Meet the Expert Who Helps Shape Microsoft Bicep – Simon Wåhlin’s Inside Story!

Meet the Expert Who Helps Shape Microsoft Bicep – Simon Wåhlin’s Inside Story!

By day, he serves as a Cloud Architect at Unwonted AB, but when the darkness falls and the product teams in Redmond come to life, he boots up his computer for another reason! Simon is a Bicep Core Maintainer, and he has made significant contributions to the Microsoft Bicep product, particularly through his involvement in providing feedback that has helped shape the infrastructure-as-code language Bicep. We sat down with Simon Wåhlin to learn more!

First off, what is Microsoft Bicep 💪?

• Bicep is a language used to create and manage configuration, primarily of Azure resources but lately also for Microsoft Graph and Kubernetes.

How did you first get involved with the Bicep project?

• I took part in a few really early feedback sessions and once the first alpha version was released in public we started experimenting with it. I’ve used it in production since alpha 0.3 and as an early adopter I’ve contributed with both community support, product feedback and actual code changes. Since a bit over a year, I’ve been a Bicep Core Maintainer, where I am invited to attend several weekly meetings with the Bicep product group. I help with triage of issues, reproducing problems and giving general feedback.

What is it like to work directly with a product team at Microsoft?

• It’s a lot of fun. They are all highly skilled individuals that must see to the needs of a very broad user base which is a very interesting challenge.

Aren’t you asleep when they work in Redmond?

• Almost. Most meetings are scheduled in the early afternoon in Redmond, which means between 9 and 11 PM my local time.

What specific feedback or contributions have you made to the Bicep team that have been most impactful?

• I did implement the keyword Metadata which is something I’m quite proud of. It required me to make changes in several hundred files and was quite challenging but also a great learning experience.

How does Bicep compare to traditional ARM templates, and how has it simplified infrastructure as code for users?

• Bicep is actually translated to ARM before it is sent to the ARM API so in terms of what they can be used for or which problems they solve it’s very similar. Bicep has however a totally different user experience. It is much easier to both read and write and has tooling which makes it quite joyful to work with.

How does your role in providing feedback to the Bicep team fit into your broader work at Unwonted?

• At Unwonted we both use Bicep internally, at our customers and we provide training. I think the experience of using and teaching Bicep during my day job is a big part of the value I can provide to the project. Being active in the Bicep project on my spare time gives me both a deeper and wider understanding of how Bicep works (and maybe why), which in turn is very useful in my day job. It’s also a lot of fun so I consider it being a win-win-win situation.

What advice would you give someone starting to adopt Bicep for their Azure projects?

• Start by creating a few simple resources and make good use of the vscode extension which makes the experience a lot better. It’s actually quite easy once you get a hang of it. Start small and build up to larger and more complex solutions. And of course, reach out if you are interested in training! ;)

Do you have any advice for someone striving to contribute to different products? Where do you even start?

• Start by providing feedback, which is especially easy for open source projects. Many product groups also host some type of community calls which is great. Bicep has monthly community calls where the product group present what they are working on and asks for feedback. But also share your experience with the rest of the community. Blog posts, videos or just being active in discussions on GitHub is a great contribution to the community in general.