what it doesn’t)
- Why this is about readability and intent, not performance
- Whether this change came too late (or right on time)

Same SQL. Much clearer code.

You can watch it here: https://lnkd.in/dtuYzayn

Implementing resilience in .NET? You better...

Polly is probably your first choice.

And Polly is much faster in V8+.

But why should you care about making your application resilient?

Let's say your services communicate by sending HTTP requests.

HTTP requests can fail because of network or server issues.

These failures can disrupt service availability, especially as dependencies increase. This increases the risk of cascading failures.

Luckily, there's a simple way to solve this in your .NET applications.

Here's how you can make your apps resilient: https://lnkd.in/e39__DXH

Do you use Polly in your applications?

There's also an official resilience library in .NET.

But it's a wrapper around Polly that adds OpenTelemetry on top.

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Most people think Redis is just used for caching.

But you can also use it as a vector database.

Here are a few use cases for Redis:

- Counters
- Rate limiting
- Leaderboards
- Session store
- Message queue
- Distributed locking

And of course, Redis as a vector database.

What are vectors?

Vectors are sequences of numbers that represent data.

You use an LLM to generate a vector embedding.

This allows you to do Vector Search: searching based on meaning.

Want to learn more?

Check out this article: https://lnkd.in/dwu4f7dj

This is one of the simplest but very valuable AI features you can add to your applications.

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Was API Versioning a mistake?

I built and maintained a large public API (400+ endpoints).

The API has dozens of integrations, serving mainly mobile applications.

When your API is serving so many clients, breaking changes are expensive.

So, everything I implemented on the public API had to be planned.

If I wanted to introduce breaking changes, I had to version the API.

This wasn't a standard I decided on, but I had to live with the consequences.

API versioning allows your API to evolve independently from the clients using it - or so they say.

What we actually need is change management for APIs.

1. Don't remove anything
2. Don't change business rules
3. Don't make optional things required
4. New things must be optional

I explained this (and many other things) in-depth in Pragmatic REST APIs: https://lnkd.in/eXP53TP6

What do you think about API versioning?

P.S. I've got a Black Friday offer for my Pragmatic REST APIs course that expires soon. Don't miss it.

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5 books I can't recommend enough:

1. Clean Architecture (R. Martin)
2. Domain Driven Design (E. Evans)
3. Building Microservices (S. Newman)
4. Designing Data-Intensive Applications (M. Kleppman)
5. Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture (M. Fowler)

My favorite: Building Microservices.

There are many others that didn't make this list.

I can't list all of them, for practical reasons.

What's on your reading list?

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5 books to become a better Software Engineer

This skill will make you valuable in any team.

Diagnosing and solving performance bottlenecks in your system.

I always strived to make my application as fast as possible.

So, performance problems are some of my favorite things to work on.

In microservices systems, this problem becomes even more prominent.

Why is this the case?

Finding the performance bottleneck is much harder in distributed systems.

Luckily, you can track the flow of requests through your entire system with tracing and OpenTelemetry instrumentation.

I wrote a step-by-step guide for configuring distributed tracing, and I'm confident you can apply this in your applications.

Here's how to get started with tracing in .NET: https://lnkd.in/eZ76HXr6

Are you integrating OpenTelemetry into your applications?

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Milos Jokic

Milan Jovanović

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