Carl and Richard talk to Chris Love about building mobile web apps for the enterprise. The conversation starts out with a reference to a comment made on a previous show about the problems with web apps not being built well enough for your device - that they feel too webby. And Chris agrees - it's very challenging to build a web app that feels great on a mobile device. So what's the problem? Chris digs deep into what it takes to make web pages render fast and clean on phones and the biggest bugbe...
Aug 20, 2014•56 min
Carl and Richard talk to Julie Lerman and Steve Smith about the fundamentals of Domain Driven Design (DDD). Julie and Steve have collaborated on a very popular Pluralsight course about DDD that has made the methodology more approachable for more people. The conversation digs into the fact that DDD has been around for more than a decade, but hasn't caught on near as much as it should - and why is that? There's at least one alphabet soup moment: What about DDD, BDD, TDD, PDD, ADDDD and SJDD? Liste...
Aug 19, 2014•1 hr 4 min
Well, here we go - the second installation of the fusion power geek out. While the first show focused on the "Big Science" fusion power projects like NIF and ITER, this time around Richard digs into smaller hybrid projects, like General Fusions Magnetized Target Fusion as well as Colliding Beam Fusion Reactors being built by Helion Energy and Tri Alpha Energy. These fusion approaches combine magnetic and inertial plasma confinement to make fusion a little less extreme and more manageable - with ...
Aug 14, 2014•55 min
Carl and Richard chat with Scott Hunter about how Microsoft is working to evolve web development for ASP.NET developers. While the focus of the discussion is on ASP.NET vNext, you can't talk web without also talking cloud, and that means Azure. Scott digs into many of the new features in Azure that can make a web developer's life easier, before digging into ASP.NET vNext. No punches are pulled - vNext represents some breaking changes, especially for web forms developers. But web forms continues ...
Aug 13, 2014•57 min
Carl and Richard talk to Seth Juarez about the latest developments in the machine learning space for the Microsoft space. The conversation starts out focused on Seth's open source library for doing machine learning in .NET. Seth talks about the challenges of getting your head around machine learning, building models and testing data. Then the discussion turns to the Azure Machine Learning tools, at the moment in preview. This can greatly simplify your experiments with machine learning, providing...
Aug 12, 2014•55 min
Carl and Richard chat with Dan Rosenstein about his work bringing the Windows Developer Program for Internet of Things (IoT) to life. The conversation starts out with a discussion about Microsoft's focus on IoT and the recognition that this a thing that is happening, and developers need tools to be productive. Dan focuses on the work Microsoft has done with Intel's Galileo device, which can work with Arduino, but uses a full x86 chipset. And while there isn't .NET available for the system yet, "...
Aug 07, 2014•54 min
Carl and Richard chat with Rick Strahl about his latest efforts to build mobile web applications. The conversation starts out with a recap of the continuing debate about native vs web on mobile devices. As Rick says, there are no easy answers there. Every approach to cross-platform development (and different browsers on different phones represent different platforms) have compromises that need to be made. There is no "one size fits all" available. But the web continues to evolve, and Rick is opt...
Aug 06, 2014•57 min
Carl and Richard talk to Mike Wood about migrating your applications to Azure. The conversation starts out thinking through the fundamentals of working in the cloud - how architecture and deployment are different. This inevitably leads to the hardest debate: Is your organization okay with data in the cloud? After that, Mike gets into some of the more interesting angles on cloud development - actually using virtual machines for your development environment. Is it cloud or is it virtual? Is there ...
Aug 05, 2014•54 min
Carl and Richard talk to Adam Tornhill about his work understanding the psychology of programming. The conversation starts out with some thinking around getting into "the flow," being able to focus effectively on programming. Adam then digs into where bugs come from and the role of complexity in code. He has been studying code repositories to determine where bugs are likely to appear based on the idea that complex code changes more than simple code. The discussion also explores the idea that whi...
Jul 31, 2014•54 min
Carl and Richard talk to Rocky Lhotka about what it means to build modern apps today. In past shows, Rocky has been pretty frustrated with the native development options and focused primarily on web development with HTML 5 and JavaScript. But things on the native side have gotten better, and Rocky talks about his experiences with Xamarin and the potential of the universal app template in Visual Studio. Could native be making a comeback? Rocky talks about the advantages of the native model with c...
