.NET Rocks!

What happened at Build? Lots! Carl and Richard talk to Rocky Lhotka about his impressions around the various announcements at Build. The conversation ranges over how this Build was somewhat different from others - perhaps more aspirational? Topics covered included the amazing AI/vision system demos that were exciting and frightening at the same time, as well as the XAML and .NET Standards, Hololens, VR, Project Rome and more! So much happened at Build!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Azure Service Fabric is here - should your application take advantage of it? Carl and Richard talk to James Sturtevant about his experiences moving applications into Azure Service Fabric. Yes, it is possible to "lift and shift" your application into Service Fabric via Guest Executables, but that doesn't mean you'll get much of the benefit that Service Fabric can provide. James talks about picking a feature in your application to peel off into a microservice, perhaps as an Azure Function or other serverless strategy - or even into a container! Instrumentation is a key aspect to understanding what will improve your application, and it takes time - all apps are on a continuum of development!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

How do you get better uptime than the cloud? Two clouds! Carl and Richard talk to Vishwas Lele about his experiences building ultra-reliable applications, both on-premises and in the cloud. The discussion digs into the decisions around reliability - it's easy to want it, but will you pay for it? It's important to calculate the cost of downtime, as that helps set the budget for what it takes to stay up. And that leads to a conversation about how you build highly reliable software - it can't just come from the infrastructure, there is code involved as well! And the next question is - how do you make your app work in two different clouds?Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Banish Your Inner Critic! Carl and Richard talk to Denise Jacobs about her new book on creativity. And yes, we're all creative, we just have to get that inner critic under control. Denise talks about her own battles with feeling good enough to actually do work well and share it with others. It comes down to a sense of self-compassion - often we are harder on ourselves than we are on others. Give yourself a break and have some fun - the creativity will come!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Troy is back, put on your tinfoil hat and get under the bed! Carl and Richard talk to Troy Hunt about the latest security exploits going around. Ransomware is hitting new highs, where a user's files get encrypted via malware, and the only way to get them back is to pay a ransom in Bitcoin. Or are there other ways to recover? And don't be so sure paying the ransom will fix anything, there are some unscrupulous criminals out there that just delete your files instead! The conversation also dives into the comprehensive move of the World Wide Web over to HTTPS - and with HTTP/2, HTTPS can actually be faster than HTTP!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Ready to get off the hourly treadmill? Carl and Richard talk to Jonathan Stark about ditching the hourly crusade. Jon talks about the fact that software development really isn't an hourly business - you don't provide value every hour with software, the value only comes when it's finished. The conversation focuses on value - what value does this software bring to the organization? If you don't know that, how can you be successful? But once you do know, pricing is different, and so is focus for you. Provide value to your customer, not an hourly rate!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

What can Azure functions do for you? Carl and Richard talk to Yochay Kiriaty about his work creating Azure Functions as part of the App Service Platform for Azure. Azure Functions get you focused on just building code, there is no virtual machine, no operating system and a minimal hosting environment. But that doesn't mean that they're simple. Yochay talks about the need to architect effectively for Azure Functions - you can get yourself in a corner where Azure Functions can't save you. But if you keep your Azure Functions lean and stateless, this is the most dynamic, fastest scaling cloud service you can imagine!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

How fast can you go through the air? Time for a Geek Out! Richard chats with Carl about the challenges of flying in the hypersonic regime - above Mach 5! Lots of experiments were done in the early days of the space race, and died down after Apollo 11. But toward the end of the cold war there was a resurgence that has continued to this day - developing engines and materials to keep flying faster. Most of the technology is focused on military weapons, but there could be a path to space when more of the problems get solved!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Is Angular ready for the enterprise? Carl and Richard talk to John Papa about the latest version of Angular and it's applicability in every day enterprise development. John discusses how the fast-moving updates of open source projects are a challenge for enterprise developers and the solutions available - you don't have to always use the latest bits! The role of the cloud (specifically Azure) is also explored, and John talks about Azure Functions as a great way to build server-side elements of your application quickly and painlessly, without a lot of ceremony and provisioning. And if you think that's cool, you want to come to AngularMix, Oct 10-12 at Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

How do you deploy software? Carl and Richard talk to Robb Schiefer about his experiences using Chef to do application deployment. Chef comes from the open source Linux world, and is free to use with a pay option when you get to certain enterprise features. The Windows support is pretty good, and it works closely with PowerShell and Desired State Configuration to automate deployment of Windows and Microsoft services. Robb digs into the testing component of Chef as well, with tools that allow you to test all sorts of options around your deployments so you can get them as robust as possible. Whether your on-premise, in the cloud, virtualized or containerized, Chef can help!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Azure with no servers? Carl and Richard talk to Jeff Hollan about Azure's Serverless offerings. The idea is to stop worrying about virtual machines and operating systems and focus on the stuff you really need. Jeff talks about Logic Apps, which provide workflow and connectors between your code and a ton of other services, some coming from Azure and many coming from other service providers. Credentials for the services are kept in the Azure Key Vault rather than your code (or in the heads of your users), and there's some great instrumentation to understand what's going on. Is Serverless the future of the Cloud?Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

How are software careers changing? Carl and Richard talk to Erik Dietrich about his new book, Developer Hegemony. Erik digs into the struggles that many developers have with the typical large enterprise, where software developers are treated more like cogs in the system, with limited amounts of information and flexibility. Leaving the company and contracting back increases your wages and flexibility, although now you are responsible for all the things that make your job your job - things like accounting, marketing, health insurance and so on. This leads to a more DevOps-like conversation that points to a future that is very software driven! It's a great time to be a developer!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Angular or Aurelia? Carl and Richard talk to Brian Noyes about his experience building Single Page Application (SPA) style web sites using Angular and Aurelia. No, not both at the same time, but separately. Angular is all the rage these days, but Brian talks about the confusion around Angular caused by the breaking changes from 1.x to 2.x, the skipping of 3 and now settling on Angular 4. The discussion also digs into convention-over-configuration, Brian identifying Aurelia as a convention-driven framework, which leads to less code, but you have to understand how it wants to work. Lots of links in the show notes for tools and opinion pieces, take a look!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Where is your DevOps at? Carl and Richard talk to Jez Humble and Nicole Forsgren about DORA, that is the DevOps Readiness Assessment. DORA helps you understand where your organization is at in the spectrum of DevOps, from low to medium to high. The conversation digs into what it takes to improve operational capability, focusing on understanding exactly how your organization delivers software so you can improve it. Along the way there are challenges, it is never easy to change an organization, but that's what it takes to actually improve software delivery. The goods news is that DevOps can work in any kind of organization: Big or small, startup or heavily regulated industry, it doesn't matter!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

You can make a game in Xamarin Forms? Yes! Carl and Richard talk to Jonathan Peppers about his latest work on NBA Life, a role-playing game for iOS and Android built with Xamarin Forms. Jonathan talks about the process they went through to decide on this particular architecture for the game, having done prototyping with Unity and Xamarin Native. The conversation also digs into the back end using Azure Service Fabric and it's Actor Model support - yes, everything is an actor! Lots of discussion around testing, deployment, crash handling and dealing with app stores. Building mobile games isn't always a pure native experience - you have choices!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Most of us have taken antibiotics at some point in our lives, but how do they work? Time for a Geek Out! Richard talks through some fundamental cell biology to be able to set the stage for what antibiotics are, where they come from and how they work. Why do antibiotics work on some illnesses and not others? Why are some bacteria becoming antibiotic-resistant and what can be done about it? What's the alternative to antibiotics? As with most Geek Out subjects, the answers are complex, but worth it!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

C# 7 and Visual Studio 2017 are shipped - now what? Carl and Richard talk to Kathleen Dollard about her experiences working with folks that are trying to dig into the latest version of Microsoft development tools. Kathleen talks about the various approaches she's taken to teaching both C# and effective use of Visual Studio, there are so many little things to know, it's hard to take it all in. The conversation dives deep into understanding async and await so that you actually get real benefit from them - it's not a simple thing to do right!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

The whirlwind of DevOps is back! Carl and Richard talk to Donovan Brown about his on-going mission to get everyone into a DevOps practice - in fact, he talks about getting to a place where continuous delivery and monitoring are just the way you make software. Donovan talks about a session he has been giving where he creates four different delivery pipelines in an hour, with different programming languages, platforms, testing and deployment tools. And if he can make four in an hour, there's really no reason anyone can't build one pipeline in an afternoon. The conversation ranges over a spectrum of DevOps topics, including testing and monitoring - it's easier than ever to rub some DevOps on it!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

What does it take to build great multi-tenant apps on the cloud? Carl and Richard talk to Joe Audette about his set of open source tools called cloudscribe to make multi-tenant apps easier to implement. The conversation starts out with managing IdentityServer, the great open source library for handling single-sign-on across multiple applications. Cloudscribe helps you manage the sites, users, roles and claims for IdentityServer. But there's more to multi-tenancy than just authentication and authorization, and Joe dives into the other elements of the suite to get your multi-tenant app running right!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

MVVMCross has grown up! Carl and Richard chat with Martjin van Dijk about his work on MVVMCross. Past guest Stuart Lodge started MVVMCross way back in 2012 when it was focused on building MVVM apps in Silverlight, but today the focus is on Xamarin. Martjin talks about how MVVMCross works with Xamarin forms to make it easier to build, test and debug mobile apps, bringing inversion of control and dependency injection as part of the library. The conversation also turns to navigation being moved to the viewmodel, rather than the view, so you write less code. MVVMCross can be a key part of your mobile app development strategy!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

What can analytics around development do for you? Carl and Richard talk to Steven Borg about his work with Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS), especially around understanding developer productivity. The conversation starts out with a comment around Team Foundation Server and VSTS, the former being the on-premise version of the latter. But why run your own infrastructure when you don't have to? Then Steven dives into different kinds of analysis, looking for the best quality code. Can analysis tell you who should do a code review? Have a listen!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Scripting with C++? Of course! Carl and Richard talk to Jason Turner about ChaiScript, his open source project that simplifies adding C++ as a scripting language to any application, but especially other C++ applications. The conversation turns to how C++ has evolved and some amazing tools available today to help you understand what C++ is doing, right down to the CPU level! Check out the links in the show notes for some of the cool tools that Jason and his associates have built!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Visual Studio on a Mac! Carl and Richard talk to Mikayla Hutchinson who's been with Xamarin since the very beginning, about her work on the preview of Visual Studio for Mac. The product comes from MonoDevelop, which is Xamarin's IDE that runs in Windows, Mac and Linux. Mikayla talks about how Visual Studio for Mac focuses on both the client side of mobile devices and Mac OS as well as the cloud - there are templates included that will generate a basic app for iOS, Android and the back end layer in Azure. It's still in preview, but Visual Studio for Mac looks great!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

How do you manage legacy code? Carl and Richard talk to David Bernstein about his book Beyond Legacy Code. The conversation starts out talking about what legacy code is - and David brings up the idea that code is legacy if you don't have confidence in it. Now how do you get confidence? This is where the rewrite behavior comes from: You're naturally more confident in your own code. But is it a good idea? David talks about nine practices that are most effective at getting your application under control and out of legacy!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

How do you bring a DevOps practice to an existing application? While at NDC London, Carl and Richard talk to Damian Brady about his experiences working with teams trying to get better at building, deploying, instrumenting and maintaining existing applications. Often the processes put in place when an application is first developed stay the same - new techniques are applied to new apps. But it doesn't have to be like that! Damian talks about engaging everyone involved in the app, including management, development, QA, data folks, operations and more to work toward a better, more reliable application. And the results are worth it!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Should we go back to the moon? Richard says yes - time for a Geek Out! In recent months conversations around the Moon have surged - Richard discusses both the SLS EM-1 mission to the move and the SpaceX space tourism flight. And then on to the main topic: Why should we go back to the moon? Richard focuses on four points: We have not explored much of the moon at all, we can extract fuel and manufacture things on the moon, we need to understand how humans function long term in low gravity (rather than freefall), and finally, there are some unique science opportunities on the moon. And it's not just Richard excited about the topic - there are a ton of scientists and industry that want to go too!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Ready for another actor framework? Carl and Richard talk to Roger Johansson about his work on proto.actor, and ultra-light-weight, easy to get into actor framework for .NET and Go. The conversation starts out with Akka.NET, the framework that Roger worked on a few years ago, and how it's origins in Java gave it a certain amount of ceremony that Roger thought could be simplified - hence proto.actor! With a focus on speed and simplicity, proto.actor uses libraries like Google's protocol buffers to work with other platforms and libraries well, check it out!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Visual Studio 2017 ships! Carl and Richard talk to Tim Sneath about his role in this version of Studio. Tim talks about speeding installation of Visual Studio by modularizing the various elements so you don't install things you don't need - but it's always easier to add more in! The conversation also digs into the extensibility model that makes it easier to build new features into Studio, and a great marketplace to share and sell them. Studio continues to evolve, the 2017 edition is awesome!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Visual Studio is twenty years old! Carl and Richard chat with Julia Liuson, who has been involved with Visual Studio since its very earliest days in the 90s. Julia talks about how Microsoft decided to build a unified IDE for all its various development products including Visual Basic, C++, FoxPro and their new web development tool, Visual InterDev. But following quickly on from the 1997 edition was .NET and the complete change that it created for Visual Studio. Lots of great stories from someone that has been involved since the beginning - here's to another twenty years of Visual Studio!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

How do you evolve your team when it triples in size? Carl and Richard talk to Ryan Stelly about his experiences working at Rally Health when an acquisition grew the development team from eight people to 30. The conversation begins with a look at where they came from, building ASP.NET MVC apps. The new team used Scala and Angular together - how do you move forward? Cross team training, exploring new technologies and a lot of fun leads to React/Redux, a new DevOps stack and a culture that you'd want to be a part of!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

What's your strategy for moving to containers? While at NDC London, Carl and Richard chat with Michele Bustamante on how she talks to companies about utilizing container technology effectively. Michele discusses the fact that implementing containers represents more than just a technology investment - it's also a change in culture and process. This means that buy-in for container technology has to start at the top and permeate through the organization. And the benefits are just as comprehensive; it can be a significant part of a DevOps practice within an organization.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

What is Conway's Law and how does it apply to your organization? Carl and Richard met up with Mark Seemann in Copenhagen to chat about how organization structure affects the structure of software. That is the essence of Conway's Law, going all the way back to the 1960s, where he talked about how committees designing software end up making software that reflects the structure of the committees themselves. This leads to a broad conversation about how virtually every company today is actually a software company, and that software represents a vital asset to most businesses, but they may not recognize it yet. Getting your organization into shape to build great software can be the difference between success and bankruptcy!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Windows Containers are here! While at NDC London, Carl and Richard chatted with Ben Hall about his on-going exploration of container technology. Windows Server 2016 shipped in late 2016 with support for two kinds of Windows containers. Ben talks about migrating an existing web application, IIS and all, over to Windows containers, providing some great deployment automation and scalability. There are still more bits to be built, but you can be productive with Windows containers today - check it out!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

What are the twelve factors that go into a successful cloud architected application? While at NDC in London, Carl and Richard sat down with Ian Cooper to talk through the twelve factors approach to building software. Ian talks about focusing on building software-as-a-service style application, likely in the cloud (and certainly using cloud architectures), with continuous delivery of new features. While agnostic to any particular technology, there are lots of common practices here that make sense when building any kind of application, just doubly so for SaaS-style applications. Have a listen!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Will fusion power ever be real? Time for a geek out! Since the original fusion shows in 2014, there has been a bunch of progress in the field of fusion... okay, some progress. Richard talks about how ITER is delayed another ten years, the Wendelstein 7-X is actually up and running and the rest of the billionaire-funded fusion projects are somewhat quiet. Does that mean they have enough money so their working, or are they stuck? The discussion dives into a key challenge of fusion - more powerful magnets. And new magnet technology is on the horizon. Is this enough to make fusion power actually work? And is it even relevant anymore?Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Mixed reality is coming! While at NDC in London, Carl and Richard sat down with Jessica Engstrom to talk about her work with virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality. And yes, they are all different, with the conversation starting off with definitions of each. Jessica talks about some of the projects she's done using the mapping capabilities of the HoloLens to re-create 3D spaces. There's a new diversity of hardware in the space coming as well, with more vendors making augmented reality solutions and Microsoft opening up the Holographic OS for other vendors to make hardware with. The VR/AR/MR space continues to evolve!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Are your machines learning? While at NDC in London, Carl and Richard hosted a panel of Jennifer Marsman, Evelina Gabasova and Barbara Fusinska talking about their work in machine learning. The conversation ranges over the variety of projects they've worked on, including using machine learning to analyze Stack Overflow data, building a machine learning-driven lie detector, doing sales data analysis with R, and more. The machine learning space is vast, and there are plenty of opportunities for everyone, you need to get exploring!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

With apologies to Jane Austen, Carl and Richard talk to Dan North about the modern operations environment as one of the first NDC London shows of 2017. Dan digs into the challenges of operating modern applications and how a constant demand for new features can be destabilizing to software. The conversation explores getting to the root of concerns in systems so that everyone understands what is hard and what is easy. When people are misunderstood, fear and resistance almost always follow. Take the time to listen and get everyone working together well!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

What's the right way to make a Xamarin app? While at NDC in London, Carl and Richard sat down with Gill Cleeren to talk about using the MVVM pattern as part of an overall mobile development stack. As Gill describes, MVVM brings consistency to the plumbing of the mobile app so that you can focus on the important (hard) stuff, getting the UI right, and trying to get as much common code as possible. In the end, the views end up being more device/OS specific, while the model and view-model can be shared. The tooling is complicated, but it is possible to get going fast with mobile development!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Ready to build a chatbot? While at NDC London, Carl and Richard talk to Galiya Warrier about the different chatbot technologies available today. The focus is on the Microsoft Bot Framework, which under the hood uses LUIS - that's Language Understanding Intelligent Service. Galiya also talks about the QnA Maker, which sits on top of the Bot Framework to automate the creation of a chatbot that can use an FAQ as content. The discussion explores different chatbot platforms you can use, the integration of speech with the tech, and how to get past the hype of chatbots and into practical value. This is a whole new kind of UI for your application!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

IdentityServer4 is all grown up! While at NDC in London, Carl and Richard sat down with Brock Allen and Dominick Baier to discuss their amazing open source product, IdentityServer. The conversation starts out where it left off last year, getting to the point of shipping IdentityServer with ASP.NET RC1. But literally a few hours later, RC2 was announced with serious breaking changes. The challenge of building software in the open! Dom and Brock talk through an implementation of IdentityServer using different federation sources, handling multi-tenancy and more. This is the right way to do identity!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Can you use Docker with your database? While at NDC in London, Carl and Richard talk to Stephanie Locke about her experiences deploying database in containers. And as Stephanie says, you can deploy the database engine there, but the data has to live somewhere a bit more stable - like the cloud! The conversation digs into the power of containers for rapid deployment and upgrading, as well as the value of using different types of file stores for retaining data. In the end, a database creates files of data, and that's what you need to protect. Stephanie also talks about what databases make sense in different scenarios - it's not only about relational!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

The Chuck Norris of C# is back! While at NDC London, Carl and Richard sit down with the indomitable (and always humble) Jon Skeet to talk about what he's been working on in the past year. First up is nodatime, an open source library for doing date, time and timezones correctly. Why is time so hard? Because politics and science! Jon talks about crazy time zone challenges, solutions for leap seconds and more. Next up is Google Cloud Platform which has gone all C# friendly! Jon talks about building C# friendly APIs for various Google services to make it easy as possible for your .NET application to work in Google's cloud. Check it out!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

The beatings will continue until morale improves! While at NDC in London, Carl and Richard talk to Louise Elliott about the idea of punishment driven development - that is, workplaces where blame is a driver. Louise talks about getting rid of blame and punishment, whether self-inflicted or team-inflicted, so that the individual unique contributions and capabilities of every member of the team are valued. The conversation also dives into creating constructive incentives - not pitting team members or separate teams against each other, actually making sure everyone is focused on making sure the business is successful. Great reminders about working on the right things!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

So what's the right way to use ASP.NET Core? There may not be one right way, but there are plenty of opinions, and Scott Allen has some! While at NDC in London, Carl and Richard chat with Scott about his preferences for building ASP.NET Core apps. Scott digs into project organization, keeping projects and folder structures aligned, keeping elements related to features together and more. Many of the defaults around an ASP.NET Core project are arbitrary - you can do things the way you want to do them. The challenge is just putting some thought into it!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Can you help a charity move to the cloud? Carl and Richard talk to Jeremy Pitman of Microsoft Philanthropies about the new offering to provide $5000 worth of Azure credit to any qualified non-profit organization. The offering includes tools like Office 365 and Dynamics CRM - things that are pretty straightforward to implement. Even using Azure to set up a WordPress blog is simple - but what if you want to lift-and-shift an existing charity website? Perhaps .NET Rocks listeners could be helping their local charities to make this a reality! Beyond the basics, the cloud offers great new capabilities in analytics that can make charities even more effective! Public cloud for public good!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

2016 was an amazing year for space - what happens in 2017! Time for a Geek Out! Richard pulls together all his notes on the various players in the US space industry (and a few beyond the US). The big player, of course, is the United Launch Alliance (ULA). With pressure from SpaceX, ULA is starting to innovate - is this a good thing? And what about SpaceX? After the accident on Sept 1 2016, they're pushing hard to return to flight (and as this show publishes, should have just flown). There's also Blue Origin, Orbital ATK and a few companies you've never heard of that are sure to make some news in 2017 - exciting space times!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Where do your keep your secrets? Carl and Richard talk to Sumedh Barde about Azure Key Vault - the perfect place to keep all your secrets for your Azure applications. Sumedh talks through the issues around securing Azure applications properly and needing to store certificates and other secrets (including username/password logins) in a very secure place. Azure Active Directory plays a critical role in making everything work by providing identity services so that you can decide who/what has access to the secrets without sharing the secrets themselves. This makes control over access much simpler - no need to change certificates because someone left the company!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

How do you monitor your applications in Azure? Carl and Richard talk to Tom Kerkhove about his work with Azure Application Insights. AppInsights works with .NET, Java and nodeJS apps to allow detailed instrumentation of how your application is being used. Tom talks about doing deep tracing with AppInsights to be able to see a request come in on the front side of the application all the way back to the database. The conversation also digs into other levels of instrumentation including Operations Management Suite and Azure Monitoring. Getting the right data is the challenge, but it's worth it!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

How do you rewrite critical code safely? Carl and Richard talk to Phil Haack about his work on Scientist.NET. Phil talks about the challenges of rewriting code, which means taking something that works (more or less) and trying to make it better, at the risk of breaking it. Yes, test suites would help, but who has those on legacy projects? The Scientist library makes it easier for you to build a new version of a function in your legacy application and run it in parallel to the old function, so that you can validate the results in production without breaking anything. The conversation also turns to the value of rewrites, how tooling, techniques and technology have changed to make it more feasible to do major rewrites, and all the other geeky goodness that comes from hanging with Phil Haack. Happy episode 1400!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations