# The Modern .NET Show Returns for Season Nine with Bridging the Gap > The Modern .NET Show opens season 9 with Bridging the Gap, a six-part series for .NET developers who are still on .NET Framework and expect to stay there. *14 September 2026* · RJJ Software Leeds, UK. [The Modern .NET Show](https://dotnetcore.show/) returned on Friday 11 September 2026 with the first episode of its ninth season. The show first published in August 2018, and every season since its second has opened in September. The episode was the 197th. The season did not open with an interview. It opened with the first part of [Bridging the Gap](https://dotnetcore.show/bridging-the-gap/), a six-part series for .NET developers who work on .NET Framework and expect to keep working on it. It is an audience the wider .NET conversation rarely addresses directly, and the series argues that when it does, the register is cautionary: a story about what happens to teams who let things slide. The episode names the specific mechanism it objects to, which is the word "still". Asking a developer why they are *still* on Framework does more damage than any technical argument about runtime versions, because it locates the problem in the person, when it almost always sits in the organisation around them. ## A Constraint, Not a Character Flaw The premise of the series is one distinction, stated in the opening episode and repeated across all six parts. Running on .NET Framework in 2026 is a constraint rather than a character flaw, and people confuse the two constantly. Procurement cycles. Compliance sign-off. An on-premises estate. A vendor support matrix. A policy that forbids open-source dependencies. The developer maintaining the application chose none of those and cannot remove any of them, yet almost every conversation about their runtime version proceeds as though they had. The reframe that follows from this is what makes the series usable by someone with a day job and no authority. Its destination is not the newest version of .NET. It is a version the organisation can stand still on. If the right answer for a business is a supported release that it then leaves alone for five years, the series promises to help them get there and not to sneer at them for stopping. Richard Campbell put the underlying point to the show in January 2019, and the opening episode returns to it. > I don't think anybody wants to feel, quote unquote, left behind. > > — Richard Campbell, [Episode 18 - The History of .NET with Richard Campbell](https://dotnetcore.show/episode-18-the-history-of-net-with-richard-campbell/) The episode also revisits a story Nick Craver told the show in February 2020, about an earlier job wrapped in so much ISO 9001 process that he was left with spare time he could not spend on the codebase. He filled it by becoming one of the top users on Stack Overflow, alongside Jon Skeet, and the company later hired him. It is a story about red tape told by a name the audience respects, and it is funnier than that summary makes it sound. ## Written to Be Forwarded Every part of the series closes with a segment called *Taking It Upstairs*: the business case for modernisation work, written in business language, aimed squarely at a reader who does not write software. In part one, the segment sets out four risks that a decision-maker carries, none of them technical. Two are worth repeating here. One is an asymmetry in who explains an outage: if a change to a working revenue system goes wrong, the engineer explains it to their manager, and the manager then explains it to the business. A refusal usually protects against that asymmetry. Doubt about the technology rarely comes into it. Another is that the largest costs typically sit outside the code, in re-certification, re-accreditation, a fresh penetration test, and vendor support matrices that no longer cover the new version. Engineering estimates routinely exclude all four. Those segments are collected at [dotnetcore.show/bridging-the-gap](https://dotnetcore.show/bridging-the-gap/), which is built to release each one on the morning its episode airs without anyone editing the page. Part two is already written and scheduled to appear there on 9 October. A developer who cannot authorise modernisation work can send one section of that page to somebody who can, which is the entire point of writing the segments in the first place. RJJ Software has written elsewhere about [the costs a business never sees on a balance sheet](/blog/the-silent-erosion-of-developer-productivity-unmasking-technical-debt-as-a-strategic-blind-spot/), and about [the leadership decisions that surround an ageing system](/blog/continual-professional-development/kill-it-with-fire-lessons-from-legacy-systems-for-modern-leaders/). ## The Disclosure the Series Carries Every episode of the series carries a disclosure, placed where a sponsor message would normally sit and before any argument begins. Host Jamie Taylor reads the full version in the opening episode. > This show is produced by RJJ Software. RJJ Software is also who I work for. RJJ does technology consulting. Some of that work is application modernisation. Which means that in this series, specifically, on this subject, I have a commercial interest in you deciding to modernise. So I'm telling you that now, at the start, before I've made a single argument. And then I'm going to spend six episodes arguing that a good number of you should not. > > — Jamie Taylor, CTO, RJJ Software, [S09E01 - You Are Not Behind](https://dotnetcore.show/season-9/you-are-not-behind-why-you-are-still-on-net-framework/) The final clause is a commitment, and the series treats it as one. At least twice across the six parts, *Taking It Upstairs* concludes that the manager is right and the answer is no. That is what keeps the other four credible, and without it the segment would be a manipulation guide with a friendlier name. RJJ Software does sell application modernisation work, and the companion page carries the same disclosure as the audio. Neither carries an offer. Listeners who want the consultancy can find it, but the series is not where they will be asked. ## The Rest of Season Nine Season nine interleaves the series with ordinary interview episodes rather than running all six parts consecutively, so the part number and the episode number drift apart as the season goes on. On 25 September, the show publishes *It's Still Your Code: AI Contributions to Open Source*, recorded live on the Codegarden stage in a collaboration with the [Candid Contributions](https://candidcontributions.com/) podcast. Emma Burstow and Lotte Pitcher of Umbraco, and Carole Rennie Logan of Equator, discuss whether open-source projects should accept AI-assisted contributions, whether a project needs written guidelines for them, and who carries responsibility for the code once it has landed. Part two of Bridging the Gap follows on 9 October under the title *You Might Not Need to Upgrade: The Case for Staying Put*. Episodes are published fortnightly, on Friday mornings at 08:00 UK time. The show is also open about what it still needs. It is looking for people to talk to on air from inside the constraints the series describes: an NHS trust, a local council, an insurer, a manufacturer. People with a .NET Framework application and a real set of reasons, rather than people with something to sell. Anonymised, where an employer requires it. [The contact page is here](https://dotnetcore.show/contact/). ## The Show in Numbers Figures below are drawn from [the show's press kit](https://dotnetcore.show/press-kit/) as of September 2026, and are updated there from the hosting platform's own reporting: - 197 episodes across nine seasons, the first published on 24 August 2018 - 198 hours of published audio - Aggregate listens of over 1.3 million across RSS, Apple Podcasts and Spotify - Around 14,000 listens a month - An average listen time of 90% on Apple Podcasts - Download reports certified by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) through Libsyn, the show's hosting provider Season eight, [which launched in September 2025](/news/the-modern-.net-show-launches-season-8-continuing-its-mission-as-the-premier-.net-developer-podcast/), ran to 24 episodes. ## Where to Listen - [The Modern .NET Show](https://dotnetcore.show/) - [S09E01 - You Are Not Behind: Why You Are Still On .NET Framework](https://dotnetcore.show/season-9/you-are-not-behind-why-you-are-still-on-net-framework/) - [Bridging the Gap: Taking It Upstairs](https://dotnetcore.show/bridging-the-gap/) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/the-net-core-podcast/id1433496275) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/6FIM18ZIqQvuX7d1TA9rbZ?si=V82TfPFLTHaBZSZAbH9_rQ) - [RSS feed](https://thedotnetcorepodcast.libsyn.com/rss) --- The Modern .NET Show is produced as part of RJJ Software's community work and is free to listen to. If your team is weighing a modernisation decision and wants the arithmetic done honestly, including the outcome where the work should wait, [schedule a consultation](/schedule-consultation/).