.NET Rocks!

How did you learn to debug? While at the Nebraska Code Camp, Carl and Richard talked to Joel Kauffman about debugging practices. Rarely is debugging taught in classes, arguably because all school code is perfect. But code in the real world has bugs, and finding those bugs can be challenging. Joel talks about helping developers understand how debugging works, utilizing stack traces, working backward through code, using watches, and so on. The conversation also digs into various tools available for assisting in debugging production applications, including open source JavaScript libraries and much more expensive dedicated instrumentation products. But good debugging is worth a lot - it's a worthy skill to cultivate!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

At the Nebraska Code Camp, Carl and Richard moderated a panel discussion with Mads Kristensen, Lee Brandt, Josh Broton, and Robert Boedigheimer exploring the state of web development on the Microsoft stack. Of course, the first topic is the upcoming ASP.NET vNext and its switch over to open source, along the way letting go of some legacy features including Web Forms. The panel also discussed various JavaScript libraries, when they should be used and when plain old VanillaJS is a better way to go. Conversation also explored design tooling and whether we all should be running Visual Studio or stick with dedicated design tools and editors. Lots of viewpoints from a great panel!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

How are you thinking about UX these days? Carl and Richard chat with Danielle Cooley about her talk at the Nebraska Code Camp around user experience, efficiency and effectiveness of design. Danielle talks about her background in biotechnical design and the challenges of bringing biology (that's us) and technology together in an effective way - including web design! The conversation explores a variety of effective designs: it's not just about speed and simplicity, sometimes it's more important to make things discoverable and clear! Danielle focuses on user-oriented design and how developers can decrease confusion, increase satisfaction and generally make the world a better place. Lots of great tips and thoughts from someone who works on the problem every day!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

What's the difference between an Azure Web Site and Web App? Not at thing! Carl and Richard talk to Scott Hunter about the latest announcements from Microsoft about Azure App Service. Azure App Service brings together Azure Web Sites, Mobile Services and a whole bunch of other goodness. Scott explains how Microsoft has unified all of these services under one umbrella to make it easier to buy and use. If it speaks HTTP or HTTPS, it's an Azure App Service. Then on to the new stuff, including Logic Apps, which lets you manage your mashups using workflow and interconnection tools. You need to check out this great set of technology!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

How do you do agile faster? Carl and Richard talk to Dan North about accelerating agile - but Dan has changed the name to Software, Faster. And even that is controversial, as Dan talks about focusing on delivering business needs, which may or may not involve code. The conversation also calls back to the Agile Manifesto and its abuse - it's not code with no documentation, its code over documentation! There's a great digression about the BBC giving away a million tiny computers to children to help create a new generation of makers... it's a fun time to be in computing! And as Dan says, the only code that has no bugs at all is no code at all.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Where can iBeacons take you? Carl and Richard talk to Greg Shackles about some of the opportunities available using beacon devices with smartphones. While iBeacons are specifically an Apple technology, there are lots of third party implementations that are more open. The balancing act of power and capability is a constant struggle for beacons. Things get really fun when you start looking at all the ways you can locate someone in an interior space using beacons - opening the door to a huge number of applications. Beacons are also part of Google's Physical Web, creating the idea of "interaction on demand." Cool stuff!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Are you building in WPF? Are you using PRISM? Carl and Richard talk to Brian Noyes and Brian Lagunas about the PRISM project, which is a set of tools for building WPF apps. As Brian Noyes says, PRISM is the AngularJS of WPF! The conversation dives into the on-going evolution of PRISM, including support for Windows Phone and Universal Apps. The point of PRISM is composability, helping you to organize the elements of your application into something more maintainable, easier to test and continue to evolve. Brian and Brian also announce that they are running the PRISM project now and have moved it to GitHub - they will take your pull requests!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Is Spaced-Based Power viable? Time for a Geek Out! Carl and Richard chat about the state of space-based power, reviewing a number of designs going back to the 1970s. Can you really transmit enough power to make it worthwhile? How big does the satellite need to be? What's the best place to put the satellite? Is it a giant weapon when its done? Who will build it and why... and just how much is this going to cost? It's not all good news, but its interesting stuff - have a listen, and don't forget to Vote for the Next Geek Out episodes!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Programming in Swift? Want to build Android apps too? Carl and Richard talk to Marc Hoffman of RemObjects about his Silver project - using Swift to program for Android. Swift is Apple's cool new language for developing iOS apps, making life easier than Objective C. Don't use Swift? No problem, how about Pascal - because RemObjects has Oxygene, which is a moderized version of Pascal. That doesn't work for you? Then how about C#? Because this tool set lets you write C# across all the platforms too. And you can use it in the development environment of your choice, including Visual Studio. Mind blown? Ours too!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

So when do IT Pros become developers? Carl and Richard talk to Steve Evans about his operations folks writing code and dealing with all the challenges that everyone finds when they write, own and operate code. The code in question is primarily PowerShell, used to automate deployment. It needs testing, source control and everything else that code requires. Steve talks about how his operations folks have come to learn the same things that all developers need to learn, and for the most part, end up using the same tools. PowerShell may have its own IDE, but more than ever the IT Pros want to use Visual Studio for its richness of tools and integration with resources that they realize they need. Now all we have to do is convince Microsoft that just because you operate systems doesn't mean you don't program!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

The awesome Kinect applications keep coming! Carl and Richard talk to Tim Huckaby about the on-going revolution of applications utilizing Kinect. While not especially popular in the traditional desktop setting, the Kinect is finding remarkable traction in retail and commercial spaces, as interactive signage and for connecting with customers. Tim talks about battling the creepiness factor - the ability of tools like Kinect to figure out who you are and what you're doing can be rather disconcerting. The challenge is in using the capability well to make retail transactions faster and more enjoyable.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Like beer? Are you using Untappd? Carl and Richard talk to creator Greg Avola about the phenomenon that is Untappd. What started as a simple tool to keep track of what beer he liked and didn't like has turned into a super popular app with millions of downloads. Greg talks about what it took to keep the app working as the number of users grew immensely, and how he and the team built the app to work on all sorts of different phones. In the end, the cornerstone of Untappd is the back end with an amazing catalog of beers and user preferences that help the lovers of beer and the makers of beer connect together to make beautiful beery music!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

What an amazing year for ScriptCS! Carl and Richard talk to Glenn Block about the latest developments in ScriptCS - comparing the state of affairs to the last time he was on a year previously. With Roslyn all but shipped, ScriptCS is going mainstream - perhaps it will even be bundled with Studio someday! In the meantime, Glenn and a host of other contributors have continued to extend ScriptCS to make it easier to deploy, share scripts and add additional functionality without having to work in Visual Studio if you don't want to. ScriptCS is putting C# into everyone's hands!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Are you user accounts secure? Carl and Richard talks to Troy Hunt about all the ways you can get your accounts stolen. So what should you store and how should you store it? Troy digs into the various encryption and hashing techniques available - and the many mistakes that have been made with them. Along the way expect yet another discussion about password management, it is an endless process. And while we're at it, SQL Injection is *still* the largest vulnerability out there. Fix it first!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

How are you dealing with mobile testing? Karen Johnson talks to Carl and Richard about thinking through the big picture when it comes to testing. The conversation starts out with a discussion about the tools we've had for desktop and web testing for years that are still hard to come by on the mobile platform - like UI capture of touch, gestures and typing. Its just not that easy to do capture on a phone. The diversity of products is a huge part of the problem, but its also the rapidly evolving operating systems and technology. Karen also digs into other devices like wearables and other physical instrumentation devices. The scope of the testing problem is only getting bigger!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

ASP.NET continues to evolve! Carl and Richard talk to Mads Kristensen about the many amazing things he's working on in the web space, starting with Web Essentials! Mads explains how Web Essentials is a way to experiment with new features for ASP.NET, and that success comes when the feature is pulled into Visual Studio itself - and you get to be part of that process, it's all open source! The conversation turns to Visual Studio embracing the web development ecosystem to use the best tools for the job, whether that is browser and performance testing, package management and workflow. Use whatever tools you want from whomever, and Visual Studio will work with them - 2015 is shaping up to be an amazing version!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

So what IoT device have you built? Carl and Richard talk to Suz Hinton about her experiences building IoT devices. Suz starts out talking about Meow Shoes, a pair of shoes she added sensors and an Arduino too - and used cat meows to test with. All sorts of hilarity ensues, but there are a number of interesting applications can be made from capturing someone's movements, even through their feet. The conversation turns to the dev stack - all Javascript, front and back! There are all sorts of libraries and tools now for anyone to build low cost IoT devices. Suz also talks about her fascination with 3D printers and their relationship to IoT and the maker movement in general. It's becoming a Makers world!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

So where is Azure at today? Carl and Richard talk to Michele Leroux Bustamante about her work with a number of customers utilizing Microsoft Azure. The conversation digs into what Michele considers new Azure vs. old Azure. She still has customers depending on web and worker roles, while many have moved purely over to WebSites. And the evolution continues, with better analytics, the beginnings of container technology taking over from regular VMs... we're still at the beginning of the cloud revolution, and it's only getting more interesting!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

How do you test your mobile applications? James Montemagno talk to Carl and Richard about various testing approaches for mobile apps. James talks about the Xamarin Test Cloud with thousands of different devices you can test against... for a fee of course. This leads to a conversation about automating UI testing, testing against local devices and only going to the cloud when you're ready to test on a larger diversity of phones. James also talks about the broadening range of devices out there, not just phones but tablets, wearables and IoT. Everything needs testing, and there are tools to make it easier!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

How do you test your cross platform applications? Carl and Richard talk to Paul Mooney about building software in .NET and Java and wanting to use a common set of testing protocols. Tricky, but possible! The conversation focuses in on abstractions, which are key to creating sufficient separation of functionality to allow you to insert testing code regardless of what language you work in. And it turns out you can write tests for multiple languages if you're careful. Java and .NET are more similar than we care to admit, and it opens the door to other approaches to testing. TDD is not platform specific!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

So how do you build your cross-platform mobile apps? Carl and Richard talk to Troy Miles about his experiences building mobile apps with the Ionic Framework. Built over top of Adobe Cordova, Ionic takes over a lot of the plumbing code that you find yourself building in every mobile app. Ionic brings controls to the table in two forms - pure CSS components and CSS/JavaScript. You could write the CSS yourself (or maybe you couldn't), but why would you? Troy talks about some of the applications out in the marketplace built with Ionic and how well they look and act like native apps, without having to write the app from scratch multiple times. Check it out!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Jez Humble is back and building a lean enterprise! Carl and Richard talk to Jez about continuous delivery and all that amazing DevOps stuff - but then we get to the serious bit, which is really about how DevOps is a manifestation of organizational change. You need buy-in from the top to make it happen, but it can't happen all at once. How do you make gradual improvements to present the power of a better culture with deeper understanding? Jez talks about the importance of metrics and measuring the performance of your software. And in the end, the best metrics are the ones that relate to the business - which is a great way to talk to management!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Well, there goes another milestone - show 1100! Since Richard actually joined as co-host starting with show 100, that makes ONE THOUSAND .NET Rocks episodes together. Sure, there's 130 Tablet Shows, but who's counting? The conversation digs into a bunch of the gear used to make .NET Rocks and all the PWOP podcasts. We may not take ourselves too seriously, but we sure do take podcasting seriously. You wanna know how it's done? Have a listen!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Are you ready for ECMAScript 6? Carl and Richard talk to Jafar Husain about some of the great new features coming in ECMAScript 6 - the next version of JavaScript, at least for now. Jafar talks about the fun and challenges of participating in the TC39 committee that developed the ES6 standard which is now being implemented by browser developers. Jafar digs into Promises, Yields, Proxies and more - lots of discussion about features you've come to love in languages like C# appearing in JavaScript! And the process isn't done, the JavaScript 7 spec is already being developed!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Are you ready for C# 6? Carl and Richard talk to Bill Wagner about the latest changes to C# 6, with some features being dropped (perhaps to appear in a later version), some syntax changes, and digging deeper on some of the more complex features available. Now that everything around C# is open source, you can see the process of developing new features going on, and even participate in it! Bill and Richard also talk about Humanitarian Toolbox, their ongoing effort to build open source software for disaster relief organizations. And even a little discussion about C# 7!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

So what comes after Durandal? Rob Eisenberg talks to Carl and Richard about Aurelia! The conversation starts out focused on AngularJS and Rob's role with the open source project and ultimate departure. But that was back in November 2014 - what happens next? Aurelia is Rob's vision of what web developers need to build effective browser-based client applications. Rob talks about implementing Aurelia to utilize ECMAScript 6 and 7 while still polyfilling back to ES5 - the Javascript you recognize. This leads to a whole discussion on transpiling and how its possible to move a language forward without breaking backward compatibility, even a language as diverse as Javascript!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Are you ready to build web pages with web components? Cory House is! Carl and Richard talk to Cory House about the web component specification and what that will look like in your modern web development. As Cory explains, the key idea behind web components is to provide a framework for Javascript library extensibility that doesn't force you to own the library yourself. While the standard is still being discussed, Cory mentions some libraries that have already gone ahead and implemented a variation of this extensibility, such as Steve Sanderson's amazing KnockoutJS. Web components make Javascript that much better to use!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Looking at moving from WinForms to WPF? Phil Japikse can help! Carl and Richard talk to Phil Japikse about the changes in thinking that have to happen to make WPF work for you if you're coming from a WinForms world. The conversation starts out discussing the strengths of WinForms and why they persist to this day - it just works! And there's no designer experience like it, including WPF. No matter where you go, after WinForms, you're going to spend more time looking at code for your UI. Do you have to learn MVVM? It depends! Phil talks about the different approaches to making WPF work for you, and taking your UI to it's full potential.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Time for a craftsmanship update from Uncle Bob! Carl and Richard talk to Bob Martin about the growth of developers, and how the number of new developers is overwhelming the available teaching and mentoring resources available today. The discussion turns to the fact that customers would rather have mentors writing code than teaching new developers - better to throw the new folks in a room and let them fend for themselves, maybe software will come out! Uncle Bob talks about the rise of professionalism, the need for professional associations or guilds, taking on the liability of software - the challenge is getting there.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Are you building mobile first? Carl and Richard talk to Chris Love about his work building mobile apps - in two styles! First Chris talks about working with a startup, with the latest tools and lots of experimentation. On the other side, there's the corporate development world, which is far more conservative and resisting change. Then the conversation turns to progressive enhancement, making new versions of web pages using modern tools and letting the old pages serve older browsers until its no longer needed. IE8 has one year of life left, its time to move!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Still resisting going to WPF? Billy is here to help! Carl and Richard chat with Billy Hollis about the ever-improving ability of WPF to build great looking desktop applications. Billy talks about techniques for getting the most from WPF and paths for new developers to take to be successful. There's a huge array of options out there in WPF, it can be terribly confusing to know where to get started. WPF is eight years old - as old as Visual Basic ever got! Shouldn't everyone be using it by now?Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

One more alternative energy Geek Out - generating power with water! The conversation starts with hydroelectric power, but then moves to tidal and wave power. Some work, some don't, and it's not just about the technology either, how the business models are built matter a lot. But there's a lot of energy from wave and tides to be had, the trick is knowing how to capture it! From tidal barrages to underwater turbines, buoys, snakes and air turbines, there are a lot of approaches to capturing this massive power resource.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Duck punch your JavaScript lately? Todd Gardner talks to Carl and Richard about the practice of changing object behaviors in JavaScript for good or evil. After an explanation of how duck punching (or monkey patching, pick your favorite silly term) works, the discussion turns to the dark side of how hackers can intercept your Javascript library calls, capture keystrokes and otherwise subtly change your web pages. Could you tell? Then Todd dives into using your powers for good - strategies for testing, aspect-oriented programming and so on. Duck punching does have significant limitations, so use sparingly, but when it works, its amazing! (NOTE: no ducks were harmed in the making of this podcast)Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Richard talk to Dominick Baier and Brock Allen about the new version of Thinktecture IdentityServer. As Dominick explains, as soon as you have more than one web application that needs authentication, you want to go to a centralized authentication and authorization scheme, and that's where IdentityServer comes into play. Working with oAuth2 and OpenID Connect, you can create identities for your users from Active Directory, other IMAP stores or just a plain old SQL Server. Take your authentication strategy to the next level!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Ready to think beyond the SPA? John Papa talks about the continuing evolution of HTML 5. Carl and Richard chat with John about web components, an evolving standard to make JavaScript libraries more extensible and organized. AngularJS comes out in the conversation as well, especially version 2 with its breaking changes - but you don't need to migrate if you don't want to. V1 will continue development. John also digs into his current suite of tools for building, deploying, and debugging web pages. The technology is maturing, and that means better tools!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Can computing cure cancer? That's Evelina Gabasova's goal! Carl and Richard talk to Evelina about her work using machine learning and data analytics to understand the genetics of cancer, its variations and subtypes. Part of her goal is to get to personalized medicine - where your doctor uses your genetic information to determine the ideal treatment, custom-made for you. So how does that involve statistics? Evelina talks about her evolution from computing into informatics and the various tools used to analyze data deeply, rather than widely - including F#!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

How many different ways can you store data? David Simons knows at least ten! Carl and Richard talk to David about a wide variety of data storage approaches. Some are SQL, some are NoSQL, but David digs into each one talking about strengths and weaknesses. The conversation digs into the idea that using one data store for all purposes is archaic - while it always depends on your application's needs, have two, three, or four different data stores isn't crazy! David talks about various classes of data stores including graph, object, time series, relational, and more... there are lots of ways to store your data, and with the right store, coding and maintaining get easier! The trick is to deal with the essentials of every data store: reliability, backup, and recovery. Here's a great list of choices for your app!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

What does Sharepoint Development look like today? Carl and Richard talk to Sahil Malik about the amazing changes that have happened to the Sharepoint development community with the impact of Azure and Office 365. Sharepoint used to be a very insular development environment, separate from everything else, but today it is expected to interact with cloud services, on-premise system and a variety of clients, including iPhone, Android, WinPhone and more. Sahil talks about gluing all the pieces together - you can't build it all yourself!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Do you know about Google Cloud? Brad Abrams does! Carl and Richard talk to former Microsoftie Brad Abrams about the other big cloud player - and there's a lot to say. Brad starts out focusing on the Platform-as-a-Service offerings of Google such as the App Engine which lets you run Python, Java, PHP, and Go in the cloud with all the scaling options you could ever want. Rather a virtual machine? The Google Compute Engine handles that, with Windows as an option coming soon! Then the discussion turns to containers: lightweight, OS-agnostic virtual machines that work with Google Container Engine and scale with Kubernetes. And that's still only the beginning; there's storage options of all sorts and Brad's favorite bits, great tracing and debugging tools. There's room for a third player in the public cloud world!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

While at NDC in London, Carl and Richard moderated a panel of Ben Hall, Peter Mounce, Jeff French and Enrico Campidoglio to talk about the state of DevOps in the .NET world. While DevOps is going strong in the open source world, it is coming slowly to .NET. The panelists discuss their preferred toolchains for speeding deployment, testing and instrumentation of software, as well as the cultural changes that have happened in their organizations as an effect or demand of DevOps. The conversation also turns to looking at the tools Microsoft is building to support DevOps vs. the open source tools that are adding Windows and .NET support. There's still a long ways to go!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Jonathan Pepper is back with another great Xamarin case study! Carl and Richard talk to Jon about the Hanx Writer, an iPad application made with the help of Tom Hanks to recreated the mechanical typewriter experience on a tablet. Remember skeuomorphism? Here is an awesome manifestation! Jon talks about the process of creating the effects of three different mechanical type writers in an iPad application, including the keyboard, sounds of keystrikes, even the fonts! But most amazingly, the app is built using Xamarin, and not just for the cross-platform capabilities, since the app is only out for iPad at the moment. Jon just loves C#!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

While at NDC London, Carl and Richard talked with Bryan Hunter about the language Elixir. Bryan tells the story of how the folks behind Ruby got interested in Erlang, thinking to bring some of Erlang's features to other languages - but then discovered it was impossible, since Erlang is its own operating system. So instead, they created a new language within Erlang, and that is Elixir. Taking the favorite features of many languages including Ruby, C#, F# and others, Elixir makes for a pleasant programming experience while still having the power of Erlang behind you. Check it out!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

