From Blinking LEDs to Aspire-ing Devs – Maddy Montaquila

Coding After Work Podcast

In this episode, we catch up with Maddy Montaquila at Microsoft Build! We talk about her journey from Xamarin and .NET MAUI to becoming the product lead for .NET Aspire. She shares what makes Aspire such a game-changer, dives into the new Copilot integration, talks about her experience with developer tooling, and even gives us a glimpse into her band life outside of tech. This one’s packed with insight, laughs, and a few solid puns.

Guest: 🎤 Maddy Montaquilla – Product Lead for .NET Aspire at Microsoft

Topics Discussed:

• What is .NET Aspire and why it matters

• From .NET MAUI to Aspire: Maddy’s transition

• Making Aspire more approachable (hint: start with “File > New Aspire Project”)

• The Copilot integration and how it actually helps

• Open source, community efforts, and cloud provider collaboration

• Lessons from MAUI brought into Aspire

• Why developer tooling can still feel overwhelming — and how Aspire hopes to help

• What surprises people about being a PM for dev tools

• The Aspire CLI and making onboarding smoother

• Misconceptions about .NET and how to bust them

• Maddy's other passion: being in a band 🎸

Links:

https://github.com/dotnet/aspire

https://bigrav.band/

https://bsky.app/profile/maddymontaquila.net

Catch us at Build and beyond! 🎧 Don’t forget to subscribe to the Coding After Work podcast for more conversations like this one. A huge thanks to Daniel Hindrikes, who helped with mixing the podcast