Bart De Smet

Bart J.F. De Smet is a software engineer working at Microsoft's mothership in Redmond, Washington. Hired fresh out of college in 2007, Bart started his Microsoft career on the Windows Presentation Foundation team, focusing on the application model, browser hosting, and native code interop. Later, he moved to the Cloud Programmability Team to work on data processing capabilities built using Language Integrated Query paradigms, which led to his involvement in the development of Reactive Extensions (Rx). Nowadays, Bart works in the Online Services Division building massive scale data processing systems that power a wide range of search capabilities in Windows, Office, Xbox, Skype, and Windows Phone. Bart got his Master in Computer Science Engineering from Ghent University, Belgium in 2007. During his studies, he was an MVP for C# and a frequent blogger on .NET internals and language evolution. Ever since, Bart is a popular speaker at conferences such as TechEd, PDC, MIX, //build, and GOTO! where he specializes on deep dive talks with a veto against product marketing speak. His passion to teach and explain is also reflected in the publication of the C# Unleashed books published by SAMS. The undertone of Bart's writings and talks is to be curious about how and why things work the way they do. At the same time, he always tries to tie back programming techniques to their foundational computer science underpinnings, making seemingly complex subjects accessible to the masses. In his spare free time, Bart loves to go on a hike in the Pacific Northwest, read books on maths and physics, and play the occasional game of snooker. Because of Bart's additional degree in civil engineering, he also loves to visit historical places in Europe and admire buildings and architectural marvels.