.NET Rocks!

How many ways can you run containers on Azure? Carl and Richard talk to Tom Kerkhove about his experiences working with Azure container solutions. The conversation starts out talking about Azure Functions, which under-the-hood are handled in containers - but you don't control those containers at all. You can run Web Apps in Containers or use the Azure Containers Instance. Azure Service Mesh also supports containers, and then there is the Azure Kubernetes Service. Tom helps sort these various options out - they each can help you in different ways!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Time for an Identity Server update! Carl and Richard talk to Dominick Baier and Brock Allen about Identity Server. The conversation starts out focused on the evolution of security over the internet in the first place, including an update to OAuth - version 2.1. Then the conversation turns to IdentityServer itself, and how to sustain and grow development on it. Dom and Brock talk about building open-source software for the long term. The answer for them is Duende Software, a company they have created to support IdentityServer into the future - check it out!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

How secure is your software? Carl and Richard talk to Maya Kaczorowski of GitHub about The State of the Octoverse Security Report - one of three annual reports coming from GitHub about how software is being built. Maya talks about how software vulnerabilities are found and fixed, including the amazing statistic that vulnerabilities on average exist in code for four years before being detected! Also, the criticality of the vulnerability doesn't seem to increase the speed to fix - what does make a difference is automation. Automated build and deployment pipelines, including security analysis early in the process - those are the things that make our software safer!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Happy New Year! To ring in the New Year, Carl and Richard talk Geek Out for a couple of hours! Topics include the Pandemic, Renewable Energy, the latest in Space and Electric Cars. Yeah, that's right, all the hits in one show! Richard talks about how our understanding of COVID-19 has evolved, and the impact of genetic technology and new vaccine concepts are advancing our response. On the power side, the growth in wind and solar, the state of fusion power, and a look at modular nuclear reactors. And then SPACE - it's been a good year for SpaceX, flying astronauts to the space station, launching lots of Starlink satellites, and the development of Starship. But also China on the Moon, Japan on an Asteroid, and Perseverance on the way to Mars! Finally, a dig into the state of electric cars - they're coming of age and here to stay. Yeah, it's a long one, but a great listen while you recover from New Years... here's to a great 2021!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

.NET 5 is shipped! What happens now? As part of the .BLD() Tech Talks XXL event in the Netherlands, Carl and Richard streamed interviewing Scott Hunter about .NET 5. The conversation turns to how the scope of .NET 5 focused in on how to help projects move from the standard framework onto .NET 5. Scott also dives into the ever-improving performance of .NET, the latest version of Blazor, and the adoption of WinForms in .NET 5 - and what's coming for .NET 6!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

What does it take to make a flight simulator in C#? On a smartphone? Carl and Richard talk to Laura Laban about her experiences building Infinite Flight - starting with the Windows Phone in 2011! The conversation follows the history of using C# in smartphones, from WinPhone 7 through to MonoTouch, MonoGame, and Xamarin! Laura discusses the challenges of tooling getting deprecated, platforms going away, and the vagaries of app stores!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

What can you use Blazor for? Carl and Richard talk to Georgia Nelson about GifBot, a Twitch bot Georgia has built using a variety of tools and languages (including Java) and today is C# and Blazor. Georgia talks about evolving the bot from version to version, looking for ways to make it easier for Twitch streamers to use. From WinForms to WPF to Blazor, the UI has taken a few turns, but Blazor works great in the role of user interface!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

With a new version of .NET out, it's time for a new version of Nuke! Carl and Richard talk to Matthias Koch about Nuke V5 - synchronizing the version number of Nuke with the version of .NET. Matthias talks about the philosophy of Nuke, focusing on creating builds using C# with package references and class inheritance. This leads to a conversation around build maintainability - making sure every developer on the team can contribute to the build, and that certain build classes can be used in multiple build projects!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Ever pivoted halfway through a software project? It happens in filmmaking too! Carl and Richard talk to Shawn Wildermuth about his experience making Hello World the Film. Shawn talks about starting out wanting to make a love story about being a programmer - and how anyone could be one. Until he discovered that it wasn't true: That getting into software development does require a certain amount of privilege. The conversation then dives into how the film explores the problems in diversity in software and the things we can do to get better. Go see it!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Can you make open source projects in the Microsoft ecosystem and live to tell the tale? Carl and Richard talk to Aaron Stannard about his view of the Microsoft open-source ecosystem, including the challenges of building and maintaining Akka.NET. Aaron talks about Microsoft being good producers of open source but not good consumers of open source - they still have that not-invented-here viewpoint on things. The conversation turns to either making an open-source project that is popular but ultimately consumed by Microsoft, or profitable because it lives in the long tail that Microsoft won't explore. But could there be a better way?Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Good user interface design makes your company money! Carl and Richard talk to Billy Hollis about his latest work around understanding the return on investment that exists with user interface design. Billy talks about a spreadsheet he's been using in presentations to actually look at the cost associated with bad UI designs, that require more keystrokes, more searching, more time and more frustration. Great UX design leads to users that work faster, consume less resources for each task and a happier work environment. Good UX is worth it!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Cake is shipping! Carl and Richard talk to Mattias Karlsson about Cake, aka C# Make. First on the show in 2016, Cake has been through a lot - all the twists and turns of .NET Core, becoming a cross-platform product - it's not easy to be a good build system! But things are stable now and version 1 is released. Mattias talks about how Cake fits into your build pipeline, working with many other components as needed. The conversation also turns to extensibility and the awesome community that has grown around it - have a slice!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Everyone wants AI - but where's the business value? Carl and Richard talk to Joel Hulen and Kyle Bunting about building machine learning models and what they can do for business. The conversation starts out with the typical AI-destroys-the-world debate, recognizing that these tools are just that, tools. Using them responsibly is important, but so is focusing on business value. What can this technology help with? Usually, the first goal is not the goal delivered!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

A new .NET Foundation board is elected - what does it mean for you? Carl and Richard talk to Layla Porter about her new role on the .NET Foundation board and the goals of the foundation to grow its membership, bring more open source projects into the fold, support the maintainers of those projects and to broaden the reach of .NET everywhere. Layla talks about finding new ways to connect with folks in the .NET community and the challenge of evolving a young foundation.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

The pandemic is sending a lot of work to the cloud - are you ready to move? Carl and Richard talk to Mike Richter about his work helping companies move .NET applications into the cloud. Mike starts out with the hard truth, that moving your virtual machines into the cloud can get expensive. Better to take advantage of the Azure platform, starting with AppService. There's a lot you can do with existing software, and even more if you're willing to recompile. Check it out!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Can a development environment be online? Carl and Richard talk to Anthony van der Hoorn about GitHub Codespaces - the consolidation of a number of online development solutions from Microsoft including Visual Studio Online. Anthony talks about unifying the online dev environment for Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code - recognizing that the two tools are very different! And there is the option to explore code directly in the browser as well. You have more choices than ever for writing code!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

What happens when an open-source experiment becomes software people care about? Carl and Richard talk to Jamie Rees about his experiences creating Ombi - an open-source project that helps people managing Plex servers to handle requests from friends and family for more content. Jamie talks about creating Ombi as an experiment with NancyFX that soon evolved into something lots of folks needed and wanted. The conversation dives into the challenges of managing a popular open-source project, both from a technical, personal, and professional perspective.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Build better distributed apps with Dapr! Carl and Richard talk to Haishi Bai about his work on Dapr, the open-source framework for building microservices with an event-driven, portable runtime. Haishi talks about the challenges of building modern distributed apps, with elements running in the cloud, on PCs, mobile, and IoT devices. There's also a variety of languages, platforms, and patterns as well. Dapr sits in the middle, abstracting away specific services so that you can keep your app running where ever it needs to be. Check it out!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Machine Learning has been around for years, what does it look like today? Carl and Richard chat with Zoiner Tejada about how he approaches machine learning today, starting with a focus on data. The bulk of the work for using machine learning is focused on sources, quality and bias in data. Zoiner talks about using data lakes to organize data simply, and be able to filter it for processing quickly. Often, it makes sense to duplicate data for processing efficiency! The conversation then dives into the role of algorithms, training and testing, and what it means to be a data scientist.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

What do you do when COVID-19 cancels your internship? Write an app! Carl and Richard talk to Theodora Tataru about her experience creating an application using Xamarin to help with tracker her college grades. Theodora talks about learning the tools, the libraries, and the various techniques to making a Xamarin app - including asking for help! College Diary is just starting to arrive in the app stores - and Theodora is starting her career as a developer!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

What are the Microsoft 365 APIs and what can you do with them? Carl and Richard chat with Glenn Block about his new role at Microsoft, working with Graph. Glenn talks about how Graph actually serves are a part of a larger "intelligent substrate" that covers all of Microsoft 365 and more. In the end, the substrate is a set of APIs that are used by Microsoft product teams and third-party developers alike. More to come!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

F# turns five - not five years old (it's more than ten years old!) - but version five! Carl and Richard talk to Phillip Carter from the F# team about what's coming in F# 5. Phillip talks about the past few years of F# being focused on getting fully onboard with .NET Core - and now is the time to go further. The conversation dives into adding capabilities to interactive mode of F# including working easily in Jupyter Notebooks. More ability to manipulate data means more power for all of us, check it out!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Sure you can build .NET apps on Azure - but what about Amazon AWS? Carl and Richard talk to Robb Schiefer about his work building .NET Apps on AWS. Robb digs into the various reasons you might use AWS, while admitting that the two clouds are pretty comparable. But like Azure, AWS has good integration into Visual Studio, supports lots of versions of .NET and offers other cloud-based services that you need. AWS is an excellent option for .NET apps!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

It's Show 1700! For a bit of fun, Carl and Richard invited the six most frequent guests on .NET Rocks over the past eighteen years - Michele Bustamante, Rocky Lhotka, Billy Hollis, Kathleen Dollard, Tim Huckaby, and Phil Haack. The conversation digs into memorable moments on the show for each of the guests, plus lots of commentary about making shows, the state of the industry, and favorite funny (if maybe a bit off-color) story. From the first show in August of 2002 to now... thanks for being with us for eighteen years. We are grateful.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

What is the right way to secure your applications? Carl and Richard talk to Christos Matskas and John Patrick Dandison about the various security offerings made by Microsoft for application developers. Christos and JD talk about Azure Active Directory B2C and the upcoming Microsoft Identity Web libraries on GitHub. The conversation explores reasoning for rolling your own security - which is almost never the right solution. Let the existing tools make your life easier when it comes to recovering passwords, using multifactor authentication, and more!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Got Silverlight apps? Carl and Richard talk to Giovanni Albani about the OpenSilver project - building an open-source version of Silverlight that runs without a plugin, using WebAssembly. Giovanni talks about companies he has communicate with that have Silverlight apps with hundreds of thousands of lines of code - not a simple thing to rewrite. The goal of OpenSilver is to let you migrate those applications.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Grenades with love! Carl and Richard talk to Sebastien Lambla about the state of the .NET open source ecosystem today, the role that Microsoft plays in it, and what the .NET Foundation could do in the future! Seb talks about the challenges of making open source projects in the .NET ecosystem when Microsoft gets involved - and how tough it is to stay involved when a megacorporation goes a different way. Is it damaging the ecosystem? The conversation turns to the value of diversity and the potential to make the ecosystem better. A key factor is the .NET Foundation - and voting is open as of July 21!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

What's coming in C# 9? Carl and Richard talk to the Mads Torgersen, the leader of the C# team, about the rapidly approaching C# 9. Mads explains that with .NET 5 coming in the fall, he felt there should be a new version of C# as well - so in less than a year since C# 8, they're going to have another version! That being said, the feature set of C# 9 is not as aggressive as it was in C# 8, with a focus on making immutable coding easier. And the whole development process is being done in public, on GitHub. So if you want to check out the bits, go for it!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Ready to simplify and organize your MVC app? Carl and Richard talk to Steve Smith about his open-source project called ASP.NET Core API Endpoints. Steve digs into the problems around the controller part of MVC - as a project gets bigger, it gets harder to manage all of the elements associated with a controller. His Endpoints library cleans up this issue, to transform the MVC pattern into the Request-EndPoint-Response pattern, with simpler code and an easy project to manage. Check it out!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

How do you do static testing in your applications? Carl and Richard talk to Patrick Smacchia of nDepend - one of the original testing products for .NET, stretching back to the very beginning! Patrick talks about how nDepend has grown over the years to provide a variety of tools for helping you to visualize the quality of your code, and to detect code smells - that is, aspects of code that may indicate a problem. The conversation dives into building out rules in projects to do static evaluation as code is created so you can catch problems early, to determine when its time to refactor older code!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Are there alternative versions of VB.NET? Soon! Carl and Richard talk to Marc Hoffman of RemObjects Software about Elements, their cross-platform compiler for Oxygene (Object Pascal), C#, Java, Swift, Go and soon, VB.NET. Marc discusses the relationship between platforms and languages and the idea that, at least for this array of languages, they can all work together. The conversation dives into why you might want to take an existing Java app, compile it in Elements, and then build C# components for it. And then there's VB.NET - the Mercury Element. Coming soon to a cross-compiler near you!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Ready to go to Maui? Carl and Richard talk to Scott Hunter about the .NET Multi-Platform App UI or MAUI for short. Scott talks about how the next versions of .NET are focused on unifying the elements that go into .NET to make One .NET. And that includes the UI stacks - including Xamarin! The evolution of Xamarin into .NET means that all UI stacks will be treated equally. And that leads to the .NET Multi-Platform App UI, letting you make a single project that covers Windows, OS/X, iOS and Android. Coming soon to a .NET near you!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Is VB.NET dead? Kathleen Dollard says No! Carl and Richard talk to Kathleen about a recent blog post from Microsoft about VB.NET not coming to .NET 5. Kathleen talks through the decision-making process that led to the blog post - not the death of VB.NET, but keeping VB.NET stable while C# is going through such significant changes. No, VB.NET is not going into maintenance, the same team is continuing to work on it - it's just going in a different direction from C#!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

How do you test your Blazor app? Carl and Richard talk to Egil Hansen about bUnit, an open-source testing framework designed to work with Blazor - both the server-side Razor components and the WebAssembly client. Egil talks about building bUnit to allow for robust testing, that is, tolerant to the normal changes that come to an application without breaking all the tests. The conversation also turns to growing the bUnit project with more contributors, a wider set of features, and perhaps being part of the .NET Foundation!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

What's your cross-platform development solution? Carl and Richard talk to Kenzie Whalen about the Uno Platform, where you write C# and XAML for Windows and are able to deploy via Xamarin to iOS and Android... and to browsers via WebAssembly also! The conversation digs into how UWP is evolving, and the approaches you can take to keep your codebase as common as possible between all the platforms. But there are always variations from platform-to-platform. Kenzie also talks about how some of the new hardware, like Surface Duo, will impact development - more cool stuff is coming!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

How are shared APIs evolving in the new decade? From the online version of NDC Porto, Carl and Richard chatted with panelists Shawn Wildermuth, Irina Scurtu, and Heather Downing about the right things to do around APIs. Are you just exposing your database to the internet through APIs? Or do you have specific use cases? What about REST vs GraphQL? How about versioning APIS - can you ever turn the old versions off? Lots of great thoughts about the modern API!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Time for some chocolatey goodness! After seven years, Rob Reynolds is back chatting with Carl and Richard about the Windows application package manager that you want to use! Since the last show in 2013, Chocolatey has grown up, become a commercial product with a great open source free version. And there's a GUI - you can help your non-technical friends and family automate application installation and updates! But more typically, you use Chocolatey to build out your development environments in an automated way. Make paving your machines easy!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Ready for a challenge? Carl and Richard talk to Heather Wilde about her work with the Air Force on innovation projects called AFWerx. Heather talks about the different kinds of projects that the Air Force is interested in, and how anyone (who is an ally of the US) can submit projects. And if your project is successful, you can build some business around it, working with the Air Force! Check out the links in the show notes for more information.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Are there Silver Bullets in Development? Carl and Richard chat with Mark Seemann about the 1986 Fred Brooks essay No Silver Bullet. Mark argues that there are silver bullets - but do we notice them? The conversation dives into technology like the Internet (maybe you've heard of it?) changing the way we do software development: Providing rapid access to resources, answering your questions, and simplifying deployment. Mark also talks about automated testing to shorten cycle times, how modern distributed source control can help you work faster and more!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Jon Skeet is the first show recorded since the COVID-19 pandemic was declared - so its pretty far ranging! Carl and Richard discuss Carl's recovery from the virus, and then chat with Jon about what life is like for him in this new world. The conversation also digs into the Better Know a Framework around VB.NET going into maintenance, challenges with nodatime and versioning and more!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

What's up with CSLA? Carl and Richard talk to Rocky Lhotka about his ubiquitous framework for managing business rules and user interfaces. Rocky talks about the latest version with support for Blazor, along with many other popular UI solutions including Web Forms, WPF even Silverlight. Rocky talks about the challenges of taking care of an open-source project for so many years, including some issues around NuGet. The conversation also dives into the power of Blazor and how CSLA makes it even easier to build great apps!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Did you know there is a separate Azure for government? Carl and Richard talk to Vishwas Lele about his work with Azure Government, specifically the version for the US Government. Vishwas explains that there are a number of data centers around the world set up as sovereign data centers for the local government. They comply with various government-related security standards and have a restricted set of features. They cost more too! But if you want to do business with certain governments, working within these specialized versions of Azure can be very lucrative!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Still using jQuery? Chris Love asks why! Carl and Richard chat with Chris Love about modern web development; and the fact that what jQuery does today is largely built into JavaScript. Chris talks about the state of JavaScript back in 2006 when jQuery first came along and how the move to HTML 5 and more mature versions of JavaScript have moved the bar far enough that you can let it go. So why is adoption still growing? Often jQuery and other libraries are included by reflex, not thought. Time to do some thinking!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

What are GitHub Actions, and why should you care? Carl and Richard talk to Enrico Campidoglio about how GitHub evolves under Microsoft and the addition of GitHub Actions to expand CI/CD capabilities directly in GitHub. Enrico talks about how typically build services of continuous integration with GitHub have to be set up elsewhere - but GitHub Actions solves that, and adds some new capabilities. The discussion turns to building Docker containers as part of GitHub Actions and the power that represents - use it wisely!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

What is pair programming like in 2020? While at SWETUGG in Stockholm, Carl and Richard chatted with Stacy Cashmore about her experiences using pair programming to build quality software - and a stronger team in the process! The conversation digs into the idea that the goal of programming is not typing, but rather thinking hard about understanding a problem and building an efficient way to solve it. The best way to do that is to talk it out with someone else!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

It's 2020, and AI technology is all around us. What are the consequences? While at NDC London, Carl and Richard hosted a panel discussion with Tess Ferrandez, Brandon Satrom and Evelina Gabasova about the state of AI today and the ethical considerations we have to think about, including bias in data, impact on work and decision making. As it was recorded in front of an audience, there are questions from the audience toward the end of the show!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

How and why would you mix Angular and Reactive Extensions? While at NDC London, Carl and Richard chatted with Sandi Barr about her work building reactive applications where the front-end is Angular. Sandi talks about how Angular has ReactiveJS built-in and why you want to use reactive in your applications where you have streams of data you need to look at, but not capture every bite of. Reactive is a cool pattern of development, you should add it to your repertoire!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

How do you implement multifactor authentication in your application? While at NDC in London, Carl and Richard chatted with Christine Seeman about what it takes to add multifactor authentication support to your application. Christine talks about all of the great tools that exist today to make it easier to put authentication tools to work. But then the tricky part comes - how do you get your users to take advantage of them!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

How do you get started with vue JS? While at NDC London, Carl and Richard talked to Gwendolyn Faraday about how she teaches people to develop with vue. Gwen breaks down what makes vue distinct as a development framework, and how you go about building, testing and deploying web apps. Want to build a native mobile app? Vue does that too!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Technology doing good! While at NDC in London, Carl and Richard sat down with Carmel Eve and Jess Panni to talk about a project with OceanMind to use machine learning technology to track ships committing illegal acts. The conversation explores the nature of illegal fishing, but also how ships are used to smuggle drugs, human smuggling and slavery. OceanMind has worked on these problems for years, and the Endjin team has moved them onto Azure to increase their capabilities - an exciting story of AI!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations