.NET Rocks!

Carl and Richard talk to Einar Høst, Jonas Winje and Bjørn Einar Bjartnes about their experiences using Reactive Extensions to control an AR Parrot Drone. The conversation starts out with a discussion on the fundamentals of reactive extensions, the idea of raising events around streams of data, and how that applies to something physical like a drone. Quickly, the core issue becomes time - we think about computing as instantaneous, and real life takes longer than that! A very geeky discussion about a cool way to program in real life.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

While at DevReach in Sofia, Bulgaria, Carl and Richard moderated a panel on Javascript libraries with Phil Japikse, Dan Wahlin and Justin Searls. The conversation starts out exploring the panelists' favorite libraries and combinations of libraries hereafter referred to as 'tribes.' Lots of discussion on Single Page Applications, mobile web and library management.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

While at the Belfast stop of the .NET Rocks Ireland Road Trip, Carl and Richard talked to the one-and-only Martin Woodward! Martin discusses the state of Team Foundation Server today and source control in general. The conversation ranges over the evolution of source control, the effects of the internet on creating distributed version control and how Git, SVC, HG and many other version control systems all get along. Great thinking from a guy who's spent years deeply immersed in source control!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

While at the Manchester stop of the UK Road Trip, Carl and Richard talked to James Lewis and Matt Collinge about micro service architectures. James served as a consultant from ThoughtWorks to comparethemarket.com where Matt is the lead architect. The conversation started out talking about the challenges that comparethemarket.com had with it's architecture a few years ago - an all too familiar problem of every new feature making the core applications less scalable, less stable and harder to maintain. James and Matt then dig into the process that comparethemarket.com went through to redesign the applications using micro services to simplify and strengthen the applications over time. Great architectural discussion!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Richard talk to Rockin' Ronnie Shewchuk about making barbeque - real barbeque, the low heat, slow cooking approach that turns tough hunks of meat into yummy goodness. The conversation starts out talking about the different regions of barbeque, like Texas, Tennessee, North Carolina and more! Ronnie also talks about different cooking systems - smokers, grills, charcoal, wood, and more! Barbeque is chemistry, delicious, delicious chemistry - you need to do this!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

While on the .NET Rocks NDC UK Tour, Carl and Richard stopped in London to talk to the one and only Dan North. Dan discussed his latest projects, changing the way large organizations (like Bank of America!) do development, making work more fun, more creative and more efficient at the same time. Disruptive change? You bet! Disruptive change for the better!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Richard talk to Troy Hunt about hacking yourself - testing your web site's defenses before someone else does! The conversation starts out talking about FireSheep and the need to use SSL everywhere. If you log in, you should be using SSL! Troy runs down a list of the common exploits you should test against, like SQL injection and cookie spoofing. There's also a discussion around cross-site scripting and X-Frame-Options. There are some simple things that script kiddies can do to exploit your site - you should do them first, and then defend yourself!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Richard talk to the one-and-only Kim Tripp about physical database design - and why it's still important. The conversation starts out talking about the state of SQL Server today, its maturity and how it works well enough that it's often ignored until there are problems. Kim talks about a 30-day blog series written by the SQLSkills team about being an accidental DBA - you didn't want to take care of a SQL Server, you just are! Always fun to talk to Kim!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Richard try something new - doing a mob style interview about mob programming! Mob programming takes agile to a new extreme where several people (more than two) work together to write code... resulting in very high quality code! The conversation digs into the actual process of writing code (drivers and navigators), the various roles that participants fall into, how more minds end up with more code reuse, testing, QA and the great sense of connection that comes with mob programming. You gotta try this!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Richard talk to Todd Anglin from Telerik about cross-platform development for mobile. The conversation focuses on Telerik's Icenium hybrid mobile development solution. Todd announces that Icenium now has a Visual Studio plug-in so that you can do your development in the environment of your choice. This leads to interesting possibilities with KendoUI, another library from Telerik that lets you build mobile web apps with native look-and-feel on different phone platforms - now you can turn them into hybrid apps!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Richard talk to Andrea Magnorsky and Andrew O'Connor about their experiences building games in .NET. The conversation starts out talking about the role of MonoGame and how Andrea and Andrew switched to Duality to build Honorbound. Andrea talks about working with artists and the need for visual editors that Duality provides. Andrew talks about the loss of XNA and the challenge of being an indie game developer - there are no good homes these days! Lots of discussion about the right way to distribute games. Game development in .NET is real! Make sure you activate your Windows Azure credits in your MSDN Subscription! You could win an Aston Martin!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Richard talk to Rob Eisenberg about DurandalJS. DurandalJS is a library for facilitating building Single Page Applications (SPAs). It works along side jQuery, Knockout and RequireJS as well as CSS libraries like Bootstrap and Foundation. Rob talks about how DurandalJS came to be as a logical path from his MVVM framework, Caliburn.Micro. Much discussion about interoperating with other libraries like RequireJS, jQuery, Knockout as well as comparisons with Angular and Ember. Rob builds great things! Make sure you activate your Windows Azure credits in your MSDN Subscription! You could win an Aston Martin!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Richard geek out on asteroid mining - the goal that could change mankind forever! After an initial conversation about the problems with sending humans to Mars (in a word: RADIATION), the topic turns to asteroid mining and those crazy folks at Planetary Resources. Richard attacks the idea of justifying asteroid mining with high value minerals and digs into the cooler idea - manufacturing in space. Once you solve the problems of prospecting, extraction and refining resources in space, you can start assembling into things! What do spacecraft and satellites look like if you don't care about lifting them from the Earth! Lots of fun thinking here! Make sure you activate your Windows Azure credits in your MSDN Subscription! You could win an Aston Martin!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Richard talk to Matthew Podwysocki about the latest news around Reactive Extensions. Matthew starts out talking about how Reactive Extensions has moved into open source in a big way, with lots of cross platform support - .NET, JavaScript, C++, Ruby, Python, even Java itself! The conversation digs into the thinking around the reactive approach to development, dealing with massive streams of data and tying event trapping over it. Lots of great thinking about modern development concepts! Make sure you activate your Windows Azure credits in your MSDN Subscription! You could win an Aston Martin!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Richard talk to Chris May about building applications for the Google Glass. The conversation starts out talking about the fundamental capabilities of Glass, how it works and when/where it makes sense to use - and apparently driving is NOT one of them! While the native programming environment is Android (and locked down for the time being), there is a cloud-centric REST model with programming support for almost anything including .NET! Lots of discussion around wearable computing in general - is this the next iPod or the next Newton? Make sure you activate your Windows Azure credits in your MSDN Subscription! You could win an Aston Martin!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Richard talk to Eric Boyd about what the power of Netflix Chaos Monkey can do to your cloud application. The conversation digs into the thinking around deep testing for highly available systems - it's not what you think of, it's what you never thought about! Eric digs into the thinking around testing in production (what happens when you're too big to test?) and how the various part of the SimianArmy, including Chaos Monkey, are byproducts of very large scale applications in the cloud. You don't choose Chaos Monkey, Chaos Monkey chooses you! Make sure you activate your Windows Azure credits in your MSDN Subscription! You could win an Aston Martin!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

While at That Conference, Carl and Richard moderated a panel on women in technology. Before the panel started the audience watched She++ the Documentary. Great thoughts on how to address the inequality of gender in technology! Make sure you activate your Windows Azure credits in your MSDN Subscription! You could win an Aston Martin!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Richard talk to Russ Unger about his work in wireframing user experiences. The conversation starts out talking about the differences between wireframing and prototyping, as well as the role of design in modern applications. And the occasional mention of the deprecated BLINK tag. Russ talks about a design effort between himself and three friends, each using different tools to design the same application. The results are a surprise! Make sure you activate your Windows Azure credits in your MSDN Subscription! You could win an Aston Martin!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Richard talk to Chris Williams about building and programming robots - all kinds of robots! After Carl opens with a conversation about the Internet of Things, Chris digs into the cool tiny computers that make it possible, like Arduino and Raspberry Pi. Communicating with small computers takes cleverness too, so don't forget about serial and serial's grown-up cousin USB. From there, the conversation turns to different robots, especially quadcopters. Chris brings up his focus on getting kids more interested in computing - and embracing that they will always think about computing differently than we do! Get out there and change the world!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Richard talk to Guy Starbuck about his use of Azure Blob Storage as part of his continuous delivery solution. Guy starts out talking about how blob storage was built to handle huge files (like VHDs) but works just fine with small files - and is very cost effective! From there, Guy talks about how he's able to use Blob Storage to place Click-Once applications of his clients for testing purposes, making it easy to include his remote customers in the continuous delivery process. Great way to think about using the cloud for testing!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

It's show 900! While at That Conference, Carl and Richard recorded the 900th episode in front of an audience. The topic - geeking out on Automated Driving. The conversation starts with the history of automated driving, including the DARPA Grand Challenge initiatives. From there, the boys dig into how the Google car works, using LiDAR. Automated driving is inevitable (Sergey Brin says five years!), to the show ends with a discussion of how these cars will come into the market - you'll probably never buy one, just rent it when you need it!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Richard talk to Bob Uva about instrumenting production software with New Relic. New Relic works with Ruby, Java, .NET and more, able to instrument applications end-to-end in production. And there's a free version you can use forever - how cool is that? Bob talks about how the instrumentation system works, reporting back to New Relic servers to give you great visualization of what is actually going on in your web application. Listen also for a great digression on engaging kids with programming also - another passion of Bob's. It's time to get instrumented!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Richard talk to Jeremiah Peschka about implementing Hadoop in the .NET world. Jeremiah starts out the discussion pointing to a blog post he's done on the Basics of Hadoop (check the links) and how the focus of Hadoop is on the cloud - pre-configured Hadoop solutions in the cloud make life easier, but you have to get the data there. Jeremiah digs into the diversity of tools available to work with Hadoop - you can use SQL-like commands, or build your own controlling code in C#. And what about data mining? Big Data is here to stay! Don't forget to activate your MSDN Azure account and be automatically entered to win an Aston Martin V8 Vantage!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Richard talk to Chris Sells about his experimentation with TypeScript. The conversation starts out with a discussion about the pervasiveness of C# and how the Mono Project brought .NET to a wider audience than just Windows. From there, Chris talks about a variety of languages beyond JavaScript, including TypeScript and others (check out the links). Ultimately the conversation circles back to JavaScript and mobile development, talking about the use of WinJS and the Cordova-derived web-based development solutions including Telerik's Icenium. Great thoughts from one of the best in the industry! Don't forget to activate your MSDN Azure account and be automatically entered to win an Aston Martin V8 Vantage!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Richard talk to Joe Kuermerle and Alex Papadimoulis about automating deployment as the path to a DevOps world. The conversation starts out talking about the real impact of DevOps, bringing developers and operations folks closer together. A key part of the process is to automate everything you can, including deployment. Part of the conversation is BuildMaster, which is free for up to five seats, providing the glue to get automated deployment working effectively. You need the process and culture to have DevOps make sense, and then good tools can accelerate the process. This is the future of application development! Don't forget to activate your MSDN Azure account and be automatically entered to win an Aston Martin V8 Vantage!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Richard talk to Chris Riley of Cloudshare about testing applications in the cloud. Chris talks about how the cloud provides a low-cost diversity of environments so that you can iterate more quickly through designs and implementations of code. Even if your organization isn't prepared to put their applications into production in the cloud, taking your testing environment there is possible and palatable! Don't forget to activate your MSDN Azure account and be automatically entered to win an Aston Martin V8 Vantage!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Richard talk to Fabio Matsui about working effectively with creative personnel in an organization. The conversation starts out just defining what we mean by design - the different types of designers (UX, visual, motion, graphics, etc) and their role in the team. Fabio then dives into the challenges of putting different mindsets together to create synergy - where the result is greater than the sum of its parts. Great teams make it possible to do amazing things!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Richard talk to Scott Stanfield about his experiences with Node. The conversation begins with a discussion on building software in the heterogeneous client environment of today. Scott also digs into his love of programming at the command line and how he configures his Mac in the CLI style. He also digs into his love of Node and the power of Node Package Manager (NPM) along with a number of other libraries (check out the links! Scott sees Node as a key ingredient in getting people engaged in development again - simple, clear and with immediate feedback. This show is as much a look forward as a look back!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Richard chat with legendary Mark Minasi of Mastering Windows fame. While Mark largely focuses on the IT side of Windows, this conversation digs into the topics that developers will find especially interesting. Mark talks about the good and bad of Windows 8, how PowerShell is an awesome tool for IT Pro and an even more awesome tool for developers! The line between the roles has blurred! There's also a brief discussion about side-loading Windows 8 applications, it's still harder than it needs to be. It's not just about goodness of Windows 8, it's about the reality of what is hard and easy.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Richard talk to Cory Fowler from Microsoft about how developers can put together a continuous delivery solution on Azure. The conversation starts out with a discussion about the core concepts of continuous delivery - integrating build and testing together with lots of automation to create a minimum number of manual steps as possible. Cory describes how Azure becomes the environment for development, QA and production, and how the MSDN subscription can help at each step of the way. Lots of tools are discussed, there are many ways to get to this level of automation.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Richard talk to Phil Haack about his latest work at GitHub. The conversation starts out talking about semantic versioning, just trying to establish a coherent set of documents about how versioning should work. Phil then talks about licensing around GitHub, discussing a new service at GitHub to make it easier to select a software license - running down the differences between MIT, Apache and GPL licenses, and more! The discussion then digs into GitHub for Windows, or rather Phil's efforts to make GitHub generally more friendly for .NET developers. Lots of cool new features!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Richard talk to Dan Wahlin about his experiences building web pages from a Silverlight perspective. The conversation starts out talking about how XAML isn't going away - there's lots of WPF development going on out there today. And Silverlight too! Microsoft has finally published some guidance around all of these technologies, check the links for the white paper. Dan also digs into how skills and expectations like data binding from technologies like Silverlight have changed web development - just look at the proliferation of libraries!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Richard talk to G. Andrew Duthie about his work with .NET Gadgeteer. The whole concept of .NET Gadgeteer is to make it easy to build small electronic devices without needing to solder anything together AND be able to program in .NET! Andrew talks about his projects, including a hand-controlled helicopter, and his experience building custom modules for .NET Gadgeteer. The conversation explores a bunch of projects, availability of hardware and the vast array of community built hardware available. You need to try this!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Well, you knew it was coming - a geek out on whiskey. Carl and Richard talk about all kinds of whiskey, starting with Scotch whiskey as the foundation for how whiskey is made, and then digging into the differences in Irish whiskey and bourbon. The different grains, maltings, fermentation, barreling and post-processing techniques are all discussed. Making whiskey is an amazing and ancient art, and the boys have been studying it for awhile... perhaps a bit too closely!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Richard talk to Kit Eason about how you can get your organization using F#. Kit talks about his work using F# and how he retrained himself to use the language effectively. It only takes a few days! He makes some awesome suggestions for approaches to learning the language effectively and the advantages that it brings. We're living in a polyglot world where the best language is used in its best role... and F# has a role!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

While at the Norwegian Developers Conference (NDC) in Oslo last week, Carl and Richard moderated a panel talking about the state of functional programming in mainstream development. The discussion reached back in time to languages like Haskell and Erlang, and looked forward at JavaScript and it's vector to seemingly take over the world. Even if you're not well versed in functional languages, this was a great discussion.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

While at NDC, Carl and Richard talk to Jez Humble about Continuous Delivery. Jez discusses the difference between continuous integration and continuous delivery and how nothing matters until your code actually gets to the customer. So no shipping parties until it does! The conversation digs into the overall story of DevOps, how development and operations need to work closer together to continuously deliver value to the customer - which is more about culture and process than it is about tools.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

While at NDC, Carl and Richard talked to Scott Guthrie about the latest Azure features including the announcements from TechEd. Scott talks about new support for developers in Azure, including monthly Azure credit for all MSDN subscriptions and per minute billing for developer testing on Azure instances. Even if your app isn't running in the cloud, you can use the cloud to do your testing. The conversation digs into continuous delivery in the cloud - Scott mentions New Relic as an instrumentation package for your production applications to gain deep insight into how your cloud applications are actually being used.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

While at the Norwegian Developers Conference, Carl and Richard chatted with Jon Skeet about Async and Parallelism. The conversation starts out with a BKaF on parallel exception handling and a reader comment about F# and parallelism. Jon chimes in on both these subjects, talking about all the challenges around error handling, parallel or otherwise, and he knows (and doesn't know) about F#. Throughout the conversation there are short discussions on his effort to teach his sons programming as well. Great insights from Mr. Skeet!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Richard talk about space telescopes - but first, a comment about Thorium Molten Salt Reactors and a Kickstarter for a Thorium documentary called The Good Reactor. Also on Kickstarter is Arkyd, the space telescope that anyone can use - get a picture of yourself in space! The conversation then digs into space observatories, there are literally dozens up there today. Everyone knows about Hubble, but what about Compton, or Spitzer or Chandra? There are different observatories for different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. Richard brings up Kepler, the little telescope that has detected hundreds of earth-sized planets around other stars. And don't forget about the upcoming replacement for Hubble, the James Webb Telescope!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

At DevTeach, Carl and Richard talk to Kate Gregory about smart clients. As Kate says, quoting Don Box, 'they're not dead, they're done.' The conversation digs into WinForms, Silverlight and WPF. They aren't changing much, but they definitely work. Kate talks about the various projects she's working on that depend on smart clients - accessing different processes, specific hardware requirements, etc. It's old developer day!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Richard talk to James Kovacs about functional programming with JavaScript. Functional programming with JavaScript? What can't JavaScript do? James starts out talking about underscoreJS, a key library to simplify functional programming and provide some awesome features to keep your web pages running well. The conversation also digs into Single Page Applications in the context of functional programming, where you can go wrong, and why you want these tools in your toolbox to build the best web applications you can.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

While at DevTeach, Carl and Richard talk to Kathleen Dollard about going beyond Async. And when she says beyond Async, she means the other amazing things in .NET 4.5. First up, the portable class libraries. Then Kathleen dives into Event Tracing for Windows classes that can let you do advanced logging in your applications. The conversation also dives into the dangers of the inline update that is .NET 4.5 from .NET 4.0... especially with the updates! Lots of subtle challenges with the latest incarnation of the .NET framework - and lots of possibilities!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Richard talk to Kevin Kline about the latest features in SQL Server 2012. The conversation starts out talking about the new features that developers will love, like windowing - no need for cursors anymore, you can request a window of records from a set and move easily window-to-window. Kevin also talks about the new column store index that is especially useful with repeating data. There's also a discussion on the role of SQL Server in an increasingly NoSQL world, along with cool new technologies like Hadoop, Cassandra and Hekaton. Kevin closes with an offer of some free tools at SQL Sentry, including Plan Explorer, a tool to help you understand the query plans that SQL Server makes from your queries. Check it out!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Richard talk to John Papa about Single Page Applications (SPA) - building web applications that operate on a single page for the duration of execution. John talks about the evolution of web design that has led to the SPA concept - the pros and cons of the approach as well. From there the conversation digs into the sets of open source libraries for making SPA easier to build and maintain. There is no one right way and lots of choice out there, check out the links below!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Richard talk to Michele Leroux Bustamante about her experiences creating startup companies. Michele talks about getting started with a new company, deciding whether or not to take external funding from investors or just bootstrapping the company yourself, and how cloud technologies like Azure and programs like BizSpark have lowered the cost of infrastructure so that the main expense of a startup is wages. The conversation also digs into all the important things that developers don't know about being successful with a startup - it's not just about software! And don't forget about the dirty jokes at the end of the show!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Richard talk to Derik Whittaker about his experiences migrating from being a XAML developer to being an HTML developer. The conversation starts out talking about the death of Silverlight - or at least the severe neglect! From there, Derik describes the group of tools he uses to bring MVVM design patterns to HTML development. Along with some weird digressions on WinForms, this is a fun show and a great starting point for anyone ready to leave Silverlight behind!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Richard talk to Tim Huckaby about the latest developments around gesture computing. The conversation covers the latest version of the Kinect SDK (with grip!), as well as SoftKinetic, Panasonic D-IMager and Leap Motion. Tim also speculates on some of the new things coming from Microsoft with Xbox and Kinect (leaked specs in the links below), and how gesture is here to stay. It's everywhere already!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Richard talk to Marc Mercuri and Mark Simms about resilient cloud architecture. The conversation starts out focused on the white paper called 'FailSafe' and the guidance it provides for building resilient cloud applications - but the information is applicable to any large scale system running on any sort of infrastructure. While the topic area is huge, Marc and Mark break down the concepts into understanding your application, finding failure points, planning for failure (it's going to happen!) effective instrumentation and more. Lots of great thinking on how to build apps that can survive the huge tsunami of success.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Richard geek out on nanotechnology - and it's a huge subject! The conversation starts out with a proper definition of nanotechnology, as well as the original thinker in the space: Richard Feynman. Nanotechnology is far more than the original science fiction ideas of tiny robots and 'grey goo', it has expanded into super strong materials, particles that transport medicine and amazing two-dimensional crystals with remarkable properties, like graphene. We're only scratching the surface of nanotech with this show, write us a comment if you want to hear more!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations