Why write functional C#? Carl and Richard talk to Simon Painter about what happens when you apply functional programming approaches to your C# code. Simon discusses how some functional programming aspects are best served in a functional language like F#, but you can write C# in a more functional style. The conversation focuses on minimizing side effects - writing your code so that you can see what it does and how it would behave when changed. Functional code tends to be more testable as well!
Feb 09, 2023•50 min
How is clean architecture evolving? Carl and Richard talk to Steve Smith about his efforts to build applications using clean architecture principles. The conversation starts with a comment from a listener about idealism around architecture - and a reminder that while there isn't one right way to do anything, using existing work, like clean architecture templates, makes it easier to do the right thing. Steve talks about the various elements that go into clean architectures and how they are often ...
Feb 02, 2023•56 min
How do you create a sustainable open-source ecosystem? Carl and Richard talk to Sarah Novotny about how the open-source community continues to evolve. Sarah talks about how the vast majority of software utilizes open-source code and should be contributing to those projects. Those contributions can be financial or development resources, whatever makes more sense for the organization. The conversation also explores the nature of those contributions when the project has smaller and larger audiences...
Jan 26, 2023•48 min
What is fusion development, and why do you want some? Carl and Richard talk to Vishwas Lele about his work with teams using the Microsoft Power Platform, including Power Apps and Power Automate. Vishwas talks about getting domain experts more involved in the development process - not just as advisors to the process but as co-creators. The role of professional developers is vital, making effective APIs and even custom-UX components for Power App development. The conversation also dives into the p...
Jan 19, 2023•58 min
API Management has evolved! Carl and Richard talk to Tom Kerkhove about his new role working on Azure API Management. Tom talks about using Azure Arc to deploy the API Management service into your on-premises services. The conversation digs into more of the fundamentals around API management with rate limiting, authentication and authorization, billing, testing, and more. A good API can make your company money - executed poorly and it's a massive headache. Use the tools available to make it easi...
Jan 12, 2023•53 min
How do we learn about application security? Carl and Richard talk to Tanya Janca about her book 'Alice and Bob Learn Application Security.' Tanya talks about bringing positive conversations around security, enabling people to get work done while being secure. Software developers are now targets for the black hats because they often have super-user accounts and aren't following security practices as closely as others. Building secure software means developing it in a secure context - it takes pra...
Jan 05, 2023•58 min
Ready for some space? Richard talks to Carl about all the incredible space-related stories in 2022. Starting with a record launch year - more flights to orbit than any year in history! Then the conversation digs into some cool missions around the solar system, including the Double Asteroid Redirection Test - we're learning how to protect our planet against asteroid impacts! Then on to space stations (there's more than one!) and, of course, the Moon - so many missions to the Moon! The biggest is ...
Dec 29, 2022•1 hr 35 min
End of the year, time for a geek out on energy! Richard chats with Carl about the usual modern power generation sources, including solar and wind, and a breakthrough in the drilling method for geothermal energy. The conversation dives into small modular reactors (SMR) and the commitment in Canada to build the first SMR! Molten Salt Reactors have made some progress in 2022, but the extensive conversation is about fusion power. From the NIF announcement to Commonwealth Fusion and others - there's ...
Dec 22, 2022•1 hr 37 min
As of December 13, 2022, IdentityServer 4 is archived - now what? Carl and Richard talk to Dominick Baier and Brock Allen about the long, winding road of IdentityServer growing up to become a commercial product. Dom talks about the challenges of open source and building a sustainable model for an enterprise identity product. Ultimately, it resulted in a transformation from open-source to source-open - so what does that mean? Growth and sustainability!
Dec 15, 2022•1 hr
Jeremy Miller is back with more open-source goodness in the form of the Wolverine .NET Command and Message Bus. Jeremy talks about developing the Marten database and reaching a point with event sourcing that led to Wolverine - building the infrastructure to work with a variety of queuing solutions to act as an intermediary, a message bus, and a command bus, as needed. The conversation also digs into the current state of open-source with his projects, and the evolution toward more sustainable ope...
Dec 08, 2022•52 min
Why should you have high-level design in your applications? Carl and Richard chat with Billy Hollis about the concepts around high-level design and how it can help make better software. Billy talks about how high-level design addresses more than UX concerns, expanding into architecture and business workflow to think more deeply about how we use software. And of course, Billy digs into various applications we all use (looking at you, Teams!) and talks about how high-level design could help deal w...
Dec 01, 2022•1 hr 1 min
How do you secure your existing applications from the security exploits out there today? Carl and Richard talk to Joylynn Kirui about the challenges developers face in making secure applications. Joylynn talks about understanding the threat landscape and staying up to date on the CVEs that can represent a zero-day vulnerability to your application. There are a ton of tools to help make you aware of the potential risks, check out all the links in the show notes. And check out Joylynn's webinar on...
Nov 24, 2022•49 min
Why should .NET developers build Power Apps? Carl and Richard talk to April Dunnam about the latest in Microsoft's Power Platform and why .NET developers should get involved. April talks about the fusion development methodology, where domain experts use the Power Platform tools alongside .NET developers using Visual Studio to build line-of-business apps. There are many opportunities in the cycle of building Power Apps where your skills as a .NET developer can make the process go faster, more rel...
Nov 17, 2022•50 min
Are your APIs vulnerable to hacking? Carl and Richard talk to Dana Epp about how APIs have become the focus of black hats today. Dana talks about tooling you can use to look at your APIs the same way the hackers do, and find potential exploit paths for impersonating users, stealing data, and otherwise exploiting your system. There's an OWASP list specifically for API security - spend some time with it!
Nov 10, 2022•59 min
How do we make open source work for everyone? While at NDC in Oslo, Carl and Richard talked to David Whitney about his experiences working on open-source projects, and the challenges of making them sustainable. David talks about how many projects start with an individual making something for themselves, which then evolves into many people utilizing the project, but not contributing to it. And when companies depend on that software, the pressure on the creators gets serious - but without compensa...
Nov 03, 2022•51 min
What can observability do for you? While at NDC in Oslo, Carl and Richard chatted with Alayshia Knighten about her work with honeycomb and helping people understand what's happening with their applications in production. Alayshia talks about instrumenting applications to provide insight into behavior in real-time - by leveraging existing tools to provide data and reporting. The conversation digs into how sysadmins and developers see applications differently, and how standard telemetry systems ma...
Oct 27, 2022•49 min
Ready for a story of cloud scaling from the trenches? While at NDC Oslo, Carl and Richard talked with Meg Gotshall about her experiences scaling the Fotoware service with her team. Meg talks about the limits of auto-scaling, where all the services are scaled up, but the bottlenecks exist in only one place - and how dashboards help to provide more visibility into the problem. But even when you sense the problem, how do you fix it? The conversation digs into breaking services into their containers...
Oct 20, 2022•53 min
How do you test your web applications? Carl and Richard talk to Debbie O'Brien about Playwright, Microsoft's new open-source web application testing tool. Playwright lets you build tests in an array of languages, platforms, and browsers. Debbie talks about how you can build atomic tests that will survive new versions, and test independently of other features. And when tests fail, Playwright generates a PWA of the test run showing exactly where the test fails!
Oct 13, 2022•52 min
GitHub Copilot is here! Are we all going to lose our jobs? While at NDC in Oslo, Carl and Richard talked to Michelle Mannering about how Copilot helps you write code - emphasis on help! Michelle explains that Copilot is able to take your explanations of what code needs to be written to find examples of that code for you to take advantage of. It's still up to you to break down the problem well enough, but you spend less time fussing with syntax. This is especially powerful when calling into unfam...
Oct 06, 2022•52 min
What can AWS do for you? Carl and Richard talk to Isaac Levin about the experience of being a .NET developer working with Amazon Web Services. Isaac talks about the broader strategy of moving applications to the cloud and what Amazon offers to make your life easier, with various migration and validation tools that can help you understand how an existing application will behave on cloud services. The goal is to get beyond the virtual machine and into containers, serverless, and more!
Sep 29, 2022•1 hr 3 min
How do you make applications that work well for the visually impaired? Carl and Richard talk to Courtney Heitman about building applications that the visually impaired can use. Courtney talks about different kinds of visual impairment including field of view, color blindness, low and no vision. There are tools to help you understand what those impairments are like and to help you test how your app will work for everyone. Then the conversation turns to screen readers - which are challenging to te...
Sep 22, 2022•56 min
How much do you need to know about design? While at CodePaLOUsa in Louisville, Carl and Richard talked to Kathryn Grayson Nanz about understanding application designers. Kathryn talks about knowing just enough about design to understand that, like software development, it is an iterative process, that takes user feedback and incorporates it into future designs. Oh, and we know why your custom icon sucks!
Sep 15, 2022•54 min
How do you test Angular forms? While at CodePaLOUsa in Louisville, Carl and Richard talked to Martine Dowden about her approach to building tests that are maintainable, and are best automated because they are tedious to test manually - like forms validation. Martine talks about a mix of automated unit testing and eyes-on manual smoke tests being the most efficient way to have a well-tested web application.
Sep 08, 2022•59 min
What's wrong with microservices? Carl and Richard talk to Shawn Wildermuth about his rant about microservices. Shawn talks about the intent of microservices in the first place, to try and break down the giant service balls of goo that get built over time. But is it necessary? The conversation explores the optimization problem, where having services together is efficient right up until it isn't - when you have a service that changes more often than others or needs to scale more. Only then does it...
Sep 01, 2022•58 min
Twenty years ago, before the word podcast existed, there was .NET Rocks! While at CodePaLOUsa in Louisville, Carl and Richard celebrated the publication of the first episode of .NET Rocks twenty years ago in August 2002. Doc Norton joined the conversation to talk about how agile has evolved and the challenges of making good software today. And a big thanks to all the listeners of the show - we couldn't have done it without you! Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations...
Aug 24, 2022•54 min
How does Power Platform fit into your application lifecycle management? Carl and Richard talk to Kartik Kanakasabesan about his work on Power Platform to treat it like every other development approach. Kartik talks about how PowerApps create straightforward forms-over-data solutions that work well on phones, tablets, and PCs. The conversation digs into how developers in the C# and Visual Studio space can work with Power Platform developers, including building back-end services, creating front-en...
Aug 15, 2022•54 min
When and why should you change your development career? Carl and Richard talk to Rocky Lhotka about his recent change from a large development firm to a one-man band. Rocky talks about changes in Magenic that helped him make the move he'd been thinking about for years. This leads to a broader conversation about how careers evolve, whether or not you become a manager, and what it takes to be out on your own. There are many ways to have a career - what works best for you? Support this podcast at —...
Aug 09, 2022•54 min
How do you make it easier for developers to build apps in Azure? Carl and Richard talk to Scott Hunter about his new role focused on developer tooling for Azure. This means much more than .NET - Scott talks about tooling for Java, Android, Node, and more! The conversation ranges over how Azure can simplify development cycles, debugging, and monitoring in production, no matter what stack you're using. Scott also digs into Azure Container Apps, announced at Build 2022, making it easier to get star...
Aug 02, 2022•53 min
Can you make your application passwordless? While at NDC London, Carl and Richard talk to Eli Holderness about implementing passwordless technology. Eli talks about using password managers and adding physical authentication tokens like fido keys. The conversation then digs into all the varieties of passwordless authentication including SMS, Authenticators, and one-time tokens. There are great libraries for implementing all of these technologies - and you're going to need more than one! Support t...
Jul 26, 2022•51 min
What features do you want to see in C# 11? Carl and Richard chat with Kathleen Dollard about the work being done to the latest version of C# so far. But first - what about VB.NET? Starting with a question from a listener, Kathleen clarifies Microsoft plans for VB.NET - it's never going away! Then into the feature list of C# 11, including new generic math, static interfaces, initialization features, pattern matching, and more! Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations...
Jul 18, 2022•49 min
