.NET Rocks!

Carl and Richard chat with Rob Conery about his open source project called Biggy. Biggy is a project in GitHub that puts a wrapper over top of Postgres (and SQL Server for that matter) to allow you to handle documents (aka JSON) efficiently and fast. Rob takes on thinking around noSQL in general, including graph and document databases. This leads to a whole discussion on what we should store and w...

While at the ModernApps2013 event in Mountain View, California, Carl and Richard got a chance to sit down with David Chappell and get his views on the changing landscape of software and software development. David talks about how applications have evolved into a devices+services model, where parts of the application live in the cloud, and the rest live in the various form factor devices that we al...

Carl and Richard talk to Neil Danson about his experiences with F#. The conversation starts off connecting Carl's thoughts on neural networks and a listener question - so what is the role of F# in the big data analytic world? Neil digs into how F# has permeated all types of development in the .NET world, even WPF! There's also some serious discussion about quality of code in F# and how Bob Martin'...

Carl and Richard chat with David McCarter about what it takes to be successful when you are interviewed for a job. But David goes well beyond just the interview - are you pursuing the right job for you? Are you looking for it the right way? The conversation digs into the value of recruiters and difference between good ones and bad ones. And when it comes to the interview itself, what preparation s...

Carl and Richard talk to Hilton Giesenow down in South Africa about what it takes to build real enterprise-class SharePoint systems. Hilton talks about the history of SharePoint and how it's twists-and-turns have left a bad taste in the mouth of some developers. The conversation also digs into the infrastructure side, which is unavoidable when it comes to SharePoint - there are lots of moving part...

Carl and Richard talk to Benjamin Howarth about his experiences working with Umbraco. Umbraco is a CMS system built in ASP.NET. Benjamin discusses how Umbraco has become a key part of his work with Universal Music - and how its affected the entire development practice. After a digression into DevOps, the conversation comes back around to what you need to know to be successful with Umbraco - where...

Carl and Richard talk to Michael Kennedy about using Python with .NET. Michael talks about the nature of Python and what makes it great (like whitespace counting). The conversation digs into the many forms of Python, some Windows friendly, some not so much, and many with specializations. Don't miss the discussion about the Zen of Python, and check out the huge collection of links for various Pytho...

Time to geek out on Bitcoin! Well, more than Bitcoin, let's talk cryptocurrency in general. But first, a history lesson - Richard runs down the fundamentals of currency and banking from the neolithic era, ancient culture, the middle ages, all the way to today. The history lesson sets the stage for why cryptocurrencies have come into being. While there are many cryptocurrencies, the boys focus on B...

Carl and Richard talk to Tatham Oddie about his work with Neo4j. The conversation starts out exploring the core concepts behind graph databases - of which Neo4j is one. This leads to a more general conversation about NoSQL, what it's good for and where it struggles. Can NoSQL and SQL work side by side? You bet! Tatham talks about some of the applications he's built using both technologies, and how...

Carl and Richard talk to Jonathan Zuck about the state of software patents today. The conversation starts out talking about some of the craziness around software patents - patent trolls, extortion-like letters and the like. Jonathan talks about the changes made by the US to patent law in 2012, and how the biggest challenge today is cleaning up poorly written patents from the DotComBoom era. Also m...

While at the Denver stop of the ModernApps2013 tour, Carl and Richard talk to Tim Huckaby about the latest on the Kinect. The Xbox One comes with the Kinect 2, which by summer 2014 will be available for PCs. The conversation starts out explaining the differences between the old Kinect and new (it's three times better!) and some ideas of what can be done with it. But don't stop there - from gesture...

Time to Geek Out on Direct Current! Carl and Richard talk about the recent wave of discussion about DC in the home. Blame USB for part of it - everyone is using USB to charge devices now, and USB was never meant to do that... but in 2014, the new USB Power Delivery standard will be implemented to make it more effective. Richard digs into his experiences switching over to LED lighting in his house,...

During the Seattle stop of the ModernApps2013 road trip, Carl and Richard chatted with Michele Leroux Bustamante about her experiences with Azure, and how that naturally leads to some DevOps practices. Michele discusses the relative benefits of automation over manual control, dealing with the challenges of account privileges, and why startups seem to be so much better at DevOps than bigger organiz...

While at the Irvine stop of the ModernApps2013 road trip, Carl and Richard talk to Dan Wahlin about getting started with AngularJS. The discussion digs into the variety of JavaScript libraries out there today and how Dan has shifted his skills from a much more C# centric world into a more JavaScript world. The interplay of the libraries is an important discussion, as well as thoughts about when NO...

At the beginning of the west coast leg of the ModernApps2013 road trip, Carl and Richard talk to Julie Lerman about the latest features of Entity Framework in Visual Studio 2013. Julie talks about the improvements made in EF6, the version of Entity Framework that ships 'alongside' Visual Studio 2013. The focus is on code-first data interaction, but along the way Richard puts on his DBA app and com...

At NDC-London, Carl and Richard moderated an amazing panel about Web API... panelists included Glenn Block, Darrel Miller, Pedro Felix, Christian Weyer, Dominick Baier and Daniel Roth. What's the future hold for Web API? Is it headed the way of WCF? Can anyone get a word in edgewise around Glenn Block? Some great questions from the audience toward the end of the show as well. Support this podcast...

While in Chicago at the ModernApps2013 Tour, Carl and Richard talk to Stephen Forte about accelerators - startup business accelerators. Stephen discusses how small teams enter into accelerators to learn about building Minimal Viable Products and the fundamentals of lean startups. The cornerstone of this story is Erik Reis' Lean Startup book. The conversation also dives into crowdsourcing sites lik...

At the Houston #ModernApps2013 Road Trip stop, Carl and Richard talk to Justin Searls about using Javascript in the enterprise. Besides referencing an awesome number of tools around Javascript (check out the huge list of links!), Justin focuses in on how enterprise's often ignore the actual care and feeding of Javascript code within their organization. While he's certainly taken advantage of that...

While at NDC in London, Carl and Richard talk to Glenn Block, Justin Rusbatch and Adam Ralph about ScriptCS. Our first show with Glenn on ScriptCS was way back in March 2013, only a week after ScriptCS was first checked into GitHub. Nine months later, where is ScriptCS now? What are people doing with it? Justin talks about his contributions while Adam digs into how he's using ScriptCS in the field...

At the St. Louis stop of the #ModernApps2013 road trip, Carl and Richard chatted with Kathleen Dollard about code generation and Roslyn. The conversation starts out talking about the relative acquiescence of code generation in recent years and the potential of Roslyn to rekindle the movement. Kathleen talks about her own efforts with code generation and where she sees this technology ultimately go...

While at NDC-London, Carl and Richard talk to Jez Humble about his latest thoughts on continuous delivery. Jez talks about the tendency of people to count on tools to provide continuous delivery, while culture and process are far more important components. No technology will save you from bad practices and a lack of trust! The conversation also digs into the inertia of automation, resistance to ch...

While at NDC-London, Carl and Richard sat down with Mark Rendle about building Zud.io, a set of tools for handling storage in the cloud. The conversation starts out with a quick chat about TypeScript and it's role in development. Mark talks about the experience of working with BizSpark Plus to build a web-centric way to programmatically handle blobs, tables, queues and more. Also discussed is buil...

Carl and Richard talk to Mads Torgersen about his work on C# and Roslyn. Mads talks about how old the Roslyn CTP has gotten - and how that may change in the future. There's also a hint about a form of Roslyn already seen in the wild (hint - it's CodeLens!). And the conversation gets crazier from there, but it comes down to one thing... is C# in Roslyn, or is Roslyn C#? Have a listen! Support this...

While at NDC London, Carl and Richard check in with Bob Martin about a variety of subjects - starting with healthcare.gov. The conversation really digs into the fundamentals of professionalism - should the customer take precedent over the industry? What does it mean to really be a professional? Bob also explores the evolution of development practices, where what was once extreme is now mainstream,...

While at NDC-London, Carl and Richard talk to Steve Sanderson about his work with KnockoutJS, Azure and other goodies. Steve starts out talking about his role in Knockout and the MVVM pattern as well as his work building the admin consoles for Azure. The conversation then dives into Steve's latest project, using WebGL to take advantage of GPU processing inside a browser! Along the way the boys tal...