.NET Rocks!

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

How do you migrate to Azure? Carl and Richard talk to Microsoft Premier Field Engineer Christos Matskas about his work helping companies move workloads to Azure. The conversation starts out focused on what you can move to Azure - which is less a technical problem and more of a political one. Christos discusses Azure Site Recovery as a sort of gateway drug for getting organizations into Azure - much cheaper than running a backup data center, Site Recovery keeps images of all your active servers so that you can switch over to them in a disaster. And then the catalog is opened up, there are a ton of products in Azure, which ones do you use? Lots of great discussion on the various approaches to moving to the cloud!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Are there new C++ programmers, or just old people? Carl and Richard chat with Kate Gregory about her discovery of a whole new generation of C++ programmers, who just haven't had to go through the same pain that the old folks once did. Kate talks about going to cppcon, the premier C++ conference in the world, and seeing packs of young people getting into C++. The good news is that C++ has evolved and the coding techniques are very different than they used to be. Yes, you can still build drivers and embedded systems with C++ and it's still pretty tough, but for regular software development, the new language features make life much more fun - check it out!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Have you seen the new docs for C# (and many other Microsoft products)? Carl and Richard talk to Bill Wagner about his work with Microsoft getting great C# docs together on http://docs.microsoft.com. But first, a conversation about side projects, including Carl's work bringing the Polly library to the .NET Foundation as well as Bill and Richard's work on Humanitarian Toolbox. Then on to the docs - which are fully editable via GitHub, so anyone can help build the docs. Lots of interactive code options, the samples are real (and tested), video, great detailed descriptions and more. What if docs didn't have to suck? Because they don't!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

How do you make your website progressive? Carl and Richard talk to Christian Heilmann about the latest approach in web development - the progressive web app (PWA). Christian talks about how PWAs really are progressive - you can add bits of these new capabilities to your existing web sites and see some benefit. It starts with the manifest that helps create an icon on a desktop or smartphone to get access to the website, so your user doesn't have to type the URL anymore. And it goes from there, adding offline capabilities, notifications and more. Different browsers are in different states of implementation with PWAs, but the movement is clear, doing more with web apps!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

You need to markdown to make good markup! Carl and Richard talk to Rick Strahl about his work building Markdown Monster, which is a Windows-based editor for creating markdown code that ultimately becomes HTML. Or leave it as markdown, which is a popular format (going back to 2004) for blogs, readme docs in GitHub and more. Rick talks about his experiences putting together a desktop app (WPF!) but still keeping it open source. Pay for it if you use it, but try it for free, or fork it on GitHub! Lots of great conversation about modern development on the desktop, including updates, packaging and so on. You can still make desktop software make sense!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

What happens when your college buddy decides later in life that he wants to switch to software development? Carl and Richard talk to Will Gant about his efforts bringing BJ Burns into his organization and apprenticing him as a software developer. What can you build with the earliest set of skills in modern development? How is an apprenticeship different from more traditional schooling? Will and BJ tell the story of how the apprenticeship came to be and where it is today - a great story of becoming a developer!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

With the release of Visual Studio 2017 Release Candidate, the truth is out - no more web essentials! Carl and Richard talk to Mads Kristensen about his decision to stop making Web Essentials, but not to stop making all the Web Essentials goodness! Rather than make one big bundle of tools for web developers, Mads has broken down the package into individual add-ins that you can download separately and install. It all comes down to manageability - not everyone wants everything, so now you can pick and choose. Key to managing the add-ins is the Web Extension Pack, that will help you install the components you need. Web Essentials lives on!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Friendship bracelets that teach girls to code! Carl and Richard talk to Sara Chipps about her experiences bringing Jewelbots to life. Sara talks about her idea to get girls more interested in coding by creating something programmable that girls will like - a friendship bracelet! Sara and her team put together a kickstarter in 2015 to raise $30,000 and ultimately raised $167,000 - the product was a hit right from the beginning. The story digs into the challenge of actually making a physical consumer product (as opposed to software), especially how much slower everything takes. But alls well that ends well - the product is shipping and people love it! Check it out!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

What does it take to keep AngularJS moving forward? Carl and Richard talk to Jules Kremer about her work as the head of Angular Developer Relations at Google. Angular started out as an internal library at Google and is widely used all over the organization. But as it's popularity grew, the outside world became interested in it also. Jules talks about learning how the rest of the world uses Angular and the role that played in the significant shift that happened in Angular 2, including the move to TypeScript, becoming more opinionated, and so on. The conversation also goes to the future of Angular, including the focus on Progressive Web Apps and a great set of docs. Oh, and we give away $5000 worth of technology to one lucky member of the .NET Rocks fan club!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Ionic is growing up! Carl and Richard talk to Justin James about his work building mobile apps with Ionic Framework, now at version 2! Justin talks about the tight relationship between Angular and Ionic, including the significant changes from V1 to V2 - mostly due to Angular, but still. As such, Justin recommends sticking with Ionic 1 for existing apps but building new apps with Ionic 2. The conversation also digs into tooling choices (Visual Studio or not?) deployment options, emulators and side loaders and the fun that is app stores. Mobile development is never easy, but it is getting better with tools like Ionic!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

There are more ways to go serverless! Carl and Richard talk to Glenn Block about his work with WebTask. WebTask uses nodeJS to build services that are unique units of work with their own scalability. Glenn also talks about using WebTask as a Webhook, allowing you to do call backs based on an activity - it's this tooling that can help you automated builds and deployments and more. Using the Webhook approach, Glenn digs into techniques for building custom commands for Slack and a bunch of other environments - WebTask can become cloud-driven glue for your apps!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

As requested by a listener, a Geek Out on worldwide energy production! Richard starts out with a discussion on how to measure the energy production of humanity, and explores how energy is used on the planet - it's not just about electricity! Then into the hard stuff, looking through all sorts of energy sources including oil, coal, natural gas, nuclear, wind, solar and even geothermal. There's a lot of ways to make and consume power, some with more impact on the planet and some with less. What are the prospects going forward? Can we actually move away from fossil fuels, or is it just too expensive? Last Geek Out of the year, see you in 2017!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

How many different decisions do you need to make before starting web development? Carl and Richard talk to Cory House about picking out a JavaScript development environment. Cory talks about his own experiences getting into the groove with the React stack, but that is certainly not the only way to build a web application. When you think more broadly about building web apps, the number of decisions can be daunting, and hence the increase in starter kits and other tools like the JavaScript Services toolkit for making it easier to get all your tools together. Lots of great links in the show notes for different tools you can use!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

How are containers doing in the world today? While in Haarlem for DevIntersection Europe, Carl and Richard hosted a panel with Michele Bustamante, Dan Wahlin and Rick Van Rousselt about how they are currently working with containers and what they see coming in the future. The panel discusses how making containers work is really about working with Linux, which is entirely viable in the .NET world with .NET Core, but Windows Containers looks to change that in the coming years. What will modern development look like in the next couple of years as containers take ahold of the entire development cycle? Exciting times!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Are you an imposter? Carl and Richard talk to Rob Conery about his battle with imposter syndrome - starting with a definition. Rob talks about how often folks that don't have formal computing science education feel like they are faking it when it comes to software development, no matter how significant their contributions are. And part of his process for dealing with his own issues was to write a book on the subject - self-published. One of the focuses of the book is to dig into core concepts in computing science that are actually valuable in your day-to-day development efforts, such as estimating the difficulty of a computing problem or describing core algorithmic concepts. Learn from the smart people that have come before in computing!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

How does security work in ASP.NET Core? Carl and Richard talk to Roland Guijt about the security features of ASP.NET Core - many of which are the same as the original .NET, but there are some significant changes! The conversation starts out dealing with the idea that retrofitting security at the end of a project is fraught with perils that ultimately endanger your application and users. It's worth taking some time to figure out how security is going to be part of your app from the beginning. Roland talks about what makes sense to build directly into your ASP.NET Core app and what can be externalized with tools like Identity Server. And there are claims - lots of claims!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Entity Framework Core has shipped - now what? Carl and Richard talk to Julie Lerman about what this new version of Entity Framework does to the data layer. Julie digs into how EF Core has the same relationship with EF 6.x as ASP.NET Core has to ASP.NET 4.x - they are parallel versions aimed at different goals. The Core editions are all about cross-platform where the originals continue to be Windows-centric. Both versions of Entity Framework are open source on GitHub so you can see the development is on-going - and participate in it if you wish!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

There are software design patterns and anti-patterns, but does the same hold true for business? Carl and Richard talk to Steve Smith about business anti-patterns, that is, practices and approaches to business that while they may appear to be useful on the surface, are actually quite harmful. While the problem tends to be around development, since it's often not understood by business, many of these anti-patterns affect all aspects of a business.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

What the heck is a Progressive Web App? Carl and Richard talk to Kirupa Chinnathambi about his experiences building at the edge of the modern web with Progressive Web Apps (PWAs). PWAs are trying to bridge the gap between traditional applications and web applications, starting with keeping a web app functional when there is an interruption in Internet connection. But it's more than that - how do you appear as an icon on a desktop or app surface, provide notifications and otherwise look and act like every other kind of application? Check it out!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

How hard is it to build a search engine? Carl and Richard talk to Anthony Brown about his efforts to build his own search engine using Azure and F#. The conversation starts out with the question "Why?" which quickly turns into an indictment of the modern search engine, which, while useful, is bothered by the necessities of business with advertising and gaming of the system. Anthony talks about getting effective at exploring web pages for meaningful content using the ability of F# to write intelligent, tolerant parsing. Azure Search plays a huge role in taking that data and indexing in a way that makes it fast. Lots of great thinking about how these complex problems get solved!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

The choices for SQL Server continue to expand! With last week's announcements at Connect, SQL Server is coming to Linux in a big way. What does that mean for the average consumer of SQL Server? Tony talks about the on-going evolution of the product to store data in lots of different ways, not just relational. And on top of that, the latest SQL Server is great at taking relational data and making it available in super-fast and efficient ways. There are more SQL choices than every before!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

What does it take to make a really great UI? Carl and Richard talk to Mark Miller about his latest work on helping people build the best possible UI. Mark has developed an amazing course teaching all of the details of making a great UI, directly connecting it to how humans see, perceive and interact with technology. Color, contrast, hue and intensity all affect perception of information on the screen, and Mark has organized every bit of it with awesome examples to help you make a really great UI. Check it out!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

.NET used to be all about Windows - but it's not anymore! How do you market something so diverse? Carl and Richard talk to Beth Massi about her new role as the Marketing Manager for .NET. Today .NET runs on all sorts of platforms, and you can develop .NET code on multiple platforms as well. Beth talks about reaching out to the new audiences that may have never considered .NET before because of it's former focus on Windows. Now .NET runs everywhere, on all sorts of devices, and into even more operating systems. Where would you like your code to run?Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

So many amazing things announced at Connect! Carl and Richard talk to Scott Hunter about his favorite bits of Connect, including a ton of important announcements including new support in Visual Studio for containers, cool new integration with SQL Server 2016, the on-going evolution of .NET Core and it's tooling and so much more! You've seen the keynotes, now listen to a deeper dive with one of the key people behind .NET today!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Functional programming for mobile development? Carl and Richard talk to Scott Nimrod about his experiences building mobile apps with Xamarin using F# as the primary programming language. Does functional make sense for mobile development? Sure, but F# can handle OOP problems too. Scott calls it "functional first". The conversation digs into the power of staying within Visual Studio - tools that you know and understand! But there are also features in Visual Studio that don't necessarily work well (or the same) with F#, so it does take time to learn your way around your new language. But worth it!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

How do you get to coding quickly with the new web development frameworks? Carl and Richard talk to Steve Sanderson about JavaScriptServices, which is actually a set of templates for helping you set up your development environment for Angular, Knockout, React and/or React-Redux. Steve talks about all the bits and pieces necessary to actually get to your code-run-debug cycle of development. Along the way he mentions a number of tools involved to make life easier, including Yeoman and WebPack. The conversation also turns to this diversity of client development stacks and the philosophy behind them - more great thinking by a web leader!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations