.NET Rocks!

Carl and Richard host a now-rare telephone-based conference call (remember when these were cool?) with Glenn Block, Henrik Nielsen and Darrel Miller about Web API. But first the conversation has to deal with the reality of having Henrik Nielsen on the call - a former graduate student of Tim Berners Lee and a guy who worked on the very beginnings of the World Wide Web! But the main topic is Web API and the reasons, strengths and approaches to using Web API.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Richard revisit nuclear power with Rod Adams, who has spent most of his career working in nuclear power. Rod talks about his experiences running nuclear reactors in US Navy submarines and then digs into nuclear power generations world wide. The discussion digs into the differences between light water and heavy water reactors, the role of breeder reactors and the reality that nuclear waste isn't waste at all - its carefully stored and contained for eventual reuse in more modern reactor designs. Rod also shares his thoughts on up-and-coming nuclear technologies including thorium, pebble bed and travelling wave.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Richard talk to Demis Bellot about ServiceStack, a set of tools for building web services and MVC web sites with incredible performance. Demis talks about his thinking behind ServiceStack, its support for a diverse set of protocols and how it compares to WCF and WebAPI. The conversation also dives into Google's Protocol Buffers, an extremely lean protocol even faster than JSON for web services as well as Dart, Google's optionally typed, higher-level language that transpiles to Javascript. Awesome conversation with a hugely smart guy!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Richard talk to Martin Woodward about Microsoft's announcement of integrating Git into Visual Studio and TFS. Martin talks about Microsoft's thinking about why and how to add Git support to Visual Studio and TFS. Then the conversation digs into the different configuration options - the Git tools work even in Visual Studio Express! Martin compares the differences of using Git directly from Studio as well as via TFS. It's a cool time to be a Studio programmer!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Richard talk to Jamie Wright about what .NET Developers can learn about Rails.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

While at CodeMash, Carl and Richard collected some great stories. First up is Evan Hauck, who digs into CUDAfy, a library on Codeplex that allows you to run C# code (any IL code actually) on your GPU. The second story is about Jessie Shternshus and her company The Improv Effect. Jessie talks about how she uses improv to help teams work together more effectively. Another awesome CodeMash!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Richard talk to Andrew Brust about Big Data. Andrew starts off connecting together the definitions of business intelligence, data analytics, OLAP, data warehousing and big data. They're all related, even though they've come at the problem of understanding data from different directions. The conversation digs deeply into Hadoop, the Linux-centric MapReduce technology that has come to define the idea of Big Data, as well as Microsoft's implementation once called Project Isotope and now known as HDInsight. How big is Big Data? That's up to you!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

While at CodeMash in Sandusky Ohio, Carl and Richard moderated a panel discussion on the death of agile. The panel quickly agrees that agile isn't dead at all - it's become so mainstream that it is discussed less and less. A bigger discussion is what exactly agile is - a topic addressed by audience member Jon Kern, who was part of the group that developed the agile manifesto.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Richard talk to Richard Astbury about migrating applications to Azure. The conversation starts out dealing with the basic idea of why you would migrate to the cloud - typically right before you have to buy more hardware to scale up or replace existing equipment. Richard then walks through the various challenges of migration, including migrating data, determining the particular style of cloud you want to use, maximizing advantages while minimizing cost. He talks about the fact that Java applications can be easier to migrate into Azure worker roles, since they tend to live in a sandbox and not touch the restricted elements of Windows inside the Azure world. Richard also digs into bootstrapping, providing links to tools to facilitate getting a worker role instance up and running with all the bits you need. Finally, the conversation digs into taking advantage of Azure - optimizing designs to reduce cost as well as utilizing the resources of Azure including Azure Fabric, Service Bus, diagnostics, etc.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Richard talk to Rob Reynolds about Chocolatey - a global PowerShell execution engine. But first, the conversation digs into the Chuck Norris Framework! Yes, that's right, a framework based on violent karate moves, Rob talks about Roundhouse, a migration and source management tool for SQL, as well as DropKick, a deployment framework and UpperCut, a template build manager. There's more to Chuck Norris than just these bits, check it out in the show notes! Finally the conversation comes around the Chocolatey, aka apt-get for Windows. Rob talks about how ChocolateySupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Richard talk to Thiago Silva and Jeff Hewitt about building applications in Azure. The good? Scaling, deployment and costs. More good - great tools and information from Patterns and Practices. The bad? Getting coherent monitoring together. The conversation digs deep into Azure level monitoring, web level monitoring and application level monitoring. How do you relate the data together? What measurements matter? How do you get to the point where you have a dashboard that shows you the health of your application? Finally, there is the ugly - and it's called licensing. Thiago and Jeff talk about how some license models (like per-machine licensing) just don't work in Azure. Good stuff for getting serious about Azure!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

The first geek out of 2013, Carl and Richard talk about nuclear power. Much feared and maligned, Richard walks through the principles of atomic theory, how neutrons are the key to the whole process and why Uranium-235 is so much more important than Uranium-238. The conversation also dives into some alternative nuclear power concepts including Traveling Wave Reactors, Pebble Bed Reactors and Thorium Salt Reactors. But they steer clear of fusion - that's another show!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

At the inaugural DevIntersection conference in Las Vegas, Carl and Richard hosted a panel to discuss what developers should care about in 2013. The panel of Scott Allen, Kate Gregory, Michele Leroux Bustamante and Woody Pewitt covered a huge spectrum of topics, including web development, client development on multiple platforms, cloud technologies and mobile development. Did we cover everything? Write comments below!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

At the San Francisco stop of the .NET Rocks! Visual Studio 2012 Road Trip, Carl and Richard sat down with Ward Bell in the GitHub offices to talk about his experiences creating breeze.js. Breeze.js focuses on the plumbing needed to make Single Page Applications (SPA) on the web work well. Ward talks about key pieces of Breeze including caching, validation, automated object mapping and more. He admits his inspiration is Silverlight and how it handled this plumbing so well. Now it's available in Javascript as well!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

While at the Los Angeles stop of the .NET Rocks! Visual Studio 2012 Launch Road Trip, Carl and Richard sat down with Phil Haack to talk about Git and GitHub. The conversation starts out with a primer on Git itself and its origins as a distributed source control for Linux. Then Phil discusses how GitHub created a more social environment for Git with pull requests and dialog around code. Phil also talks about how GitHub itself operates as a non-hierarchical business and what that means to his work day, his career and his prospects for a raise. A little NuGet sneaks in there too!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

While at the Irvine stop of the .NET Rocks! Visual Studio 2012 Launch Road Trip, Carl and Richard chatted with Brian Randell about the DevOps movement and it's application in the Microsoft world. DevOps focuses on the concept of bringing developers and operations together to iterate software more quickly, so that your applications are continuously delivered with continuous feedback and continuous quality. That's a lot of continuity!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

While at the Houston stop of the .NET Rocks! Visual Studio 2012 Launch Road Trip, Carl and Richard sat down with Venkat Subramaniam to talk about development in the modern era.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

While at the Orlando stop of the .NET Rocks! Visual Studio 2012 Launch Road Trip, Carl and Richard stopped at the Better Software conference to have some conversations about fast development cycles. The first conversation is with Jesse Dowdle, who has a web app shipping new versions several times a day, with great visibility into the production environment to get feedback rapidly to developers. The second conversation is with Mathew Bissett, working for the UK Government, who participated in bringing an application that shipped a version every nine months down to 22 weeks, then to 6 weeks, and now daily and looking to go even faster! How fast can development cycles go, and what does it take to speed them up?Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

While at the Bentonville stop of the .NET Rocks! Visual Studio 2012 Launch Road Trip, Carl and Richard sat down with Matt Nunn to talk about his vision around Modern Apps and the Modern App Lifecycle.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

While in Orlando for the .NET Rocks! Visual Studio 2012 Launch Road Trip, Carl and Richard stopped in at the Better Software conference to talk to Ken Pugh about Acceptance Test Driven Design. Ken describes the core concept of involving the 'triad' of business stakeholder, developer and tester when writing user stories and capturing tests at the same time - tests that are described to the satisifaction of all three parties.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

At the Jacksonville stop of the .NET Rocks! Visual Studio 2012 Launch Road Trip, Carl and Richard sat down with former co-host of .NET Rocks! Mark Dunn to talk about his experiences with MVC. The conversation starts out talking about the old days - when Carl and Mark both taught .NET. Mark has continued to train, but these days focuses on MVC. He compares the modern web application approach of MVC with the old days, talks about strengths and weakenesses and how you can get the most out of your web application.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

While on the .NET Rocks! Visual Studio 2012 Launch Road Trip stop in Orlando Florida, Carl and Richard stopped into the Better Software conference and interviewed Scott Ambler about his work helping companies implement agile development practices. The conversation starts out talking about the scalability of agile practices, how waterfall is hard to get rid of, and common mistakes that organizations make implementing agile. Scott also digs into the DevOps movement, talking about how all stakeholders in an application, including operations and tech support, need to be part of the process.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

While at the Orlando stop of the .NET Rocks! Visual Studio 2012 Launch Road Trip, Carl and Richard talk to Steve Evans about his work instrumenting applications in production. Steve talks about how to understand the log files coming out of Internet Information Server, and how you can analyze the log files to improve the performance of your site.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

While at the Better Software show in Orlando during the Road Trip, Carl and Richard talked to Dan North about how development teams can manage uncertainty. Dan talks about how software planning can change to being more discovery based, knowing what is unknown. That process gets people talking and learning from each other and ultimately creates excellent plans.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

While at the Tampa stop of the .NET Rocks! Visual Studio 2012 Launch Road Trip, Carl and Richard talked to John Papa about building Single Page Applications (SPAs).Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

At the Tallahassee Code Camp stop of the .NET Rocks! Visual Studio 2012 Launch Road Trip, Carl and Richard chatted with Udi Dahan about development practices, architecture and methodology.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

On the .NET Rocks! Visual Studio 2012 Launch Road Trip, Carl and Richard stopped in at the NoVa Code Camp in Reston, Virginia and talked to Oren Eini about the role of NoSQL in modern application development. Oren explores the compromises that developers make to work with relational databases - compromises that are made by reflex, with almost no thought. He makes the case that in many cases, building applications that store data in NoSQL stores (including RavenDB) are simpler, more reliable and faster to develop. So what is the role of SQL Server in this new world? Listen to find out!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

While at the Louisville stop of the .NET Rocks! Visual Studio Launch Road Trip, Carl and Richard sat down with Alex Robson to dig deep on what it takes to be a successful polyglot programmer. Alex talks about the characteristics of different languages - not just their syntax, but also their idioms and culture, and how that affects their role in building software. He talks specifically about C#, Javascript (largely in the form of node.js) and Erlang.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

While at the Charlotte stop of the .NET Rocks! Visual Studio 2012 Launch Road Trip, Carl and Richard sit down with Rocky Lhotka to talk about his latest incarnation of CSLA. Yes it's true, Rocky has gotten CSLA running on Windows 8 in the Windows Store (formerly known as Metro) mode. Rocky talks through the challenges of making CSLA work - how do you live without reflection? The conversation turns more philosophical about the direction of development as whole. Computing is undergoing a major inflection point!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

While at the Atlanta stop of the .NET Rocks! Visual Studio 2012 Launch Road Trip, Carl and Richard talk to Julie Lerman about Entity Framework 5.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

While at the Philly stop of the .NET Rocks! Visual Studio 2012 Launch Road Trip, Carl and Richard talk to Glenn Block about Node.js, WebAPI and China. The conversation digs into the philosophical differences of Node, JavaScript outside the browser, and starting from a blank slate of services, rather than the 'everything-on' model of yester-year. Glenn also talks about his experiences in China, engaging the local development community in Shanghai, and the tools and preferences there.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

While at the New York stop of the .NET Rocks! Visual Studio 2012 Launch Road Trip event, Carl and Richard talk to Kim Tripp and have to drink from the SQL Server firehose! Kim runs down the key things she thinks developers need to know about making their databases perform well today and tomorrow as their application becomes bigger and more successful.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

While at the Boston stop of the .NET Rocks! Visual Studio 2012 Launch Road Trip, Carl and Richard talk to Don Syme and Keith Battocchi about F# 3.0. Don and Keith talk about their roles in building F#, still being part of Microsoft Research and working with Microsoft's Developer Division in Redmond. The conversation also digs into F#'s ability to create type providers for accessing internal and external data as if it is part of the language. Call it the ultimate extension to IntelliSense!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

While at the Toronto stop of the .NET Rocks! Visual Studio Launch Road Trip, Carl and Richard talked to Michele Leroux Bustamante about her experiences running a start-up using Azure. Michele talks about how she's been able to bootstrap her startup company SnapBoard with no external funding. The conversation digs into how you can get free Azure services using MSDN, BizSpark and BizSpark Plus, as well as the process of doing a lean start up - don't build more than you have to and get as much feedback as you can!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

While in Columbus, Ohio on the .NET Rocks! Visual Studio 2012 Road Trip, Carl and Richard talk to Alan Stevens and Leon Gersing about leading a group of developers in a project. Alan and Leon tell stories of how they evolved into leaders, talking about the things they did right and wrong (mostly wrong). The conversation also explores how you can grow as a leader of developers without giving up development, and how to deal with the poisonous people in your organization. Great thinking from great leaders!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

While at DevReach in Bulgaria, Carl and Richard moderated a panel on architecture with panelists Steve Smith, Miguel Castro and Charles Nurse. The conversation ranged over a broad swath of architecture topics, talking about brownfield and greenfield design, different scales of architectures, the tension between developers and architects, how to do both roles at once, and more!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

While at DevReach, Carl and Richard hosted a panel on web performance with panelists Steve Smith, Kent Alstad and Paul Carvalho. The conversation starts with the challenge of good instrumentation, different techniques, and values for measuring performance. The panel also explores load testing, caching and other performance techniques - lots of deep dives into hard concepts!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

On the .NET Rocks! Visual Studio 2012 Road Trip stop in Chicago, Carl and Richard sat down with Tony Surma of Microsoft to talk about disaster relief. During the discussion Tony announces a new initative being supported by Microsoft called the Humanitarian Toolbox. The goal of the Humanitarian Toolbox is to improve the response capabilities of lead disaster response organizations by creating a toolbox of software that can be stood up quickly when needed. Want to help save the world with software? Contribute!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

At the Omaha stop of the .NET Rocks! Visual Studio 2012 Launch Road Trip, Carl and Richard chatted with Bill Wagner. Bill talks about the approaching tidal wave of change coming in computing, between tablets, mobile, cloud and more. Rather than focus on the technology, Bill focuses on how individuals cope with change to move forward into a new world still be able to produce good code.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Richard talk to Dr. Yngve Falck-Ytter about his efforts to understand programming. Yngve talks about the limitations of the software in the medical industry and how he's learned to work around it with some of his own programming. Ultimately the conversation digs into the idea that good software can make treatments more effective and less expensive and, in the end, save more lives.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

What happens when you put Chris Sells and Scott Hanselman on the same stage at the same time in front of 200 folks in Portland? Have a listen!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Richard talk to Ian Felton about his charity efforts. Ian talks about exercising different programming skills on different charitable projects so that he has a chance to get code into production with a lower set of demands. Ian also talks about a charity he started called Marching Mountains for getting used instruments out of closets and into the hands of students in marching bands of disadvantaged counties in Appalachia. Ian's message to us is to get involved in something you're passionate about!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Richard talk to Alex Robson about polyglot programming. Alex talks about various languages including Erlang. He focuses on the idea that different languages have different strength, and trying to function in a monoculture of only one programming language limits your ability to solve problems efficiently. The conversation goes on to talk about the different patterns of development available once you stop thinking about the limits of your language!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Richard talk to Alan Stevens about leadership in software development. Really, leadership in everything. The conversation digs into the issues of trust, value, play and food being key to success in leading any kind of project. Alan tells some great stories about how to make leadership work. If you're looking to lead, this is a show for you!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Richard talk to Jon Rozenblit about the latest set of features in Azure. The conversation starts with a discussion about Azure Mobile Services, which is really a REST storage system that doesn't need to involve mobile at all - maybe they'll fix the name! Next, with Richard's encouragement, Carl talks about his need for virtual machines and Jon digs into the features of the new virtual machine features in Azure. Jon also tackles the challenge of pricing, running on premise and how the new features in Azure make things easier for moving from on-premise to cloud and back again. Great conversation if you're ready to take a fresh look at Azure!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Wow, show 800! Carl and Richard invite Scott Hanselman and Rob Conery to chat about what happens when you make 800 podcasts in a row.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Richard talk to Phil Trelford about the new features in F# 3.0, the version shipping with Visual Studio 2012. Phil talks about how F# is functional first, object second, as opposed to C# which is object first, functional second - but the two languages work together fine. He also digs into using F# with XAML to do UI related work. The conversation turns to projects using F# including it's role in Halo 3! F# is at its magic third version! Check out the ton of links to this show, all sorts of great stuff for getting started with F#.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Richard talk to Chris Patterson about MassTransit, an open source enterprise service bus. The conversation starts out talking about service bus in general, how the patterns around a service bus make it easier to build large, multiversion applications with the fewest dependencies possible. Chris sets MassTransit in context with large, expensive service buses like Biztalk. He also digs into some of the other projects he's worked on, including TopShelf (for building Windows services) and Magnum (the mother of all toolkits). The boys also ask Chris about his focus on open source, the advantages and disadvantages around licensing, pricing and support. Amazing smart guy with some awesome code!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Richard talk to Mark Seemann about building web applications using Web API and REST. The conversation starts out with the hard part - so what is REST exactly anyway? Mark digs into the history and meaning behind REST and the challenges that those practices bring to real world web applications.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Ready to geek out on Mars? Carl and Richard chat about the Mars Science Laboratory's arrival at Mars. Richard digs into the history of Mars exploration, from the Mariner missions in the 1960s to the amazing Viking landers in the 1970s, and finally to the modern era with the loss of Mars Observer and the triumphs of rovers like Sojourner, Spirit, Opportunity and finally Curiosity. The conversation goes on to the future of Mars exploration - what about a sample return mission? What will it take to get humans on the surface of Mars?Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations