.NET Rocks!

How can the command line be cool? Carl and Richard talk to Richard Turner, freshly back into Microsoft, and working on the Bash on Windows project. So why would you want a Linux command line prompt? As Richard explains, there are cool bits of code you can create on your Windows box but don't really behave all that well - some Ruby Gems, etc. Having Linux, real Linux, running in Windows helps all t...

Ready to code for XBox One? Carl and Richard talk to Tom Spilman about his efforts to bring MonoGame to the XBox One. When the XBox One came out a few years ago, it did not support Microsoft's Indie game platform, XNA. MonoGame has stepped up to fill that role. And as an extra perk, it runs on everything - iOS, Android, Mac, Playstation and Nintendo devices. And of course, everything is coded in C...

Are there startups running .NET? Sure! Carl and Richard talk to Alec Lazarescu about his experience running LearnBop. The applications are built in .NET, but being a startup is about more than just programming languages. Alec talks about having the agility of a startup, being able to rapidly scale while tightly controlling costs - there's only so much money in a startup! To get startup dynamics, y...

Ready for JavaScript on the server? Carl and Richard talk to David Gatti about building the backend with nodeJS. The conversation starts out with why to use node - its not always an obvious answer! The philosophy of node moves away from the "do everything" web server of IIS and into turning on just what you want. With node you specify where you're listening and what you're listening for, and can c...

Have you checked out Microsoft Band? Carl and Richard talk to Charles Stacy Harris about his work building Band apps. The Band is stuffed with sensors, strapped to your wrist, which opens the door to a ton of interesting information. Stacy talks about several programming options for the Band, including the web tiles that will essentially push an RSS feed onto the band. There's also SDK development...

Time for an Aurelia update from the man himself! Carl and Richard talk to Rob Eisenberg about the latest developments in the Aurelia project - and what a year it has been! Rob talks about the architectural decisions in Aurelia that allowed for rapid development and an ability to just grab the bits of the library that you need. Lean-ness is the new mantra in JavaScript libraries, and as few custom...

When do you choose Cordova over Xamarin and vice versa? Carl and Richard chat with Brian Noyes, who has built apps on both stacks and talks through the details! The conversation starts out on Cordova, which takes a bit of effort to assemble a coherent code-build-debug cycle from. As Brian says, your productivity is directly measureable by how quickly you can get around that cycle, and he's worked...

Microsoft as a Service? Carl and Richard chat with Jeremy Thake about all the goodness coming from the Office 365 team and beyond in the Azure space. Jeremy describes the new Microsoft Graph, which literally provides REST calls to Microsoft related products, starting with Office. The story continues with web callbacks to provide event driven ways to capture activity within accounts on services lik...

Microsoft buys Xamarin! While at Build, Carl and Richard chatted with Nat Friedman and Miguel de Icaza about what the acquisition of Xamarin means. The big news is that the Xamarin tools for making iOS and Android apps are now part of Visual Studio - all versions, right down to the Community Edition. And there's more (of course), so have a listen. Miguel digs into what this means for the average ....

MSDeploy can do it! Carl and Richard talk to Robert Schiefer about his experiences using MSDeploy to automate complex deployment solutions throughout the enterprise. Robert talks about the fact that MSDeploy is part of WebDeploy and includes a ton of features that are not always obvious - doing far more than just installing software, it can also modify security settings, update registry keys, even...

What do you know about genetically modified foods? Time for a Geek Out! Richard starts with some history as usual - humans have been modifying food plants for 12000 years! With selective and cross-breeding, humankind has managed to create and modify domesticated plants and animals in remarkable, and sometimes shocking ways. So genetic modification has been going on a long time now - why is there s...

Ready for the new Angular? Carl and Richard talk to John Papa about Angular 2 being in beta. And really in beta - John mentions that for the past few betas, updating his samples have only taken a few minutes, not hours. The conversation also dives into the controversy around the significant differences between Angular 1 and 2, although John sees it as simplification. A lot of ceremony that existed...

How is C# 7 coming along? Carl and Richard talk to Kathleen Dollard about her involvement in the very public process that is the open source development of the next C#. Kathleen talks about how there are issues in the GitHub repository for Roslyn that are actually design notes - summaries of the current thinking on the new features coming. Where things get really exciting is the comments on those...

How do you build cross-platform desktop applications? Carl and Richard talk to Curtis Wensley about eto.forms, an open source project he started back in 2006 to deal with cross-platform challenges. Originally focused on mobile, Curtis recognized that Xamarin was moving seriously into that space and pivoted to the desktop side, just in time for Silverlight to go into limbo. Under the hood, eto depe...

Ready to transpile your Javascript? Carl and Richard chat with Craig McKeachie about BabelJS, an open source tool for transpiling Javascript. Why would you want to do that? So you can write in the latest version of Javascript and still have it run everywhere! Craig talks about how the rate of evolution in Javascript is increasing, and the jump that is ECMAScript 6, also known as ECMAScript 2015, m...

Where do development patterns fit into your world? Carl and Richard talk to Gael Fraiteur about the evolution of PostSharp into a library for implementing patterns. The combination of aspect-oriented programming and patterns is powerful - providing a means to implement a pattern while keeping it separate from your business code. Gael explores one particular pattern - multi-threading. Postsharp imp...

What's missing from most document data storage technology? Carl and Richard talk to Jeremy Miller about Marten, an open source document data store library that runs on top of PostGreSQL. Why would you run a document store on top of a relational database? For the features! Jeremy talks about how PostGreSQL brings the backup systems, development tooling and all that DevOps goodness to Marten. Under...

Can you continuously deliver software on Azure? Carl and Richard talk to Jeffrey Palermo about his approach (and toolkit) to do continuous delivery - and Azure makes it far more feasible! The conversation starts out with some definitions, recognizing that the development community has been working its way toward faster delivery of value to customers for a long time - it's part of the Agile Manifes...

How do you manage your software releases? Carl and Richard talk to Kevin Mack and Brandon Rohrer about the various tools that come together to help automate software releases. The focus on this approach is a product formerly known as InRelease by InCycle, which was acquired by Microsoft back in 2013. Now it's known as Release Management Services for VSTS and deeply integrated with the Studio tools...

Have you used the biggest, most complex Single Page Application (SPA) in the world? It's the Azure Portal! Carl and Richard talk to Jakub Jedryszek, one of the folks building the framework that runs the Azure Portal. Jakub talks about the portal framework being built on TypeScript and Knockout so that all the different Microsoft teams building Azure products don't get delayed in delivery because t...

What does Virtual Reality and XAML have to do with each other? Carl and Richard talk to Laurent Bugnion about his work around building virtual reality software. The challenge, as Laurent puts it, is the whole 3D issue. Building 3D software is tricky, and the tooling is hugely important. The conversation turns to tools like Unity3D, which is very popular in the 3D space. But can XAML do the job? Wh...

So where are containers and microservices going? While at NDC London, Carl and Richard hosted a panel discussion with Michele Bustamante, Mark Rendle and Ben Hall to talk about microservices and the role that containers play in making microservices manageable and practical. Docker is the most well-known of the container services, but its not alone, and the panel debates the relative merits of the...

Do agile development practices make economic sense? Carl and Richard chat with Matthew Renze about his views on the economics, psychology and science behind agile development. The conversation turns to the benefits of agile done well - moving rapidly to build effective solutions for a business. This touches a lot of points that developers care about, like their software actually being used and bei...

How do you get started with machine learning? On the last stop of the Scot Net Rocks tour, Carl and Richard talked to Gary Short about his work independently and now with Microsoft building machine learning solutions for a large variety of companies. Gary talks about the evolution of machine learning, and how the cloud has become a critical part of the equation. With the cloud, you can harness as...

How can you bring change to your organization in an agile way? While on the ScotNetRocks tour, Carl and Richard talked to Chris McDermott about his experiences bringing agile to companies, and how that affected change. The conversation explores the idea that companies are actually highly resistant to change - change represents risk, and risk should be avoided. How do you really embrace change? Chr...