Jul 30, 2014•57 min
Carl and Richard chat with Jeff Fritz about ASP.NET vNext - and yes, ASP.NET is now open source! So what does that really mean for ASP.NET developers? Jeff digs into the impact of taking open source on the development process of ASP.NET and how we can all get more involved! This leads to a discussion about the expanding reach of .NET into other platforms such as Linux using OWIN and Katana, and the Microsoft stack being a friendly place for developers of all kinds to hang out. Azure is also a bi...
Jul 29, 2014•57 min
In what is likely to become a multi-part series, Richard and Carl chat about fusion power, focused on the "hot" side of fusion - megaprojects like the National Ignition Facility (NIF) and the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). But first, a review of what is actually involved in fusing atoms together and how it differs from fission (as discussed in the older nuclear power shows. Richard then delves into a quick history lesson of power demand and why we need fusion as well as...
Jul 24, 2014•1 hr 5 min
Carl and Richard talk to Atley Hunter about how he monetizes phone apps. A newcomer to .NET Rocks, Atley was a regular guest on the TabletShow and has talked about monetization before - but now he's learned even more techniques! Atley talks about the advantages of in-app purchases over try-before-you-buy, as well as asking for donations. He also digs into the idea that you can offer a variety of prices and how to encourage your customers to spend more! Lots of great thinking on how to make an in...
Jul 23, 2014•54 min
Carl and Richard talk to Daniel Simmons about his work with PasTrak, building RFID tools for small businesses. The first half of the conversation focuses on what RFID is all about - different types of tags, scanners, security concerns, and so on. There's a lot of choice out there when it comes to RFID and its cousin Near Field Communications (NFC). Then Danny digs into the coding side of things - the various APIs you work with to handle different readers, how your code responds, how to deal with...
Jul 22, 2014•57 min
Carl and Richard chat with David Graham about what it takes to create a new developer. David starts out the conversation talking about the shortage of developers today, and how the shortage is getting worse, not better. This leads to a conversation about existing training approaches, such as a four-year computer science degree. While we all agree that the best way to learn to program is to actually program, what are the best tools to start out with? How do you get out into the industry and conti...
Jul 17, 2014•42 min
Carl and Richard talk to Jason and Brian Kriesel about their work building Amazon Fire Tablet applications. The conversation starts off talking about the differences between the Android world and the Amazon world - they aren't that far apart! The brothers Kriesel talk about what it takes to maintain an application that runs in regular Android tablets and phones as well as the Amazon Fire world - what features Amazon brings to the table and the strengths of their platform and app store. The discu...
Jul 16, 2014•50 min
Carl and Richard talk to Michelle Smith about building great development teams. Michelle talks about what a great team looks like, the differences in productivity and focus. This leads to a conversation about team building, creating trust within the team and dealing with remote workers - how do you create trust when you can't see each other. Then there's the process of recruiting and interviewing, where Michelle focuses on the interaction with the team even more than technical skills. Great team...
Jul 15, 2014•41 min
On the last day of the NDC 2014 Conference in Oslo, Carl and Richard assembled a panel of speakers: Robert Virding, Steve Sanderson, Venkat Subramaniam, and Anthony Eden. The discussion focused initially on the motivations around building software, but ultimately evolved into the best way to build sustainable software. Is the profit motive for software development a good one? What about open source? How do you know when your software is 'done?' How do you decide what features to add and what to ...
Jul 10, 2014•55 min
Carl and Richard talk to Rob Eisenberg about the crazy changes going on in his life - starting with joining Google! Rob talks about meeting the AngularJS folks at the ng-conf conference and deciding that upcoming versions of DurandalJS and AngularJS are on a collision course. So why duplicate effort? Rob talks about the significant rethinking going on with AngularJS 2.0 to be more effective in mobile environments, dealing with rendering performance and connectivity issues. The whole process is t...
Jul 09, 2014•1 hr 5 min
While at NDC, Carl and Richard chat with Troy Hunt about specific common web security breaches and things you can do about them. The conversation starts out with a continuation of an earlier show, talking about the vulnerabilities around open WiFi connections. From there, Troy talks about the most common breach of them all - SQL Injection. Yes, it's still a problem. Troy also digs into the importance of transport layer security, typically using SSL. There's a reason all the big web sites have sw...
Jul 08, 2014•53 min
While at NDC is Oslo, Carl and Richard talk to Martin Jul about the state of visual computing technology today. As Martin says, the future is very bright - amazing free libraries are now available that make it simple to do image and character recognition with all sorts of cameras, even one on the Raspberry PI! The conversation digs into a project that Martin built to identify when the pizza guy is at his front door, exploring what it takes to recognize a pizza box in video. There are digital cam...
Jul 03, 2014•49 min
While at NDC in Oslo, Carl and Richard talked to Nik Molnar and Anthony van der Hoorn about instrumenting web application. Of course the conversation starts out with a catch-up on Glimpse, the awesome session-based instrumentation tool for your web pages. Then the conversation moves to looking at instrumentation end-to-end on web applications, in the aggregate, so that you can see where your pain points are and where to focus your attention on tuning. Nik talks about starting at the high level v...
Jul 02, 2014•51 min
Carl and Richard chat with Paul Stovell, one of the principals behind Octopus Deploy. Octopus Deploy is all about getting your organization to continuous delivery - by automating every step. Paul talks about how the product came to be, from the frustrations he was having with deployment using Word documents and remote desktop. Octopus Deploy is free to download and use for small projects. Once you're addicted to one-button deployment, you can pay for larger projects and teams. And under the hood...
Jul 01, 2014•54 min
While at the Norwegian Developers Conference in Oslo, Norway, Carl and Richard talk with Mark Seemann about his thinking around how developers 'get into the zone.' As Mark explains, this behavior isn't all that unusual - psychologists call it 'flow,' and it is a common state for athletes, musicians, writers and more. The conversation digs into the truth around flow, primarily that it doesn't guarantee productivity. Mark discusses techniques for getting into flow faster, so that you're less sensi...
Jun 26, 2014•53 min
Celebrate the millennium with us in this special episode of .NET Rocks! We do a little looking back, a little looking around and a little looking forward. Jason Olson joins us for a mini-show about audio and MIDI in Windows - and an epic giveaway. Mary Jo Foley shares her story of how the world is a better place because of .NET Rocks!, as do you, our listeners! You told us your stories of success, and now it's your turn to shine. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donation...
Jun 25, 2014•1 hr 9 min
Carl and Richard talk to Stephen Forte about the continuing evolution of wearables and their role in the workplace. The conversation starts out focused on the most visible of the wearables today - Google Glass. Does it have a role in the enterprise? That's a tricky concept. Steve talks about retail and more industrial applications, places where workers in motion get additional contextual information to improve their work. Human instrumentation is a big part of the wearable market as well, like F...
Jun 24, 2014•58 min
Well here we go - a tough geek out topic if ever there was one. The most requested Geek Out we haven't done yet: nuclear weapons! Starting back before World War II, Richard digs into the science history that created the first proposals for nuclear weapons. The war ultimately provided the catalyst in the form of the Manhattan Project, culminating in the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Then the story continues into thermonuclear weapons and other variations. What defense is there agai...
Jun 19, 2014•1 hr 26 min
While at NDC, Carl and Richard chat with Cory House about his experiences building Single Page Applications for the automotive industry. Cory talks about the challenges of the industry, including supporting both IE7 and IE8 running on Windows XP and iPad devices. Quite a span of technology there! The conversation digs into UI design, the integration of third party services and meeting the expectations of a customer that is not all that focused on technology. Cory digs into the idea of SPA as a c...
Jun 18, 2014•47 min
While at NDC, Carl and Richard talk to Michael 'Doc' Norton about his experiences figuring out the right metrics to measure in productivity of a development team. The discussion focuses in on the key issue - that velocity is a dangerous metric. As Doc explains, pushing developers to do more features per sprint creates serious problems. So what measures make sense? Great thinking around what makes people productive, what impairs productivity, and how to do the right things the right way. Support ...
Jun 17, 2014•57 min
While at NDC in Oslo, Carl and Richard talked to Bryan Hunter about his experiences building communities around functional programming. Bryan talks about the transformative moment he had first encountering functional code in the form of an Erlang service. The conversation digs into the thinking around the weaknesses of object orientation, it's motivations and the idea that maybe, today, it is obsolete. Is functional programming really the way? Bryan discusses how communities are forming around f...
Jun 12, 2014•50 min
