Are you ready for C# 6? Carl and Richard talk to Bill Wagner about the latest changes to C# 6, with some features being dropped (perhaps to appear in a later version), some syntax changes, and digging deeper on some of the more complex features available. Now that everything around C# is open source, you can see the process of developing new features going on, and even participate in it! Bill and Richard also talk about Humanitarian Toolbox, their ongoing effort to build open source software for...
Feb 10, 2015•57 min
So what comes after Durandal? Rob Eisenberg talks to Carl and Richard about Aurelia! The conversation starts out focused on AngularJS and Rob's role with the open source project and ultimate departure. But that was back in November 2014 - what happens next? Aurelia is Rob's vision of what web developers need to build effective browser-based client applications. Rob talks about implementing Aurelia to utilize ECMAScript 6 and 7 while still polyfilling back to ES5 - the Javascript you recognize. T...
Feb 05, 2015•57 min
Are you ready to build web pages with web components? Cory House is! Carl and Richard talk to Cory House about the web component specification and what that will look like in your modern web development. As Cory explains, the key idea behind web components is to provide a framework for Javascript library extensibility that doesn't force you to own the library yourself. While the standard is still being discussed, Cory mentions some libraries that have already gone ahead and implemented a variati...
Feb 04, 2015•56 min
Looking at moving from WinForms to WPF? Phil Japikse can help! Carl and Richard talk to Phil Japikse about the changes in thinking that have to happen to make WPF work for you if you're coming from a WinForms world. The conversation starts out discussing the strengths of WinForms and why they persist to this day - it just works! And there's no designer experience like it, including WPF. No matter where you go, after WinForms, you're going to spend more time looking at code for your UI. Do you ha...
Feb 03, 2015•59 min
Time for a craftsmanship update from Uncle Bob! Carl and Richard talk to Bob Martin about the growth of developers, and how the number of new developers is overwhelming the available teaching and mentoring resources available today. The discussion turns to the fact that customers would rather have mentors writing code than teaching new developers - better to throw the new folks in a room and let them fend for themselves, maybe software will come out! Uncle Bob talks about the rise of professiona...
Jan 29, 2015•54 min
Are you building mobile first? Carl and Richard talk to Chris Love about his work building mobile apps - in two styles! First Chris talks about working with a startup, with the latest tools and lots of experimentation. On the other side, there's the corporate development world, which is far more conservative and resisting change. Then the conversation turns to progressive enhancement, making new versions of web pages using modern tools and letting the old pages serve older browsers until its no ...
Jan 28, 2015•52 min
Still resisting going to WPF? Billy is here to help! Carl and Richard chat with Billy Hollis about the ever-improving ability of WPF to build great looking desktop applications. Billy talks about techniques for getting the most from WPF and paths for new developers to take to be successful. There's a huge array of options out there in WPF, it can be terribly confusing to know where to get started. WPF is eight years old - as old as Visual Basic ever got! Shouldn't everyone be using it by now? Su...
Jan 27, 2015•1 hr 2 min
One more alternative energy Geek Out - generating power with water! The conversation starts with hydroelectric power, but then moves to tidal and wave power. Some work, some don't, and it's not just about the technology either, how the business models are built matter a lot. But there's a lot of energy from wave and tides to be had, the trick is knowing how to capture it! From tidal barrages to underwater turbines, buoys, snakes and air turbines, there are a lot of approaches to capturing this m...
Jan 22, 2015•52 min
Duck punch your JavaScript lately? Todd Gardner talks to Carl and Richard about the practice of changing object behaviors in JavaScript for good or evil. After an explanation of how duck punching (or monkey patching, pick your favorite silly term) works, the discussion turns to the dark side of how hackers can intercept your Javascript library calls, capture keystrokes and otherwise subtly change your web pages. Could you tell? Then Todd dives into using your powers for good - strategies for tes...
Jan 21, 2015•46 min
Carl and Richard talk to Dominick Baier and Brock Allen about the new version of Thinktecture IdentityServer. As Dominick explains, as soon as you have more than one web application that needs authentication, you want to go to a centralized authentication and authorization scheme, and that's where IdentityServer comes into play. Working with oAuth2 and OpenID Connect, you can create identities for your users from Active Directory, other IMAP stores or just a plain old SQL Server. Take your authe...
Jan 20, 2015•57 min
Ready to think beyond the SPA? John Papa talks about the continuing evolution of HTML 5. Carl and Richard chat with John about web components, an evolving standard to make JavaScript libraries more extensible and organized. AngularJS comes out in the conversation as well, especially version 2 with its breaking changes - but you don't need to migrate if you don't want to. V1 will continue development. John also digs into his current suite of tools for building, deploying, and debugging web pages....
Jan 14, 2015•55 min
Can computing cure cancer? That's Evelina Gabasova's goal! Carl and Richard talk to Evelina about her work using machine learning and data analytics to understand the genetics of cancer, its variations and subtypes. Part of her goal is to get to personalized medicine - where your doctor uses your genetic information to determine the ideal treatment, custom-made for you. So how does that involve statistics? Evelina talks about her evolution from computing into informatics and the various tools us...
Jan 13, 2015•54 min
How many different ways can you store data? David Simons knows at least ten! Carl and Richard talk to David about a wide variety of data storage approaches. Some are SQL, some are NoSQL, but David digs into each one talking about strengths and weaknesses. The conversation digs into the idea that using one data store for all purposes is archaic - while it always depends on your application's needs, have two, three, or four different data stores isn't crazy! David talks about various classes of da...
Jan 08, 2015•54 min
What does Sharepoint Development look like today? Carl and Richard talk to Sahil Malik about the amazing changes that have happened to the Sharepoint development community with the impact of Azure and Office 365. Sharepoint used to be a very insular development environment, separate from everything else, but today it is expected to interact with cloud services, on-premise system and a variety of clients, including iPhone, Android, WinPhone and more. Sahil talks about gluing all the pieces togeth...
Jan 07, 2015•54 min
Do you know about Google Cloud? Brad Abrams does! Carl and Richard talk to former Microsoftie Brad Abrams about the other big cloud player - and there's a lot to say. Brad starts out focusing on the Platform-as-a-Service offerings of Google such as the App Engine which lets you run Python, Java, PHP, and Go in the cloud with all the scaling options you could ever want. Rather a virtual machine? The Google Compute Engine handles that, with Windows as an option coming soon! Then the discussion tur...
Jan 06, 2015•56 min
While at NDC in London, Carl and Richard moderated a panel of Ben Hall, Peter Mounce, Jeff French and Enrico Campidoglio to talk about the state of DevOps in the .NET world. While DevOps is going strong in the open source world, it is coming slowly to .NET. The panelists discuss their preferred toolchains for speeding deployment, testing and instrumentation of software, as well as the cultural changes that have happened in their organizations as an effect or demand of DevOps. The conversation al...
Jan 01, 2015•57 min
Jonathan Pepper is back with another great Xamarin case study! Carl and Richard talk to Jon about the Hanx Writer, an iPad application made with the help of Tom Hanks to recreated the mechanical typewriter experience on a tablet. Remember skeuomorphism? Here is an awesome manifestation! Jon talks about the process of creating the effects of three different mechanical type writers in an iPad application, including the keyboard, sounds of keystrikes, even the fonts! But most amazingly, the app is ...
Dec 31, 2014•52 min
While at NDC London, Carl and Richard talked with Bryan Hunter about the language Elixir. Bryan tells the story of how the folks behind Ruby got interested in Erlang, thinking to bring some of Erlang's features to other languages - but then discovered it was impossible, since Erlang is its own operating system. So instead, they created a new language within Erlang, and that is Elixir. Taking the favorite features of many languages including Ruby, C#, F# and others, Elixir makes for a pleasant pr...
Dec 30, 2014•58 min
While at NDC London, Carl and Richard talk to Enrico Campidoglio about including databases in your continuous delivery process. Enrico talks through a few different strategies for getting your database moving as fast as your application, without losing data along the way. The conversation digs into issues around version control for databases, keeping schema and reference tables in your source control system, and recognizing that database updates don't happen at the same time as application updat...
Dec 25, 2014•54 min
While at NDC in London, Carl and Richard sat down with Mark Rendle to talk about the latest version of Simple.Data - version 2! Simple.Data started out years ago as a simple abstraction for data access, all open source with numerous additional projects built on it to support a huge variety of data stores. Mark talks about going back into his old V1 project and realizing he did some interesting twists and turns to make it work, and how a rethink of the design brought out the idea of V2. The conve...
Dec 24, 2014•57 min
Another great show from NDC London, Carl and Richard talk to Ben Hall about Docker. Docker has been taking the industry by storm, bringing a lighter-weight approach to virtualization by getting the operating system out of the package and focusing on automated configuration and implementation. Ben talks about the origins of Docker and its focus on the Linux world - but that is rapidly changing with Microsoft promising an implementation running on Windows. The potential of Docker for facilitating ...
Dec 23, 2014•53 min
Carl and Richard got the amazing opportunity to go to the NASA Goddard Space Flight center to see the James Web Space Telescope in person. And while there, they sat down with Craig Tooley, the Project Manager of the Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission (MMS) to understand a bit more about space weather and the remarkable science and engineering that goes into a mission like MMS. The MMS mission utilizes four identical spacecraft flying in formation to measure plasma interaction effects between the ...
Dec 18, 2014•48 min
At the NDC London conference, Carl and Richard talk to Steve Sanderson about his work on the Azure Portal and building arguably the greatest Single Page Application (SPA) around today. Steve talks about the approach the Azure Portal team has taken to deal with memory management as well as a flexible plugin architecture that allows the various Azure related teams to plug into the common "shell" component of the Azure Portal. The conversation digs into the challenges of SPAs as the scale and utili...
Dec 17, 2014•51 min
While at NDC London at the Excel Center, Carl and Richard talked to Phil Trelford about building your own compiler. First off, why would you do that? Phil talks about the various ways that compiler technology can be used and help improve your own understand of languages and tools. You probably don't need to replace the C# compiler for your applications, but you might want to use parsing technology to provide algorithmic support in your applications. The power of F# is apparent when you start wor...
Dec 16, 2014•1 hr
While at the NDC London conference, Carl and Richard talk to Liam Westley about building your own software business. It starts with the idea that the most destructive thing to your software business is support calls - or more broadly, the accumulated cost of your past business. The conversation digs into the power of being a business of one, rather than having employees, and thinking beyond just your development work, digging into all the other aspects of business: marketing, sales, accounting, ...
Dec 11, 2014•53 min
While at NDC in London, Carl and Richard talk to Shay Friedman about the Chrome Developer Tools. The conversation starts out talking a bit about the state of web development, the jump in JavaScript performance, and the huge increase in the complexity of web applications - which naturally leads to the challenge of debugging said JavaScript-based applications. Enter the Chrome Developer Tools. Firefox was the original web developer browser, but Chrome has slid into that slot with more capabilities...
Dec 10, 2014•51 min
While at NDC London, Carl and Richard talk to Ian Cooper about hexagonal architectures. Turns out the important part is not the six sides - it's the idea of ports and adapters. Originally talked about by Alistair Cockburn, this is an architectural approach that focuses on being tolerant to testing as well as separating commands from querying. It's not quite Command Query Responsibility Segregation (CQRS), but you can see it from there! Ian discusses testing in a hexagonal architecture and how Te...
Dec 09, 2014•53 min
Julie is back and all about the latest version of Entity Framework - version 7! The conversation starts out with a bit of a state of the union, with Julie describing how moving Entity Framework to GitHub has opened up an amazing level of communication between the EF team and regular developers. Which leads to the scarier part of the discussion: The breaking changes coming to EF7 from EF6. Like ASP.NET vNext, EF7 represents a substantial break. But Julie says you shouldn't worry, there are lots o...
Dec 04, 2014•1 hr 2 min
Carl and Richard talk to David Božjak about the Lumia Imaging SDK... or is it the Nokia Imaging SDK? Caught in the midst of a name change since the acquisition of Nokia phones, the SDK is called Lumia Imaging on the blog sites, but is still Nokia Imaging on NuGet. Certainly it'll all be Lumia some day. David talks about the huge array of features available in the SDK to take photos, apply filters and effects to them, and then render the images. The conversation digs into how to handle huge image...
Dec 03, 2014•46 min
Carl and Richard talk to Rocky Lhotka about where universal apps in Visual Studio are really going. But first, a bit of a landscape discussion, especially a laugh about the "comeback" of .NET and C#. Did Xamarin save the day? Rocky talks about how universal apps aren't all that universal, but with Xamarin in the mix, you start to look at a common code base for desktop, laptop, tablet and mobile development. Almost. Maybe. It's always more complicated than you think! But Rocky is optimistic that ...
Dec 02, 2014•1 hr