While at NDC London, Carl and Richard talk to Enrico Campidoglio about including databases in your continuous delivery process. Enrico talks through a few different strategies for getting your database moving as fast as your application, without losing data along the way. The conversation digs into issues around version control for databases, keeping schema and reference tables in your source control system, and recognizing that database updates don't happen at the same time as application updates - there can be updates before and after, or otherwise independent of the application itself. Lots of little tips and tricks for managing your database updates more effectively!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

While at NDC in London, Carl and Richard sat down with Mark Rendle to talk about the latest version of Simple.Data - version 2! Simple.Data started out years ago as a simple abstraction for data access, all open source with numerous additional projects built on it to support a huge variety of data stores. Mark talks about going back into his old V1 project and realizing he did some interesting twists and turns to make it work, and how a rethink of the design brought out the idea of V2. The conversation also digs into the fundraising efforts he did to incentivize getting an alpha version of V2 together. Lots of fun digressions on various projects and ideas as well!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Another great show from NDC London, Carl and Richard talk to Ben Hall about Docker. Docker has been taking the industry by storm, bringing a lighter-weight approach to virtualization by getting the operating system out of the package and focusing on automated configuration and implementation. Ben talks about the origins of Docker and its focus on the Linux world - but that is rapidly changing with Microsoft promising an implementation running on Windows. The potential of Docker for facilitating efficient development is obvious, but could this change how we use applications as a whole?Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Richard got the amazing opportunity to go to the NASA Goddard Space Flight center to see the James Web Space Telescope in person. And while there, they sat down with Craig Tooley, the Project Manager of the Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission (MMS) to understand a bit more about space weather and the remarkable science and engineering that goes into a mission like MMS. The MMS mission utilizes four identical spacecraft flying in formation to measure plasma interaction effects between the Earth's magnetosphere and the sun. The goal of MMS to capture (by flying through) a magnetic reconnection event, where a huge amount of plasma energy is discharged. As with most things in the universe, reality is a complex thing, and the MMS is at the forefront of our understanding of the universe, at least around our planet!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

At the NDC London conference, Carl and Richard talk to Steve Sanderson about his work on the Azure Portal and building arguably the greatest Single Page Application (SPA) around today. Steve talks about the approach the Azure Portal team has taken to deal with memory management as well as a flexible plugin architecture that allows the various Azure related teams to plug into the common "shell" component of the Azure Portal. The conversation digs into the challenges of SPAs as the scale and utilization goes up. You can make it work, but it isn't always simple! Steve also discusses the choices you can make around SPAs, it's not just about AngularJS, there are many ways to build a SPA toolchain.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

While at NDC London at the Excel Center, Carl and Richard talked to Phil Trelford about building your own compiler. First off, why would you do that? Phil talks about the various ways that compiler technology can be used and help improve your own understand of languages and tools. You probably don't need to replace the C# compiler for your applications, but you might want to use parsing technology to provide algorithmic support in your applications. The power of F# is apparent when you start working on compilers, with its amazing pattern matching and parsing capabilities. Phil also mentions some toolsets to make experimenting with compilers easier, check out the show links for more info!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

While at the NDC London conference, Carl and Richard talk to Liam Westley about building your own software business. It starts with the idea that the most destructive thing to your software business is support calls - or more broadly, the accumulated cost of your past business. The conversation digs into the power of being a business of one, rather than having employees, and thinking beyond just your development work, digging into all the other aspects of business: marketing, sales, accounting, and so on. As Liam says, starting a software business is easy, staying in business is hard!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

While at NDC in London, Carl and Richard talk to Shay Friedman about the Chrome Developer Tools. The conversation starts out talking a bit about the state of web development, the jump in JavaScript performance, and the huge increase in the complexity of web applications - which naturally leads to the challenge of debugging said JavaScript-based applications. Enter the Chrome Developer Tools. Firefox was the original web developer browser, but Chrome has slid into that slot with more capabilities than ever. More than just element inspection, the Chrome Developer Tools let you look at your web application executing on the browser. Shay talks about tracking down memory leaks in complex Javascript code, where many variables are created, but few are destroyed. You need these tools in your kit!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations