How do you manage your DNS? Carl and Richard talk to Anthony Eden of DNSimple about his latest product, the Domain Control Plane. Anthony talks about how everyone has DNS—and usually in more than one place. Getting a common view of all your DNS entries, no matter where they are, is valuable, but being able to automate changes is even more important, especially as things scale up! The conversation ranges over development, cloud, scaling systems, and some old-fashioned geekery!

GitHub Copilot has been out for a few years now - how is it going? Carl and Richard talk to Michelle Duke about what's been happening with GitHub Copilot. Michelle discusses the new features in GitHub Copilot, including Chat, which gives you more of a ChatGPT-like interface while still being focused strictly on code, including your code! Then, the conversation digs into the broader ideas around large language models and the perception of artificial intelligence affecting the entire world. A lot is going on!

Do you understand how your APIs are being used? Carl and Richard talk to Anthony Alaribe about his experiences dealing with poorly documented APIs that need updates - but no breaking changes! Anthony tells a story about missing a use case for an API that cost a lot of money, which started him down the path to making APItoolkit.io. The toolkit allows you to see how your API is being used and any exceptions that are happening. It will also generate tests to validate that your new version won't cause problems! Check it out!

How has Aspect-Oriented Programming changed? Carl and Richard talk to Gael Fraiteur of PostSharp fame about his new tool, Metalama. Gael talks about being able to move out of IL and into Roslyn Analyzers to help you get rid of boilerplate code and focus more on the value your application brings. The conversation dives into how AOP can help build higher quality code, to the point of being a testing platform for code compliance for your organization - used right, metalama can make your code reviews smoother! There's a lot of power inside metaprogramming; it's worth trying to understand what Metalama can do for you.

It's 2024, how is Azure doing? Carl and Richard chatted with Magnus Mårtensson about his work with customers migrating and operating in Azure. Magnus talks about the waste many organizations have in cloud resources, often by provisioning services with too many resources or failing to shut down things they no longer need. The conversation digs into today's excellent tooling, including Azure Migrate, Advisor, and Monitor. All tools can help you right-size and control your cloud spend. And AI is coming to make those tools even better!

Modular Monoliths strike the middle ground between monoliths and microservices! Carl and Richard talk to Steve Smith about his work striking a balance between the simplicity of a monolithic set of services and the complexity of breaking everything into microservices. Steve discusses the performance and simplicity advantages of monoliths and only breaking out services with specific needs into separate services. .NET has excellent tooling to help you evaluate, test, and manage your modular monoliths!

Has observability hit a tipping point? Carl and Richard chat with Steve Gordon and Martin Thwaites about the various products and technologies today to make observability a vital part of a successful application. Steve talks about telemetry support hitting a tipping point where most vendors have products working with OpenTelemetry. Martin digs into the many places you can send telemetry to increase your understanding of how your applications work on-premises and in the cloud. It's an exciting time to build cloud-native - are you on board?

Another version of CSLA? Yes! Carl and Richard talk to Rocky Lhotka about his work keeping CSLA up-to-date with the latest .NET features. And now, with .NET 8, CSLA 8 has strong support for Blazor! Rocky talks about getting deep into Blazor for CSLA, the power of rendering the client or server side, and whether or not mixing the two is smart. Lots of great thoughts from one of the original .NET educators!

How do you improve your CSS skills? Carl and Richard talk to Martine Dowden about her new book, Tiny CSS Projects. The book is built around twelve progressively more complex CSS tasks - you can follow along to learn in general or pick a particular chapter for a specific skill you want to exercise. The conversation digs into thinking about the architecture of styling beyond the particular page and how those styles can be updated version-to-version without frustration. You can improve your CSS game!

What's the latest with gRPC? Carl and Richard chat with Irina Scurtu about her latest work with gRPC. Irina talks about the improved tooling with gRPC, including tools like Postman to help you see what's happening in a gRPC interaction, even decoding the binary data! The conversation also digs into the complexity of metadata with headers and trailers and the challenges of supporting multiple platforms and multiple type systems - but it works if you take the time to learn the details. And the results are fast and flexible communications!

How do you handle background tasks? Carl and Richard talk to Sergey Odinokov about Hangfire, his open source project for background job processing in .NET. Sergey talks about his experiences building applications that needed background processing and hoping to find a library similar to other platforms - and eventually creating Hangfire. The conversation dives into the array of different processing options, state management, and the challenging problem of building and maintaining an open-source project over a decade!

What can Uno do for you? Carl and Richard talk to Nick Randolph about the latest from the Uno platform. Nick talks about how Uno has continued to evolve into a broad and effective cross-platform client tool while also adding integrations for design and continuous integration. The conversation digs into the challenge of getting from design to development and how the Figma Plugin makes it easier to take designer Figma docs and make them into actual code in Uno. There are also wizards for helping you add Uno UX testing into your CI/CD pipeline and much more. It's an open-source project, so you can take Uno out for a spin today!

Coming out of .NET Conf, one of the big announcements was .NET Aspire. Carl and Richard talk to David Fowler about his work creating the tools to make building cloud-native .NET applications easier. David discusses the challenge of not re-creating the past - tools like Azure Service Fabric. However, the complexity of containerized applications is real. Aspire can make it simpler to take advantage of being in a container, on the cloud, with all the telemetry, observability, scalability, and flexibility that being cloud-native can bring you!

How do you migrate to .NET 8? Carl and Richard talk to Jimmy Bogard about his experiences helping teams migrate from .NET Framework 4.8 to more modern versions of .NET. Jimmy talks about the team wanting to be able to use ASP.NET Core in their applications as the incentive to make the migration in the first place. The conversation digs into landing on .NET 6 to make migration easier but then wanting to move quickly to later versions to take advantage of the latest features. And no dead-drop migrations - using a reverse proxy to operate the two applications side-by-side so that over months, everything moves across while remaining functional - a great story of migration!

Let's start 2024 with a conversation about energy! Richard chats with Carl about ongoing developments in power generation around the world. Wind technology is maturing but also hitting size limits. Solar is the fastest-growing power generation source on the planet now - and there are recycling options! There are exciting new developments in power storage, some applied hydrogen power projects, and new concepts in geothermal and small modular nuclear. Richard wraps up with thoughts on COP 28 and our progress towards safer, stable power for everyone. Happy New Year!

Time for the annual Space Geek Out! Richard summarizes many of the important space stories of the past year, including SpaceX's record number of Falcon 9 flights and the first two flights of Starship. The conversation also explores the state of the International Space Station, Dream Chaser, Artemis, and other moon missions, including India's successful landing! Richard then digs into the Crisis in Cosmology - how the James Webb Space Telescope has changed our understanding of the universe, and how it is disrupting the current models of the universe. But new science is good - the more you know!

How do you improve the performance of your .NET applications? Carl and Richard talk to Daniel Marbach about his work building high-performance .NET applications and the process he goes through to get them to perform at the level his customers need. Daniel talks about profiling and benchmarking - understanding where your time passes in your code and how to measure it to know if you're making it better. The good news is that great tools are out there to help you; check the show notes for links to them!

It's almost 2024, do we still need to talk about securing our apps? Carl and Richard talk to Laura Bell Main about her ongoing efforts to get everyone involved in creating and operating software to be part of making that software secure. Laura talks about committing one hour of each sprint to security and how, over time, those small efforts can build up to excellent secure guardrails that make our software more resistant to exploitation. Don't push security issues off to someone else - we can all help!

A new version of Polly is out - and it's a special one! Carl and Richard talk to Joel Hulen and Martin Costello about the release of Polly V8. Joel tells the story of Microsoft reaching out about Polly - because it is heavily utilized inside of Azure and at cloud scale, it needed further optimization. The results are a very high-performance library focused on resilience as a whole - with lots of smart defaults so that you can write even less code to have even more resilient applications!

How do we put large language models to work? Carl and Richard talk to Vishwas Lele about his work using LLMs with his customers. Vishwas talks about focusing on specific data sets for building LLMs and how size matters - things are simple when the source data is small, but as it grows, you need more complex tools to be able to allow the LLM to perform. Lots of cautionary tales and ideas on how to get great results from these new automation tools!

How do we make our software greener? While at NDC in Porto, Carl and Richard talked to Lea Mladineo about her work in sustainable development. Lea talks about the impact of digital technology on the environment and how, with some thought and effort, we can make a real difference to that impact. The conversation explores how cloud computing can worsen the problem - or better! Software efficiency can reduce the number of cycles needed to complete a task, which is good for the environment and could save your organization money!

How can React Server Components make your website better? While at NDC in Porto, Carl and Richard talked to Aurora Walberg about her work with RSC and Next.js 13. Aurora discusses mixing server and client rendering - and server rendering within client rendering! While it's still early days, if you're looking for options in the React development space, RSC is worth a look!

How do you commercialize open-source products? While at NDC Porto, Carl and Richard talked to Victoria Melnikova about her work with Evil Martians, helping startups make open-source products and make a living at the same time. Victoria talks about various revenue strategies, but always with a mind to providing a "forever free" tier to be responsible to the open source community. Charging for pro-features, limiting the number of uses before a paid tier... there are several approaches to revenue that users can work with, as long as you are open and honest about how things work!

Are you ready for .NET Conf? Carl and Richard talk to Jeff Fritz about the latest version of .NET coming out - and the online event that celebrates it! Jeff talks about his top ten favorite sessions in the show, the ones you definitely don't want to miss. And if you have folks that are new to .NET, you want to check out the pre-event day that can help folks get started! See you online Nov 13-15!

What is observability engineering, and why do you need some? While at NDC in Porto, Carl and Richard recorded a .NET Rocks Live with Charity Majors, one of the founders of Honeycomb. Charity talked about her experiences trying to understand how complex applications worked and failed at scale over her years of experience at Facebook and other companies. Ultimately, those experiences led to a book and the creation of Honeycomb. Lots of fun insight from someone who has fought the good fight - and some great questions from the audience!

What's the latest with bUnit? Carl and Richard chat with Egil Hansen about his excellent testing library for Blazor. Egil digs into the ongoing improvements being made in Blazor and how bUnit can support those changes without having to rewrite tests - even .NET 8 shouldn't be a huge problem! The conversation also digs into the different sorts of open-source projects out there, including tooling like bUnit. Not all open source is created the same! Great thinking from an experienced builder of testing tools to make it easier to build reliable Blazor applications.

What is data sharding, and why do you need it? Carl and Richard talk to Oren Eini about his latest work on RavenDB, including the new data sharding feature. Oren talks about the power of sharding a database across multiple servers to improve performance on massive data sets. While a sharded database is typically in a single data center, it is possible to distribute the shards across multiple locations. The conversation explores the advantages and disadvantages of the different approaches, including that you might not need it today, but it's great to know it's there when you do!

How do you make Kubernetes easier to use? While at the Copenhagen Developers Festival, Carl and Richard talked to Annie Talvasto about her work with Kubernetes and the Cloud Native Compute Foundation. Annie talks about the easy and hard ways to work with Kubernetes and why you might choose either approach - it comes down to how much control you want. The CNCF supports many tools for Kubernetes in various stages of development to make your life easier to orchestrate containers at scale - when you need them, you'll really need them!

Azure and GitHub - better together? While at the Copenhagen Developer Festival, Carl and Richard talked to April Edwards for a special .NET Rocks Live. April talked about how Azure and GitHub work well together, discussing Azure DevOps and GitHub Actions on the CI/CD pipeline side and how other services can interact. Lots of laughter and great questions from the live audience!

Data Science and UX should be the best of friends! While at the Copenhagen Developer Festival, Carl and Richard talked to Grishma Jena about her work in data science at IBM - and working closely with the UX teams to understand how customers use software and the opportunities to improve it. Grishma talks about the quantitative side of analytics regarding application telemetry, including the ability to predict when a customer is about to abandon an application. The conversation also digs into using modern machine learning to analyze quantitative data, such as comments in surveys - could you sort that kind of data by sentiment or actionability? Improve your UX with data!

What can you do with a Particle Photon? While in an aluminum Airstream trailer in a thunderstorm at the Copenhagen Developers Festival, Carl and Richard talked to Colleen Lavin about her work with the Particle Photon IoT device - and its many maker possibilities! Colleen talks about making it easy to start building a device - but the struggle with so many choices to actually pick a project. The conversation also digs into making production versions of your device so that they are smaller, cheaper, and very reliable - it's a fun time to be a maker!

How about some in-process messaging with no dependencies? Carl and Richard chat with Jimmy Bogard about his work with MediatR, a simple mediator pattern implementation in .NET. Jimmy talks about how MediatR emerged from his work with customer applications having controllers and/or managers that slowly got bigger and more complicated... and how they became difficult to maintain. Using the mediator pattern to break down those blocks of code into more manageable chunks needed a bit of tooling that was cut and pasted from project-to-project until MediatR was born!

How can a large language model help your application? Carl and Richard talk to Brian MacKay about his work with large language models, including ChatGPT - and others! Brian talks about how LLMs continue to evolve and the limitations they have. But identifying language inside your applications can be powerful, and Brian talks through a few scenarios his company uses in production today. Work could you be taking advantage of today!

How much architectural ceremony is enough? Carl and Richard talk to Jeremy Miller about his minimal approach to architecture when building software, including his products Wolverine and Marten. Jeremy talks about how good tooling can simplify architecture, ultimately by writing less code - so that you are writing only the code that is unique to your customer needs.

How is Chocolatey evolving? Carl and Richard talk to Gary Ewan Park about the latest with the open-source Windows package management solution. Gary discusses some of the differences between the various package managers for Windows these days, including WinGet. Each product has its niche, and Chocolatey has done a good job of evolving into a broader product, including Chocolatey for Business, to allow a view of applications installed across all your machines - and being able to push updates out to them.

How's your architecture game? Carl and Richard talk to Thomas Betts about being a better architect. Thomas focuses on the key aspect - communication! An effective architect can talk to all the stakeholders in the language of the stakeholder, whether that's speaking business with business stakeholders, coding with developers, and understanding the needs of the security and operations folks. All those aspects (and more) go into an effective architecture and then come the changes as the implementation challenges happen. The conversation also digs into the importance of documentation to know why decisions were made and how to change them as you respond to changing needs and landscapes.

Large Language Models like GPT-4 are all the rage - how do we use them well? Carl and Richard talk to Amber McKenzie about the challenges and concerns around LLMs, especially regarding the data involved. Amber talks about the risks of creating products around LLMs while the technology is so young and constantly evolving, especially with how the general public reacts to conversational AI. Education is key, and constantly fact-checking - good advice for a lot of technology, but LLMs are making fact checking even more important!

Microservices or Monoliths? Carl and Richard talk to Layla Porter about choosing a middle ground between microservices and monoliths, with modular monoliths. Layla talks about the pushback from the community around microservices and the insistence that there is "one right way." Monoliths have their advantages until they are a problem - but that doesn't mean that re-architecting everything is the right way to go. Chipping off parts of the monolith into satellite modules strikes a balance of flexibility and scalability - and opens the door to accessing the power of bus architectures when needed!

Databases continue to evolve! Carl and Richard talk to Ted Neward about multi-model data stores - which, these days, are most databases! Ted talks about how SQL and NoSQL are not that different - it's only a query engine. But how do you store your data? Today multi-model databases store data with multiple storage engines, and so can store your data in the most appropriate form. There are lots of choices, and it's worth digging deeper into your existing data stores, as well as the new ones available!

What can we do to make testing easier? Carl and Richard talk to Dennis Doomen about Fluent Assertions, an open-source set of extension methods to help write better tests. Dennis talks about working on Fluent Assertions for over a decade and the great team of folks that have helped it grow. With tens of millions of downloads, you should check it out! The conversation also digs into how these types of open-source projects don't make money, even though they help many people. Could we fix that?

How do you scale a monolith? Carl and Richard talk to Derek Comartin about his blog posts and YouTube series around scaling a monolith. Derek talks about the tendency for folks to want to split a monolith into microservices without assessing if it will make a difference. There is no one right way! The conversation digs into different approaches to scaling - up, out, using caching, queuing, and more! There are many approaches to scaling your applications, and yes, microservices are an option, but there are many others!

Can you quit your job and work full-time on your open-source project? Carl and Richard talk to Shaun Walker about his recent move to focus on Oqtane, the open-source application framework and CMS he has been developing for the past few years. Shaun talks about recognizing when an open-source project has matured to the point that it is being held back by not also providing a commercial license. For some folks, a commercial license is not an option - they need it to be able to use the software within the company. Then comes the tricky part: Setting up a business, and balancing the needs of the open-source community with the commercial customers. It isn't easy, but it can be done!

How do you get your app running in Azure? Carl and Richard talk to Savannah Ostrowski about Azure Developer CLI (azd), an open-source tool to help developers using .NET, Javascript/Typescript, Python, Java, and more to get deployed into Azure. Savannah talks about staying high-level with azd commands, keeping the complexity of deployment pipelines in tools you already know how to use, like Bicep and Terraform. The conversation digs into the templating system to help assemble all the platforms and elements of an Azure deployment, depending on your application. There are a ton of options - check it out!

How can OpenAI help you program faster? Carl and Richard talk to Mark Miller about his experiments with OpenAI and CodeRush. Mark talks about the power of building agents to analyze code to write comments and tests - in parallel so that multiple agents can run simultaneously. Then the conversation turns to the potential of a voice interface as an effective way to work with Visual Studio - you were talking anyway!

What can OpenTelemetry do for you? While at Techorama in Belgium, Carl and Richard talked to Laïla Bougriâ about her experiences with the open-source library that can help give you more insight into the behavior of your applications. Laïla talks about being able to instrument your applications from top-to-bottom, regardless of platforms or development stacks. The conversation digs into the differences between logging, tracing, and telemetry - and how each aspect adds value to understand what your applications are doing, and how you can make them better!

When it comes to machine learning, there is no free lunch! While at Techorama in Antwerp, Carl and Richard talked to Dr. Jodie Burchell about her experiences working with machine learning models, including the large language models that drive tools like ChatGPT. Jodie starts with a great explanation of how these machine learning models are built - and there is a lot to it! This leads to a conversation about the limitations of those models and how they could be improved further. There's a lot of hype around LLMs right now - it will pass eventually, but in the meantime, be thoughtful of how you use these experimental technologies!

The power of .NET means PHP can run in the browser efficiently! Carl and Richard talk to Jakub Míšek about PeachPie using WASM. Jakub talks about how easy it was to deploy PeachPie, the .NET implementation of PHP, into WebAssembly, much like Blazor works. Then the tricky bit starts - PHP is a server-side technology, so many of the constructs are based on trips to a server. That doesn't mean there aren't solutions, but they need some thinking through. The question is, do we want to run WordPress in a browser?

What's an immutable architecture, and why do you want one? Carl and Richard talk to Michael Perry about his book The Art of Immutable Architecture and the power of historical models. Michael talks about different designs for immutability, the ability to always look back through data, to avoid conflict between resources, and the advantages of eventual consistency. As Michael says, you already use immutable architecture - look at Git and how you only add new files to the system, always able to get back to a previous state! The conversation dives into implementing architecture in a way that helps to show where immutability makes sense.

How do you do more with Entity Framework? Carl and Richard talk to Erik Ejlskov Jensen about his work contributing to Entity Framework and creating tools to make Entity Framework easier to use. Erik talks about how EF has continued to evolve, including some significant performance optimizations. The conversation also explores code-first vs. database-first - although Erik falls firmly into the schema-first mindset. There's more coming for Entity Framework; it's worth your time to get the most from it!

How do we support open-source projects? Carl and Richard talk to Joseph Finney about his ongoing efforts to build various projects in his spare time while still working a regular day job. Joe talks about the options to contribute to open-source, including submitting issues to help improve the project, code contributions where you add to the body of work, and financial options - contributing money directly to the creator. The conversation explores some of the existing tooling and more opportunities that could be created to make it easier for organizations to see their dependence on open-source libraries in a path that would make it easier to garner support for creators. The open-source world continues to evolve, and with some effort, we can make it more sustainable and valuable for everyone.

Web Testing Evolved! Carl and Richard talk to Ely Lucas about the latest version of the Cypress Testing Framework. Ely talks about three significant versions shipping in 2022 - starting with version 10, a complete UI overhaul. Following the semantic versioning standards, versions 11 and 12 had some breaking changes, primarily around component testing and other great new features. Today Cypress is effective at end-to-end testing, component testing, and with an open source plugin, API testing. The product is free and open-source, with a paid version offering enterprise-class cloud services for scaling testing up. Check it out!

How do you know the code you write is being used in production? Carl and Richard talk to Roni Dover about his work with Digma to help bring code utilization into your development tooling. Roni talks about the challenges of getting and using production telemetry - often, it never reaches developers. But with OpenTelemetry, there's a lot of data out there; the challenge is to present it helpfully - and that's what Digma is all about. It's still in beta, but sign up if you want to get involved!

Microsoft is making several Copilot products - should you? Carl and Richard talk to Phil Haack about the latest version of ab.bot, his customer success startup. Now Phil is calling ab.bot a Copilot for Customer Success since he incorporated OpenAI ChatGPT into it. The conversation tries to steer clear of the hysteria around modern large language models (although it is hard!) and more into the practical applications - using large language models to summarize long customer support conversations and find related conversations to current ones - perhaps identifying new high-priority features! The wave of large language models is in its early days, and with the new APIS available, it may be time to make them part of your projects too!

Do you know what your web app is up to? Carl and Richard talk to Sam Basu and Rosen Vladimirov about the latest versions of Fiddler. The original Fiddler for Windows is a free tool, but the Progress team has written all new products in the Fiddler space that are cross-platform and designed to work with different groups of people. Fiddler is for developers, first and foremost, letting you see the messages passing between the browser (or other clients) and the server in HTTP and HTTPS. With the new products, you can also connect to SignalR and gRPC data! Then there are tools for tech support and even embedding capabilities into your applications.

An MAUI version of Doom? Carl and Richard talk to Wesley Cabus and Nico Vermeir about their efforts to port the venerable game Doom to C# and .NET 6 with MAUI as the UI. Wesley did the base conversion of Doom over to .NET, while Nico focused on getting the UI working through MAUI. Converting code, graphics, music, and sound effects from the 1990s into modern solutions is challenging but fun! Primarily working on the PC, there's a concerted effort to get a version running on Android devices too - and they could use your help!

What if you didn't have to choose between client-side and server-side Blazor? Carl and Richard talk to Javier Nelson and Steve Sanderson about Blazor United in its early stages of development, providing flexibility at the web component level for client- and server-side rendering. At the simplest level, Blazor United offers server-side rendering when a site is first hit so that you can load the larger client-side components over time. But deeper is the idea that some elements on your web page benefit from being client-side, and some from being server-side, and why should you have to choose only one?

How can the cloud help developer velocity? Carl and Richard talk to Bryan Foster about the complexities of modern software development - and how different cloud technologies can help move faster and not be afraid to break a few things along the way! Bryan talks about using Azure Deployment Environments to make it easy for developers to stand up resources for their apps - and just as quickly shut them down when done. This leads to a broader conversation around the governance of CI/CD pipelines and the role of the cloud, even to the point of using DevBox to have an entirely virtualized development environment!

ChatGPT, BingAI, and Google Bard are the latest examples of large language model machine learning - are we at an inflection point in technology? Carl and Richard talk to Grant Barrett of A Way with Words about the power of these new technologies to solicit reactions from many folks, including many tech journalists. Grant talks about how language conveys a sense of intelligence even when there is none to be had and the problems created by those assumptions. It is still the early days for these chatbots - will they rapidly improve or fade into another AI winter?

What's next for C#? Carl and Richard talk to Mads Torgersen about what the team is working on for C# 12. Mads talks about how the language design team is organized to take ideas for C# and explore them, considering all aspects before implementation. The conversation digs into a few of the new features coming and some of the considerations, like breaking changes, that might be necessary to make a feature as good as possible. With C# nearly 25 years old, there is lots of legacy to deal with, but the future looks bright!

What does web front-end development look like in 2023? Carl and Richard chat with Amy Kapernick about her work helping companies build web front ends with a vast array of tools. Amy talks about how client frameworks continue to evolve, extending the so-called "big three" of Angular, Vue, and React to focus on different styles. The conversation also ranges over testing web apps, building pipelines for automated testing, accessibility, and more!

MAUI is out! What's next? While at Swetugg in Stockholm, Carl and Richard chatted with David Ortinau and Maddy Montaquila about getting MAUI shipped and seeing how the world is using it! The conversation digs into what typical developers are doing with MAUI and other platforms in the plans for future MAUI. David and Maddy talk about how Blazor Hybrid is creating a lot of excitement for folks, balancing the reach of web development with the power of native development - it's a great time to be building cross-platform software!

Why write functional C#? Carl and Richard talk to Simon Painter about what happens when you apply functional programming approaches to your C# code. Simon discusses how some functional programming aspects are best served in a functional language like F#, but you can write C# in a more functional style. The conversation focuses on minimizing side effects - writing your code so that you can see what it does and how it would behave when changed. Functional code tends to be more testable as well!

How is clean architecture evolving? Carl and Richard talk to Steve Smith about his efforts to build applications using clean architecture principles. The conversation starts with a comment from a listener about idealism around architecture - and a reminder that while there isn't one right way to do anything, using existing work, like clean architecture templates, makes it easier to do the right thing. Steve talks about the various elements that go into clean architectures and how they are often where you end up in development whether you start with a template or not - and how much of a pain it is to course-correct as the project gets larger. Sustainable software needs architecture, and clean architecture is one approach that works - check it out!

How do you create a sustainable open-source ecosystem? Carl and Richard talk to Sarah Novotny about how the open-source community continues to evolve. Sarah talks about how the vast majority of software utilizes open-source code and should be contributing to those projects. Those contributions can be financial or development resources, whatever makes more sense for the organization. The conversation also explores the nature of those contributions when the project has smaller and larger audiences, is purely for developer consumption, or the greater public. Open-source software is diverse, so the support for open-source software also needs to be diverse!

What is fusion development, and why do you want some? Carl and Richard talk to Vishwas Lele about his work with teams using the Microsoft Power Platform, including Power Apps and Power Automate. Vishwas talks about getting domain experts more involved in the development process - not just as advisors to the process but as co-creators. The role of professional developers is vital, making effective APIs and even custom-UX components for Power App development. The conversation also dives into the potential of Power Fx, an open-source language that is very much like Excel functions, providing programmability to domain experts - and perhaps a migration path for those company critical spreadsheets!

API Management has evolved! Carl and Richard talk to Tom Kerkhove about his new role working on Azure API Management. Tom talks about using Azure Arc to deploy the API Management service into your on-premises services. The conversation digs into more of the fundamentals around API management with rate limiting, authentication and authorization, billing, testing, and more. A good API can make your company money - executed poorly and it's a massive headache. Use the tools available to make it easier!

How do we learn about application security? Carl and Richard talk to Tanya Janca about her book 'Alice and Bob Learn Application Security.' Tanya talks about bringing positive conversations around security, enabling people to get work done while being secure. Software developers are now targets for the black hats because they often have super-user accounts and aren't following security practices as closely as others. Building secure software means developing it in a secure context - it takes practice, but is the best way to succeed in making secure software!

Ready for some space? Richard talks to Carl about all the incredible space-related stories in 2022. Starting with a record launch year - more flights to orbit than any year in history! Then the conversation digs into some cool missions around the solar system, including the Double Asteroid Redirection Test - we're learning how to protect our planet against asteroid impacts! Then on to space stations (there's more than one!) and, of course, the Moon - so many missions to the Moon! The biggest is Artemis, but there are plenty of others. And then there's the James Webb Space Telescope... what a fantastic year in space!

End of the year, time for a geek out on energy! Richard chats with Carl about the usual modern power generation sources, including solar and wind, and a breakthrough in the drilling method for geothermal energy. The conversation dives into small modular reactors (SMR) and the commitment in Canada to build the first SMR! Molten Salt Reactors have made some progress in 2022, but the extensive conversation is about fusion power. From the NIF announcement to Commonwealth Fusion and others - there's lots to talk about!

As of December 13, 2022, IdentityServer 4 is archived - now what? Carl and Richard talk to Dominick Baier and Brock Allen about the long, winding road of IdentityServer growing up to become a commercial product. Dom talks about the challenges of open source and building a sustainable model for an enterprise identity product. Ultimately, it resulted in a transformation from open-source to source-open - so what does that mean? Growth and sustainability!

Jeremy Miller is back with more open-source goodness in the form of the Wolverine .NET Command and Message Bus. Jeremy talks about developing the Marten database and reaching a point with event sourcing that led to Wolverine - building the infrastructure to work with a variety of queuing solutions to act as an intermediary, a message bus, and a command bus, as needed. The conversation also digs into the current state of open-source with his projects, and the evolution toward more sustainable open-source development - there is more to come!

Why should you have high-level design in your applications? Carl and Richard chat with Billy Hollis about the concepts around high-level design and how it can help make better software. Billy talks about how high-level design addresses more than UX concerns, expanding into architecture and business workflow to think more deeply about how we use software. And of course, Billy digs into various applications we all use (looking at you, Teams!) and talks about how high-level design could help deal with the challenges around those kinds of applications. Is it needed everywhere? No - but more is needed!

How do you secure your existing applications from the security exploits out there today? Carl and Richard talk to Joylynn Kirui about the challenges developers face in making secure applications. Joylynn talks about understanding the threat landscape and staying up to date on the CVEs that can represent a zero-day vulnerability to your application. There are a ton of tools to help make you aware of the potential risks, check out all the links in the show notes. And check out Joylynn's webinar on shifting application security left at https://aka.ms/DevSecOpsDNR

Why should .NET developers build Power Apps? Carl and Richard talk to April Dunnam about the latest in Microsoft's Power Platform and why .NET developers should get involved. April talks about the fusion development methodology, where domain experts use the Power Platform tools alongside .NET developers using Visual Studio to build line-of-business apps. There are many opportunities in the cycle of building Power Apps where your skills as a .NET developer can make the process go faster, more reliable, and with more features! Also, check out April's upcoming workshops on building Power Apps online at https://aka.ms/PowerDNR and at the DevIntersection conference in Las Vegas in December!

Are your APIs vulnerable to hacking? Carl and Richard talk to Dana Epp about how APIs have become the focus of black hats today. Dana talks about tooling you can use to look at your APIs the same way the hackers do, and find potential exploit paths for impersonating users, stealing data, and otherwise exploiting your system. There's an OWASP list specifically for API security - spend some time with it!

How do we make open source work for everyone? While at NDC in Oslo, Carl and Richard talked to David Whitney about his experiences working on open-source projects, and the challenges of making them sustainable. David talks about how many projects start with an individual making something for themselves, which then evolves into many people utilizing the project, but not contributing to it. And when companies depend on that software, the pressure on the creators gets serious - but without compensation. How do we make open source better? And how do the tech giants make the situation better or worse?

What can observability do for you? While at NDC in Oslo, Carl and Richard chatted with Alayshia Knighten about her work with honeycomb and helping people understand what's happening with their applications in production. Alayshia talks about instrumenting applications to provide insight into behavior in real-time - by leveraging existing tools to provide data and reporting. The conversation digs into how sysadmins and developers see applications differently, and how standard telemetry systems make it easier for everyone to be on the same page!

Ready for a story of cloud scaling from the trenches? While at NDC Oslo, Carl and Richard talked with Meg Gotshall about her experiences scaling the Fotoware service with her team. Meg talks about the limits of auto-scaling, where all the services are scaled up, but the bottlenecks exist in only one place - and how dashboards help to provide more visibility into the problem. But even when you sense the problem, how do you fix it? The conversation digs into breaking services into their containers and AppService plans so they can be scaled independently - initially for diagnostics but ultimately for production!

How do you test your web applications? Carl and Richard talk to Debbie O'Brien about Playwright, Microsoft's new open-source web application testing tool. Playwright lets you build tests in an array of languages, platforms, and browsers. Debbie talks about how you can build atomic tests that will survive new versions, and test independently of other features. And when tests fail, Playwright generates a PWA of the test run showing exactly where the test fails!

GitHub Copilot is here! Are we all going to lose our jobs? While at NDC in Oslo, Carl and Richard talked to Michelle Mannering about how Copilot helps you write code - emphasis on help! Michelle explains that Copilot is able to take your explanations of what code needs to be written to find examples of that code for you to take advantage of. It's still up to you to break down the problem well enough, but you spend less time fussing with syntax. This is especially powerful when calling into unfamiliar APIs or coding in languages you have less experience with. The conversation dives into how the developer ecosystem continues to evolve with these new tools, so that we can do more faster!

What can AWS do for you? Carl and Richard talk to Isaac Levin about the experience of being a .NET developer working with Amazon Web Services. Isaac talks about the broader strategy of moving applications to the cloud and what Amazon offers to make your life easier, with various migration and validation tools that can help you understand how an existing application will behave on cloud services. The goal is to get beyond the virtual machine and into containers, serverless, and more!

How do you make applications that work well for the visually impaired? Carl and Richard talk to Courtney Heitman about building applications that the visually impaired can use. Courtney talks about different kinds of visual impairment including field of view, color blindness, low and no vision. There are tools to help you understand what those impairments are like and to help you test how your app will work for everyone. Then the conversation turns to screen readers - which are challenging to test with because it does take quite a bit of experience to use. There are powerful solutions, you just need to incorporate these accessibility features - sooner, rather than later!

How much do you need to know about design? While at CodePaLOUsa in Louisville, Carl and Richard talked to Kathryn Grayson Nanz about understanding application designers. Kathryn talks about knowing just enough about design to understand that, like software development, it is an iterative process, that takes user feedback and incorporates it into future designs. Oh, and we know why your custom icon sucks!

How do you test Angular forms? While at CodePaLOUsa in Louisville, Carl and Richard talked to Martine Dowden about her approach to building tests that are maintainable, and are best automated because they are tedious to test manually - like forms validation. Martine talks about a mix of automated unit testing and eyes-on manual smoke tests being the most efficient way to have a well-tested web application.

What's wrong with microservices? Carl and Richard talk to Shawn Wildermuth about his rant about microservices. Shawn talks about the intent of microservices in the first place, to try and break down the giant service balls of goo that get built over time. But is it necessary? The conversation explores the optimization problem, where having services together is efficient right up until it isn't - when you have a service that changes more often than others or needs to scale more. Only then does it make sense to carve it out. Lots of fun conversation!

Twenty years ago, before the word podcast existed, there was .NET Rocks! While at CodePaLOUsa in Louisville, Carl and Richard celebrated the publication of the first episode of .NET Rocks twenty years ago in August 2002. Doc Norton joined the conversation to talk about how agile has evolved and the challenges of making good software today. And a big thanks to all the listeners of the show - we couldn't have done it without you!

How does Power Platform fit into your application lifecycle management? Carl and Richard talk to Kartik Kanakasabesan about his work on Power Platform to treat it like every other development approach. Kartik talks about how PowerApps create straightforward forms-over-data solutions that work well on phones, tablets, and PCs. The conversation digs into how developers in the C# and Visual Studio space can work with Power Platform developers, including building back-end services, creating front-end components, and working with existing source code and deployment pipelines. The result is what Kartik calls fusion development, where everyone works together to build solutions effectively!

When and why should you change your development career? Carl and Richard talk to Rocky Lhotka about his recent change from a large development firm to a one-man band. Rocky talks about changes in Magenic that helped him make the move he'd been thinking about for years. This leads to a broader conversation about how careers evolve, whether or not you become a manager, and what it takes to be out on your own. There are many ways to have a career - what works best for you?

How do you make it easier for developers to build apps in Azure? Carl and Richard talk to Scott Hunter about his new role focused on developer tooling for Azure. This means much more than .NET - Scott talks about tooling for Java, Android, Node, and more! The conversation ranges over how Azure can simplify development cycles, debugging, and monitoring in production, no matter what stack you're using. Scott also digs into Azure Container Apps, announced at Build 2022, making it easier to get started using containers for your applications, but not limiting how you use containers in the future!

Can you make your application passwordless? While at NDC London, Carl and Richard talk to Eli Holderness about implementing passwordless technology. Eli talks about using password managers and adding physical authentication tokens like fido keys. The conversation then digs into all the varieties of passwordless authentication including SMS, Authenticators, and one-time tokens. There are great libraries for implementing all of these technologies - and you're going to need more than one!

What features do you want to see in C# 11? Carl and Richard chat with Kathleen Dollard about the work being done to the latest version of C# so far. But first - what about VB.NET? Starting with a question from a listener, Kathleen clarifies Microsoft plans for VB.NET - it's never going away! Then into the feature list of C# 11, including new generic math, static interfaces, initialization features, pattern matching, and more!

How do you measure how secure your application is? While at NDC London, Carl and Richard chatted with Victoria Almazova about her work around measuring DevSecOps. Victoria talks about making security part of the DevOps cycle, which is part of every build and measured constantly. The conversation moves to traditional penetration testing and the challenges of incorporating security improvements into applications. But what if your security efforts shifted to the left and became part of your development practice? Then there would be fewer fixes to make!

WebAssembly is awesome - what else can you do with it? While at NDC London, Carl and Richard talked to Steve Sanderson about his work with WebAssembly, including Blazor. Steve talks about how WebAssembly continues to evolve adding WebAssembly System Integration. This opens the door to the idea that code in the WebAssembly can be run anywhere - any operating system, any language, using whatever compute is available. That gives an option to run code on the client, the server, and anywhere in between!

Episode 1800! While at NDC London, Carl and Richard were on stage for a live show with Heather Downing, discussing the modern developer career. The pandemic created considerable changes in work, and developers were also affected. Do you have the job you want? How do you change it? With some questions from the online viewers, Heather talks about taking control of your career and turning it into the life you want - and celebrating 1800 episodes of .NET Rocks!

What is WebRTC, and why do you want to use it? While at NDC London, Carl and Richard talk to Liz Moy about WebRTC, the open-source library that is used by many of your favorite video chat applications. Liz talks about taking advantage of the hard work already done to control video and audio devices through the browser, as well as the various strategies for actually connecting to other people through firewalls and NAT routers. The conversation also explores where and when you would want to have integrated video, audio, screensharing, and data transfer capabilities.

June is GitHub Maintainer Month - have you hugged an open-source project maintainer lately? Carl and Richard talk to Martin Woodward and Immo Landwerth about what it's like to be a maintainer of open-source projects. Often an open-source project starts as something you want for yourself and choose to share - and then others start to use your project and life gets more complicated. The conversation dives into what its like for a full-time employee to contribute to a project maintained by someone working part-time on it, the challenges around licensing, and how the open-source community continues to evolve - hopefully for the better!

How well does gRPC work with .NET? Carl and Richard talk to Irina Scurtu about her work with gRPC in .NET. Irina talks about the new features added in .NET 6 to support gRPC including client-side load balancing, fault tolerance, and improved performance. The conversation digs into the various uses of gRPC - Irina advocates for inter-microservice calls, but you can make gRPC work for a browser using gRPC Web. High performance and flexible - what more could you want?

How do you find a great video clip after the fact? Carl and Richard talk to Jeff Fritz about his work building KlipTok, a tool for making Twitch video clips more discoverable and shareable. Jeff digs into the tricky bits of KlipTok, which is all about fast indexing and searching to get to the right clip. The conversation digs into various data storage techniques and using the cloud in a way that doesn't break the bank. Jeff may be a Microsoft employee, but that doesn't mean he uses only Microsoft tools for his projects!

How do you modernize a .NET application? While at NDC Porto, Carl and Richard talked to Mark Rendle about his work on Visual Recode, a tool for migrating WCF apps to gRPC, and dug into the broader story of what a modern .NET application looks like. Mark talks about why you would bother to modernize at all - because the standard framework isn't going anywhere. But if you want to take advantage of the latest features of .NET and the performance available to you with .NET 6 and the cloud, modernization is the way to go!

What can web components do for you? Carl and Richard talk to Jemima Abu about her work with web components. Jemima talks about the projects she is currently working on, and how UI web components make it easier to build good-looking front ends quickly. The discussion digs into how web components stay agnostic of different web frameworks - although often there are solutions within the framework for many component problems. If you're a fan of vanilla JavaScript, web components can be a big boost to development, but its up to you to do the right things with them!

How do you know your open source is secure? Carl and Richard talk to Jillian Ratliff about security practices on your own code, and the open-source code you depend on. Jillian talks about some of the high-profile security problems that have happened recently in the open-source world including log4j. The conversation turns to practices for making your applications secure with open-source including security testing as part of your CI/CD pipeline, periodic penetration testing, and more!

How are extensions in Visual Studio changing? Carl and Richard talk to the extension master himself, Mads Kristensen. With over 150 extensions in the Marketplace, Mads has a lot of experience building tooling that can streamline your Studio experience. The conversation digs into why an extension makes sense rather than being built into Studio. Although in the case of the Markdown Editor, that does happen! Mads also as the VSIX Community space if you want to get into building your extensions, with libraries and tooling to guide you to the pit of success with your extension project. Check it out!

When should you pivot your startup? Carl and Richard talk to Phil Haack about his experiences with Abbot - the chatbot designed to work within Slack. Phil talks about starting with Abbot focused on ChatOps, where Abbot would help with automation around the deployment of applications. And while there were some customers, it wasn't enough. The pivot was to customer support that also depends on tools like Slack. The conversation digs into focusing on understanding where customers have challenges and learning to solve them, rather than trying to offer a platform for everything!

How do you do Infrastructure-as-Code? Carl and Richard talk to Chris Klug about his experiences with different IaC approaches. Chris talks about using HashiCorp's Terraform - one of the original IaC solutions, with many providers to work with all sorts of platforms - but do they keep up with the latest? Microsoft has released Bicep as a domain-specific language over Azure Resource Manager, but it's only for Azure. And then there's Pulumi, letting you create IaC in C# - as always, there's no one right way, but there is a path to nirvana out there somewhere. You just have to find it!

How do you make web apps into desktop apps? Carl and Richard talk to Otto Dobretsberger about Photino, a fork from Steve Sanderson's WebWindow project that will compile your web application into a cross-platform desktop application for Windows, macOS, and Linux. Otto talks about keeping Photino extremely lightweight, many times smaller than other desktop framework approaches. The typical approach is using the SPA of your choice - Angular, Vue, or React, and then compiling it into the desktop form. Great for making reliable off-line applications and onto dedicated kiosk-style hardware!

How do you debug asynchronous code? Carl and Richard talk to Isadora Rodopoulos about her debugging asynchronous code series of videos and the tools available today to help with debugging. Different people approach debugging in different ways - there's no one way to solve any given problem. But Isadora digs into the critical challenges of asynchronous code, not being sure of the order of execution, managing when messages get lost and detecting the transient problems that come from async code!

What's an Azure Static Web App, and why do you want one? Carl and Richard talk to Stacy Cashmore about Azure Static Web Apps, Microsoft's implementation of static web apps. Stacy talks about the bare essentials of making a web page - serving up some HTML. How much back-end processing do you really need? The static web app approach serves a page as a static file - and while that file may make calls to APIs, it doesn't require AppService itself. The result is fast, low-cost web apps!

Are you moving apps to the cloud? Carl and Richard talk to Richard Reukema about his experience shifting workloads into the cloud. Richard talks about getting beyond virtual machines in the cloud and utilizing the platform services that allow your application to scale up and out. The conversation dives into designing software independent of the implementation, even the cloud provider! This separation between design and implementation, combined with modern practices of deployment and testing automation, get to the true value of the cloud - the ability to rapidly iterate to respond to business needs!

How do you build cross-platform UI? Carl and Richard talk to Dan Walmsley about Avalonia, a lightweight, cross-platform UI using XAML and C#. Dan talks about supporting an array of Linux GUIs, Windows, macOS, WebAssembly, Raspberry PI, iOS, and Android! Avalonia comes from the Linux and Mono world and now runs with .NET 6 - you should check it out!

Flutter comes to Windows! Carl and Richard talk to Chris Sells about the latest incarnation of Flutter which now has desktop support for Windows. Flutter has been around for a few years helping to build mobile apps in iOS and Android with a unified codebase. But now it also supports deployment as a web app, and as a Windows app, and soon, MacOS and Linux. Chris talks about how Flutter provides for hardware abstraction that has allowed the ecosystem to support even more platforms, and build libraries to take Flutter in all sorts of directions.

Visual Studio turns 25! Carl and Richard talk to Julia Liuson, who has been working on Visual Studio since the beginning about her experiences building and leading the product. Julia talks about how Visual Studio got started, its evolution into .NET, with some great stories along the way. There's also Studio for the Mac and Visual Studio Code to talk about as well - all with different origin stories!

Another in the series of twenty years of .NET, this one with Scott Guthrie! Carl and Richard talk to Scott about the early days of ASP.NET, the recruiting of the ninja army of Scott Hanselman, Rob Conery, Phil Haack (and others), and much more! Scott has been part of .NET from the beginning and talks about bringing the ASP.NET web team with him when he joined the Azure group. The conversation digs into how to keep a 20-year-old product relevant, which does mean an occasional reinvention!

.NET is twenty years old - how has it changed? Carl and Richard talk with Mark Miller about how he moved from Delphi to .NET, and how .NET has continued to be relevant through the years. The conversation also digs into those pivotal moments of .NET and how it shaped the product into the open-source, cross-platform product of today!

C# is twenty years old! Carl and Richard chat with Anders Hejlsberg about how C# has evolved, and how it's continuing into the future. Anders digs into the origins of C# as the C-like Object-Oriented Langage aka COOL that he proposed when Microsoft could no longer build its own version of Java. The conversation gets into how all programming languages 'build on the shoulders of giants' and use features of languages past, with their own twists and innovations. Fun conversation with the father of C# !

Twenty years of .NET! Carl and Richard talk to Miguel de Icaza about his experiences working with .NET, going all the way back to 2001 with the announcement of the Mono Project. Miguel talks about those early days of Mono, creating MonoTouch to make C# run on iOS, Xamarin, and more! The conversation also dives into the evolution of open source, and the impact that tech companies have on open source projects, and what the future might hold for open source maintainers.

How do you build microservices? Carl and Richard talk to the authors of Pro Microservices in .NET 6 - Sean Whitesell, Rob Richardson, and Matthew Groves. The conversation digs into how microservices have evolved, the role of containers, and how the different tools that go together to make a successful microservices architecture. Then there's a whole discussion on reliability, security, scalability, and testing - there are a lot of things that go into making professional microservices!

What's your UX strategy? Carl and Richard talk to Brian Lagunas about his work on Prism, the UX framework that works WPF, Xamarin, and now the Uno Platform to build good-looking, consistent UX experiences. Brian talks about the challenges around simplifying the UX experience enough to make it easy to do the right thing, while still having enough functionality to not limit what your applications can do. The conversation also dives into web UX challenges and some of the tools that Brian has been working on for Infragistics in the same space.

What's the right development stack for a startup? Carl and Richard talk to Oleg Fridman about his latest startup called Verb Data and the challenges of building a startup with the .NET stack. Oleg talks about how the investors, and sometimes the developers, have concerns around .NET - but not the customers. .NET is well known for being enterprise-class and scalable - but it's not as well known for being cross-platform, open-source, and cloud friendly. The conversation dives into where .NET makes sense in a project and where it does not and the differences in developing in a startup versus a more established business. Not everyone is suited for startup life, but startup life has also evolved - maybe you're ready to try it!

Geek Out Number Three - Energy! Richard chats with Carl about the state of power generation in the world today - the growth of wind (offshore wind is growing!) and solar, why geothermal isn't taking off, and then a long conversation about small modular nuclear power. Is SMR really going to be a thing? 2021 also had a lot of news around fusion - much of it just noise, but there have been some important developments that might actually mean fusion is getting closer! The energy Geek Out wraps up with power storage, including thermal storage, different types of battery storage, even the potential of hydrogen! Lots to geek out about!

Ready to migrate from ASP.NET Web Forms? Carl and Richard talk to Veli Pehlivanov about his work helping organizations modernize their ASP.NET Web Forms applications. Veli talks about finding an appropriate migration strategy for the application, often keeping the existing app in operation while modernization efforts happen piece by piece. The challenging part in that scenario is aspects like security - can you share authentication from the older app with the newer? Sometimes it's necessary to build shims to keep things in sync, and while they seem temporary, often they are run for many years. Migration isn't easy, but the alternatives are worse - plan to take the time!

Part Two of the Geek Outs - all about the Pandemic. The conversation starts out talking about the Omicron variant and how the pandemic has changed since the 2020 Geek Out. The biggest thing that has happened is having 3.8 billion people vaccinated - not quite half the population, and not enough for herd immunity yet. But progress is being made, and there's more to come. Richard also dives into the power of the innovation that mRNA vaccines represent - a new tool for humanity to fight all sorts of illnesses. Finally, the show wraps up with a discussion on the supply chain crisis. Nominally brought on by the pandemic, there have been supply chain issues for years, exacerbated by lockdowns, illness, interruptions, and a huge backlog in container traffic. It will get resolved eventually, but that have been some changes coming for a while that will be felt for years - whether that is good or bad is yet to be determined!

It's the end of the year and time for a Geek Out - actually, three! With so much geeky goodness to explore, this is the first of three Geek Outs to come out in rapid succession, starting with SPACE! Richard talks about how amazing 2021 was for spaceflight - with a record-setting number of space flights from China and the US. China had a huge year in space, including landing a rover on the Moon and launching a space station. Then there are all the amazing science missions including DART, Perseverance, and the James Webb Space Telescope. There's good news and bad news on the rocket development front - and then there's the ISS. The space station is getting old, and the conversation is growing about building multiple replacements. With spaceflight getting cheaper, more things are going to fly - perhaps even us, one of these days!

.NET 6 was huge for Blazor - what's next? Carl and Richard talk to Daniel Roth about how Blazor continues to evolve as a C#-centric way to build web applications. Daniel talks about a bunch of the key features from .NET 6, including smaller runtime, Hot Reload, and rending components from JavaScript. The conversation also digs into the evolution of Blazor Fluent UI and MAUI - which also leads to the futures conversation, taking advantage of multithreading, and other great features you can see in the road map on GitHub. More Blazor is coming!

What is DAPR, and why do you want it? Carl and Richard talk to Paul Yuknewicz about how DAPR helps you build better microservices by dealing with all the plumbing. We all need messaging, security, logging, and other services to make microservices work - and there are a ton of SDKs and libraries out there to help. DAPR helps glue all those pieces together with a nice layer of abstraction to make it easier for your tool selections to work!

OpenSilver reaches V1! Carl and Richard talk to Giovanni Albani about OpenSilver - an open-source, plug-in-free implementation of Silverlight. Giovanni talks about how the client-side of OpenSilver is different from Silverlight, using Web Assembly to eliminate the need for the plug-in. But the developer SDK side is as close to identical as possible. The conversation explores going beyond compatibility with Silverlight 5 from 2011 to more modern capabilities, including the latest versions of .NET and C#. OpenSilver is not just a migration solution - it's a cross-platform development platform that is continuing to grow!

How do you start thinking outside the box? Carl and Richard chat with Mark Miller about his approach to creative problem-solving - not just solving the problem, but making it appear like there's no problem at all! Mark talks about driving toward optimal solutions, with some examples from his work in CodeRush. You don't always have the perfect tools to do everything you want, which is where improvisation comes in. The conversation also digs into getting beyond failure, being willing to walk away from an approach and try something totally new. There are many ways to solve problems, and part of the fun is trying a new way!

How do you test .NET applications written for different browsers, different servers, and different platforms? Carl and Richard talk to Kendra Havens about the recent release of .NET 6, Visual Studio 2022, and all the great tools to make testing and debugging cross-platform .NET applications easier. Kendra digs into tools like Test Explorer, the Remote Debugger, and Hot Reload - all tooling to make your testing life easier, no matter where your code is running!

Is desktop development still relevant? Billy Hollis says yes! Carl and Richard talk to Billy about his work building desktop apps, primarily with XAML. Billy talks about how desktop development has evolved even though a lot of folks have steered clear of it for years, doing all development with web clients. What is better with a traditional desktop client? The conversation also swings to how users interact with software, how developers learn, and how we could all stand to take a step back, decrease our rate of interruption, and focus more!

How do you automate DNS changes? And why would you? Carl and Richard talk to Enrique Comba, the DNSimple Ambassador, about programming against the DNSimple API. Enrique talks about automating migration from other DNS services - in fact, there are community-created products for migrating from various 'popular' DNS providers to DNSimple. The conversation also ranges over other tasks that are difficult to do manually, like certificate generation and renewal. If you're creating multi-tenant applications, configuration of DNS is a normal part of the job, and it should be automated - there are lots of reasons to dive into the API!

How do you build your Azure infrastructure? Carl and Richard talk to Eduard Keiholz, Erwin Staal, and Henry Been about their upcoming book on building Azure infrastructure with code using ARM Templates and Bicep. The conversation dives into a deep love for JSON that no one has - and the amount of tweaking it takes to build ARM Templates from JSON. Enter Bicep that gives you a more familiar dot notation that works well with intellisense and ultimately transpiles into the JSON that Azure needs. There are lots of tools out there to help you automate your infrastructure - but the built-in products in Azure can do the job for you!

How has the cloud changed data analytics? Carl and Richard chat with Vishwas Lele about his latest work taking a developer's view of data analytics - without upsetting the DBAs too much! Vishwas talks about how the cloud has changed bringing disparate data sources together for analytics. With the cloud's compute-on-demand, you don't need to do many transformations of data as it's loaded - but you can test it! This leads to a conversation of how CI/CD techniques can be applied to data to make for accurate data analytics - make your ingestion pipeline smart!

Collaboration is key - how do you add it to your applications? Carl and Richard talk to Rickard Hansson about Weavy and their API for adding audio, video, and text to your application. Rickard talks about collaboration with context - making sure you can bring together the right people at the right time to get work done. The conversation also turns to various other approaches to collaboration, and making the distinction between business-to-consumer and business-to-business interactions. But when collaboration is done right, the productivity boost is huge!

What's coming for the next version of C#? Carl and Richard chat with Mads Torgersen about some of the new features in C# 10 shipping with .NET 6. Mads talks about how a year is not a lot of time for building language features - but it does create a steady stream of new language ideas explored and tested before being finalized into the language. While C# 10 is largely finished, we also get a peek into some of the new ideas coming for C# 11!

It's 2021, what can Uno do for you? Carl and Richard talk to Thomas Huber about the current state of Uno and the many other options for desktop and cross-platform client development. Thomas talks about how Uno offers a great path to pushing out applications to iOS, Android, MacOS, web, and Windows - and offering routes to platform-specific features. The conversation also digs into MAUI, Xamarin, WPF, and Blazor. There are lots of choices out there, have you seen what Uno can do?

How do you make code that fits in your head? Carl and Richard talk to Mark Seemann about his latest book that focuses on building sustainable applications. Mark talks about the key issue of any application that is going to exist for a while: Can others understand what you wrote? Making understandable code starts with brevity, but clarity is also important. Modern tooling makes it easier to create sustainable applications, with automated testing and continuous integration and deployment being some of the biggest players. Code that you can learn from is code that fits in your head!

What's been happening in the web development world and F#? Carl and Richard talk to Zaid Ajaj about his favorite tools for building web pages with F#. The conversation starts concerning the comment read on the show and the Giraffe library that works with ASP.NET Web Core, still going strong at version 5. Zaid also talks about the power of Fable to transpile F# code into JavaScript and how to interoperate with existing JavaScript libraries - pointing to the project that Zaid build for using React from within F# through Fable. F# transpiles to JavaScript well, and can help you create very sustainable web apps!

Should we all be software engineers? Carl and Richard talk to Chad Michel and Doug Durham about the discipline of software engineering - separate from computing science and software development. Doug and Chad discuss the elements of lean engineering in software, referencing their book Lean Software Systems Engineering for Developers. The conversation digs into what it is to focus on engineering and the role of developers within the engineering system. There's room for a range of skills in development, and as Doug says, it's important to have a diversity of experiences and viewpoints to build great software!

Does it make sense to use .NET with Microsoft 365 (was Office 365)? Carl and Richard talk to Dan Wahlin, now in his new role as a Cloud Developer Advocate, about the power that exists within the Microsoft 365 APIs and what you can do with them with .NET. Dan talks about how Microsoft 365 knows a lot about what's going on in your organization, and how you as a developer can take advantage of the existing file handling, messaging, and interconnects to simplify your projects and make them more visible to users. The conversation explores moving existing brownfield applications into the Microsoft 365 realm, and what code you should be writing, or perhaps turning over to Azure Logic Apps or Power Automate!

Learning by doing! Carl and Richard talk to Joseph Finney about his experiences building Text-Grab, a clever utility for extracting text from graphics using OCR built into Windows. Joe talks about how the 'search-with-screenshot' built into Windows 10 depends on Bing, but there is an OCR library inside Windows - why go to the cloud? The conversation dives into the challenges of handling multiple screens, screen resolutions, DPIs, language packs, and more... what seems like a simple tool is never that simple. And, as it turns out, building the app is the easy part: Now, how do you get it into the Microsoft Store? That leads to both Richard and Carl installing the app, showing that purchasing and installing an app is much harder than it needs to be!

Julie and Steve return! Carl and Richard talk to Julie Lerman and Steve Smith about their new version of the Domain-Driven Design Fundamentals course. The conversation starts focused on Open AI Codex, a project for writing code with the spoken (or typed) word - and how that is an example of focusing on domain implementation - because the AI is doing the functional implementation from your words! Julie and Steve also dig into how DDD has evolved since their original class in 2014, including using event storming to help gather all the important information around a project in an enjoyable way. Gathering domain information is important - implementations come later! Don't get stuck in the conference-driven development of the latest technology, better to focus on what is distinct to the business!

How much more productive can Visual Studio get? Carl and Richard talk to Mika Dumont about some of the new features coming in Visual Studio 2022 to help shorten your development inner loop. Mika talks about some of the new code analyzer capabilities working within the Roslyn service that you can customize - and create your own! The conversation explores how these tools can add code automatically to save you typing, like adding using constructs on paste. It's a challenge to get the balance right between helping and interrupting, but the team works hard on it - and listens to your feedback to make it better. Take the VS2022 Preview out for a spin and help make it even better!

How do you speed up your development loop? Carl and Richard talk to Dmitry Lyalin about Hot Reload in Visual Studio 2022. Dmitry talks about how Hot Reload goes beyond Edit and Continue, where you can make changes in code without a breakpoint, and Hot Reload will insert it into the running code, wherever possible. It doesn't work in every scenario, but it does work for many, and across platforms and tools! Get more productive by being able to change code and see the results immediately!

How is Vue evolving? Carl and Richard talk to Shawn Wildermuth about the ongoing evolution of Vue, now at V3. Shawn talks about the culture of Vue and how the significant changes between versions two and three did NOT lead to a lot of breaking changes. There may have been some casual chatter between three old guys, but hey, there are worse things.

Bring the fight to the hackers with some clever code! Carl and Richard talk to Dana Epp about honeytokens - adding code and elements to your applications that are there only to attract bad actors. Dana talks about how hackers attack applications, looking for vulnerabilities. Often those attempts take weeks or even months and are hard to detect in regular logs. By adding code that would only run if an attacker was trying to exploit, you can raise a red flag to your security team early and take action before the attackers are successful. Have a listen, then chat (preferably over pizza) with your security folks about how you can help!

Why should form tags and submit events have all the fun? Carl and Richard talk to Carson Gross about htmx, a small Javascript library that extends HTML through attributes so that almost any element, on any event, can trigger a GET, POST, PUT, PATCH, or DELETE. Carson talks about building sophisticated web apps with HTML, rather than tons of JavaScript, and really getting into the original hypertext web metaphors - arguably the way Tim Berners Lee intended. With a simple learning curve, it doesn't take much effort to get started with htmx, just add a few attributes and start exploring what HTML really could be doing for your apps!

What if you could build a mixed reality app once, and run it on all kinds of different VR and AR headsets? Carl and Richard talk to Catherina Diaz about the Mixed Reality Toolkit (MRTK) on GitHub, which offers up a cross-platform deployment of VR/AR applications. Catherine talks about how MRTK abstracts the visualizations and interactions across different devices, including implementations for Hololens, Oculus, Vive, the Windows VR headsets, and even mobile devices! The conversation also dives into how VR and AR evolving, mapping existing user interface metaphors into the 3D realm, and also ideas on what pure VR/AR interfaces could be like!

How do you make APIs in Azure that work across a dozen languages? Carl and Richard talk to Jeffrey Richter about his role at Microsoft working on with a number of different groups that help keep Azure APIs consistent around key features like authentication, logging, and tracing. The conversation digs into managing and minimizing breaking changes in existing APIs, and keeping API implementations working well not just for C#, but also C, C++, Go, Java, JavaScript, Python, iOS, and Android!

It's 2021 - how has NodeJS evolved? Carl and Richard talk to Rob Richardson about NodeJS and much more. Rob dives into the current evolutionary process of JavaScript with the ECMAScript standards and the impact of transpilers to allow developers to use the latest concepts of JavaScript while still remaining compatible with existing browsers. The conversation dives into the Node philosophy of minimal footprint and surface area and the great libraries that help you get going quickly. And then there's WebAssembly!

Do the SOLID principles still make sense? Carl and Richard talk to Dan North about SOLID, starting with a five-minute PubConf talk that Dan did about how SOLID was wrong. Meant to be humorous (it was PubConf after all), the SOLID fans took exception, and actually led to Dan exploring how SOLID could be reinterpreted... as CUPID. With a lot of back story and laughs, Dan digs into his thinking around making sustainable, quality software with the acronym CUPID.

Are you using open-source libraries in your enterprise applications or products? What are the consequences? Carl and Richard talk to Rocky Lhotka about his work with organizations coming to grips with the use of open-source code in their projects. What happens if the project goes away? What if there is malware added to the code intentionally or accidentally? What about plagiarism of code? Diligence around the origin of code is important, whether it is open-source or not - and should be part of your build process!

What is event sourcing, and why should you care? Carl and Richard talk to Jeremy Miller about the latest version of Marten, the Document store for PostgreSQL - and how there is an increased focus in this version of event sourcing. Jeremy talks about the patterns of development around event sourcing, separating how data is written to a system from reading it. One of the side effects is some latency, but the advantage is scalability and reliability. It takes some time to get used to the patterns around event sourcing, but for the right project, it can make all the difference!

Ransomware is serious - are you protected? Carl and Richard talk to Paula Januszkiewicz as part of the Techorama online event about her work fighting ransomware. Paula talks about how successful the bad guys have been these days - multi-million dollar ransoms are being paid. But sometimes, not all the data gets restored - you can't trust bad guys! There are a lot of approaches to resisting ransomware, and some great tools, but it does take time and effort. But if the alternative is being out of commission for days, costing huge amounts of money... isn't it worth it to get secure?

What's being announced at Build? Carl and Richard talk to Scott Hunter about the latest from the Virtual Build conference. With .NET 5 out last November, and .NET 6 coming next November, this is a time for interim features - including some huge performance improvements! Scott talks about being able to modify code while running to shorten your development cycle, and the latest version of Upgrade Assistant to help move your existing .NET applications to the latest version. Lots of great stuff!

Oracle for Startups? Carl and Richard talk to Jason Williamson about Oracle's programs to support startups using Oracle's Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). Jason talks about how startups can get credit on OCI, migrate workloads from other locations, and even interoperate with other clouds - for redundancy, special services, or even to save money. The conversation also dives into what Oracle brings to the table - access to investors in the Silicon Valley, even to existing Oracle customers! If you'd like to take Oracle for Startups for a spin, go to <a href="https://www.oracle.com/startup/">https://www.oracle.com/startup/</a> and use the promo code NETROCKS for $2,500 USD in free cloud credits!

What's new in Visual Studio 2022? Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell talk to Simon Calvert, Anthony Cangialosi, and Andy Sterland about the upcoming version of Studio. First on the docket is 64-bit: While Studio has been able to build 64-bit applications for more than a decade, the devenv.exe itself has remained a 32-bit application. The team discusses why it makes sense to move to 64-bit and what that means for development going forward. But there's much more to Studio 2022, including improvement to debugging and diagnostics across platforms, being able to collaborate with developers in real-time using Live Share, and getting smarter about how you navigate and explore existing code. Cool new things are coming!

What happens when your company brings on investors? Carl and Richard talk to Paul Stovell about the recent investment made by Insight Partners into Octopus Deploy. Paul talks about how a great investment group brings important skills and insights to a company - not just money. The conversation also digs into deciding when to take investment, what new opportunities open up, and how the investment can affect the culture of the company - preferably for the better!

How do you do smarter testing? Carl and Richard talk to Simon Cropp about Verify, Simon's open source project to add snapshot testing capabilities to many of your favorite testing stacks. Simon talks about how snapshots can help you look at the output of code, rather than the code itself, to test its validity. And as code changes, the new snapshots reflect those changes - no need to rewrite the tests!

Xamarin Forms 5 is being replaced by .NET Maui - what's a mobile dev to do? Carl and Richard talk to Gerald Versluis about what to expect from .NET Maui and what to expect when migrating your Xamarin Forms apps. There are going to be some changes, and you can expect support for Xamarin Forms to end sometime in 2022. Gerald talks about how the skill sets are similar, so the move isn't too hard - and its still worthwhile to learn and build in Xamarin Forms today!

How are you doing TDD today? Recorded online at NDC Manchester, Carl and Richard chat with Ian Cooper about his views on TDD, going back to his old talk on Where TDD Went Wrong. Ian talks about how folk struggled to understand TDD, focusing solely on writing tests, rather than understanding how people use their software. This leads to a conversation on how development approaches have evolved with the cloud and modern software - is it time for a new development methodology?

How do you test the security of your applications? Carl and Richard chat with Kim Carter about purpleteam, an open-source library for testing web applications as part of your CI/CD pipeline. Kim talks about OWASP in general and yes, SQL injection (and injection in general) is still the number one security risk - but there are plenty more. Don't be an easy victim, start making security testing part of your build and deployment process!

What is the impact of Artificial Intelligence on the environment? Carl and Richard talk to Amber McKenzie about her examination of resource consumption when creating machine learning models. As Amber explains, using ML models is not particularly resource-intensive, but creating them is - which leads to a discussion about using technologies like transfer learning to avoid making models unnecessarily. The conversation also digs into the broader thinking about resource consumption in computing - do you know how much power your apps use?

How is Visual Studio working for you? Carl and Richard chat with Mads Kristensen about his new role on the Visual Studio feedback team - not that he's ever far from VS extensions! With a dash of home automation thrown in, Mads talks about how you can provide feedback to the Visual Studio team, and how that feedback is part of the continuous development plans for improving Visual Studio!

Where would you like your Mongo? Carl and Richard chat with James Kovacs and Rachelle Palmer about the latest at MongoDB, the open-source document database. While MongoDB's origins are in open web projects, today it is very popular with the enterprise development crowd and so the libraries for Java and C# are excellent. The conversation also turns to MongoDB Atlas, which is the cloud offering that runs on AWS, Azure and GCP - so you can have MongoDB-as-a-Service in the cloud provider of your choice!

What's next for .NET? Carl and Richard chat with Dan Roth about all the good things coming this November for .NET. The conversation starts out with some discussion around Blazor, which is no longer an experimental project, but now a key part of .NET. Dan talks about the role of MAUI bringing together UI elements for smartphones, tablets, PCs, and more. There's a lot to look forward to by the end of 2021!

How can Elasticsearch help you? Carl and Richard talk to Steve Gordon, who recently moved to Elastic to work on the .NET clients. Steve talks about how Elasticsearch can act as a data store as well as work with existing databases and non-relational data to provide awesome search capabilities to your applications. And not just for search bars - there are many cases where having an ability to see across an organization's data can provide huge value. Check it out!

Do you have apps that need to move to .NET 5? Carl and Richard talk to Mark Rendle about his work on Visual Recode, which started out as a migration tool for WCF to gRPC, but has evolved to deal with the migration to .NET 5 challenges. Mark talks about how older WCF apps can often move to gRPC pretty easily, but moving the app has other problems, like out-of-date libraries, build practices, tests, and so on. There's also the possibility of migrating WebAPI and even WebForms apps - lots of possibilities!

Teams is extensible - wanna write some code? Carl and Richard talk to Hilton Giesenow about his work building Teams extensions - and there are a lot of options! The conversation starts out focusing on what Teams can do for you, which is to be the portal into collaboration at work. Hilton talks about the huge array of extensibility options for Teams to put more of the work in the tabs of Teams - from bots to PowerApps, there are a lot of choices!

Can a chatbot make your team development process better? Carl and Richard talk to Phil Haack about his work building Ab.bot, a chatbot designed to work in Slack and Discord to help with building software - call it ChatOps - doing your development workflow with everyone able to see, sending commands through the bot. Phil talks about building add-ins to Ab.bot using C#, Python, and Javascript. ChatOps your way to an efficient team building great software!

What's a Blazor Static Web App, and why should you care? Carl and Richard talk to Jeff Fritz about how the new Azure Static Web App service can be combined with Blazor to do dynamic things on the client, without any client rendering on the server. The conversation ranges over a variety of web development technologies, including Web Forms, Angular, and more. Static doesn't mean boring!

What's new in Entity Framework Core 5? Carl and Richard chat with Julie Lerman about the latest in EF Core, stories from the trenches of data development and more! Julie talks about there not being an EF Core 4 (to avoid confusion), but that there will be an EF Core 6 which should align pretty nicely with EF 6, which is now in maintenance. Yes, there's more to do to make the ORM better, and parity is close between the versions!

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!

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!

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!

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!

.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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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?

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!

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!

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!

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.

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!

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!

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.

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!

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.

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!

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!

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!

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!

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.

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!

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.

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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#!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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.

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

What if Visual Studio could help you write better code? Carl and Richard talk to Danny Simmons and Gustavo Soares about Program Synthesis Using Examples - aka, PROSE. PROSE uses machine learning to understand how you are changing your code and finds ways to help with those changes. Originally a part of Microsoft Research, PROSE has moved to the developer division at Microsoft and is part of the Intellicode extensions in Visual Studio. There are also examples and code on GitHub - check it out!

It's 2020 - how do you build client-side applications? Carl and Richard talk to Brian Lagunas about his work in client-side development, largely around XAML (don't worry WinForms, we still love you!) - WPF, UWP and Xamarin.Forms. Brian leads the Prism open-source project that helps to build XAML-based applications, specifically WPF and Xamarin.Forms. The conversation digs into the problems around UWP and even a mention of Silverlight - and then the challenges of the other client-side platform, mobile!

What does the perfect developer education look like? Carl and Richard talk to Thomas Betts about how he learned about software development, and how he has taught others. The conversation dives into the diversity of education, including the power of a liberal arts education to provide key skills like communication, teamwork and communication. Oh, and also, communication! This wide-ranging conversation also dives into the differences in generations of developers, adding new skills when you're an experienced developer, and more!

What if your development environment was in the cloud? Carl and Richard talk to Nik Molnar about Visual Studio Online - literally a version of Visual Studio running on Azure. Nik talks about the time it takes to set up each development environment for each development project you have, and what you could do to make that less painful. The conversation also dives into the differences between personal configuration options and project options - you can have a dark theme if you want! And even more interestingly - you can do remote development on your own dev machine at work while traveling through VS Online. Lots of cool possibilities!

How do you write XAML? Carl and Richard chat with Dmitry Lyalin about Microsoft's on-going efforts to make coding in XAML faster, easier and more reliable. Dmitry starts out talking about how there are different dialects of XAML, including WPF, UWP, Xamarin Forms and more - although there are concerted efforts to keep them more in sync. And that helps with tooling also! Dmitry dives into Blend, XAML Designer and the power of coding XAML directly with IntelliCode, hot-reload and more!

Are we actually making progress on quantum computing? While at .NET Developer Days in Warsaw, Carl and Richard talked to Johnny Hooyberghs about quantum computing and Microsoft's Q# language. The discussion begins with some definitions around quantum computing including qubits, superposition, and entanglement. Google's announcement on quantum supremacy is debated, as is the idea that quantum computers could ever be general-purpose computing devices. Back in the 1950s, we didn't think computers would be in homes, so who knows what comes next!

Memory Leaks in .NET? How is that possible? While at .NET Developer Days in Warsaw, Carl and Richard talked to Adam Furmanek about modern memory leaks - the things we can do in .NET that cause more memory to be consumed over time. Adam talks through various aspects of .NET that have a risk of causing memory leaks, how to detect them and then the hard part - how to fix them.

Containers sound like a good idea - but can you get your application live on them? Carl and Richard talk to Michele Bustamante about her on-going work migrating existing applications to microservices on containers, as well as greenfield development. Michele discusses the balance of complexity and flexibility that containers bring, and the challenges of getting an organization comfortable operating an entirely new architecture of applications. But the payoff is big - scalable, reliable and cost-effective software!

Do you Python? Carl and Richard chat with Michael Kennedy about the current state of Python and how .NET developers can learn it! Michael talks about the many flavors of Python out there today and the tremendous number of libraries available. The focus of Python on machine learning, scientific computation and more makes it great for all sorts of applications outside of regular dev. But if you wanna make a web site - it kicks butt there too! Check out Michael's course on Python for .NET Developers if you want to get started!

How do you improve the performance of your application? While at .NET Developer Days in Poland, Carl and Richard chatted with Steve Gordon about his work writing high-performance C#. The conversation digs into the larger picture of why and how you improve performance - don't guess, use method profiling, benchmarking and great measurements to know if you're fixing the right thing, the right way. That being said, there are a bunch of techniques available to improve performance - check out Steve's blog and the links in the show notes!

How can you be more productive with Visual Studio? Carl and Richard talk to Kendra Havens about all the built-in productivity gadgets in Studio - plus the ones you can build yourself! Kendra talks about putting those red and green squiggles, lightbulbs and screwdrivers to work communicating with developers about standards of development within your organization using Roslyn Analyzers, as well as taking advantage of the huge number of productivity features including regex completion, type recognition and many more!

How do you configure your cloud? Carl and Richard talk to Joe Duffy about Pulumi, a tool that lets you use your favorite programming languages to provide Configuration-as-Code. Joe Duffy talks about the new addition to Pulumi - .NET Core languages including C#, F#, VB.NET... even COBOL.NET if you really want to! The conversation then turns to the process of creating better code for managing configuration, getting real testing, building our modules. Configuration-as-Code is code, give it the love it needs!

What's up with Entity Framework? Carl and Richard talk to Julie Lerman about the latest updates to Entity Framework, both EF 6 and Entity Framework Core 3.0. The discussion dives into this transitory time in the world of .NET, where .NET framework and .NET Core live side-by-side, and looking to a future of a unified .NET 5. Julie talks about the new features in EF Core 3.0 and what's coming shortly in EF Core 3.1. There are more breaking changes than new features, but it should all be worth it, lining up for what comes in the next year. Exciting times!

What's happening with Windows client-side development? Carl and Richard talk to Ryan Demopoulous about WinUI 3.0, the next version of the WinUI stack, which represents a major shift in how Windows applications are going to be built and supported in the future. Ryan starts the conversation focused on the current WinUI 2, which is open source, but largely focuses only on UWP. WinUI 3 expands the horizons to support .NET Core and more - the alpha bits shipped at Ignite, check it out!

What does it take to move away from AngularJS? Carl and Richard talk to Jennifer Wadella about so-called legacy Angular apps, that is, web apps built using Angular 1.x - known as AngularJS. The discussion calls back to the issues around AngularJS, that its flexibility led to a huge array of programming approaches, making it difficult to manage projects in the long term. The opinionated approach of Angular from version 2 dealt with that issue, at the price of making upgrading hard - but today the change shows its value in a huge ecosystem that makes modernizing worthwhile!

Software-as-a-Service is getting more common, what does it take to make a good app in that world? Carl and Richard talk to Tom Kerkhove about building multi-tenant cloud apps today. While multi-tenant apps have been around for a long time, the cloud offers new ways to build, monitor and maintain them. The conversation starts out digging into the challenge of data - do you really want a database for each customer? Tom talks about the new data capabilities Azure offers and how that impacts your choices - along with monitoring, API controls and more!

What does client-side development look like today? Carl and Richard talk to Tim Corey about WinForms, WPF and other ways to build applications that live on a client. The conversation digs into the fear that client-side developers have around WinForms going away - which does not appear to be happening with a new version appearing in .NET Core 3. But Tim does dive into how you can spend time organizing your application in a way that tolerates changes to UI... but what to change to?

Ready for a tale of migration? Carl and Richard enjoy a tale by Elias Puurunen who tells the story of migrating a 90's era Delphi app to .NET. The application in question was an air quality simulation application with some serious math equations in it that was written in the 90's in Delphi. The original developer long gone, there is source code but no operating development environment for it. Elias describes the various tactics he used to get the application into .NET so that it could have a future - and new features!

The ASP.NET Core Ecosystem is thriving! What does that mean for you? Carl and Richard talk to Jeremy Miller about how the latest versions of ASP.NET Core are building an ecosystem of third-party tools in the open-source world. Jeremy talks about looking at different approaches to building web apps with ASP.NET Core, the variety of backend libraries available, and takes a short trip down memory lane to talk about ALT.NET, an open-source movement he was a part of going back to 2007!

.NET Core 3 has shipped - what did we get? Carl and Richard talk to Scott Hunter about the announcements at .NET Conf around .NET Core 3 and the cool stuff still coming from the latest version of .NET. .NET Core 3 continues to expand on the ability to work across platforms, while also adding the new Windows SDK that contains a new version of WinForms and WPF. More compiling options, installation features, monitoring and more - it's a great time to be a .NET developer!

How do you build software for a diversity of customers? Carl and Richard talk to Lily Dart about what it takes to really build diversity-sensitive software, and it starts with understanding the difference between sympathy and empathy. Lily talks about how folks fall into the trap of avoiding diversity using empathy training - but real empathy takes understanding, and that means living with diversity. There's no substitute for a diverse team, and even then, you'll still need to research into areas of diversity your team doesn't have. It's hard work, but worth it!

Blazor is coming on strong - should you migrate to it? Carl and Richard talk to Jeff Fritz about what's happening with Blazor and how server-side Blazor is going to ship with .NET Core 3. But what about moving existing web forms apps to Blazor? The developer ecosystem seems to be building controls for Blazor, so perhaps there are options there, but first, make sure your web forms apps are using the latest .NET bits - then you'll have a better grasp of what's possible and where to go!

What is gRPC and why should you care? Carl and Richard talk to Shawn Wildermuth about the new hotness that is gRPC - or is it? Shawn talks about all the different approaches we've taken over the years to communicate over the wire, whether with SOAP, REST or all the other flavors in-between. What makes sense for your application? Shawn talks about how gRPC has a solid cross-platform solution for streaming connections and how that is probably the main reason you should consider gRPC at all - and if you aren't concerned about streaming, then there isn't much reason to move from where you are.

In the age of the cloud, does performance matter? Carl and Richard talk to JD Trask of Raygun software about his work making applications run fast - and knowing how to do it! JD talks about the various ways that you can measure the performance of different types of applications, especially in this modern day where you can instrument in production and actually see what your customers are experiencing. The trick is to not look at averages - individual experiences matter, and figuring out where and what to tune takes time and good tooling. A great geeky conversation on performance!

Server-Side Blazor is poised to ship at the end of September 2019 - are you ready? Carl and Richard talk to Shaun Walker, formerly of DotNetNuke fame, about server-side Blazor - starting with, how does server-side Blazor even make sense? Blazor has been a client-side technology using web assembly since Steve Sanderson showed off the prototype in 2017. But as the product matured, a server-side model from the Razor world emerged as a hugely powerful way to build forms-over-data web applications - and the component vendors have jumped on-board! Shaun talks about his new open-source project called Oqtane which promises to make building Blazor apps even easier!

How do you integrate accessibility into your applications? Carl and Richard chat with Elle Waters about her on-going work helping educate developers and organizations to include accessibility features as part of their user experience design. Elle digs into how accessibility should become part of your workflow - it takes time to learn, but once understood, it doesn't cost much in terms of routine work. The same applies to client-side and mobile tech. In the end, accessibility *is* user experience - you gotta do it!

What is Rust and why would you use it with C#? While at NDC in Oslo, Carl and Richard chatted with Ashley Mannix about he and the team at Datalust build Seq, a structured log server, using Rust on the back end and C# on the front. Rust looks a lot like C++, but with a great type safety system and a smart compiler that can help catch memory leaks before they happen. Rust is a modern language with modern capabilities and well worth the look!

Artificial Intelligence is happening - are we using it correctly? While at NDC in Oslo, Carl and Richard talked to Amber McKenzie about the challenges of building AI applications that are ethical and unbiased. Doc Am discusses how the AI term is over-used, and how often there are simpler technologies that can solve business problems. But where AI is applied, it comes with some ethical needs about how it is used, and an understanding that there is always bias in the data that trains AI . Tread carefully!

Can software summarize documents? While at NDC in Oslo, Carl and Richard talked to Masa Nekic about automated text summarization. Masa walks through a few cases where text summarization is valuable, such as search optimization. There are a variety of strategies to automate text summarization, and there are plenty of 'it depends' cases, but it's a cool tech to explore!

WCF isn't coming to .NET Core 3 - what to do? While at NDC in Oslo, Carl and Richard chatted with Mark Rendle about his new project called Recode. Mark talks about how Microsoft came to the decision that they could not migrate WCF to the open-source, cross-platform .NET Core and what that means going forward. Mark's solution is a tool called Recode that can convert WCF code to gRPC - check it out!

How does UX work in your organization? While at NDC in Oslo, Carl and Richard talked to Debbie Levitt about how UX can help make software better and the development process less difficult. Debbie talks about UX being part of the initial requirements gathering process, talking to users and looking through how business processes actually work. UX can help you build the right thing!

What can HashiCorp's Packer do for you? Carl and Richard talk to Jamie Phillips about how Packer helps to make golden images of hypervisor machines - that would be Hyper-V, VMWare or any of the container solutions so that you can ship them out to whoever needs them. The images can be used as part of your pipeline to push cloud products into a store, or for developers to work from production-configured images, and so on. Packer is a powerful open source solution that can be part of your CI/CD pipeline!

What's your authentication solution? Carl and Richard talk to Vittorio Bertocci, now an architect at Auth0, about building pure identity solutions that work for all platforms and languages. Vittorio digs into why you want an authentication solution that stands independent of any given cloud vendor, and what capabilities you need to get authentication right!

How do you use messaging? Carl and Richard talk to Jimmy Bogard about his work developing messaging architecture for applications. Jimmy talks about the mistakes he's made along the way, starting with not using formal messaging systems - yes, you can use a text file or a database table as a queue, but should you? And when you do embrace messaging, there is an overhead of code and effort to work with queues properly. Is it worth it? The answer is always, it depends!

It's 2019, how smart is your home? Time for a Geek Out! Carl and Richard chat with Mads Kristensen about how he's adding automation to his home - and in a way that is tolerable for his significant other and young children. Mads talks about his kids being small enough that they can't reach the light switch - so automation to turn lights on is hugely empowering for them! But how do you make your home automation not so annoying? That's a bit trickier, and a great conversation!

Why should you build your website with Gatsby? Carl and Richard chat with Jason Lengstorf about the Javascript library built on top of ReactJS to automate the generation of static web pages from a variety of data sources with a focus on blogs and CMS sites. The conversation dives into this idea of higher layer abstractions making building multi-format web pages easier and highly performant by generating to static content. This lets you push your content closer to the customer on a CDN - the web development world continues to evolve.

Ready to move your applications into containers? Carl and Richard chat with Rob Richardson about his work migrating existing applications running in virtual machines over to containers using Kubernetes as the orchestration engine and Istio as the traffic manager. Why add Istio to the mix? It makes it easier to have a mixture of containers, services running in VMs and more. The conversation digs into the expanding tribe of services that work in containers together to give you great options for analytics, security and more.

Have you heard of Rockstar? Carl and Richard talk to Dylan Beattie about a joke that may have gone too far - or perhaps not far enough? Dylan talks about the origins of Rockstar, the idea that recruiters like to use the term rockstar to identify a certain class of developer that is far from realistic. But what if rockstar was a language? Then anyone who programmed in it would be a rockstar developer... right? What started as a gag specification is now a language - the code looks like 80s rock lyrics, but it compiles!

How do you secure microservices? Carl and Richard chat with Sam Newman about the complexity that comes with containerization and microservices, and how that impacts your security plans. Often security has been based on a monolithic single-point-of-access model. But when applications are broken down into microservices, there are a whole bunch of new points of contact to be secured. The good news is, there is plenty of technology out there to help, including password vaults, mutual TLS and more - you just need to learn about it!

Build is over - what did we learn? Carl and Richard talk to Scott Hunter about the various announcements at Build connection with .NET - including the delivery date of .NET Core 3 and what happens beyond! The conversation digs into switching to a routine delivery model for .NET, so that you can anticipate when you'll need to implement the new version of the framework. Scott also talks about new features coming in C# 8, including the fact that C# 8 is only for .NET Core 3 and above... things are changing, and it seems for the better!

What's the latest for Identity Server? While at NDC in Porto, Carl and Richard chatted with Dominick Baier and Brock Allen about their latest work on Identity Server. The conversation goes through the various current generations of attacks on web pages, how Single Page Apps behave differently, and more! Great conversation about the current state of web-based security and how you can do more.

Back in February, the fascinating David Frangioni made a trek up to Pwop Studios to geek out with Carl and Richard about music technology. Oh, the stories! What a gas.

What does it take to be a modern developer? While at NDC in London, Carl and Richard talked with Dan North about how being a developer has evolved. The conversation starts out discussing the transformation of Microsoft itself and how it has helped throw the definition of developer out the window - so what happens now? Dan digs into looking at developers as more than an array of technical skills, but also how they work in teams and in the organization. Great thinking!

Templates can make your life better! While at NDC in London, Carl and Richard chatted with Layla Porter about the power of Visual Studio Templates. Layla talks about trying to avoid repeating herself in code, and trying to document or remember best practices for the various projects she works on. The answer is templates - so that you can File-New a project with all that thinking already built in. And not just for new projects - you can template Visual Studio configurations as well!

Impostor Syndrome is real and pervasive in the development industry - what can you do about it? While at NDC London, Carl and Richard talk to Rob Conery about the second edition of The Impostor's Handbook. Rob talks about how most software developers don't actually have an education in computing science, but that doesn't mean you can't learn - he talks about key bits of education you can add to your repertoire to help resist feeling like an impostor - you can do it!

What can Azure Functions do for you? While at NDC in London, Carl and Richard talked to Simona Cotin about Azure Functions. You can code Azure Functions in C#, Java, Python and JavaScript - but Simona prefers JavaScript. Use the language you're most comfortable with. Programming Azure Functions in JavaScript means using the NodeJS frameworks, building small chunks of code that do exactly what you want them to do without a lot of plumbing!

How do you measure the success of a feature in your application? While at NDC in London, Carl and Richard talked to Christine Yen about her experiences building instrumentation systems for applications both to diagnose problems and to understand how to make software better. The conversation digs into the scientific method of hypothesizing a potential feature, exploring different ways to build it and deciding on measurements of success - know when something works!

Build your web site in F#! While in London at the NDC, Carl and Richard talked to Anthony Brown about the SAFE Stack - a complete set of tooling for building back-end and front-end parts of your website in F#! Anthony talks about the various pieces needed to work together, how debugging works, and his preferred tooling, including VSCode as the editor and some great plug-ins that make F# coding easy!

Are you adding security to your application at the end of a development cycle? While at NDC in London, Carl and Richard talk to Victoria Almazova about how she encourages developers to include security planning as early as possible - it costs less and is more effective! The new tooling available today for security makes it easier to do the right thing, you just have to include it as part of the process.

Have you heard of CSS Grid? While at NDC in London, Carl and Richard talk to Amy Kapernick about one of the new features in CSS introduced in 2017 on all major browsers. CSS Grid is not tables - and tables aren't inherently evil, they can just be used badly. With Grid, you can define flexible layouts and formatting for a variety of elements. And there's nothing you're doing that can't be tweaked effectively by designers when the time comes - check 'em out!

Have you got a home assistant device? While at NDC in London, Carl and Richard talk to Sarah Withee about her experience with Mycroft, the open source home assistant device. As an open source project you can run Mycroft on your PC, or even a Raspberry Pi. The conversation turns to the concerns about constantly listening speakers and how having an open source project that lets you see what its listening to make that whole experience less concerning. And there's custom hardware too!

What's up with Blazor? While at NDC in London, Carl and Richard chatted with Steve Sanderson and Daniel Roth about the latest efforts around running C# in the browser with Web Assembly. Since its first demo back in 2017 by Steve, Blazor has grown up a lot - part of ASP.NET Core but still nominally an experimental project, parts of Blazor are now appearing in the preview editions of .NET Core 3 as Razor Components. 2019 looks to be a big year for Blazor!

How do developers learn? While at NDC, Carl and Richard talk to Clare Sudbery about her experiences helping developers learn. The conversation digs into various learning models, the challenges of coming up with standards for education in software and what we can do to get better. Clare talks about how organizations need to create a culture that allow their people to not know things so that there is room to learn - once that culture is in place, things get much simpler!

How do you migrate your .NET application to current standards? Carl and Richard talk to Rocky Lhotka about his approach to migrating existing .NET applications to .NET Standard. Rocky explains that many folks ask him about moving to .NET Core, but getting to .NET Standard is an easier move (but likely not easy) and offers more options in the long run, including .NET Core. The process starts with getting your .NET application upgraded to at least .NET 4.6.1, but it goes on from there - many organizations have a huge portfolio of older .NET applications - Rocky offers a plan to modernize!

Should developers care about search engine optimization (SEO)? Chris Love says yes! Carl and Richard talk with Chris about how SEO impacts consumer-facing websites and what developers can do to include SEO in their development process. The good news is, many of the things we do routinely in web development help with SEO, including mobile-first development, using HTTPS and focusing on performance. But there's more to be done, and Chris digs into important bits - check out the tools in the show notes for more ideas on how to make your website more SEO friendly!

User Experience Design is on the rise! Carl and Richard talk to Billy Hollis about his latest thoughts and efforts around getting developers to design UX as part of their development process. The conversation dives into the change of thinking it takes to really understand how users work with your software and the interfaces change as you think about what someone needs to see and when. Billy also brings up the advantage of great UX - happier users, more users and more profitability. Software is also cheaper to maintain and educate on as well! Whether its mobile, web or desktop, you need great UX!

How do you get into test automation? Carl and Richard talk to Arnon Axelrod about his new book on Test Automation and the concept of the Test Automation Maturity Model - the steps you take along the way to getting testing to be a key part of making quality software. Arnon digs into building the right kinds of tests, what tools help you move in that direction, and where skills need to be grown to make better tests and automate them in a way that they are part of every build, whether you ship the software at that time or not. Test automation is not just for SaaS apps - everyone can benefit!

It's 2019, do you know where your containers are? Carl and Richard talk to Jessica Deen about her work with containers and how Kubernetes has come to dominate the container space, especially in the Microsoft arena. Kubernetes is a container orchestration engine that runs on-premises and all the major cloud vendors - but it is so much more than that, with an ecosystem growing up around it providing an array of tools that can handle your CI/CD pipeline and a huge array of elements for deploying applications. Check out the extensive set of links in the show notes!

How do you make .NET Core go even faster? System.Memory! While at the Update Conference in Prague, Carl and Richard sat down with .NET Core team member Adam Sitnik to talk about his work on Span of T and System.Memory. Adam talks about .NET Core 2.1 and C# 7.2 giving access to unmanaged heap and stack memory. Used right, you can get huge performance boosts and decreased memory footprints for certain classes of work - at the risk of a stack overflow! Great conversation about when and where you should take advantage of these new features!

What does it mean to be cloud native? Carl and Richard talk to Vishwas Lele of <a href="https://www.appliedis.com/">Applied Information Sciences</a> about his on-going evolution to be a cloud-native, and what means in 2019. Vishwas talks about the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, an organization independent of the major cloud vendors that helps with identifying and managing tools that make cloud native applications work! Vishwas digs into a variety of tools, starting with Kubernetes and with many more tools coming! The cloud is only getting more amazing!

How do you debug? Carl and Richard talk to Omer Raviv about OzCode Debugging, including its ability to do 'time travel' or 'reverse' debugging - rather than stepping through code forward line-by-line, you can go any direction you want with any rules that you need. Omer talks about the years of work in OzCode and the array of features including understanding what your LINQ queries are doing in detail, writing conditional breakpoints and more.

Ready to add blockchain to your repertoire? Carl and Richard talk to Marc Mercuri about the Azure Blockchain Development Kit. Blockchain is full of hype, especially in relationship to cryptocurrency, but there are so many other possibilities. The idea of a distributed ledger of transactions has huge potential for reducing costs of transactions and allowing the sharing of information about those transactions up and down the chain. But how to make it work? That's where Microsoft comes in with some great tooling - have a listen!

The .NET Foundation is changing! Carl and Richard talk to Jon Galloway and Beth Massi about the changes in the .NET Foundation and what it means to the average .NET developer. The first announcement is that the .NET Foundation is moving to an open membership model - if you have made a contribution to .NET in any way, be it code, documentation or other, you can apply for membership and expect to be accepted. Next up, the expansion of the .NET Foundation board to seven directors and open elections for those board seats - any .NET Foundation member can be a director! Nominations are happening in January 2019, so get on board today!

What can you do with the Bot Framework? How about make old-school 8-bit adventure games? While at UpdateConf in Prague, Carl and Richard chatted with Edwin van Wijk and Sander Molenkamp about the GameATron4000 open source project that ties the Bot Framework together with Phaser.io graphics to make simple, funny adventure games. The conversation explores how the Bot Framework simplifies the whole command engine of the game, being able to deal with the variations in language to still get to the intent commands of the game. Add other Cognitive Services to take it even further! The project is open source and looking for contributors - bring your humor and learn what the Bot Framework can do!

Merry Christmas! For your Christmas listening pleasure, Carl and Richard chat with former .NET Rocks co-host Rory Blyth. Rory chats a bit about what has happened to him lately, and how he's gotten more engaged with the community after a long break. Lots of conversation about the past and a little bit about some of the new things that he's playing with, Rory is always a fun and freewheeling conversation. NOTE - this show is PG-13 and there are a few bleeps, but nothing too awful. It's just like Christmas with that one uncle that everyone has!

What's new in Node development? While at DevReach in Bulgaria, Richard moderated a panel of David Neal, Brandon Satrom and Tara Manicsic about their experiences with Node. There's a huge array of application types that make sense for Node, starting with IoT solutions, but also exploring the more traditional web applications. Node works great in the serverless role as well, it's low-ceremony approach works great with Azure Functions and AWS Lambdas. The continuing improvements to Javascript help also, and since you control the runtime environment, you get to use those language improvements in production!

What can you do wrong with Azure security-wise? Lots! While at Update Conference in Prague, Carl and Richard talked to Karl Ots about all the things that can go wrong with security in Azure. Karl starts at the top with one of the main reasons you should consider Azure - physical security. Those data centers are safe! From there, the conversation dives into choices you make when setting up Azure that can cause trouble - what email addresses to use, what privileges each account requires, and so on. It makes perfect sense to give minimum privileges to users and applications, but do you do it? Have a listen!

How do you build a mobile app in 2018? Or should you? Richard moderates a panel from DevReach in Bulgaria with Sam Basu, Jen Looper and Jo Franchetti about their experiences with different tools building mobile apps. The conversation ranges over Xamarin, Cordova, NativeScript and good ol' fashion mobile web. Is the Progressive Web App good enough now to skip going to the app store? Or do you want your PWA to appear in the app store? How awful are app stores? Great thoughts around testing, accessibility and more!

What can edge computing do for you? While at the Update Conference in Prague, Carl and Richard chatted with Jared Rhodes about his work building Internet of Things solutions with a variety of hardware and software. Jared talks about building reliable IoT solutions that are simple of customers to interact with - or work without any interaction at all. There are a lot of different choices in the IoT space right now, and no one right way - it is worth experimenting!

Windows represents the single largest Git source control library in the world at 300GB - but what does it take to work on it? Carl and Richard talk to Ed Thomson and Jill Campbell about how Azure DevOps (formerly known as VSTS) functions under the load of 33,000 people working on the Windows project with 11 million work items. There are many things in Azure DevOps that can cope with that scale, but some aspects don't make sense to add directly, like moving millions of work items. For that, the team has built extensions available in the Visual Studio marketplace - check them out, maybe they can help you!

What's your dependency injection solution? Carl and Richard talk to Steven van Deursen about his work building SimpleInjector and why there seem to be so many different dependency solution options out there. Steven talks about how he came to build SimpleInjector and what makes different DI solutions valuable - including when the .NET Core team tried to build an abstraction over dependency injection that resulted in an anti-pattern! Dependency injection helps you code in a maintainable way, but the tooling you use affects everything. It takes time to make the right fit for you application.

Is there a morality to software development? Carl and Richard talk to Microsoft Principal Researcher Bill Buxton about his thoughts on what software can do and what our responsibility as software creators is. Bill talks about Melvin Kranzberg's Laws of Technology, starting with the idea that technology is neither good nor evil, nor is it neutral. Ultimately software is a tool, and people decide how that tool is going to be used. We shape tools, but tools ultimately shape us as well. It's always wise to check in on what your shape is. Lots of great thinking!

You need more actors in your life! Carl and Richard talk to Aaron Stannard about the latest around Akka.NET, an open source actor model framework that has been evolving and growing for a number of years. Aaron talks about how his company Petabridge is providing professional services around Akka.NET including some custom tooling like a CLI tool called CMD. The conversation also dives into utilizing actors outside of just the server - actors make sense in mobile devices and IoT to name two! It's a different way to think, but actors can help you work concurrently and asynchronously - and who doesn't want to do that?

Happy 1600 - time for a Geek Out! Richard and Carl discuss superconductors - where they come from and what they can do for us. The tricky part is figuring out how and why superconductors even work. There have been a number of theories postulated along the way about superconductors, but they involve aspects of atomic science that are not fully understood. Today superconductors are in a number of products, including MRI machines, various kinds of sensors, high powered motors and MagLev trains - who knows where they will turn up next!

Windows Server 2019 has shipped and Windows containers have improved! Carl and Richard talk to Elton Stoneman about the changes that have come with Server 2019 and the 1809 Update. Elton describes it as the second significant implementation of containers on Windows, although it has been steadily tested in the field over the past few years. For the most part, containers on Windows now have parity with the Linux containers - and the possibilities for migrating existing .NET applications to containers have expanded - check it out!

Looking for some build automation options? Carl and Richard talk to Matthias Koch about his open source project called Nuke - as in Nu-Make. Matthias discusses building a domain-specific language in C# that focuses on building software using fluent syntax, but looking beyond those options for more ways to work with third-party software and not getting too tangled in the details. This leads to an entire add-on model for Nuke that lets you encapsulate functionality and complexity. Check it out!

How are user experiences evolving? Carl and Richard talk to Heather Wilde about her work with UX in a number of capacities, including helping to create the user experience of EverNote. The conversation dives into a number of poor UX designs, including frustrations around Windows 10 - but what's coming next? Heather talks about anticipatory design from the perspective of most people living with decision fatigue and being unwilling to make more decisions. So simplify your UI! Popular applications today need to be spartan and direct to help the user. The question is what the UX is attempting to do - help the user or help the business? Can it do both?

How do you build out your cloud infrastructure? Carl and Richard talk to Luke Hoban about Pulumi, a start-up making open source software that helps you take Infrastructure-as-Code to the next level - not just simple scripts, but real programming languages. Luke talks about getting away from the cut-and-paste effects of Infrastructure-as-Code into building classes with enough sophistication that you're not creating technical debt each time you build a new cloud resource. With support for multiple clouds and multiple programming languages, this looks to be the next essential cloud development tool!

Web performance is still important - what are you doing to keep your sites fast? Carl and Richard talk to Benjamin Howarth about his current approach to web site performance - with a focus on dealing with older smartphones and lower bandwidth. The conversation runs through a huge gamut of tools that help you understand what your customer experiences when accessing your website, and where to focus to make improvements. Not everyone has 4G connections and top-of-the-line phones - be kind to your users!

Functions are ephemeral and stateless - right? What if they weren't? Carl and Richard talk to Maxime Rouiller about durable functions in Azure. Maxime dives into the patterns that durable functions provide, starting with the chaining pattern, where you can declare a series (or chain) of function calls that only start when the previous function completes. And then onto the fan-out pattern that allows for an orchestrator to launch any number of simultaneous functions and then collect their results in whatever order they complete. There's more choices and a ton of possibilities in durable functions!

Is .NET ready for the Internet of Things? Carl and Richard talk to Bryan Costanich about the current state of IoT and how his startup Wilderness Labs is building next-generation hardware that runs .NET! Bryan talks about how microcontrollers have gotten much more powerful today, but the programming stacks are still back in the 80s. The expectations of customers today is cloud integration, auto-updating and mobile apps - which is expensive and time-consuming to write in C++! Enter Meadow, programmable with .NET Standard 2. Join the Kickstarter to get the first release of hardware!

Ready for a different database? Carl and Richard talk to Craig Kerstiens about his work with PostgreSQL. The conversation starts out with a little bit of the history of PostgreSQL being one of the original open source projects - and how it has evolved over the years. Today there is great support for Postgres in .NET, and in Azure as well! Craig is the editor of the Postgres Weekly newsletter, so if you're keen to get engaged with the Postgres community, sign up today!

Call it an impromptu Geek Out! While at NDC Sydney, Carl and Richard talked to Agustinus Nalwan about his work with artificial intelligence technology in his company. This leads to a larger conversation about the risks around AI and the idea that we may be approaching the Singularity - which according to Gus is where technology continues to teach itself. Richard chimes in on the debate around the Singularity from Ray Kurtzweil, exploring how humans could integrate with technology and what that would mean to society as whole. Lots of philosophy, and perhaps even pushing against the edges of spirituality, this isn't a technical show, but it sure is geeky!

Ready for some functional thinking? While at NDC in Sydney, Carl and Richard chatted with Daniel Chambers about his experiences in functional programming, starting with F# and moving to Haskell. Daniel talks about how F# serves as the gateway drug for functional programming, living within Visual Studio and still interoperating nicely with the object-oriented world. But sometimes you want pure functional, and Haskell can help you - communicating with it via web service models, you write purely functional, immutable code. The tooling is a bit different, but the benefits are significant!

What does it take to make an application resilient to exploits? Caring about more than just the code you wrote! While at NDC in Sydney, Carl and Richard talked to Nina Juliadotter about securing all the code in your application - including the open source libraries that your application takes dependencies on. Nina talks about building tests into your CI/CD pipeline to evaluate all the libraries in your project to figure out what is in your application and what the current versions are. Do you keep all your libraries up to date? They're the most likely versions to be secure!

What can PowerBI do for you? While at NDC in Sydney, Carl and Richard talked to Peter Myers about Microsoft's modern data analytics tool. The conversation starts out exploring the history of data analytics at Microsoft and how it has landed at PowerBI. Peter talks about how PowerBI is both a Software-as-a-Service tool and Platform-as-a-Service component. You can embed PowerBI in your applications to do dashboards and dynamic reporting. It consumes virtually any data source and has great programmatic extensibility - add it to your application!

Start programming quantum today! While at NDC in Sydney, Carl and Richard talked with John Azariah about Q# and the Quantum Development Kit that he has helped create. The conversation starts out with a refresher on quantum computing in general, including exploring a number of the myths and fallacies - John brings up the really important problems that quantum can tackle, including (no kidding!) world hunger and climate change. John dives into what Q# is all about, being able to abstract away from the quantum hardware and various emulators so that you can explore quantum functions. You may not have the hardware today, but some day you will!

How do you read other people's code? While at NDC Sydney, Carl and Richard talked to Patricia Aas about the fine art of studying code you haven't written - and even more challenging, understanding it! Code doesn't read like a novel, there really is no beginning or end, it's always an exploration. The conversation also turns to being respectful of existing code, recognizing that it is as good as it could be at the time and that there are always ways to make it better. And when you're writing code, the challenge is to write it so that it can be read and understood by others!

You need a bot for that! While at NDC in Sydney, Carl and Richard talked to Adam Stephensen about his experiences building bots. The bot craze has died down a bit these days, but that means that more serious work is being done. Adam talks about what it takes to build a good bot, looking beyond the FaqBot and into more context-sensitive and service-oriented bots. In the end, a bot is just another front-end over your well-organized services layer that can handle web and mobile front-end services as well. But what does it do that is unique? How does it help people? Are bots just a fad, or are they here to stay? Adam has thoughts!

Can you build a neural net from scratch? While at NDC in Sydney, Carl and Richard talked to Joe Albahari about using LINQPad to create neural nets from scratch. LINQPad is an interactive development environment for .NET - originally focused on helping you build LINQ expressions. But as Joe explains, it can be used for all sorts of interactive coding experiences - including learning to build neural networks. Joe talks through the fundamentals of neural nets and what it's like to build neural nets yourself. Even if you move on to more advanced machine learning tooling, learning the fundamentals are useful!

SignalR is updated! Carl and Richard talk to Microsoft Cloud Developer Advocate Anthony Chu about the latest updates to SignalR - including a version of SignalR for .NET Core! Anthony talks about how SignalR has evolved since the first versions in 2011, today there is still the Standard Framework edition as well as the new .NET Core edition. And then there's also the Azure backend! You can run the back end in Azure with a free tier, and there's a paid tier as the scale gets larger. Anthony also dives into how Azure Functions can play a role. Socketed connections live on!

How do you test a single page application? Carl and Richard talk to Dan Wahlin about cypress.io, Dan's favorite new open source library for testing anything in the browser, including SPAs like Angular, React and Vue. The conversation dives into the various challenges around testing for web apps, trying to get beyond unit testing and into more functional testing that will let you know if you broke the UI. Dan talks about taking over existing projects that have chunks of code that everyone fears - and how testing helps mitigate that fear. As usual with Dan, he also compares and contrasts various web stacks - lots of great links in the show notes too!

Time to rub a little DevOps on it! Carl and Richard talk to Donovan Brown about the state of DevOps at Microsoft - including some important changes! The conversation starts out talking about the latest tooling making it easier than ever to get a great automated pipeline of continuous delivery. But that's not enough, there's a cultural shift that has to happen also. Donovan talks about how IT folks can resist the changes that come with rapid deployment, and Richard argues back about how IT roles struggle - the solution is to create common goals around value to the customer. Meantime, there's big news at Microsoft - Visual Studio Team Services is becoming Azure DevOps, and opening the door to a more diverse way to rub more DevOps on everything you do!

The Internet of Things keeps evolving! Carl and Richard talk to Suz Hinton about her on-going work in the IoT space, including joining Microsoft! It's been five years since Suz created the MeowShoes, and the combination of Moore's Law and the Cloud has made IoT more powerful and less expensive at the same time. Suz talks about coding in JavaScript via NodeJS to deploy code to all sorts of devices, along the way mentioning that operating systems just don't matter much, these days you can program what you want with whatever you want. Security continues to be a key issue, but things are looking up with smart ecosystems like Azure Sphere on the way. More IoT FTW!

What's an Intelligent Edge? Carl and Richard talk to Microsoft EVP and CTO Kevin Scott about his work in software with Google, LinkedIn and Microsoft - and what he focuses on today. Kevin talks about the resurgence of interest in .NET and C#, and the expansion of .NET across all sorts of development areas including Internet of Things. This leads to a conversation around Intelligent Edge, recognizing that there is enough compute power in even the smallest of devices that they can do analysis of data, not just haul it up to the cloud. AI and ML tech is key here - and there's lots to explore!

How do you protect the source code you ship in your applications? Carl and Richard talk to Gabriel Torok, who has led PreEmptive Software for years and has provided code obsfuscation for .NET since the very beginning - for free! Today it's not enough to conceal your code, as Gabe says, it's about tamper-proofing. Not just to keep your code from being stolen, but to stop hackers from stealing data and exploiting your applications. With GDPR and other regulations, your responsibilities to protect your applications are growing - so check it out!

The Redux Dance Craze is on! Carl and Richard talk to Ward Bell about how Redux has becoming a key player in state management for UX stacks in modern Single Page Application development. Although Redux was originally a library to support the React component model, today there are implementations of Redux for almost any Javascript UI solution - including Angular! Ward talks about how Redux and reactive architecture makes a cleaner, tidier and more maintainable UI solution. And lots of great side conversations about various aspects of web development along the way!

Migrating .NET applications to .NET Core? The Windows Compatibility Pack can help! Carl and Richard talk to Immo Landwerth about the Windows Compatibility Pack, which is a NuGet package of NuGet packages to fill in over 20,000 APIs that aren't part of .NET Core. The goal, as Immo explains, is to make it easier for developers to deal with migration, by having more parts of the framework included. But you likely don't need them all, so breaking them down into separate packages makes them easy to remove also!

What the heck is Twitch, and why would you want to code on it? Carl and Richard talk to Jeff Fritz about his experiences building a TwitchTV livestream for coding with .NET. What started as an experiment has grown to thousands of viewers and streams that happen several times a week. Jeff talks about the power of reaching new audiences and how the digressions during streams turn into the most important bits. Is live stream coding a good way to learn? How does it compare to other techniques? And just for fun - we recorded this show on his Twitch channel!

How should developers get started with Azure? Carl and Richard talk to Adam Cogan about his nine knights of Azure - in order, a set of services in Azure that developers should start with. Right off the bat, Adam suggests staying clear of the fancy cloud techs like containers and serverless. Start simple with Azure Web Apps, then start working on continuous integration and deployment. There are a ton of moving parts in Azure, and Adam has a great plan for getting your application and your skills gradually up to speed so that you can take them all on!

Xamarin keeps evolving - are you using the latest? Carl and Richard talk to James Montemagno about his on-going work making life easier for Xamarin developers. The conversation starts out referencing a comment from a listener about the code-compile-deploy time and what it takes to get going faster. James discusses the work Xamarin has done working with the different emulators out there to make things go faster and work in more configurations. And then it's on to Xamarin Essentials - combining all your favorite Xamarin plugins into one easy-to-install-and-manage package!

Can Artificial Intelligence help protect the Earth? Jennifer Marsman says yes! Carl and Richard talk to Jennifer about her new role working with Microsoft Research on implementing machine learning systems to support agriculture, environmental protection, biodiversity and more. Some of the projects originate within Microsoft, but there are a number of external projects supported by the team with Azure credits and funding. AI for good!

How are applications being built for Hololens? While on the Modern Web Tour in Munich, Richard chatted with Jimmy Engstrom about his work building software for Hololens. The conversation starts out with the frustration over the lack of new hardware on the Hololens front - but with hope for something new soon! Jimmy runs down a variety of different programming methods for Hololens, the most popular of which is Unity - and not just for writing games!

Back at the beginning of WPF, before Silverlight, there was MVVM Light. While on the Modern Web Tour in Zurich, Richard sat down with Laurent Bugnion to talk about his work creating the open source toolkit that helped developers build cross-platform applications using the Model View View-Model pattern. Laurent's story crosses much of the story of XAML itself, from WPF to Silverlight to Windows Phone and Xamarin Forms!

Ready to add UX to your skills? While in Berlin at the Telerik Modern Web Tour, Richard interviews Jessica Engstrom on how developers can add UX skills to their repertoire. Sure, it would be nice to have a dedicated UX person, but that's not always an option. So what do you need to know to get started? Jessica talks about the Tenets and Traps card deck that lists a variety of key tenets and the traps that you can fall into when it comes to making great UX experiences. Lots of great thinking!

So many ways to build mobile apps - what works best for you? Carl and Richard talk to Matt Netkow about the past, present and future of PhoneGap and how the Progressive Web App is playing in the mobile dev world. Matt talks about the many JavaScript-based solutions for mobile cross-platform development including PhoneGap, Cordova, NativeScript and Ionic. But with Progressive Web Apps being supported by browsers on mobile devices, could you just be writing native Javascript for your web app? Lots of good discussion!

It's 2018, do you know where your C++ is? Carl and Richard talk to Kate Gregory about the resurgence she sees in C++ - but why? Kate talks about a number of factors, including the fact that C++ itself has evolved, the latest standard is from 2017 and there are plans for a 2020 edition! Anywhere that performance and resources are at a premium, C++ is there - you see it in embedded systems, all kinds of drivers and production code that cares how fast things go. There are lots of new developers on lots of new projects in the C++ world, check it out!

GraphQL continues to evolve - should it be in your toolbox? Carl and Richard talk to Cory House about how he's been working with GraphQL. Cory talks about how he appreciates the lack of ceremony around GraphQL and it's strengths in dealing with a diversity of clients and bandwidth availability. Comparisons with oData are inevitable, and the jury is kind of out on it - both technologies are viable. GraphQL has a great ecosystem growing up around it, and is well worth a look if you need web-callable APIs!

Containerize all the things! Carl and Richard talk to Ben Hall about his on-going work with software in containers. Ben talks about Docker being pretty much synonymous with containers now, but when it comes to orchestration, there are a few more choices. Kubernetes seems to be the popular choice in the public cloud space, but Docker Swarm, Apache Mesos and Red Hat OpenShift all can play a role as well. Ben also digs into the role of serverless in a container world, and how these cloud-native architectures make you think about software differently!

We've all heard of volcanoes - but what's a supervolcano? Time for a Geek Out! Richard starts out with a discussion on the core concepts behind our understanding of volcanoes and vulcanism - and how before modern times, there have been occasional massive volcanic eruptions so large they are classed as super-eruptions. The best-known supervolcano today is the Yellowstone Caldera, and depending who you ask, it's due for an eruption. What would a super-eruption look like, and what can we do about it?

Azure loves Node! Carl and Richard talk to John Papa about running JavaScript on the server side, in the cloud and otherwise. John talks about the tooling around doing web development in Azure, including the Azure CLI and more. The conversation also digs into the client side of development with VS Code and the huge array of extensions available that allow you to personalize and automate your development experience - the right tooling makes all the difference!

Time for a chat with the leader of C#! Carl and Richard talk to Mads Torgersen about where C# has been and where it's going. Mads discusses some of the ideas being explored for what will become C# 8, including the on-going experiments with nullable reference types. The conversation dives into how language features are developed, the challenge of dealing with a huge diversity of developers in C# of varying skill levels and community engagement. Mads loves his role, and C# is better for it!

Serverless technology can extend your applications! Carl and Richard talk to Glenn Block about his work at Auth0 and building out WebHooks. Glenn talks about taking WebHooks to the next level with Extend, providing a SaaS offering for extensibility into other SaaS applications. This leads to a conversation about the architecture of extensibility in the cloud - rather than building a ton of features, let your customers extend your software the way they want!

Want to extend Visual Studio? Carl and Richard talk to Mads Kristensen about what its like to build Visual Studio extensions - and how he's now responsible for helping others build extensions too! Mads is the person behind Web Essentials, which used to be a big stand-alone download. Today it's a bunch of Visual Studio extensions. Today Mads is a program manager for Visual Studio extensions, and wants to help YOU be successful at building them too!

.NET Core in Action! Carl and Richard talk to Dustin Metzgar about his new Manning book, .NET Core in Action. Dustin talks about the challenge of writing faster than the .NET team can ship code - how do you get a book done? The conversation also digs into effective strategies for working with .NET Core, the kind of tooling you care about, approaches to debugging, internationalization and more!

How can Azure help your applications be secure? Carl and Richard talk to Daniel Piessens about his experiences using various features of Azure to secure applications. The conversation starts out with application secrets stored in Azure Key Vault - not just for SSL certificates, any information that your application needs should be in there. To access it, you'll want Azure Active Directory, and that leads to a discussion on multi-factor authentication and increasing sophistication of identity - all features that come automatically from Azure. Whether your application is in the cloud or on-premises, you can make it more secure with these tools!

Put machine learning into your .NET app! Carl and Richard talk to John Alexander about ML.NET - a set of libraries that Microsoft has been using internally for years, now available for you as a NuGet package that you can add to your application pretty painlessly. The conversation dives into what sorts of machine learning tasks make sense for ML.NET and your application, and there are a ton. From sentiment analysis to pricing prediction, machine learning has a ton of possibilities. ML.NET provides a .NET friendly layer over top of a number of machine learning technologies!

How do you handle faults in your application? Carl and Richard talk to Dylan Reisenberger about Polly, the open source library (now part of the .NET Foundation) that helps organize fault recovery into a set of policies. Dylan talks about creating good fault solutions, not especially hard code, but it can get messy at times - creating policies makes your code more readable as well as easy to maintain when your approach to faults needs to change. And now Polly is a recommended tool for working with .NET Core 2.1!

The .NET Framework continues to evolve! Carl and Richard talk to Kathleen Dollard about her work at Microsoft - helping to provide tooling and new features for maintaining existing applications and creating new ones. Kathleen is also responsible for Visual Basic .NET, and talks about how it's being maintained based on the needs of VB.NET developers - stability is a focus! The upcoming Core 3 offers some interesting opportunities for existing applications to get new features, and Kathleen talks about how the team will integrate the new features. The framework continues to evolve!

Everything fails eventually - how do you recover? Carl and Richard talk to Barry O'Reilly about building anti-fragile systems. Anti-fragility is the philosophy of accepting that things can break and you need to be able to detect and recover from that failure, whatever form it might take. Barry talks about the four aspects of anti-fragility: redundancy, diversity, modularity and loose-coupling. They're all common terms, but understanding how to do them well within your system is a challenge. How reliable do you need to be? What's an acceptable level of failure? This is what modern software systems are all about!

Microsoft acquires GitHub! What does this mean? Carl and Richard talk to Phil Haack about what's going to change and what isn't - starting with, at least for the foreseeable future, Phil is not a Microsoft employee! GitHub is going to be a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft, operated independently. But having Microsoft resources available does open some interesting doors - Phil talks about the vast amount of resources that Microsoft has to move quickly on cool features and projects around the open source world!

Where has Uno been all your life? Carl and Richard talk to Francois Tanguay and Jerome Laban about Uno - the open source cross-platform UX library based on the Microsoft Universal Windows Platform (UWP) - the other flavor of XAML! Francois and Jerome talk about using various versions of Uno the past four years to build cross-platform applications for Windows, Android and iOS - more than 200 of them! Now they have implemented a web assembly version as an experiment and are open sourcing the framework to broaden the community and explore more UX ideas - check it out!

C# is not done - there's more to come! Carl and Richard talk to Mark Michaelis about his work on Essential C# 7 which digs into the new bits in the 7.x version of C# - which is cool, but so is the conversation around what happened at the Build event and how that is reflected in C#. Mark talks about the new language features in C#, even going into some things that should appear in version 8 to deal with modern programming problems. And then there's Core 3 - what will it mean to have WPF and WinForms? Could they be cross-platform? Should they be? Lots of good thinking!

Azure is good - but tooling makes it great! While at Build in Seattle, Carl and Richard talked to Paul Yuknewicz and Andrew Hall about the latest tools available in Visual Studio for developers wanting to get the most out of Azure. The conversation starts out with a response to a listener about debugging services in Azure - the challenge of following an execution path through your software and the various service offerings of Azure that your application might depend on to understand where problems lie. Then a dive into the new bits - new container support, tooling around Kubernetes and more!

More news from Build - the release of Visual Studio for the Mac 7.5! Carl and Richard talk to Mikayla Hutchinson about the latest features coming for the former Xamarin product. The biggest news is support for Razor, JavaScript and TypeScript intellisense, which sounds simple, but involves a ton of changes and makes VS for Mac more than just that mobile development tool. There's plenty of improvements in the mobile dev space too, and the first steps to integrating with VSTS!

Could there be life on other planets? Time for a Geek Out! Richard chats with Carl about Fermi's Paradox, Drake's Equation and all the latest science we've gathered around how common life is on other planetary bodies. This does lead to a discussion about what makes a planet a planet in the first place - that definition is changing and being heavily debated. And as for intelligent life... well, that's a whole other problem!

Desktop installation needs to get better! While at Build in Seattle, Carl and Richard talked to Andrew Clinick about MSIX, the next generation installation technology from the Windows team. MSIX is open source and available at GitHub, and works to make your desktop application installation experience a bit less painful. Andrew discusses the various approaches that Microsoft has taken over the years around installation and some of the unintended consequences that have come along - all that learning has been merged into MSIX to make desktop installation better. Check it out!

Tabs for Windows apps? While at Build in Seattle, Carl and Richard talked to legend Raymond Chen and Jason Watson about the upcoming Sets capabilities in Windows 10. The conversation dives into the virtual desktop, Windows 10 timeline and other tech to get you back to a productive state quickly, from one device to another. Jason and Raymond talk about how developers can add functionality to their applications to take advantage of Sets to further increase productivity. Windows continues to evolve!

.NET Core is fast, but does how you write code in .NET Core help with performance? Carl and Richard talk to Ben Watson about the 2nd Edition of his HIgh Performance .NET Code book. The original edition came out in 2014 when .NET Core was just beginning (ASync/Await were brand new too!) and so an update is welcome. Ben explains that there is no one right way to write high performing code, every implementation is on a case-by-case basis. You need to benchmark and instrument to understand where bottlenecks are, then measure performance carefully before you start trying to improve. But there are a bunch of options available to improve performance!

MFractor grows up! Carl and Richard talk to Matthew Robbins about the progress he's made over the past 18 months (since his last show) on MFractor - now an extension for Visual Studio for the Mac to make building mobile applications with Xamarin easier. Matt talks about improving the mobile development cycle - the time it takes from writing code on your PC to it running on your smartphone, and recognizing that it's not just about compile and transfer times. It's also image sizing and copying, catching errors early and more - things that can be done while writing code!

Fresh from Build (actually recorded before Build) - a new version of .NET Core! Carl and Richard talk to Scott Hunter about the announcement of .NET Core 3. Scott leads off with a conversation around .NET Core 2.1, now a release candidate at Build. And then the big news, the next version of Core bringing love to the desktop side, at least for Windows. Versions of WinForms and WPF run against Core. It's a separate package because it's not cross-platform, but it certainly brings new Windows desktop development to Core! Check out the build.microsoft.com site for video on Core 3!

Do constraints liberate? Carl and Richard talk to Mark Seemann about the very constraints that developers often argue against - pointing out how those constraints can actually make us more productive. Mark talks about memory management, such as garbage collection in .NET, while a constraint (you can't do what you want with memory) actually liberates you from thinking about memory. The same with static typing - decide on a type once, and stop worrying about it. The question is, are you surrounding yourself with the constraints that liberate you?

Where do you store your objects? Carl and Richard talk to Kamran Ayub about the latest version of RavenDB. Kamran talks about his experiences implementing Raven in different projects all the way back to version 2 - and how much he appreciates that this latest version offers a ton more features and the kind of stability you need in a data storage tool. The comparisons to MongoDB are inevitable, and it's impressive how similar they are - but clearly RavenDB has a .NET spin! Of course, it's open source and cross-platform, so you can run RavenDB anywhere you like - even a Raspberry PI!

How do you build your web UI? Carl and Richard talk to Frank Krueger about his work on Ooui (pronounced whee), an open source project for implementing a Xamarin-forms like UI experience to the browser. The result is pretty amazing, including a web-based XAML editor that all runs in the browser... super fast! Frank talks about his experiences building code that runs with WebAssembly and the challenges of thinking through new UI experiences. The challenge is the variations in implementation - is XAML destined to fragment further, or can they all come together?

Blazor is getting some buzz, but is it really useful? Carl and Richard talk to Rocky Lhotka about his thoughts around how Blazor uses WebAssembly (WASM) to let C# run on the browser - and what that means for client-side development, both web-based and regular desktop client. Rocky talks about how WASM is an equal-opportunity feature for all sorts of languages, and covering the four big browsers: Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari. Could the future of enterprise apps be all in the browser? Between Progressive Web Apps and WASM, this might be the way forward!

What does it mean to have clean architecture? Carl and Richard talk to Steve Smith about his work on an e-book and template for clean architecture using ASP.NET Core. Steve describes the new tools that make life easier for following clean architectural principals as well as the separation of concerns, between business logic, infrastructure, and clients. The conversation also digs into Domain Driven Design, Test Driven Development and the ever popular Pain Driven Development. Great, common-sense thinking from Steve Smith!

What's new with Xamarin? Carl and Richard talk to Laurent Bugnion, now a Microsoft Cloud Developer Advocate, about his latest experiences with the cross-platform mobile development tool. It's been two years since Xamarin joined Microsoft, and a lot has happened - and far more to come. Laurent talks about both .NET and XAML Standards, and the challenges of reconciling development approaches for an array of mobile devices, the PC and the web. The conversation also dives into the truth that there is no one right way to build cross-platform mobile applications. New approaches and tools continue to be developed!

Test Driven Development (TDD), good idea in theory, but in practice? Carl and Richard talk to John Callaway and Clayton Hunt about their success with TDD. At it's simplest level, TDD is about writing tests first, before coding. In practice, everything is more complicated than that. Writing testable code isn't as simple as it seems, and refactoring existing code to become testable can cause it to break - which is why you wanted tests in the first place. John and Clayton talk through their experiences getting things right and exploring the advantages that TDD brings - more reliable software that sustains for longer and can continue to evolve!

How do you do desktop deployment? Carl and Richard talk to Paul Betts about the open source project called Squirrel, which is all about making desktop deployment less painful. As Paul says, like ClickOnce, only doesn't suck! This leads to a discussion about the various installation tools out there and what they focus on. Paul talks about what makes Squirrel different - providing the tooling to make it easier for a developer to provide unobtrusive updating of applications - as in, not when they start up!

How productive are you with Visual Studio? Carl and Richard chat with Kasey Uhlenhuth about her work making Visual Studio even more productive for developers. The conversation focuses on the huge array of features that Visual Studio has, to support all sorts of different styles of programming. Kasey talks about balancing the needs of developers - some want lots of support and hints from Visual Studio, and some want it to just get out of the way while they program. There are a ton of options, you just have to discover them. Kasey points out a productivity guide that she has helped create to help you take advantage of the power of Visual Studio - check out the link in the show notes!

Programming for the Cloud! Carl and Richard talk to Vishwas Lele about the Microsoft Business Application Platform, which organizes the huge suite of tools available in Azure along with PowerApps and PowerBI to create a great place to build applications that run on Windows, iOS and Android. Vishwas talks about moving up into a higher layer of coding using Logic Apps and Azure Flow to pull together the various sources of data that already exist in your organization, including Office, SharePoint, Sales Force and so on - you already have the data, how do you surface it in an app that your users like to use?

Falcon Heavy flies! Now what? Time for a Geek Out! Richard talks to Carl about the amazing Falcon Heavy launch - what worked, what didn't and why did it take so darn long to fly? The discussion dives into how the plans for the Heavy evolved, affected by the evolution of the Falcon 9. The impact of the launch is interesting - is it a new phase of spaceflight for humanity? The Heavy just barely sneaks into the super heavy lift class, and it's flight has caused a bit of a kerfuffle - both Russia and China have announced new super heavy lift rockets. And then there's NASA... does the Space Launch System still make sense?

How do you do concurrency? Carl and Richard talk to Riccardo Terrell about his new book on concurrency in .NET. More than just ASync and AWait, there are still a ton of concurrency options available in .NET, you just need to know when and where to apply them. The conversation ranges over a bunch of different technologies, including a lot of discussion on functional programming as a whole, since it lends itself to concurrency far better. But you don't have to use F# to write functional code! Riccardo talks through a number of strategies for deciding when concurrency makes sense and how to do it safely.

Can Big Data actually hurt society? Carl and Richard talk to Cathy O'Neil about her book, Weapons of Math Destruction. Cathy has been deeply involved with machine learning and big data for decades and has a broad view of both the potential and dangers of the technology. The conversation dives into understanding how this technology amplifies bias and how that bias ultimately shapes behavior. The trick is to acknowledge that the bias exists - once you see it, it is possible to overcome its effects. Lots of great thinking from an expert in the space!

Michele is back and surviving microservices! Carl and Richard talk to Michele Bustamante about her work with microservices and the challenges that her customers have. Starting with the normal problems innate to any re-architecting exercise - what is the benefit to the customer? You can't make microservices because they're fun, they have to solve a particular problem - and typically it's the problem of over-coupling within a group of services. Update one and you derail the others. Picking what service to separate is a challenge - and how do you do it! Great conversation about containers, DevOps and management strategies!

How do you have success with Azure? Carl and Richard talk to Microsoft PFE Christos Matskas about some of the projects he's been involved in helping organizations deploy apps and services into Azure. As Christos says, it's not an all-or-nothing thing - some applications and services make more sense in the cloud, and some work great on-premises. But there are a bunch of moving parts to organize and understand to have success with Azure. Christos tells stories of where things go right, things go wrong, and how it has less to do with the technology involved, and more with how you think and work together as a team!

What is coming up for .NET Core? Carl and Richard talk to Scott Hunter, who leads all of .NET at Microsoft, about the road ahead for .NET Core. But first, a quick look back at where .NET has come from, including a discussion around performance and the impact of the Meltdown and Spectre CPU security flaws impacting performance across the board. Then into a huge raft of features coming up in the next year in .NET Core, including compilation and performance enhancements, as well as some old favorites like lazy loading in EF Core and SignalR!

How do you know how your software is working? While at NDC in London, Carl and Richard talk to Jessica White about her experience building dashboards to instrument operations, management and development. The conversation dives into what needs to be measured as well as how to represent those measurements in ways that help people understand - do it wrong and you can actually confuse people, or have your dashboard ignored. Jessica talks about how dashboards have to evolve with business needs. With new goals come new metrics and new dashboards to show those metrics. Your dashboard is no more static than your business is!

SharePoint development continues to evolve in 2018! Carl and Richard talk to Sahil Malik about his view on the latest offerings around SharePoint. At the Ignite event in 2017, Microsoft announced SharePoint 2019, so there's definitely a new on-premises version of SharePoint coming. Obviously, it's taken from the cloud edition, which is why the development model has changed so substantially. Sahil talks about the SharePoint Framework as the model for doing SharePoint customizations, and the coding is primarily in JavaScript - now SharePoint development is web development!

What does it take to build an application where the UI is strictly voice? While at NDC in London, Carl and Richard sat down with Heather Downing to talk about her experiences building voice-driven applications with a variety of tools, including Alexa and Google Voice. Heather digs into the challenges of thinking through what the voice interface is really good at, versus more traditional screen, keyboard, and mouse driven software. This leads to a broader discussion about getting away from the desk entirely, into highly mobile and standing environments where the keyboard is just not a practical option. Voice-driven apps are a different class of app entirely - does it make sense for your organization?

What goes into a Docker stack? Carl and Richard talk to Rob Richardson about how containers are evolving in the .NET world. Rob talks about how the Windows side of Docker is actually getting stronger - most developers using Docker use Linux as the template OS. The conversation focuses on moving existing .NET applications into Docker - aka, without .NET Core. It's certainly possible, and you get some of the container advantages. But with containers comes new thinking around architecture, the ability to organize and scale your services differently. But you can implement those features gradually, and take advantage of what orchestration can do for you. Whether in the cloud or on-premises, containers have a lot to offer!

Modern software development is complex, how do you teach it to beginners? While at NDC in London, Carl and Richard sat down with Maria Naggaga to talk about her approaches to teaching software development, both to children and adults, from the very beginning. Maria talks about using more approachable cause-and-effect type tools at the beginning to learn about procedural programming, and how the latest bits actually allow you to take that code forward into more advanced tools. Interactive documentation and minimal installation requirements are also important - check out Try .NET!

C# continues to evolve - there's more to learn! While at NDC in London, Carl and Richard talk to Jon Skeet and Bill Wagner about their on-going work on C#. For Bill, he's now part of the docs team helping people understand C#, and for Jon, it's his contributions via GitHub to ideas and features for C#. Both write great books and talk about the challenge of how C# is evolving as open source and in public. What features matter, and where does it all lead to? Will C# ever be finished, or is this an endless process? Is it getting easier to develop with C# or more complex? Great thoughts from two of the nicest thinkers on C#!

Whether you're a multi-national NGO or your local church group, every non-profit has cybersecurity issues! Carl and Richard talk to Cameron Birge and Tarek Dawoud about tools, techniques and mindset to protect data and resist hackers. While the practices are broadly applicable to any organization and applications, non-profits have specific challenges that make cybersecurity all the more challenges - how do you train volunteers that turn over steadily? How can you be sure that a volunteer software developer is doing the right thing security-wise? Lots of good thinking about how to prioritize your security needs, it's a journey, not a destination!

How is machine learning different over in the land of Amazon? While at NDC in London, Carl and Richard talked to Kesha Williams about her work building machine learning solutions using various Amazon technologies. The conversation starts out talking about the challenges around bias being amplified by machine learning technology - there are no simple solutions. Kesha talks about building a crime risk evaluation system using image recognition and machine learning. Just a prototype, but it opens the door to a deep conversation about the moral obligations on developers today. And the tech is cool too!

What does it mean to build a cloud-native application? While at NDC in London, Carl and Richard talked to Scott Guthrie about the latest features available in Azure. While there are always the Infrastructure-as-a-Service options of VMs and the like, you don't really get the power of the cloud until you move into more of the platform features. Scott describes how existing applications and be lifted-and-shifted into VMs in the cloud, and then broken apart to take advantage of various services. The ultimate manifestations use technologies that are cloud-specific, like CosmosDB and Logic App features so that you focuses solely on your code.

What if you could program in C# in your browser? Carl and Richard talk to Daniel Roth and Steve Sanderson about the evolution of Blazor - Steve Sanderson's amazing project using WebAssembly to put .NET In the browser. The big news is that Blazor is moving from a Sanderson research project into the ASP.NET GitHub repository - the team is going to work on it! Still experimental, the Microsoft team is keen to see what all of us will do with Blazor. If you want a C# experience end-to-end in web development, you need to check it out!

How can space science help you learn Postgres? While at NDC London, Carl and Richard talk to Rob Conery about his latest book, A Curious Moon. Rob talks about being inspired by Andy Weir's The Martian to write a book that teaches Postgres by using the data from the NASA Cassini mission to Saturn. The book is part story, part tutorial about using Postgres, data loading and analytics. And the data is real - you're working from the actual data from the Cassini mission. The book is an innovative way to learn and starts you down the path of doing real data analytics, looking at what your data says!

Another year goes by, time for an identity update! While at NDC in London, Carl and Richard talk to Dom and Brock about the latest updates to IdentityServer. A key aspect of the past year was two versions of .NET Core - both 1.1 and 2.0. Dom and Brock talk through all the twists and turns that it takes to keep IdentityServer up to date with the latest .NET Core pieces. So what about authentication? The conversation turns to the new PolicyServer available as both an open source and a retail product version. Identity continues to evolve!

How do you get girls interested in programming and help them learn? While at NDC in London, Carl and Richard talk to Jennifer Wadella about her experience building Kansas City Women in Technology. Jennifer talks about trying to build a community of women peers in Kansas City, only to discover a huge group of women who wanted to get involved in technology. So off into the teaching practice, aimed at girls called Coding and Cupcakes and for women, an event called Coding and Cocktails. Lots of great thinking about how to make programming more approachable!

Still exploring options for cross-platform mobile development? Carl and Richard talk to Tim Sneath and Adam Barth about Google's Flutter - using the Dart language to build mobile applications that compile to iOS and Android. Tim has only recently joined Google but has dived head-first into this new approach to mobile development. Adam as one of the originators of the project talks about his key focus - the architecture that allows you to build for both platforms from one code base, and a rapid code-compile-deploy-edit cycle called hot-reload that makes iterating on your mobile app development fun! With a choice of editors (including VSCode), Flutter might just be the approach you'll enjoy to cross-platform mobile development!

How can storytelling advance your career? Carl and Richard talk to James Whittaker, who recently published The Storytellers Spellbook, about the power of stories to help people understand you and the things that are important to you. James tells his story about realizing how important storytelling was to his career and what it could do for him - and the additional challenge of teaching others how to tell stories. He breaks down three key aspects - the story you tell, how you tell it, and what you do while telling it. You don't have to be on stage, even your regular performance review at work is a type of storytelling, and it's in your best interest to get better at it!

How do you make sure your APIs can interop across languages and other complexities? Carl and Richard talk to Darrel Miller about OpenAPI, the open source specification for standard aspects of APIs like collections, security rules and more. The specification is now at version 3 and starting to really mature - all the big players are involved, and you can contribute as well! Darrel discusses how Microsoft has been implementing OpenAPI standards to their own APIs and what it takes for you to do it as well. There is an OpenAPI.NET implementation available at GitHub for you to work from and lots of great information in Microsoft docs. Check it out!

How do you get a job in software development that you love? Carl and Richard talk to Chuck Max Wood about his experiences teaching people to get jobs in software development. Chuck starts with finding a job you really want - there are lots of options in software development. He talks about LinkedIn as a great source of information about companies and the people that work at them. Making connections to people in companies, understanding what the company does and who is responsible for hiring is all part of the practice of getting the right job - you can do it!

Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) are here, and Chris Love has some thoughts! Carl and Richard talk to Chris about his view on PWAs and their impact on building great web applications. Chris talks about the power of service workers to increase the performance of a web application through pre-loading of caching, tolerating unreliable connections, even cool event features that allow web apps to light up when they are needed, especially in a mobile scenario. Graceful degradation of features means that you build to the ideal browser, but tolerate versions that don't have comprehensive support for all PWA features. And check out Chris' offer for a PWA Course, special to .NET Rocks listeners!

Artificial Intelligence has transformed vision technology! Carl and Richard talk to Tim Huckaby about his latest work with vision systems for retail, security and more. Tim talks about how AI has fundamentally changed the way you implement vision systems, taking away many of the limitations on number of people tracked, object and face recognition and so on. The conversation digs into the demonstration done at the Build conference for using regular security cameras to implement a real-time safety tracking system on a construction site - aspirational, but coming soon! And of course, there's a long conversation about privacy. What is fair, reasonable and wise?

A new year, and new features for ASP.NET! Carl and Richard kick off the new year by talking to Jeff Fritz about his on-going work on ASP.NET - both the framework and core editions. The conversation naturally turns to web forms, the big exclusion from the core edition, but new features continue to be released in .NET Framework 4.7.1. Jeff talks about what modern development looks like for ASP.NET web forms, and the power of continued support for existing web applications, while providing approaches for adding new capabilities like mobile development and more. It's going to be an exciting 2018!

Last show of 2017, how about a story about changing the world? Carl and Richard talk to Stephen Forte about the Laudato Si Challenge, a startup accelerator that focuses on conscientious capitalism, providing an intense ten-week program that helps the companies get moving with finance, marketing, and growth strategies. Stephen talks about the genesis of the challenge with Pope Francis' encyclical 'On Care of Our Common Home.' Making a profit doesn't have to be at the expense of the planet or other people - we can all benefit, and Stephen is working to make it true!

Mobile development continues to evolve in the Xamarin world! Carl and Richard talk to James Montemagno about the latest features coming out of the Xamarin team to make developing cross-platform native applications faster and easier. James digs into the new Xamarin Live tools that show your Xamarin app on your device with edit-and-continue capabilities. As you modify your Xamarin Forms code, the changes are immediately reflected in the device. This shortens the code-deploy-debug cycle so you can get more done in less time. The conversation also turns to XAML Standard and the challenges around bringing UWP, WPF and Xamarin Forms teams together to a common specification. James wraps up with a discussion on .NET embedding, letting you put your favorite .NET code into libraries that can be consumed by Objective-C, Swift and Java codebases!

Last show before Christmas - time for some rants! Carl and Richard talk to Billy Hollis about his frustrations around UX design. And Billy starts out talking about the complete lack of UX design he finds in many applications. The conversation digs into the differences between visual design and interactive design, where the interactive part is harder, but ultimately more valuable. Billy also discusses the costs around poor design and ultimately, poor quality software. Cloud and internet have made it easy to update software, but pushing bad software on your customers is never a good idea. Can you see the impact? Lots of great thinking as usual from Billy!

The new version of DotVMM is imminent! Carl and Richard talk to Tomáš Herceg about his on-going effort to build a great framework for creating web applications and migration paths away from web forms and other web pages bound to the .NET Framework over to .NET Core. Tomáš discusses the new features coming in the latest version and his solutions to various problems around building web pages where the JavaScript is taken care of. And everything is open source - you have the code, modify it as you will! There are commercial versions available as well if you want to support this great set of tools!

Developing in Salesforce? What's that about? Carl and Richard talk to Jay Janarthanan about the kinds of software being built today against the Force infrastructure that runs the Salesforce CRM SaaS product - and so much more! Jay talks about why you would want to do extensions to Salesforce, and how in the past few years enterprises have been building entire applications with the Force tools and infrastructure. The language of Force is Apex, and Jay is building an open source project called ApexSharp to let C# programmers use their favorite tools to build Salesforce applications. Check it out!

What does it take to implement a DevOps practice at Microsoft? While at Connect in New York, Carl and Richard talked to Lori Lamkin about the efforts of the VSTS team to deliver more value to customers faster. Lori talks about changing the tempo of deployment for TFS from 24 months to three weeks and the re-organization of the teams so that developers are responsible for features from conception to operations. The role of operations also evolves to one that focuses on monitoring, rather than deployment - it's a lot of change, but worth it!

Show 1500! What better to celebrate another aught-aught milestone of .NET Rocks than a look back. Richard has been working on writing a book on the History of .NET (maybe Christmas 2018?) but to celebrate a milestone show, he dives into the topic with Carl. .NET has had a lot of twists and turns through the years and .NET Rocks has been there the whole time - throughout the conversation, there are opportunities to point to specific shows that represent part of that history. Here's to another 1500 show and 15 years of .NET!

Ready for some AI tooling? While at Connect in New York, Carl and Richard sat down with Paige Bailey and Seth Juarez to talk about the newly announced Visual Studio Tools for AI. The conversation starts out talking about what we really mean by Artificial Intelligence, focusing on machine learning and deep learning. There are a variety of tools out there to make building the models of AI easier, and the Visual Studio Tools for AI bring all those tools together into one working environment. Tons of cool links below, check them out!

Where has Visual Studio come from and where is it going? While at Connect in New York, Carl and Richard sat down with Connect owner/organizer Mitra Azizirad to talk about her show and long career at Microsoft. Mitra comes from a technical world but moved into developer marketing - and she's a huge fan of developers! Lots of interesting historical references about Visual Studio and more!

Where is Artificial Intelligence going at Microsoft? While at Connect in New York, Carl and Richard talked to Joseph Sirosh about his work with AI through the years and especially now while it's a new (and likely permanent) upswing. Sirosh talks about what it takes to let regular developers take advantage of AI technology by gluing different bits of tech together. There's a lot to know, but it is the future!

Visual Studio Team Services continues to evolve! While at Connect in New York, Carl and Richard chatted with Brian Harry about the latest set of features coming out of the VSTS team. Brian talks about how Microsoft has been eating its own dog food and using VSTS everywhere, even with the development of Windows. Discussions also dig into the challenges of moving so fast with so many developers, managing testing at speed and more!

Ready to use GitHub beyond your browser? Carl and Richard talk to Phil Haack about his latest work at GitHub, where they are focused on expanding the audience that can rely on GitHub for social coding of all types. The discussion starts out focused on the rewrite of GitHub Desktop to Electron and the impact that has had for maintainability of code, and then moves to the latest work done to support game development in GitHub, specifically for Unity developers. Game development involves large digital assets like 3D models, movies and music - not the usual fodder for a Git repository. But Phil's team has build stuff to make life easier - check it out!

No anti-patterns this time - Steve is talking patterns! Carl and Richard chat with Steve Smith about various development patterns that can help you build software that is more reliable, scalable and robust. While Steve is famous for his anti-pattern calendars, this time around he's discussing a number of excellent patterns that are becoming more prevalent in the .NET development world, including the Builder pattern (which .NET Core relies on), Null Object Pattern, Strategy and Rules Patterns and more! If an hour isn't enough, check out Steve's books and Pluralsight videos!

Ready to experiment with containers? Carl and Richard talk to Kendra Havens about the on-going integration of container technology into Windows, Visual Studio and .NET. Kendra talks about moving existing applications into Docker containers, and how even when the underlying operating system is large (say, Windows), you only need to download it once to use it across any number of container instances. There's great tooling for Docker support in Visual Studio and VS Code, so you can use Docker the way you want to. And Microsoft uses containers extensively internally as well, so the tooling just keeps getting better!

Can everyone benefit from DevOps practices? While at Ignite in Orlando, Carl and Richard sat down with Donovan Brown and Damian Brady to talk about the recently formed League of Extraordinary DevOps Advocates and the effort to get both developers and operations folks taking advantage of Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery, Instrumentation tooling and more. While the key to a good DevOps practice is the culture and process, having great tools makes everything easier, and today VSTS and TFS offer one-button delivery pipelines. It's never been easier for everyone to get onboard with a DevOps practice!

How does Microsoft make Visual Studio Team Services? With Visual Studio Team Services! While at Ignite in Orlando, Carl and Richard sat down with Dan Hellem and Rogan Ferguson to talk about their work in the VSTS team building and deploying features on a three-week cycle. The discussion dives into the agile practices that the different teams use and how they come together to get new versions out on a regular basis as part of the Software-as-a-Service offering of VSTS. Great conversation about keeping developers productive!

DevOps with SQL Server? Yes! While at Ignite in Orlando, Carl and Richard sat down with Kevin Cunnane and Eric Kang to talk about the latest set of tooling in SQL Server to facilitate incorporating SQL Server databases into your DevOps workflows. Databases seem to be the biggest obstacles in the continuous deployment process - how do you make them part of the process? Kevin and Eric talk about the SQL Server Data Tools as a mechanism to allow database schema to be part of your source code and to be able to build deltas for version changes. Lots more tools in the show links, check them out!

What can developers do with artificial intelligence? While at Ignite in Orlando, Carl and Richard sat down with David Carmona to talk about the latest AI offerings from Microsoft. The conversation starts out focused on some of the higher level issues in AI tech - the moral and ethical aspects. The major AI players in the world are collaborating to help develop standards to do the right things. Then David digs into the tooling available from Microsoft including all of the cognitive services, deep learning and analysis models. Lots of great things to experiment with!

Ready for a different vue on web pages? Carl and Richard talk to Shawn Wildermuth about his experiences with vueJS. The conversation starts out with a discussion about the endless range of JavaScript frameworks - do we need another one? Shawn compares his experiences with Angular, React and vue. They all have strengths and weaknesses, the question is, what is important to you when building websites?

Git for everyone! While at Ignite in Orlando, Carl and Richard talked to Ed Thomson and Dmitry Lyalin about the latest updates to Visual Studio Team Services that includes deep integration with Git - not just GitHub, but Git the repository technology. The conversation digs into the commitment Microsoft has to contributing to open source projects including Git itself - including moving Windows into the world's largest Git repository, a whole 300GB of source code! Git has penetrated deeply into Microsoft, is it the right choice for your projects?

In September 2017, Elon Musk walked out on stage at the International Astronautical Congress and updated everyone on SpaceX's latest plans. Time for a Geek Out! But first, an update on all of SpaceX's projects, including Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy and the Interplanetary Transport System. Then into the new stuff - the next iteration of the Big Falcon Rocket (BFR) that Elon says will replace all three systems. The BFR is bigger than the Falcon, smaller than the ITS (which likely will never be built), uses a smaller version of the Raptor methane engine and should be able to lift 150MT to Low Earth Orbit with 100% reusability. If SpaceX makes the BFR work, the price of spaceflight will drop to pennies a kilogram. Can it be true?

.NET Core 2 is shipped - what comes next? While at Ignite in Orlando, Carl and Richard chatted with Scott Hunter about life after shipping .NET Core 2. The conversation ranges over what the .NET Standard really means, and the fact that there are no immediate plans to declare new standards - there's no need! Scott also talks about XAML Standard and hints at some interesting futures for WinForms and traditional client apps. .NET continues to evolve!

There are so many messaging options in Azure, how do you choose? While at ProgNet in London, Carl and Richard sat down with Clemens Vasters to talk through the strengths and weaknesses of each messaging service. Clemens has been part of every messaging product in Azure, starting with Service Bus more than ten years ago. He discusses how customer needs and increasing demands in messaging resulted in making more specific products like Event Hub and IoT Hub. Azure Event Grid also fits a specific role in the discussion, making it easier for you to create message-driven workflows. Trying to sort out messaging in Azure? Clemens has the answers!

What's up with Artificial Intelligence - and why should we care? While at DevIntersection in Stockholm, Carl and Richard hosted a panel discussion with Seth Juarez, Jessica Engstrom and Tess Ferrandez to explore the current AI craze. Each of the panelists discuss the technologies they've been working with for years that now fall into the banner of AI - whether that be machine learning, speech and visual recognition, even chatbots today are part of the AI story. As much branding as product, AI seems to be coming true, have you looked at the latest?

Why should open source developers consider the Microsoft stack? While at ProgNet in London, Carl and Richard sat down with Dylan Beattie to talk about his experiences working with developers that have written lots of code, but not in the Microsoft world. The conversation starts out focused more on the ongoing evolution of the Microsoft Stack with the recent release of Core 2 and the evolving ability to do mobile development. Dylan talks about .NET no longer being about Windows, but rather available to whatever platform you care about: OS/X, Linux, iOS, Android... what matters to you?

Core 2 is out, and with it, Entity Framework Core 2! While at ProgNet in London, Carl and Richard chatted with Julie Lerman about the latest version of Entity Framework Core. Julie talks about what's in, what's out and what's different - and it's a lot. The discussion digs into why you would use EF Core, including cases where you would use it with the regular Framework, not just with .NET Core. The team has taken the opportunity to do things differently, based on learnings from the original Entity Framework, giving EF Core some unique features and a pretty cool future. EF Core has more to come!

How would you make presentations better? While at ProgNet in London, Carl and Richard talked to Mark Rendle about his efforts to build a tool to make presentations more social - he calls it Shtik! The idea is to provide a cross-platform presentation tool using HTML so that it works on any platform (hence .NET Core) but also provides ways for the attendees to take notes and send feedback in real time. This opens the door to having the attendees of a presentation help direct it, offering a very different type of talk. It's early days, but everything is open source and Mark is looking for some help, so take Shtik out for a spin!

How do you diagnose problems in your applications? While at ProgNet in London, Carl and Richard sat down with Jon Skeet to talk through how he does diagnostics and understanding bugs. The conversation starts out with a discussion around a comment that Richard read about writing great Stack Overflow questions by breaking down the problem into the smallest possible reproducible version. Jon talks about humility and diversity as cultural aspects in development teams that leads to better diagnostics and sharing. In the end, it's not the tech, it's the people that solve problems!

Event-driven architecture in Azure! Carl and Richard talk to Dan Rosanova about Azure Event Grid, built to power event-driven and serverless apps in Azure. Dan talks about how Event Grid picks up where WebHooks leave off, providing simpler connectivity between a variety of event streams and routing to different event consumers. The conversation also digs into the broader concepts of event-driven architecture, using queuing and subscription patterns to build loose-coupled, highly scalable and reliable applications. This is architecture perfect for the cloud!

.NET Core 2 is out - are you ready to migrate? Carl and Richard talk to Jeremy Likness about his experiences migrating his own projects over to Core 2 from .NET Framework. The latest version of Core has the vast majority of the base class libraries from the original framework implemented. Jeremy talks about his open source project called Sterling that hails back from the Silverlight days as a NoSQL data store. And it migrated fine! The conversation dives into other aspects beyond being cross platform, including performance benefits and what new technologies are on the horizon that may be Core-only. It's a great time to kick the tires on Core!

Struggling to get started with Universal Windows Platform applications? Carl and Richard talk to Clint Rutkas about the Windows Template Studio (WTS). WTS was first released into the Studio marketplace at Build in 2017 and has been updating every six weeks or so - with lots of community contributions. Clint talks about striking the right balance between generating code automatically that demonstrates best practices and getting in the way of you writing your own code - it's never simple, but when done right, hugely powerful. WTS is an open source project on GitHub, you can contribute to it as well!

New to ASP.NET Core 2 is Razor Pages - how is it different from Razor? Carl and Richard talk to Jess Chadwick about how Razor Pages takes Razor to the next level, getting away from traditional MVC (which is a funny thing to say) and into a more flexible model with a simpler code-behind approach. Jess talks about how this approach often ends up more closely coupled, but in a lot of cases, that's just fine. The different techniques are not mutually exclusive, you can mix-and-match as needed. This leads to a great conversation about state management, server-side rendering and more - web development continues to evolve!

Do you have animation in your work? Carl and Richard chat with Rachel Nabors about her work putting animation into web applications. The conversation starts out with a bit of a history lesson around early animation on computers, especially around touch - Rachel argues that what made the iPhone great was the keyboard animation metaphor so good you forgot you were typing on glass. Animation when done right just makes your software easier and more enjoyable to use - but it shouldn't be too noticeable! Want to learn more? You can get 10% off of Rachel's books and courses with the code NETROCKS.

Ready to try on F#? While at NDC Oslo, Carl and Richard chatted with Scott Wlaschin about what C# developers need to know to get started with F#. Scott talks a bit about his own history with development which ties in with the evolution of functional programming which in a way lost out to object-oriented programming back in the 1980s. Not that the two approaches are mutually exclusive, and Scott discusses how objects and functions live happily together in F#. It's a different way of thinking, but can be a very productive way to build applications - check it out!

How do you get to know your customers? While at NDC Oslo, Carl and Richard talked to Diane Zajac-Woodie about empathy mapping, a process for trying to internalize the dimensions of your various customers. Diane talks about considering various dimensions of people, looking at what the see, hear, think, say and do. Empathy mapping is a way to get your team more engaged around what customer needs are, but they're only guesses - you also have to craft experiments to figure out the truth! In the end, the goal is to make the best software you can.

Serverless is here - why would you do anything else? While at NDC Oslo, Carl and Richard hosted a panel of Rob Conery, Lynn Langit and Mathias Brandewinder to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the serverless approach to building applications. First up - the terrible name. Of course there are servers involved in serverless computing, you just don't have to think about them. The conversation spans over a number of different offerings, including AWS Lambdas, Azure Functions and Google Firebase. Serverless is worth serious study, there's a lot of potential!

How does security work in ASP.NET Core? Barry Dorrans knows, he's writing it! While at NDC Oslo, Carl and Richard sat down with Barry to talk about all his work in the security space at Microsoft. As Barry says, .NET Core represented a unique opportunity to reboot how security works on the web for the Microsoft stack, and he tried to do right by us all. Nothing is ever simple as you want it to be, especially when it comes to security, but there are good things available today if you spend some time to understand them. And a little scotch doesn't hurt either!

How do you make your applications accessible to everyone? Carl and Richard talk to Elle Waters about her working building applications for the visually and hearing impaired, on all sorts of platforms. The web dominates the discussions since so much can be built there. Elle talks about the array of tools that users have to help them understand a web page through audio, even touch solutions using braille! You can make your applications work well with these tools, but it takes empathy, effort and lots of testing.

How can ETW help you? While at NDC in Oslo, Carl and Richard talked to Dina Goldshtein about her work instrumenting applications. This leads to a conversation about Event Tracing for Windows, which Dina uses primarily to take measurements of different applications running on Windows machines - but you can have your app add to the ETW stream as well. Monitoring, profiling and debugging are all different tasks that can take advantage of the data provided by ETW, it depends on your needs at the time. Lots of discussion on the impact of measuring as well - nothing is free!

There's a lot of stuff in Azure - how to sort through it all? While at NDC in Oslo, Carl and Richard talk to Barry Luijbregts about the huge array of features that exist in the Azure Platform-as-a-Service offerings. Barry runs down the list, helping to categorize what elements are very similar, what are totally different, and how things work together. The platform is where it's at in terms of value, it's well worth your time to figure out what parts can work for you!

Is there more to logging? Yes! While at NDC in Oslo, Carl and Richard talked to Nicholas Blumhardt about his long running logging project called Serilog. Calling back to the earlier .NET Rocks episode on Serilog (2014!), Nicholas talks about how logging is one of those 'bicycle shed' problems - it looks simple on the surface, but the deeper you go, the more you find complexity that needs to be managed well. Don't do it yourself, use a great library like Serilog! The core implementation is simple, but a great abstraction allows you to push those logs wherever you need them, whether that be text files, databases or the huge diversity of existing log tracking.

MS Build is cooler than you think! While at NDC Oslo, Carl and Richard sat down with Daniel Plaisted to talk about the latest version of MS Build. But first, a quick conversation about the situation around the reversion back from project files using JSON rather than the traditional XML-driven MS Build files. The good news is that more of what made the JSON project files great is showing up in the MS Build files! The conversation also digs into building complex pipelines for MS Build and more importantly - how to debug them! Structured logging to the rescue!

Are you ready to go into the cosmos? With apologies to the late Carl Sagan, let's talk about Cosmos DB! While at NDC in Oslo, Carl and Richard talked to Josh Lane about Cosmos DB which was first announced at the Build conference. Cosmos DB is a globally distributed multi-modal database. As of the recording it supported several flavors of document storage (including MongoDB) as well as key-value, graph and columnar stores. Josh digs into the various scenarios for an ultra-fast distributed storage solution like this - a great example of platform-as-a-service!

It's summer in the northern hemisphere, are you ready to get hacking? Carl and Richard chat with the new executive director of the .NET Foundation, Jon Galloway. The conversation starts out talking about the Foundation itself, why it exists and what it does for the .NET open source community as a whole. The Foundation is where .NET Core, C# and more all live, as well as many awesome third party projects. Then to the Summer Hackfest, where the Foundation is providing support to get developers working on open source projects - if you've got one in mind, check out the links below and make a submission!

How do you make your APIs accessible to everyone? While at NDC is Oslo, Carl and Richard talk to Steven Faulkner about GraphQL, a Facebook open source project for exposing your APIs in a type-safe JSON-like approach. Steven talks about the advantages of having an abstraction over your APIs, allowing you to manage new versions of your API painlessly as well as packaging up multiple calls - saving some round trips! While the reference implementation is React and Javascript focused, the community has built support for many languages including C# - check it out!

Core 2 is coming - are you ready? While at NDC Oslo, Carl and Richard talked to the amazing duo of Damian Edwards and David Fowler about the rapidly approaching release of Core 2. Expectations are huge, but Damian and David are confident that Core 2 will deliver. The conversation dives into the meta side of software development - what didn't make it into Core 2, what had to be pushed to the next version, and what will have to be added at the last minute. Lots of laughs and enthusiasm as the open source reality of .NET is coming true!

The father of C# and TypeScript drops by for a visit! While at Build in Seattle, Carl and Richard talked to the one-and-only Anders Hejlsberg about his work on C# and more recently, TypeScript. Anders in his inevitable style talks through why languages work the way they do, the evolution of both C# and JavaScript, and the role that TypeScript has to play in making web development a better place. Great words from the legend!

How are containers coming along in the Windows world? Carl and Richard talk to Steve Lasker about his work making containers easy to use from within Visual Studio. Most work on containers has been around Linux, but when Windows Server 2016 shipped, Windows containers became real. Should you be using containers in your all-Windows world? Steve talks about the advantages and challenges, it's not all simple, but it is very powerful and worth a look!

After years of waning, .NET is on the rise - is it time for a renaissance? Ian Cooper says yes! The first of the NDC Oslo shows for 2017 starts out focused on a blog post that Ian published in February 2017 calling for a .NET Renaissance, and what it takes for it to come true. The move to open source has helped a lot, as it opens the door to what people really look for in a thriving community - rather than being a product created by Microsoft, it is a set of tools supporting by Microsoft but with direct community involvement. There's a lot going right, it's time for a renaissance!

Ready to get fluent? While at the Build conference in Seattle, Carl and Richard talked to James Clarke about the Fluent Design System. Fluent represents the next generation of Windows UI elements, as part of the continuous updating process that Windows 10 is under going these days. James talks about how you can start to experiment with the latest Fluent bits and provide feedback directly to the team as the features evolve. Microsoft is implementing Fluent against Windows and the Microsoft Store, and you can be part of those experiments too - check it out!

What's up with .NET Standard and the new XAML Standard? While at Build in Seattle, Carl and Richard chatted with Mike Harsh and Joe Stegman about the importance of the new standards and how they will affect .NET development going forward. As Mike and Joe explain, the focus is on making sure that the different versions of .NET (and XAML) that are out there today converge on a common standard. This will make it easier for tool vendors to build tools that work everywhere, and for developers to be able to write code that runs across platforms. It's going to take some time, but standards should make our lives better!

Is Silverlight back? Carl and Richard talk to Steve Sanderson about a demo he did at NDC Oslo that blew some minds. The demo involved using WebAssembly to put a version of the .NET Runtime and C# into the browser. Yes, that's right, Steve found a way to write C# that runs in the browser with NO PLUGIN. It's only an experiment, and there's no XAML to be found, so it's not really Silverlight, but it certainly gets you thinking - what if you could run any language you wanted in the browser? What would your world be like then?

We all have multiple devices, how do we make them all work together well? While at Build in Seattle, Carl and Richard sat down with Vikas Bhatia and Shawn Henry to talk about Project Rome. As Vikas explains, Project Rome is all about cross-device experiences utilizing APIs available on multiple platforms and interacting with Microsoft Graph. The goal is to have work and information follow you between devices - with the user always in control. Check it out!

More analysis from Build - during Build! While at Build in Seattle, Carl and Richard talked to Holger Mueller about his impressions of the show, shortly after the first keynote. Holger runs the gamut, talking about .NET Core, Visual Studio 2017, Azure, DevOps, Containers and more. A lot happened at Build, here's a view from the early point in the event itself!

What does the military want with a space plane? Time for a Geek Out! The conversation begins with that question - what space plane? Richard digs into the history of the space shuttle, which did have substantial funding from the US Air Force for specific military missions, none of which ever happened for a variety of reasons. And then off into the various projects to try and build a military space plane, including the DC-X, X-33, X-37B, DARPA RASCAL and the latest attempt, the DARPA XS-1. Each project brought some capabilities to the fore, but there's still a long way to go!

Want to manage your Azure apps on your smartphone? Carl and Richard talk to Jakub Jedryszek and Michael Flanakin about their work building the Azure Mobile App. Not just a mobile version of the Azure Portal, the app is built with Xamarin Native for iOS and Android, and focuses on using the phone efficiently to let you do what you need to! The discussion dives into the challenges of working on varying form factors and the tools that make things easier. And of course, there are great instrumentation and feedback mechanisms. It's early days for this application yet, so check it out and let them know what you need!

Are you ready to take your UX design to the next level? Carl and Richard talk to Mark Miller about his latest research into the science of great design - and it's definitely a science! Mark walks through some core concepts related to user interface design and the design of the application as a whole, helping users stay focused on what they need to do without interrupting or confusing them along the way. The discussion also embraces a lot of design decisions in the non-digital world as well - how you walk and drive a car are impacted by the design of a number of things!

What happened at Build? Lots! Carl and Richard talk to Rocky Lhotka about his impressions around the various announcements at Build. The conversation ranges over how this Build was somewhat different from others - perhaps more aspirational? Topics covered included the amazing AI/vision system demos that were exciting and frightening at the same time, as well as the XAML and .NET Standards, Hololens, VR, Project Rome and more! So much happened at Build!

Azure Service Fabric is here - should your application take advantage of it? Carl and Richard talk to James Sturtevant about his experiences moving applications into Azure Service Fabric. Yes, it is possible to "lift and shift" your application into Service Fabric via Guest Executables, but that doesn't mean you'll get much of the benefit that Service Fabric can provide. James talks about picking a feature in your application to peel off into a microservice, perhaps as an Azure Function or other serverless strategy - or even into a container! Instrumentation is a key aspect to understanding what will improve your application, and it takes time - all apps are on a continuum of development!

How do you get better uptime than the cloud? Two clouds! Carl and Richard talk to Vishwas Lele about his experiences building ultra-reliable applications, both on-premises and in the cloud. The discussion digs into the decisions around reliability - it's easy to want it, but will you pay for it? It's important to calculate the cost of downtime, as that helps set the budget for what it takes to stay up. And that leads to a conversation about how you build highly reliable software - it can't just come from the infrastructure, there is code involved as well! And the next question is - how do you make your app work in two different clouds?

Banish Your Inner Critic! Carl and Richard talk to Denise Jacobs about her new book on creativity. And yes, we're all creative, we just have to get that inner critic under control. Denise talks about her own battles with feeling good enough to actually do work well and share it with others. It comes down to a sense of self-compassion - often we are harder on ourselves than we are on others. Give yourself a break and have some fun - the creativity will come!

Troy is back, put on your tinfoil hat and get under the bed! Carl and Richard talk to Troy Hunt about the latest security exploits going around. Ransomware is hitting new highs, where a user's files get encrypted via malware, and the only way to get them back is to pay a ransom in Bitcoin. Or are there other ways to recover? And don't be so sure paying the ransom will fix anything, there are some unscrupulous criminals out there that just delete your files instead! The conversation also dives into the comprehensive move of the World Wide Web over to HTTPS - and with HTTP/2, HTTPS can actually be faster than HTTP!

Ready to get off the hourly treadmill? Carl and Richard talk to Jonathan Stark about ditching the hourly crusade. Jon talks about the fact that software development really isn't an hourly business - you don't provide value every hour with software, the value only comes when it's finished. The conversation focuses on value - what value does this software bring to the organization? If you don't know that, how can you be successful? But once you do know, pricing is different, and so is focus for you. Provide value to your customer, not an hourly rate!

What can Azure functions do for you? Carl and Richard talk to Yochay Kiriaty about his work creating Azure Functions as part of the App Service Platform for Azure. Azure Functions get you focused on just building code, there is no virtual machine, no operating system and a minimal hosting environment. But that doesn't mean that they're simple. Yochay talks about the need to architect effectively for Azure Functions - you can get yourself in a corner where Azure Functions can't save you. But if you keep your Azure Functions lean and stateless, this is the most dynamic, fastest scaling cloud service you can imagine!

How fast can you go through the air? Time for a Geek Out! Richard chats with Carl about the challenges of flying in the hypersonic regime - above Mach 5! Lots of experiments were done in the early days of the space race, and died down after Apollo 11. But toward the end of the cold war there was a resurgence that has continued to this day - developing engines and materials to keep flying faster. Most of the technology is focused on military weapons, but there could be a path to space when more of the problems get solved!

Is Angular ready for the enterprise? Carl and Richard talk to John Papa about the latest version of Angular and it's applicability in every day enterprise development. John discusses how the fast-moving updates of open source projects are a challenge for enterprise developers and the solutions available - you don't have to always use the latest bits! The role of the cloud (specifically Azure) is also explored, and John talks about Azure Functions as a great way to build server-side elements of your application quickly and painlessly, without a lot of ceremony and provisioning. And if you think that's cool, you want to come to <a href="http://angularmix.com/">AngularMix</a>, Oct 10-12 at Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida!

How do you deploy software? Carl and Richard talk to Robb Schiefer about his experiences using Chef to do application deployment. Chef comes from the open source Linux world, and is free to use with a pay option when you get to certain enterprise features. The Windows support is pretty good, and it works closely with PowerShell and Desired State Configuration to automate deployment of Windows and Microsoft services. Robb digs into the testing component of Chef as well, with tools that allow you to test all sorts of options around your deployments so you can get them as robust as possible. Whether your on-premise, in the cloud, virtualized or containerized, Chef can help!

Azure with no servers? Carl and Richard talk to Jeff Hollan about Azure's Serverless offerings. The idea is to stop worrying about virtual machines and operating systems and focus on the stuff you really need. Jeff talks about Logic Apps, which provide workflow and connectors between your code and a ton of other services, some coming from Azure and many coming from other service providers. Credentials for the services are kept in the Azure Key Vault rather than your code (or in the heads of your users), and there's some great instrumentation to understand what's going on. Is Serverless the future of the Cloud?

How are software careers changing? Carl and Richard talk to Erik Dietrich about his new book, Developer Hegemony. Erik digs into the struggles that many developers have with the typical large enterprise, where software developers are treated more like cogs in the system, with limited amounts of information and flexibility. Leaving the company and contracting back increases your wages and flexibility, although now you are responsible for all the things that make your job your job - things like accounting, marketing, health insurance and so on. This leads to a more DevOps-like conversation that points to a future that is very software driven! It's a great time to be a developer!

Angular or Aurelia? Carl and Richard talk to Brian Noyes about his experience building Single Page Application (SPA) style web sites using Angular and Aurelia. No, not both at the same time, but separately. Angular is all the rage these days, but Brian talks about the confusion around Angular caused by the breaking changes from 1.x to 2.x, the skipping of 3 and now settling on Angular 4. The discussion also digs into convention-over-configuration, Brian identifying Aurelia as a convention-driven framework, which leads to less code, but you have to understand how it wants to work. Lots of links in the show notes for tools and opinion pieces, take a look!

Where is your DevOps at? Carl and Richard talk to Jez Humble and Nicole Forsgren about DORA, that is the DevOps Readiness Assessment. DORA helps you understand where your organization is at in the spectrum of DevOps, from low to medium to high. The conversation digs into what it takes to improve operational capability, focusing on understanding exactly how your organization delivers software so you can improve it. Along the way there are challenges, it is never easy to change an organization, but that's what it takes to actually improve software delivery. The goods news is that DevOps can work in any kind of organization: Big or small, startup or heavily regulated industry, it doesn't matter!

You can make a game in Xamarin Forms? Yes! Carl and Richard talk to Jonathan Peppers about his latest work on NBA Life, a role-playing game for iOS and Android built with Xamarin Forms. Jonathan talks about the process they went through to decide on this particular architecture for the game, having done prototyping with Unity and Xamarin Native. The conversation also digs into the back end using Azure Service Fabric and it's Actor Model support - yes, everything is an actor! Lots of discussion around testing, deployment, crash handling and dealing with app stores. Building mobile games isn't always a pure native experience - you have choices!

Most of us have taken antibiotics at some point in our lives, but how do they work? Time for a Geek Out! Richard talks through some fundamental cell biology to be able to set the stage for what antibiotics are, where they come from and how they work. Why do antibiotics work on some illnesses and not others? Why are some bacteria becoming antibiotic-resistant and what can be done about it? What's the alternative to antibiotics? As with most Geek Out subjects, the answers are complex, but worth it!

C# 7 and Visual Studio 2017 are shipped - now what? Carl and Richard talk to Kathleen Dollard about her experiences working with folks that are trying to dig into the latest version of Microsoft development tools. Kathleen talks about the various approaches she's taken to teaching both C# and effective use of Visual Studio, there are so many little things to know, it's hard to take it all in. The conversation dives deep into understanding async and await so that you actually get real benefit from them - it's not a simple thing to do right!

The whirlwind of DevOps is back! Carl and Richard talk to Donovan Brown about his on-going mission to get everyone into a DevOps practice - in fact, he talks about getting to a place where continuous delivery and monitoring are just the way you make software. Donovan talks about a session he has been giving where he creates four different delivery pipelines in an hour, with different programming languages, platforms, testing and deployment tools. And if he can make four in an hour, there's really no reason anyone can't build one pipeline in an afternoon. The conversation ranges over a spectrum of DevOps topics, including testing and monitoring - it's easier than ever to rub some DevOps on it!

What does it take to build great multi-tenant apps on the cloud? Carl and Richard talk to Joe Audette about his set of open source tools called cloudscribe to make multi-tenant apps easier to implement. The conversation starts out with managing IdentityServer, the great open source library for handling single-sign-on across multiple applications. Cloudscribe helps you manage the sites, users, roles and claims for IdentityServer. But there's more to multi-tenancy than just authentication and authorization, and Joe dives into the other elements of the suite to get your multi-tenant app running right!

MVVMCross has grown up! Carl and Richard chat with Martjin van Dijk about his work on MVVMCross. Past guest Stuart Lodge started MVVMCross way back in 2012 when it was focused on building MVVM apps in Silverlight, but today the focus is on Xamarin. Martjin talks about how MVVMCross works with Xamarin forms to make it easier to build, test and debug mobile apps, bringing inversion of control and dependency injection as part of the library. The conversation also turns to navigation being moved to the viewmodel, rather than the view, so you write less code. MVVMCross can be a key part of your mobile app development strategy!

What can analytics around development do for you? Carl and Richard talk to Steven Borg about his work with Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS), especially around understanding developer productivity. The conversation starts out with a comment around Team Foundation Server and VSTS, the former being the on-premise version of the latter. But why run your own infrastructure when you don't have to? Then Steven dives into different kinds of analysis, looking for the best quality code. Can analysis tell you who should do a code review? Have a listen!

Scripting with C++? Of course! Carl and Richard talk to Jason Turner about ChaiScript, his open source project that simplifies adding C++ as a scripting language to any application, but especially other C++ applications. The conversation turns to how C++ has evolved and some amazing tools available today to help you understand what C++ is doing, right down to the CPU level! Check out the links in the show notes for some of the cool tools that Jason and his associates have built!

Visual Studio on a Mac! Carl and Richard talk to Mikayla Hutchinson who's been with Xamarin since the very beginning, about her work on the preview of Visual Studio for Mac. The product comes from MonoDevelop, which is Xamarin's IDE that runs in Windows, Mac and Linux. Mikayla talks about how Visual Studio for Mac focuses on both the client side of mobile devices and Mac OS as well as the cloud - there are templates included that will generate a basic app for iOS, Android and the back end layer in Azure. It's still in preview, but Visual Studio for Mac looks great!

How do you manage legacy code? Carl and Richard talk to David Bernstein about his book Beyond Legacy Code. The conversation starts out talking about what legacy code is - and David brings up the idea that code is legacy if you don't have confidence in it. Now how do you get confidence? This is where the rewrite behavior comes from: You're naturally more confident in your own code. But is it a good idea? David talks about nine practices that are most effective at getting your application under control and out of legacy!

How do you bring a DevOps practice to an existing application? While at NDC London, Carl and Richard talk to Damian Brady about his experiences working with teams trying to get better at building, deploying, instrumenting and maintaining existing applications. Often the processes put in place when an application is first developed stay the same - new techniques are applied to new apps. But it doesn't have to be like that! Damian talks about engaging everyone involved in the app, including management, development, QA, data folks, operations and more to work toward a better, more reliable application. And the results are worth it!

Should we go back to the moon? Richard says yes - time for a Geek Out! In recent months conversations around the Moon have surged - Richard discusses both the SLS EM-1 mission to the move and the SpaceX space tourism flight. And then on to the main topic: Why should we go back to the moon? Richard focuses on four points: We have not explored much of the moon at all, we can extract fuel and manufacture things on the moon, we need to understand how humans function long term in low gravity (rather than freefall), and finally, there are some unique science opportunities on the moon. And it's not just Richard excited about the topic - there are a ton of scientists and industry that want to go too!

Ready for another actor framework? Carl and Richard talk to Roger Johansson about his work on proto.actor, and ultra-light-weight, easy to get into actor framework for .NET and Go. The conversation starts out with Akka.NET, the framework that Roger worked on a few years ago, and how it's origins in Java gave it a certain amount of ceremony that Roger thought could be simplified - hence proto.actor! With a focus on speed and simplicity, proto.actor uses libraries like Google's protocol buffers to work with other platforms and libraries well, check it out!

Visual Studio 2017 ships! Carl and Richard talk to Tim Sneath about his role in this version of Studio. Tim talks about speeding installation of Visual Studio by modularizing the various elements so you don't install things you don't need - but it's always easier to add more in! The conversation also digs into the extensibility model that makes it easier to build new features into Studio, and a great marketplace to share and sell them. Studio continues to evolve, the 2017 edition is awesome!

Visual Studio is twenty years old! Carl and Richard chat with Julia Liuson, who has been involved with Visual Studio since its very earliest days in the 90s. Julia talks about how Microsoft decided to build a unified IDE for all its various development products including Visual Basic, C++, FoxPro and their new web development tool, Visual InterDev. But following quickly on from the 1997 edition was .NET and the complete change that it created for Visual Studio. Lots of great stories from someone that has been involved since the beginning - here's to another twenty years of Visual Studio!

How do you evolve your team when it triples in size? Carl and Richard talk to Ryan Stelly about his experiences working at Rally Health when an acquisition grew the development team from eight people to 30. The conversation begins with a look at where they came from, building ASP.NET MVC apps. The new team used Scala and Angular together - how do you move forward? Cross team training, exploring new technologies and a lot of fun leads to React/Redux, a new DevOps stack and a culture that you'd want to be a part of!

What's your strategy for moving to containers? While at NDC London, Carl and Richard chat with Michele Bustamante on how she talks to companies about utilizing container technology effectively. Michele discusses the fact that implementing containers represents more than just a technology investment - it's also a change in culture and process. This means that buy-in for container technology has to start at the top and permeate through the organization. And the benefits are just as comprehensive; it can be a significant part of a DevOps practice within an organization.

What is Conway's Law and how does it apply to your organization? Carl and Richard met up with Mark Seemann in Copenhagen to chat about how organization structure affects the structure of software. That is the essence of Conway's Law, going all the way back to the 1960s, where he talked about how committees designing software end up making software that reflects the structure of the committees themselves. This leads to a broad conversation about how virtually every company today is actually a software company, and that software represents a vital asset to most businesses, but they may not recognize it yet. Getting your organization into shape to build great software can be the difference between success and bankruptcy!

Windows Containers are here! While at NDC London, Carl and Richard chatted with Ben Hall about his on-going exploration of container technology. Windows Server 2016 shipped in late 2016 with support for two kinds of Windows containers. Ben talks about migrating an existing web application, IIS and all, over to Windows containers, providing some great deployment automation and scalability. There are still more bits to be built, but you can be productive with Windows containers today - check it out!

What are the twelve factors that go into a successful cloud architected application? While at NDC in London, Carl and Richard sat down with Ian Cooper to talk through the twelve factors approach to building software. Ian talks about focusing on building software-as-a-service style application, likely in the cloud (and certainly using cloud architectures), with continuous delivery of new features. While agnostic to any particular technology, there are lots of common practices here that make sense when building any kind of application, just doubly so for SaaS-style applications. Have a listen!

Will fusion power ever be real? Time for a geek out! Since the original fusion shows in 2014, there has been a bunch of progress in the field of fusion... okay, some progress. Richard talks about how ITER is delayed another ten years, the Wendelstein 7-X is actually up and running and the rest of the billionaire-funded fusion projects are somewhat quiet. Does that mean they have enough money so their working, or are they stuck? The discussion dives into a key challenge of fusion - more powerful magnets. And new magnet technology is on the horizon. Is this enough to make fusion power actually work? And is it even relevant anymore?

Mixed reality is coming! While at NDC in London, Carl and Richard sat down with Jessica Engstrom to talk about her work with virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality. And yes, they are all different, with the conversation starting off with definitions of each. Jessica talks about some of the projects she's done using the mapping capabilities of the HoloLens to re-create 3D spaces. There's a new diversity of hardware in the space coming as well, with more vendors making augmented reality solutions and Microsoft opening up the Holographic OS for other vendors to make hardware with. The VR/AR/MR space continues to evolve!

Are your machines learning? While at NDC in London, Carl and Richard hosted a panel of Jennifer Marsman, Evelina Gabasova and Barbara Fusinska talking about their work in machine learning. The conversation ranges over the variety of projects they've worked on, including using machine learning to analyze Stack Overflow data, building a machine learning-driven lie detector, doing sales data analysis with R, and more. The machine learning space is vast, and there are plenty of opportunities for everyone, you need to get exploring!

With apologies to Jane Austen, Carl and Richard talk to Dan North about the modern operations environment as one of the first NDC London shows of 2017. Dan digs into the challenges of operating modern applications and how a constant demand for new features can be destabilizing to software. The conversation explores getting to the root of concerns in systems so that everyone understands what is hard and what is easy. When people are misunderstood, fear and resistance almost always follow. Take the time to listen and get everyone working together well!

What's the right way to make a Xamarin app? While at NDC in London, Carl and Richard sat down with Gill Cleeren to talk about using the MVVM pattern as part of an overall mobile development stack. As Gill describes, MVVM brings consistency to the plumbing of the mobile app so that you can focus on the important (hard) stuff, getting the UI right, and trying to get as much common code as possible. In the end, the views end up being more device/OS specific, while the model and view-model can be shared. The tooling is complicated, but it is possible to get going fast with mobile development!

Ready to build a chatbot? While at NDC London, Carl and Richard talk to Galiya Warrier about the different chatbot technologies available today. The focus is on the Microsoft Bot Framework, which under the hood uses LUIS - that's Language Understanding Intelligent Service. Galiya also talks about the QnA Maker, which sits on top of the Bot Framework to automate the creation of a chatbot that can use an FAQ as content. The discussion explores different chatbot platforms you can use, the integration of speech with the tech, and how to get past the hype of chatbots and into practical value. This is a whole new kind of UI for your application!

IdentityServer4 is all grown up! While at NDC in London, Carl and Richard sat down with Brock Allen and Dominick Baier to discuss their amazing open source product, IdentityServer. The conversation starts out where it left off last year, getting to the point of shipping IdentityServer with ASP.NET RC1. But literally a few hours later, RC2 was announced with serious breaking changes. The challenge of building software in the open! Dom and Brock talk through an implementation of IdentityServer using different federation sources, handling multi-tenancy and more. This is the right way to do identity!

Can you use Docker with your database? While at NDC in London, Carl and Richard talk to Stephanie Locke about her experiences deploying database in containers. And as Stephanie says, you can deploy the database engine there, but the data has to live somewhere a bit more stable - like the cloud! The conversation digs into the power of containers for rapid deployment and upgrading, as well as the value of using different types of file stores for retaining data. In the end, a database creates files of data, and that's what you need to protect. Stephanie also talks about what databases make sense in different scenarios - it's not only about relational!

The Chuck Norris of C# is back! While at NDC London, Carl and Richard sit down with the indomitable (and always humble) Jon Skeet to talk about what he's been working on in the past year. First up is nodatime, an open source library for doing date, time and timezones correctly. Why is time so hard? Because politics and science! Jon talks about crazy time zone challenges, solutions for leap seconds and more. Next up is Google Cloud Platform which has gone all C# friendly! Jon talks about building C# friendly APIs for various Google services to make it easy as possible for your .NET application to work in Google's cloud. Check it out!

The beatings will continue until morale improves! While at NDC in London, Carl and Richard talk to Louise Elliott about the idea of punishment driven development - that is, workplaces where blame is a driver. Louise talks about getting rid of blame and punishment, whether self-inflicted or team-inflicted, so that the individual unique contributions and capabilities of every member of the team are valued. The conversation also dives into creating constructive incentives - not pitting team members or separate teams against each other, actually making sure everyone is focused on making sure the business is successful. Great reminders about working on the right things!

So what's the right way to use ASP.NET Core? There may not be one right way, but there are plenty of opinions, and Scott Allen has some! While at NDC in London, Carl and Richard chat with Scott about his preferences for building ASP.NET Core apps. Scott digs into project organization, keeping projects and folder structures aligned, keeping elements related to features together and more. Many of the defaults around an ASP.NET Core project are arbitrary - you can do things the way you want to do them. The challenge is just putting some thought into it!

Can you help a charity move to the cloud? Carl and Richard talk to Jeremy Pitman of Microsoft Philanthropies about the new offering to provide $5000 worth of Azure credit to any qualified non-profit organization. The offering includes tools like Office 365 and Dynamics CRM - things that are pretty straightforward to implement. Even using Azure to set up a WordPress blog is simple - but what if you want to lift-and-shift an existing charity website? Perhaps .NET Rocks listeners could be helping their local charities to make this a reality! Beyond the basics, the cloud offers great new capabilities in analytics that can make charities even more effective! Public cloud for public good!

2016 was an amazing year for space - what happens in 2017! Time for a Geek Out! Richard pulls together all his notes on the various players in the US space industry (and a few beyond the US). The big player, of course, is the United Launch Alliance (ULA). With pressure from SpaceX, ULA is starting to innovate - is this a good thing? And what about SpaceX? After the accident on Sept 1 2016, they're pushing hard to return to flight (and as this show publishes, should have just flown). There's also Blue Origin, Orbital ATK and a few companies you've never heard of that are sure to make some news in 2017 - exciting space times!

Where do your keep your secrets? Carl and Richard talk to Sumedh Barde about Azure Key Vault - the perfect place to keep all your secrets for your Azure applications. Sumedh talks through the issues around securing Azure applications properly and needing to store certificates and other secrets (including username/password logins) in a very secure place. Azure Active Directory plays a critical role in making everything work by providing identity services so that you can decide who/what has access to the secrets without sharing the secrets themselves. This makes control over access much simpler - no need to change certificates because someone left the company!

How do you monitor your applications in Azure? Carl and Richard talk to Tom Kerkhove about his work with Azure Application Insights. AppInsights works with .NET, Java and nodeJS apps to allow detailed instrumentation of how your application is being used. Tom talks about doing deep tracing with AppInsights to be able to see a request come in on the front side of the application all the way back to the database. The conversation also digs into other levels of instrumentation including Operations Management Suite and Azure Monitoring. Getting the right data is the challenge, but it's worth it!

How do you rewrite critical code safely? Carl and Richard talk to Phil Haack about his work on Scientist.NET. Phil talks about the challenges of rewriting code, which means taking something that works (more or less) and trying to make it better, at the risk of breaking it. Yes, test suites would help, but who has those on legacy projects? The Scientist library makes it easier for you to build a new version of a function in your legacy application and run it in parallel to the old function, so that you can validate the results in production without breaking anything. The conversation also turns to the value of rewrites, how tooling, techniques and technology have changed to make it more feasible to do major rewrites, and all the other geeky goodness that comes from hanging with Phil Haack. Happy episode 1400!

How do you migrate to Azure? Carl and Richard talk to Microsoft Premier Field Engineer Christos Matskas about his work helping companies move workloads to Azure. The conversation starts out focused on what you can move to Azure - which is less a technical problem and more of a political one. Christos discusses Azure Site Recovery as a sort of gateway drug for getting organizations into Azure - much cheaper than running a backup data center, Site Recovery keeps images of all your active servers so that you can switch over to them in a disaster. And then the catalog is opened up, there are a ton of products in Azure, which ones do you use? Lots of great discussion on the various approaches to moving to the cloud!

Are there new C++ programmers, or just old people? Carl and Richard chat with Kate Gregory about her discovery of a whole new generation of C++ programmers, who just haven't had to go through the same pain that the old folks once did. Kate talks about going to cppcon, the premier C++ conference in the world, and seeing packs of young people getting into C++. The good news is that C++ has evolved and the coding techniques are very different than they used to be. Yes, you can still build drivers and embedded systems with C++ and it's still pretty tough, but for regular software development, the new language features make life much more fun - check it out!

Have you seen the new docs for C# (and many other Microsoft products)? Carl and Richard talk to Bill Wagner about his work with Microsoft getting great C# docs together on http://docs.microsoft.com. But first, a conversation about side projects, including Carl's work bringing the Polly library to the .NET Foundation as well as Bill and Richard's work on Humanitarian Toolbox. Then on to the docs - which are fully editable via GitHub, so anyone can help build the docs. Lots of interactive code options, the samples are real (and tested), video, great detailed descriptions and more. What if docs didn't have to suck? Because they don't!

How do you make your website progressive? Carl and Richard talk to Christian Heilmann about the latest approach in web development - the progressive web app (PWA). Christian talks about how PWAs really are progressive - you can add bits of these new capabilities to your existing web sites and see some benefit. It starts with the manifest that helps create an icon on a desktop or smartphone to get access to the website, so your user doesn't have to type the URL anymore. And it goes from there, adding offline capabilities, notifications and more. Different browsers are in different states of implementation with PWAs, but the movement is clear, doing more with web apps!

You need to markdown to make good markup! Carl and Richard talk to Rick Strahl about his work building Markdown Monster, which is a Windows-based editor for creating markdown code that ultimately becomes HTML. Or leave it as markdown, which is a popular format (going back to 2004) for blogs, readme docs in GitHub and more. Rick talks about his experiences putting together a desktop app (WPF!) but still keeping it open source. Pay for it if you use it, but try it for free, or fork it on GitHub! Lots of great conversation about modern development on the desktop, including updates, packaging and so on. You can still make desktop software make sense!

What happens when your college buddy decides later in life that he wants to switch to software development? Carl and Richard talk to Will Gant about his efforts bringing BJ Burns into his organization and apprenticing him as a software developer. What can you build with the earliest set of skills in modern development? How is an apprenticeship different from more traditional schooling? Will and BJ tell the story of how the apprenticeship came to be and where it is today - a great story of becoming a developer!

With the release of Visual Studio 2017 Release Candidate, the truth is out - no more web essentials! Carl and Richard talk to Mads Kristensen about his decision to stop making Web Essentials, but not to stop making all the Web Essentials goodness! Rather than make one big bundle of tools for web developers, Mads has broken down the package into individual add-ins that you can download separately and install. It all comes down to manageability - not everyone wants everything, so now you can pick and choose. Key to managing the add-ins is the Web Extension Pack, that will help you install the components you need. Web Essentials lives on!

Friendship bracelets that teach girls to code! Carl and Richard talk to Sara Chipps about her experiences bringing Jewelbots to life. Sara talks about her idea to get girls more interested in coding by creating something programmable that girls will like - a friendship bracelet! Sara and her team put together a kickstarter in 2015 to raise $30,000 and ultimately raised $167,000 - the product was a hit right from the beginning. The story digs into the challenge of actually making a physical consumer product (as opposed to software), especially how much slower everything takes. But alls well that ends well - the product is shipping and people love it! Check it out!

What does it take to keep AngularJS moving forward? Carl and Richard talk to Jules Kremer about her work as the head of Angular Developer Relations at Google. Angular started out as an internal library at Google and is widely used all over the organization. But as it's popularity grew, the outside world became interested in it also. Jules talks about learning how the rest of the world uses Angular and the role that played in the significant shift that happened in Angular 2, including the move to TypeScript, becoming more opinionated, and so on. The conversation also goes to the future of Angular, including the focus on Progressive Web Apps and a great set of docs. Oh, and we give away $5000 worth of technology to one lucky member of the .NET Rocks fan club!

Ionic is growing up! Carl and Richard talk to Justin James about his work building mobile apps with Ionic Framework, now at version 2! Justin talks about the tight relationship between Angular and Ionic, including the significant changes from V1 to V2 - mostly due to Angular, but still. As such, Justin recommends sticking with Ionic 1 for existing apps but building new apps with Ionic 2. The conversation also digs into tooling choices (Visual Studio or not?) deployment options, emulators and side loaders and the fun that is app stores. Mobile development is never easy, but it is getting better with tools like Ionic!

There are more ways to go serverless! Carl and Richard talk to Glenn Block about his work with WebTask. WebTask uses nodeJS to build services that are unique units of work with their own scalability. Glenn also talks about using WebTask as a Webhook, allowing you to do call backs based on an activity - it's this tooling that can help you automated builds and deployments and more. Using the Webhook approach, Glenn digs into techniques for building custom commands for Slack and a bunch of other environments - WebTask can become cloud-driven glue for your apps!

As requested by a listener, a Geek Out on worldwide energy production! Richard starts out with a discussion on how to measure the energy production of humanity, and explores how energy is used on the planet - it's not just about electricity! Then into the hard stuff, looking through all sorts of energy sources including oil, coal, natural gas, nuclear, wind, solar and even geothermal. There's a lot of ways to make and consume power, some with more impact on the planet and some with less. What are the prospects going forward? Can we actually move away from fossil fuels, or is it just too expensive? Last Geek Out of the year, see you in 2017!

How many different decisions do you need to make before starting web development? Carl and Richard talk to Cory House about picking out a JavaScript development environment. Cory talks about his own experiences getting into the groove with the React stack, but that is certainly not the only way to build a web application. When you think more broadly about building web apps, the number of decisions can be daunting, and hence the increase in starter kits and other tools like the JavaScript Services toolkit for making it easier to get all your tools together. Lots of great links in the show notes for different tools you can use!

How are containers doing in the world today? While in Haarlem for DevIntersection Europe, Carl and Richard hosted a panel with Michele Bustamante, Dan Wahlin and Rick Van Rousselt about how they are currently working with containers and what they see coming in the future. The panel discusses how making containers work is really about working with Linux, which is entirely viable in the .NET world with .NET Core, but Windows Containers looks to change that in the coming years. What will modern development look like in the next couple of years as containers take ahold of the entire development cycle? Exciting times!

Are you an imposter? Carl and Richard talk to Rob Conery about his battle with imposter syndrome - starting with a definition. Rob talks about how often folks that don't have formal computing science education feel like they are faking it when it comes to software development, no matter how significant their contributions are. And part of his process for dealing with his own issues was to write a book on the subject - self-published. One of the focuses of the book is to dig into core concepts in computing science that are actually valuable in your day-to-day development efforts, such as estimating the difficulty of a computing problem or describing core algorithmic concepts. Learn from the smart people that have come before in computing!

How does security work in ASP.NET Core? Carl and Richard talk to Roland Guijt about the security features of ASP.NET Core - many of which are the same as the original .NET, but there are some significant changes! The conversation starts out dealing with the idea that retrofitting security at the end of a project is fraught with perils that ultimately endanger your application and users. It's worth taking some time to figure out how security is going to be part of your app from the beginning. Roland talks about what makes sense to build directly into your ASP.NET Core app and what can be externalized with tools like Identity Server. And there are claims - lots of claims!

Entity Framework Core has shipped - now what? Carl and Richard talk to Julie Lerman about what this new version of Entity Framework does to the data layer. Julie digs into how EF Core has the same relationship with EF 6.x as ASP.NET Core has to ASP.NET 4.x - they are parallel versions aimed at different goals. The Core editions are all about cross-platform where the originals continue to be Windows-centric. Both versions of Entity Framework are open source on GitHub so you can see the development is on-going - and participate in it if you wish!

There are software design patterns and anti-patterns, but does the same hold true for business? Carl and Richard talk to Steve Smith about business anti-patterns, that is, practices and approaches to business that while they may appear to be useful on the surface, are actually quite harmful. While the problem tends to be around development, since it's often not understood by business, many of these anti-patterns affect all aspects of a business.

What the heck is a Progressive Web App? Carl and Richard talk to Kirupa Chinnathambi about his experiences building at the edge of the modern web with Progressive Web Apps (PWAs). PWAs are trying to bridge the gap between traditional applications and web applications, starting with keeping a web app functional when there is an interruption in Internet connection. But it's more than that - how do you appear as an icon on a desktop or app surface, provide notifications and otherwise look and act like every other kind of application? Check it out!

How hard is it to build a search engine? Carl and Richard talk to Anthony Brown about his efforts to build his own search engine using Azure and F#. The conversation starts out with the question "Why?" which quickly turns into an indictment of the modern search engine, which, while useful, is bothered by the necessities of business with advertising and gaming of the system. Anthony talks about getting effective at exploring web pages for meaningful content using the ability of F# to write intelligent, tolerant parsing. Azure Search plays a huge role in taking that data and indexing in a way that makes it fast. Lots of great thinking about how these complex problems get solved!

The choices for SQL Server continue to expand! With last week's announcements at Connect, SQL Server is coming to Linux in a big way. What does that mean for the average consumer of SQL Server? Tony talks about the on-going evolution of the product to store data in lots of different ways, not just relational. And on top of that, the latest SQL Server is great at taking relational data and making it available in super-fast and efficient ways. There are more SQL choices than every before!

What does it take to make a really great UI? Carl and Richard talk to Mark Miller about his latest work on helping people build the best possible UI. Mark has developed an amazing course teaching all of the details of making a great UI, directly connecting it to how humans see, perceive and interact with technology. Color, contrast, hue and intensity all affect perception of information on the screen, and Mark has organized every bit of it with awesome examples to help you make a really great UI. Check it out!

.NET used to be all about Windows - but it's not anymore! How do you market something so diverse? Carl and Richard talk to Beth Massi about her new role as the Marketing Manager for .NET. Today .NET runs on all sorts of platforms, and you can develop .NET code on multiple platforms as well. Beth talks about reaching out to the new audiences that may have never considered .NET before because of it's former focus on Windows. Now .NET runs everywhere, on all sorts of devices, and into even more operating systems. Where would you like your code to run?

So many amazing things announced at Connect! Carl and Richard talk to Scott Hunter about his favorite bits of Connect, including a ton of important announcements including new support in Visual Studio for containers, cool new integration with SQL Server 2016, the on-going evolution of .NET Core and it's tooling and so much more! You've seen the keynotes, now listen to a deeper dive with one of the key people behind .NET today!

Functional programming for mobile development? Carl and Richard talk to Scott Nimrod about his experiences building mobile apps with Xamarin using F# as the primary programming language. Does functional make sense for mobile development? Sure, but F# can handle OOP problems too. Scott calls it "functional first". The conversation digs into the power of staying within Visual Studio - tools that you know and understand! But there are also features in Visual Studio that don't necessarily work well (or the same) with F#, so it does take time to learn your way around your new language. But worth it!

How do you get to coding quickly with the new web development frameworks? Carl and Richard talk to Steve Sanderson about JavaScriptServices, which is actually a set of templates for helping you set up your development environment for Angular, Knockout, React and/or React-Redux. Steve talks about all the bits and pieces necessary to actually get to your code-run-debug cycle of development. Along the way he mentions a number of tools involved to make life easier, including Yeoman and WebPack. The conversation also turns to this diversity of client development stacks and the philosophy behind them - more great thinking by a web leader!

DC Lighting real, and Richard has installed it! Time for a Geek Out! You've heard bits and pieces about the flood in Richard's basement and the year long effort to get it restored and renovated - including DC LED lighting! Richard discusses his experience getting the LumenCache lighting system working in his basement, along with the various kinds of lights possible: new dedicated LED light fixtures, refitting existing light fixtures with LED and custom making LED lighting with aluminum extrusions and LED light tape. Power efficient, cool running and cool looking - this is what modern lighting should be!

Making mobile apps is never simple - but it can be made easier! Carl and Richard talk to Matthew Robbins about MFractor, a tool designed to help you build mobile apps using Xamarin across platforms more easily. Matthew talks about the challenges of trying to create common code (typically C#) in Xamarin that actually runs correcting in Android and iOS. A big part of MFractor is the code analysis tooling that helps you verify correctness for schema assignments, references, and so on. There's also help with code generations, navigation and a variety of other utilities. Check it out!

So many versions of .NET Framework, so little time! Carl and Richard chat with Immo Landwerth about the .NET Standard specifications. Now that .NET has gone cross-platform, the sheer number of implementations of the framework can be overwhelming. And if you're building products for .NET, how do you communicate with your customers about what your product will work with? This is what the .NET Standard is all about - setting specific rules on what needs to be implemented to comply with a specific version of the framework. It's early days yet, but at least there is a plan to keep everyone organized. Dive in!

Data Lakes are growing up, and you want one! While at Ignite in Atlanta, Carl and Richard sat down with Michael Rys to talk about Azure Data Lakes - a place to store your data "as is" so that you can easily query and organize the data for further analysis. Michael discusses the problems of data warehouses, with their Extract-Transform-Load (ETL) processes that manipulate the data into a particular shape for the warehouse - and make it harder to ask new questions of the data. Leave the data as it is in the data lake and then build mechanism to extract on demand for the various data marts you have. The conversation turns to USQL (U as in Universal) and HDInsights (Hadoop) as different ways to extract data from the Data Lake for analysis. Lots of choices!

What does it take to make the web more accessible? Carl and Richard talk to Aaron Gustafson about his years of work helping to create and support standards for accessibility on the web - all kinds of accessibility. While supporting visual and hearing impaired is important, there are so many more aspects to accessibility, especially today where those capabilities translate into new devices that make focus on speech or other completely different UI paradigms. The good news is, the tooling is getting better (check the links on the web page) to make it easy for you to keep accessibility in your mind as you code - don't bolt on at the end!

Are you afraid to make your API public? You should be! Carl and Richard talk to Vishwas Lele about Azure API Management, the safe an effective way to expose your API to the world and not take down your system. Vishwas talks about the array of problems in front of you once the public has access to your API: What happens if it's too popular for it's own good? Or someone builds runaway software that hammers it constantly? Or you want granular control over who can call your API, how often, and how fast? That's where Azure API Management comes in, taking on all of the front end side of APIs, even if you run the application behind the API on-premise. Check it out!

Installation is in chaos! Carl and Richard talk to Rob Mensching about the crazy amount of change that has come to distributing and installing software. The conversation references a comment from a listener about the diversity of server installation solutions including MSDeploy. But what about the desktop? As Rob says, things have been pretty stable for a long time with the MSI - and Rob led the WiX Toolset project to make MSIs. But with AppStores, MSIs are looking long in the tooth. What does the new desktop installation look like?

How can you be successful with a product without good documentation? You can't! Carl and Richard talk to Ward Bell, who is serving as editor in chief for Angular docs. After complaining about the quality problems with the Angular documentation, Ward found himself in charge of the problem - and has taken it on in a big way. The docs themselves are developed in GitHub, so anyone can contribute. The challenge is making sure they're good - everything is driven by coding samples that are as simple as they need to be and follow strict standards. The result is docs you can trust - first and foremost they are correct, and hopefully effective at getting you productive with Angular!

Time for a Xamarin update - things are moving fast! Carl and Richard talk to James Montemagno, now a Microsoft employee since the Xamarin acquisition, about the on-going evolution of the Xamarin tools for building mobile and UWP applications. The conversation starts out with a comment about folks coming to mobile development for the first time: Less rocket science, more building data-over-forms apps for internal use. James dives into the expanding set of capabilities that Xamarin Forms has to make folks more productive building mobile apps that have to work across iOS, Android and UWP. And testing is getting better too - check it out!

On September 27, 2016, Elon Musk held a press conference that was more like a rock concert to an excited crowd at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico. At the event, he announced the Interplanetary Transport System (ITS) and a plan to move a million people to Mars by 2050. How viable is this? Time for a Geek Out! Richard reviews the design of the Raptor engine, the ITS booster and spacecraft and the entire plan. This rocket is many times more powerful than anything ever built before. Will it work? What could you do with a rocket with this much power beyond the mission to Mars? Lots of possibilities!

What does it take to move an existing application to Docker? Carl and Richard talk to Elton Stoneman about his experiences migrating applications to Docker. The power of containers is obvious, with the ability to run common configuration across development, QA and production. But how do you retrofit your existing application into that new model? It's not a simple lift and shift - Elton talks about breaking down your application into the relevant pieces that make sense for individual containers. Part of your app can live in VMs and part in containers. The process inevitably will make your application better by drilling into what is really important!

Serverless is the new hot buzzword - but what does it really mean? Carl and Richard talk to Ben Godwin about his work building serverless applications - no servers, but lots of services! Ben talks about Amazon Lambda, which is similar to Azure Functions. Both these environments allow individual bits of code to run within them, written in a variety of languages, but often that language is Javascript in the Node style. The advantage of this approach is eliminating a lot of the ceremony around your services set, but at the price of some new working patterns and organization. Ben also mentions the Serverless Framework as a great free tool for getting started!

Are user groups obsolete? Carl and Richard talk to Blake Helms and Robb Schiefer about their experiences starting and growing a .NET Meetup Group in Birmingham, Alabama. Modernizing on the user group with Meetup doesn't change the fundamentals - it takes dedicated volunteers, a good location, great speakers and consistency to make a group grow. Are meetups still worth your time? Definitely! The conversation turns to the power of networking: Not TCP/IP, but actually meeting and talking with people that share a common interest. If there's a Meetup group in your area, go to it! If not, start one - Blake and Robb have great suggestions on getting started!

What role does distributed caching play in applications today? Carl and Richard sit down with Iqbal Khan to talk about nCache, an open source product built to do distributed caching in the .NET world. The conversation starts out with the traditional role of a distributed cache - state storage for a large scaling websites. It's never as simple as it sounds! From there, Iqbal dives into comparing caching to noSQL stores and RDBMS - they can all have a role in your application. The discussion then turns to more complex challenges around using distributed caches for map-reduce problems, and so on. Caching can do a lot!

What the heck is Hybrid Transactional Analytical Processing (HTAP)? While at Ignite, Carl and Richard sat down with Lindsey Allen to talk about taking SQL Server "beyond relational." HTAP focuses on being able to do data analysis as data arrives in the database, independent of the transaction that actually wrote it. Lindsey talks about the power of being to get to near-real time with data analytics, rather than batch processing. Different than streams, you're still talking about data written to the database, so you already know your application logic and data integrity have been applied before you start your analysis. HTAP has huge potential for making super responsive applications!

Has voice control come of age? Carl and Richard talk to Austin Dimmer about his efforts to build a great voice control system - including for Visual Studio! The conversation digs into the complexity of recognizing a diversity of voices and being fast enough to get the words right. Then the hard stuff: How to keep words in context so that you can derive enough meaning from them to be useful. This isn't just about transcription, it's about control. Austin also talks about all the different voice-related products that Microsoft makes, it can be a confusing landscape. Is it time for voice to be part of your application?

Compiled PHP on .NET! Carl and Richard talk to Benjamin Fistein and Jakub Míšek about Peachpie, and open source project to implement PHP on the .NET Core. While the project isn't complete yet (you can help - it's open source!), the potential power is huge - taking existing PHP code and being able to compile it down to the CLR. Ben and Jakub talk about the challenge of mapping functionality across the languages, and the huge performance boost that compiled CLR code gets. How fast could WordPress be? The goal is to make PeachPie run on the .NET Core as well, so it can work on any platform you want. Check it out!

How does Microsoft maintain mature applications? Carl and Richard talk to Dustin Metzgar about his work at Microsoft maintaining applications and libraries like Windows Workflow, older versions of ASP.NET and Entity Framework and more. These products are maintained for a long time, typically without adding features, but rather to make sure new operating systems still work with them, security is maintained and bugs are fixed. There's a ton of cool stories in this space, it's the ultimate brownfield project challenge - rarely, if ever, do folks who created a product continue with it throughout it's life time!

You can't multitask! Carl and Richard talk about the myth and scourge of multitasking, which has been proven again and again to not actually work. Ben talks about how the human brain is not that different from a microcomputer CPU - the context shifts involved in multitasking are expensive, and if you do too much of it, you spend all your time switching contexts, rather than actually getting work done. The conversation digs into all sorts of good discussion around productivity, but first and foremost, it is about getting things done - focus on one task until you're finished, then move on!

Time to review the web application stack! Carl and Richard talk to Dan Wahlin about his current explorations into building web applications. The current stack for Dan is Angular 2 on the front-end, ASP.NET Core on the backend and Docker as the hosting environment. There are so many cool capabilities in this configuration that it can affect the way you build software as a whole, making it easier to automate deployment, accelerate testing, distribute sample versions, and so on. This could be the future of .NET development!

Version 6 of nServiceBus is imminent! Carl and Richard talk to Udi Dahan about his on-going efforts to build a great service bus in a sustainable business way. The conversation starts out talking about sustainable open source businesses and what has worked (and not). Udi then dives into the cool new features of the latest version of nServiceBus, with a strong focus on asynchronicity. Reliability across clouds and on-premise systems is also a key focus of this version of nServiceBus, so you can run your software where you want. Then a deep dive into the architectural models of services buses, including a great conversation on microservices and actor models. Check it out!

Back from the wilds, Richard Campbell has stories of the Arctic Ocean! Carl asks questions to Richard about his experience on a 12-day sail around the Svalbard islands and up into the arctic ice to see polar bears, walrus and a huge assortment of sea birds. There's also stories about the crazy adventurers of the 19th and 20th century trying to get to be the first to the north pole - and most didn't make it. Ultimately the conversation comes back to the marine mammal known as the polar bear. Is it doomed? It seems inevitable now that the polar ice will melt. But it's not the first time in history that has happened to the polar bear, but mankind can help protect the bear so it has a chance to survive!

Digging into what it's like to build mobile applications today with someone who's built more than just about anyone - Atley Hunter! Carl and Richard chat with Atley about what is working for him today and what's not. Atley talks about revenue potential from iOS, Android and Windows Phone apps (yes, there still is some revenue there), and what approaches make sense for actually building cross-platform apps today. While he's capable of native development, he's also looking close at the various evolving tools out there. Atley also digs into the challenges of the various app stores - the problems continue. It's tricky to make money on mobile apps, but it is possible, you just have to know your options!

Is it worth your time to take on the latest frameworks and tools? Carl and Richard talk to Uncle Bob about fighting against "The Churn" - that is, change for change's sake. The conversation starts out focused on being professionals and holding yourself to a higher standard for your industry than just your customer. And the same issue applies for tooling - often it is easier to dive into new tools than it is to get better at your existing ones. Is this really the most productive thing you could be doing? Focusing on the broader aspects of your industry, whether a deep dive into the tooling you use or better understanding how your company really makes money, you can be more valuable and effective. And isn't that what a professional should be doing?

The rumors of the death of WebForms is greatly exaggerated! Carl and Richard talk to Jeff Fritz, who runs with WebForms team (yes, there is a team!) about what's happening in the WebForms world. While WebForms is not coming to ASP.NET Core, it is a part of regular Windows-centric ASP.NET Framework, and there are new features continuing to be built. Jeff talks about what a modern WebForms app looks like - ViewState is gone, and PostBack checking is obsolete - you can use ASync Model Binding in WebForms! The conversation also digs into how the relationship between the community and the ASP.NET team has evolved... so much more of what's being done is visible and can be discussed before decisions are made!

What's an "Emerging Experience" and why would you want one? Carl and Richard talk to Giorgio Sardo about Microsoft's overarching term for all of the new ways we connect humans to computers, and how much more fun it is to program beyond the keyboard and mouse! Of course it's easy to jump right to HoloLens, which is very cool, but there is so much more in the space. Giorgio talks about some of the Cognitive Services features available including LUIS, which is all about having a really natural conversation with your machine, and how it's possible to write code to work with it without a PhD in Linguistics! There's a ton of links to a host of cool tools for moving into this new space of development. Computing technology is permeating the world, and Microsoft is working hard to let your existing skills take advantage of it. Jump in!

What if a data storage library just stored and retrieved your data? What if it wasn't a mollusk? Carl and Richard talk to Mark Rendle about his refocusing on his open source library called Simple.Data - now with .NET Core! Mark talks about why Simple.Data is not an ORM, and why you don't want to use an ORM anyway. And yeah, the conversation gets sillier from there! Mark also talks about what it means to build a library that runs on all the platform (because Core) and the challenge of getting everything together to run on the other platforms like Linux. And yes, we know a library can't be a mollusk, but it could be an ORM, and nobody wants that.

Can you build a line of business web application and not write any JavaScript? Carl and Richard talk to Tomáš Herceg about his open source project called DotVVM. With DotVVM, you write your ViewModel in C# and your View in HTML. The JavaScript is generated at run time, and you never need to look at it. While there are free open source elements to the project, there are also "pro" editions of some features that you can pay for to keep the project going. Lots of controls to make your pages look good with a minimum amount of code. And it works with ASP.NET Core!

Are you building XAML-driven applications yet? Carl and Richard chat with Billy Hollis about what it takes to get going with building XAML applications. As Billy says, XAML is a "compositional" platform, which is a very different way to think about how to build user interfaces. Ultimately, these design principles become platform-agnostic - you can use whatever tools you want to build them. Is it hard to think this way? It does take time, but the products you make stand out as just a better way to work with computers. Your customers will thank you!

Are you adding feature toggles to your apps? Carl and Richard talk to Daniel Piessens about his approach to adding feature toggles, using frameworks to keep things organized. The conversation starts out talking about different kinds of features toggles, starting with the classic one that allows you to build features over time, but keep the code in the trunk, just not visible to the users until you're ready. In some cases, that feature toggle because permanent because it is a tool for ops to reduce load on a server at peak times. Toggles are also a strategy for A/B testing of different features, styling and advertising - you need to dig into this!

How about *no* JavaScript libraries? Carl and Richard talk to Chris Love about his passion with making the smallest, fastest web applications possible. The conversation starts out with the idea that JavaScript libraries, like most code libraries, constantly grow - old code, support for things that don't matter any more, and features that you aren't using, all add up to a lot of bytes and compute time that you don't need to waste. Chris talks about how he doesn't write everything from scratch, he has built some very small libraries (check the links) that do only the things you absolutely need. You can be an HTML Native with just the code you need to make an application do what it needs to!

React comes to Windows! Carl and Richard talk to Matthew Podwysocki and Eric Rozell about using React for Windows to build native Windows applications while programming in JavaScript! Originally intended for mobile apps, React Native works equally well building Windows 10 apps that work on phone, tablet and desktop. The conversation also turns to the conjunction of all things react and reactive - why do they go together? Matt talks about how the philosophy of streaming and event response build a philosophy that makes highly scalable, resilient software. Yet another cool way to build cross-platform applications with JavaScript!

We all want to believe we have good habits when it comes to programming - but what about the bad habits? Carl and Richard chat with Steve Smith and Brendan Enrick about some of the many anti-patterns that exist in software development. Part of this conversation also ties back to a cool product that Steve and Brendan create - the Software Craftsmanship calendar! Be part of the <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/988315286/software-craftsmanship-2017-calendar">Kickstarter</a> and get yourself a hilarious and inspirational calendar!

Why would a client-side Javascript library have a command line interface? Carl and Richard talk to Joseph Woodward about the power of the Angular CLI. It's all about the scripting! Joseph talks about all those tedious tasks involved in getting an application set up when you're ready to push out to the world. Angular CLI is all about automating that process using NodeJS style modules. The conversation also explores utilizing as many existing tools as possible, like Bower, Sass, and so on. You don't have to depend on Visual Studio if you don't want to - there are lots of ways to get deployed!

A new version of Akka.NET has shipped! Carl and Richard talk to Aaron Stannard about Akka.NET 1.1. The discussion starts out talking about some of the new features in the latest release, which is focused on providing the tooling needed to build highly reliable and scaling enterprise class software. Aaron also digs into the differences between Akka.NET and other actor model frameworks. Akka is growing up!

More cloud choices! Carl and Richard welcome Chris Sells back onto .NET Rocks after three years and a career change - Chris is now at Google! And he's been busy, excited to announce that Google is provided extensive support for .NET in the Google Cloud, including Visual Studio add-ins to make your implementation even easier. The conversation ranges over the modern cloud development pattern of building code, packaging it into containers (aka Docker) and then deploying into the cloud - for Google Cloud, that means Kubernetes. Meantime, Kubernetes is presumably coming to Azure also - could we be looking at a unified cloud world?

There has been lots of conversation about cross-platform mobile apps, but how about cross-platform desktop apps? Carl and Richard talk to David Neal about the Electron framework, letting you build cross-platform desktop apps using HTML, JavaScript and CSS. Electron is how visual Studio Code is built! The conversation also turns to Xamarin - would you rather code in C# and XAML? Lots of choices for cross-platform development, it's worth taking a few out for a spin!

Ready to move to .NET Core? Carl and Richard talk to Stackify's Matt Watson about their efforts to migrate their applications to the RTM editions of the .NET Core and ASP.NET Core. For better or worse, there have been a number of major changes between the two RCs and the RTM. But this is the version to stick to, so if you haven't started to move, now is a great time. Matt also talks about the challenges of losing certain libraries - projects that haven't been migrated to the Core editions yet.

Could there really be airliners powered by electricity? Time for a Geek Out! The conversation starts out with Richard talking about the Solar Impulse, a single seat aircraft with a wingspan larger than a 747, that has flown around the world powered solely by the solar panels covering it. So yes, electric aircraft are real, but could they be made commercially viable? NASA continues to fund various research projects to improve modern airliners by increasing fuel efficiency, decrease emissions and noise. Electric powerplants could help in all those aspects, but how much power can you pack into an aircraft and how much do you need? We're closer than you think!

What's a really modern web app look like? Carl and Richard talk to Qiming Liu about the Reactive Trader Cloud, demonstrating the synergy between the cloud, containers, microservices, the Reactive Extensions Framework and ReactJS on the client to make a real time currency trader application. The application is on GitHub, you can take it out for a spin for yourself and get a feel for this cool architecture. Qiming talks about treating all data as streams with the Reactive Framework for Javascript, passing messages to the various microservices to complete transactions. Packaging up those microservices in containers allows for resiliency and scalability - you just launch more instances using (in this case) Kubernetes. Check out the code!

What does it take to make an application support multiple customers? Carl and Richard talk to Paul Stovell about his work making multi-tenant applications. As with most things, making multi-tenant apps is more complicated than it seems! Paul talks about making architectural decisions around separation between various customers - do they each get their own database? What about web server and/or app-pool? What about customizations and deployment. Do customers get new features immediately, or do they have the option to wait? How does the cloud impact your decision making? It's a complicated subject with a variety of trade-offs!

How long does it take you to get an idea into a URL? Carl and Richard talk to Daniel Moore about HyperDev - a tool to make the shortest possible path between writing code and putting it online. Initially only implementing Node and HTML, you can use your Javascript skills to build a quick prototype that is easily shareable, even allow multiple people to work on the code together. At this point the system is relatively small, but it's easy to move off onto your own platform once you get your idea to a place where it needs to grow. But perhaps in the future HyperDev will be that place!

F# that transpiles to Javascript! Wait, what? While at NDC is Oslo, Carl and Richard chatted with Tomas Petricek about the Fabel project, combining F# and the Babel project to turn F# into some tight Javascript code. Tomas talks about the easy parts of Fabel first, because Javascript does have some functional elements, and it is possible to write immutable-style code in Javascript if you really want to. Then come the more difficult parts, like typing. There's a judgement call to make about what makes sense in Javascript and what doesn't. But with the choices in where to run Javascript, writing in F# offers some interesting possibilities!

So how's your DevOps doing? While at DevTeach in Montreal, Carl and Richard hosted a panel of Stephane LaPointe, Dylan Smith, William Buchwalter and Alexandre Brisebois to discuss the ups and downs of getting teams to work closer together to make better products and provide better services. The conversation focuses first and foremost on culture - the chant of People, Process and Products around DevOps is not accidental, without a commitment in culture, nothing much can happen. How do we create organizations that are willing to admit failure and make improvements? Does it always have to come from the top? How do you get started down the DevOps path? The panel digs into the questions and more - have a listen!

How do we get more women involved in programming? Carl and Richard talk to Astrid de Laval and Andreas Persson about CodePub, a gathering hosted by NetLight to get women coding. The events have been running in Stockholm, Helsinki, Oslo and more over the past several months, drawing larger and larger crowds. Every event involves some coding exercises even for complete novices who have never coded before. CodeHub is looking to put on more events in more places - if you'd like to be a part of it, reach out to them!

Ready to learn R? While at NDC Oslo, Carl and Richard sat down with Jamie Dixon and Evelina Gabasova to talk about what .NET developers need to know to get conversant in R. Data science represents a huge opportunity for developers these days, helping businesses actually take advantage of the data the company has. Jamie comes at R from a traditional .NET developer perspective, talking about how there are some skills (like source control and testing) that developers have more experience with than most data science folks. Evelina talks about the academic side of using R, learning statistical modeling and how to talk to data science experts when you're a developer. There's a great community out there to help you learn more and focus on the right things - join in!

Time to get scared times three! While at NDC Oslo, Carl and Richard hosted a security panel of Troy Hunt, Niall Merrigan and Stephen Haunts in front of a live NDC audience. The conversation starts where most security conversation start - on passwords. Yes, passwords suck. The challenge is making them suck less. Beyond passwords, what aspects of application security are the responsibility of the developer, and what are more the focus of operations? Check out the links below for a number of tools you can add to your build process to evaluate the security of your web applications every time you check in code!

Ready to talk about Thorium again? Since the last Thorium Geek Out in 2013, there have been a number of important developments. Richard takes Carl on a tour of why we want Thorium as a fuel, molten salt as a reactor design, and the choices we can make around different turbine technologies. Aspects of molten salt reactors continue to mature, offering continuous fuel reprocessing that means more of the dangerous radioactive material can be used for heat and left with safe residuals. Is it time to get building a molten salt reactor?

How do we get all our IoT devices talking to each other? While at NDC in Oslo, Carl and Richard chatted with Jimmy Engstrom about AllJoyn, a Qualcomm started project now part of the Linux Foundation that provides a common language for devices to communicate with. Jimmy talks about the different elements of AllJoyn, servers and clients and how they share information about their capabilities. There's a plugin for Visual Studio to make it easier for you to implement AllJoyn in your IoT applications and get access to the ecosystem. Jimmy also talks about building and utilizing bridges to other device protocols including Zigbee, Z-Wave and more!

ASP.NET Core is released, now what? Carl and Richard talk to Shawn Wildermuth about his efforts to migrate to the RTM of ASP.NET Core. As Shawn points out, the framework is ready, but the tooling is still in preview, so more changes to how you build your web sites and services will happen before everything is said and done. Lots of digressions in the show too, talking about the road trip, being an old developer and trying to do things right - a fun conversation!

What's the best way for you to learn new technology? Carl and Richard talk to Ben Hall about his latest creation, KataCoda. KataCoda is a free web site that hosts tutorial systems for a variety of technology content including Docker, Erlang, C#, Jenkins and so on. Rather than make you set up an environment to experiment with new tech, KataCoda is all set to go and has great scenarios and walkthrough for you to practice with. And when you're ready to try your own thing, there are playgrounds also! The conversation digs into the different learning styles of developers and the challenges of doing effective hands-on practice. Give KataCoda a try!

Write your build scripts in C#! While at NDC in Oslo, Carl and Richard talked to Gary Ewan Park about Cake - aka C# Make. Cake is a cross platform build automation solution - it works on Windows, OSX and Linux. Gary talks about being able to work in C# to define everything that needs to happen in your build process, including testing, documentation generation and so on. Your script can call other scripts so that you can contain complexity based on task. And since it's an open source project, if you want to use something that isn't directly support it, you can add it yourself. Take a look!

Quick, how long can a file path in .NET be? Carl and Richard talk to Jeremy Kuhne, who has taken on the challenge of breaking the 260 character limit on file paths in .NET. Why has this problem persisted for so long? Jeremy references some blog posts from Kim Hamilton back in 2007 when the issue came up big - at the time, .NET was deeply intertwined with Windows, and there were too many things to fix. But the creation of .NET Core presented an opportunity to fix the problem once and for all, and Jeremy jumped on it. What happens next?

The Hololens SDK edition is out - are you ready to write some code? Carl and Richard talk to Rene Schulte at NDC Oslo about his work building apps for the Hololens. The conversation explores the differences in virtual reality and augmented reality and the huge number of possibilities out there for Hololens. Rene talks about what it's like to develop for Hololens, discussing the relative merits between writing code in Unity3D and the Universal Windows Platform (XAML!) - it's all C# in the end! There's as much to discuss about the capabilities of Hololens as there is to talk about the potential solutions it can generate. There's a lot to think about!

How does testing contribute to the failure of a project? Todd Gardner chats with Carl and Richard at NDC Oslo about his experiences with failing projects and testing. More than just the usual case that a lack of testing led to unreliable software, Todd also talks about how testing the market is important too - what if you build software nobody wants? The focus has to be on relevant tests, because every test represents an overhead of computing and maintenance. This ultimately comes back to understanding the value proposition of your software: What does your software do that is valuable, and how do you assure that value with testing?

What does it mean to build for the cloud? While at NDC in Oslo, Carl and Richard chatted with Paul Stack about thinking about architecture specific for the cloud - not necessarily Azure or AWS, but the overall concepts of what it means to be in the cloud. It starts with the idea of everything you build being virtual and portable, whether than be VMs or containers. But there's also so-called 'server-less' designs as well, where your software runs on a platform in the cloud. If you could get rid of the need to patch operating systems, wouldn't you? Paul also talks about the smaller cloud providers and some of the cool stuff available there as well - there are lots of choices!

Can you detect lies with machine learning? Jennifer Marsman can! Carl and Richard chatted with Jennifer while at the NDC conference in Oslo. Jennifer talked about gathering EEG data with Emotiv headsets to do lie detection by taking base line (known true and known false) questions and then applying Azure Machine Learning to classify the data. The conversation dives into the different machine learning techniques available on Azure and how certain algorithms are more effective on different data sets - it turns out EEG data works great with deep neural networking! There are lots of different opportunities in the machine learning space, time to check it out!

Ready to go deeper into Elixir? While at NDC in Oslo, Carl and Richard caught up with Rob Conery to see how his obsession with Elixir and Erlang has evolved. Rob talks about getting comfortable in the space and getting serious about building software using the Phoenix MVC library and other tools. The conversation turns to the Actor Model pattern and how it becomes a way of life when you're working in Elixir - as fundamental as objects are to C#. Rob discusses the building, testing and deploying aspects of an Elixir project, and how you can integrate elements built in Elixir into the rest of your software.

What's next for C#? While at NDC Oslo, Carl and Richard talked with Mads Torgersen about what's coming up in C# 7. But first some fun, talking about how languages evolve and the challenge of bringing new features to life while avoiding breaking what has come before. It's not easy building languages, especially popular ones! Mads talks about the process of deciding what is in and what will be pushed out for the next version of C#. Along the way, the discussion turns to grabbing onto great ideas from other languages (like pattern matching from F#) while still remaining true to the C# way of doing things. If you want an F# feature, use F#, but that doesn't preclude running with good ideas. A fun discussion with the guy who drives C# forward!

Time to get Geeky in space! Carl and Richard talk about what it takes to make a truly reusable spacecraft. First up is the venerable space shuttle, which wasn't so much reusable as rebuildable. It never really made economic sense, but it definitely drove the technology forward. SpaceX has been able to recover four first stage rockets from Falcon 9 flights, but hasn't reused any yet, and Richard gets into the nitty gritty details of the challenges of reusing rocket engines. It may require a different engine design to be truly reusable. And what about the rest of the rocket? Reusability is hard, and the economics may not make sense - it's important to understand the trade-offs!

It's an exciting time for .NET! While at NDC in Oslo, Carl and Richard sat down with David Fowler and Damian Edwards to talk about the development of .NET Core, ASP.NET Core 1 and the Kestrel web server. The conversation digs into the challenges of writing a cross-platform web development framework, including some controversial pivots that have frustrated some developers - looking at you, RC2! Damian then discusses Kestrel, the cross-platform web hosting environment. This is a wide-ranging conversation and the excitement is palpable!

Time for a new version of CSLA! Carl and Richard talk to Rocky Lhotka about the latest incarnation of the venerable business object framework that started all the way back at Visual Basic 5! CSLA has always been about keeping business logic out of your user interfaces and databases - keep it in the middle where it belongs. And today that is clearly wise architectural design: The diversity on the client side means you have a lot more devices accessing your application, and CSLA supports most of them in one form or another. The same is true on the back end, it's not all about SQL Server anymore, and CSLA stays out of your way when it comes to data storage. The framework is open source and on GitHub, check it out!

Virtual Reality is here, and there are choices! Carl and Richard talk to Jason Weimann about the HTC Vive, the competitor to the Oculus Rift. Jason talks about how the two devices are similar and how they are different. And one place they are similar is the programming model - it's all about Unity3D. The conversation focuses in on what it takes to really learn Unity - you're working in Visual Studio with C#, but the platform and tooling are quite a bit different. And don't worry too much about 3D art, there are tons of free assets! VR is here, are you ready?

Do you know how people are actually using your mobile apps? Carl and Richard chat with Greg Shackles about his work instrumenting mobile apps in production. The low hanging fruit is actually gathering data about every crash or error that occurs in the field. Getting that information back to your dev team can make the application better, but what if operations were able to respond to the failure? What if you could turn a crash into a moment of delight for the user? The conversation then dives into deeper instrumentation - what can we learn about how people use the app, what is hard and easy, and what we could add to make the app more awesome. Lots of great thinking on taking mobile apps to the next level!

Is DevOps dead, or just a fad? Carl and Richard talk to Wes Higbee about his experiences building great software. As Wes says, don't let any methodology stop you from doing the right thing. The conversation digs into the challenges that come around the term DevOps, much the same way they impact the term Agile. It's very easy to start using terminology to define practices rather than focus on the common goal of building great software. Do the labels developer, tester and IT separate us or unify us? Shouldn't everyone talk to the customer and be sure they're working on the right thing? Time to think beyond DevOps!

How can competition teach machine learning? Carl and Richard talk to Anthony Goldbloom of Kaggle about competitive machine learning. Kaggle hosts competitions provided by industry and academia to find machine learning solutions on different data sets. While the competitive aspects tend toward only particular types of data sets, Anthony talks about how two very different machine learning algorithms - Gradient Boosting Machine and Deep Recurrent Neural Networks - have risen to the top. Want to learn machine learning in a hurry? Join a competition!

Here comes Windows Containers! While at Techorama in Belgium, Carl and Richard talk to Els Putzeys about the current technical preview of Windows Containers on Windows Server 2016. Els discusses how the Windows Containers can be built using templates so that you have a configuration-as-code capability, making repeated creation fast and easy. Now your documentation for building a system is code that actually creates it! We're still a few months away from Server 2016 being released, but it looks to be an important version of server for development!

How do you do continuous deployment? While at Techorama in Belgium, Carl and Richard sat down with Marcel de Vries and Rene van Osnabrugge to talk about their efforts working with various customers trying to help them get further down the DevOps line of productivity. The conversation digs into the various elements that go into getting to continuous delivery, including a lot of conversation about automating testing - if you're going to build fast, you need to test fast too! Marcel also talks about feature toggling, giving operations the ability to turn features off and on to understand how they behave and improve software quality in the process. Lots to deploy!

Ready to think differently about programming? While at Techorama in Belgium, Carl and Richard chatted with Mark Seemann about his experiences with Haskell, helping him to be the best functional programmer he can be. Mark talks about the battle of developing in F#, and how it's easy to fall into object-centric development methods, even when F# strongly encourages function-centric coding. By spending time in a pure functional language like Haskell, you strengthen those functional reflexes! The language has been around for a long time and runs on all sorts of platforms including Windows. It's a great tool to make you a better developer!

Even more new stuff from Xamarin! While at Techorama in Mechelen, Belgium, Carl and Richard sat down with James Montemagno to talk about all the goodness that came out of the Evolve conference. The conversation focuses first on the new edition of Xamarin Forms, building UI abstracts for your mobile apps to increase your code sharing across platforms. James also talks about data pages as a way to present data on your mobile apps, with some great styling options. Xamarin is continuing to build awesome things!

How do you manage your non-relational data? While at Techorama in Belgium, Carl and Richard talk to Oren Eini about his work with RavenDB and getting companies to really think about organizing non-relational data in a sensible way. The conversation focuses on how much relational database methodology (like normalization) has permeated thinking in development, so that we tend toward similar behavior when working on a non-relational data store. Store the objects as objects, it's going to be okay!

How do you change a developer's mind? While at Techorama in Belgium, Carl and Richard talk to Julie Lerman about her experiences working with a variety of teams moving into new technologies and techniques. While some folks are happy to jump into the latest-and-greatest, others are more cautious or even resistant - and often for good reason. There's always a productivity hit with changing up tooling and process, with substantial benefits coming further down the path. How can you help people "get over the hump" of engaging with a new tool or approach? What do you do about the poisonous folks that resist change through verbal and in some cases even direct sabotage? Everyone is different, and you need to take the time to understand where people's concerns lie. Often once someone is understood, they are much more open to change!

What does modern open source look like? While at Techorama in Belgium, Carl and Richard moderated a panel of Bill Wagner, Udi Dahan, Nik Molnar and Jimmy Bogard to discuss their experiences working in open source in this day and age. Much of the discussion focuses the various approaches that folks make a living while building and maintaining open source projects. Does it make sense for a commercial product to be open source? What's the right way to go about that? Why would someone put their project into an entity like the Dot Net Foundation? What happens when large companies want to take a dependency on your little open source project? Lots of great thinking from folks who have been there!

How can you keep your customer identity information safe? While at Techorama in Mechelen, Belgium, Carl and Richard talk to Vittorio Bertocci about Microsoft's offerings around Azure Active Directory. With all the data breaches going on these days, its wise to consider offloading the work of managing your customer's personally identifiable information to a service that has as much security around it as possible. Vittorio talks about the new B2C service on Azure offering the ability to store custom information, authorization tokens - everything you'll need to know who your user is and what they are able to do. That's half your security battle done, just gotta secure your transactions!

More Geeking Out on GMO Foods! This time, Richard digs into the more controversial side of genetic modification - making crops that are resistant to pests and pesticides. And to make it even more fun, part of the conversation includes scientists from Monsanto! First up is Bacillus Thuringensis, better known as BT - a biopesticide that is a naturally occurring bacteria found back in 1901. BT is used on organic crops! Today, key genes from BT have been incorporated into plants so that you no longer need to spray BT, it's built in. Then the big topic: glyphosate, also known as Round Up. The most popular herbicide in the world and effective at killing most plants, except for ones that have been genetically modified to resist it. Does the use of Round Up ready crops increase the amount of glyphosate used? What happens when glyphosate is in everything? How do we know it's safe?

Where is the .NET community going? Carl and Richard talk to Sam Basu and John Bristowe of Telerik about the data they've gathered in their 2016 Developer Report. The conversation explores what languages and tools developers visiting the Telerik site are using, with lots of exploration around the evolution of mobile development. Desktop development plays a role as well - and lots of folks are still building WinForms apps! The latest news out of Microsoft has piqued folks interest in open source and cross-platform development, but how important is it to developers right now? Grab a copy of the report and follow along with the analysis!

What is slowing your web site down? Carl and Richard talk to Matt Watson, CEO of Stackify, about their free product called Prefix. Method profiling has been around for awhile, but it takes a lot of time and tuning to get right - and running profilers on production servers can be a career limiting behavior. Prefix runs on your development workstation so that you can see what parts of your code are taking time - including how much is involved in communications time, query processing, and so on. Take a look!

That scary guy is back! Carl and Richard talk to Troy Hunt about the latest state of affairs in the hacking world. Yes, SQL Injection is still a thing, and the hacks are actually getting bigger - entire voting populations of some countries have had data stolen. What happens with this data? What is the right response to a breach like this? Troy talks about his experiences with good breach management and bad. The conversation also turns to ransomware and that ongoing battle. It's a real thing, and it's being successful. Developers are able to help in this fight, educate yourself about security!

How do you think about Android? Carl and Richard talk to Josh Vergara, Android-fan, non-developer and head of Android Authority about his experiences around Android phones and tablets. Josh talks about the various flavors of Android, including Cyanogen, and the move to make Android more open source and less Google-centric. And then there are the tablets, the poor old Android tablets. Will anything good come there for the marketplace? Cool viewpoint from a consumer of tech!

So is every class a service? While at DevIntersection in Orlando, Carl and Richard talk to Juval Lowy about how his statement nearly ten years ago has in some ways come true. Juval talks about how services evolved back in the 2006 time frame into monolithic, unmanageable software and the swing to simplification that has led to the current microservices movement. Keeping services small and flexible is the key, to the point that you see service aspects appearing down in very fine grained parts of software: Integer as a Service? Great thinking from an experienced architect of how services continue to evolve!

How do you deploy your applications? While at DevIntersection, Carl and Richard chatted with Damian Brady from Octopus about the latest version of Octopus Deploy. Damian talks about all the changes that have come in Octopus 3, using SQL Server to store deployment information, getting more involved with deployment to Azure, and so on. The conversation also digs into the impact of open source and support for Linux and OSX, which means looking at a change of dependencies when it comes to things like nuget. There's lots to talk about in deployment, things are only getting better!

Scott Hunter is back and managing the whole .NET platform! While at DevIntersection in Orlando, Carl and Richard sat down with Scott to talk about his new role as director of the entire .NET platform. That includes all the open source goodness - and Scott digs into his team's efforts to make ASP.NET the fastest web development platform on the planet (they're almost there!) and what it takes to bring all the incarnations of .NET into a common standard, both for the old school close source editions as well as open source across the platforms. One .NET standard is coming to you soon!

How do you manage the building, monitoring and maintenance of mobile apps? Carl and Richard talk to Donovan Brown about how all the pieces have come together in the Microsoft stack to make creating, testing, deploying, maintaining and monitoring of mobile apps better. Donovan talks about all the good stuff from Build in mobile, including Xamarin being part of the toolset, but also tools like HockeyApp and Release Management. While Microsoft provides a ton of tools, you can bring your own as well - everything is optional and changeable. Ultimately, it's the synthesis of all the parts into a whole that provides the greater value. Check it out!

Universal Apps are becoming more universal - arriving on the XBox One! Carl and Richard talk to Chris Gomez about the announcements at the Microsoft Build event around building software for the XBox One. Now, any developer can write code using the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) approach, which means you can code in C#, Javascript... pretty much any language you want in the CLR space. Chris explains that while you have limited access to all the resources in the XBox One, the UWP approach is a starting point to building bigger things if that's what you want to do - the XBox team is watching!

The Web is broken - time to fix it! While at DevIntersection in Orlando, Carl and Richard sat down with Douglas Crockford to talk about the problems the web has and what can be done about them. Doug rightfully focuses on how the web was never intended to do what its doing - it was meant for sharing academic papers, and has far outgrown that initial requirement. Security is the key, and security with the least amount of trust is best. How do we build something inherently secure and still easy to work with?

What do developers need to know about information security? Carl and Richard talk to Kim Carter about his experiences helping developers secure their web sites. Kim has written a series of books on the subject to help get developers thinking about infosec as they develop, rather than try and cram security on at the end of a project. All kinds of great tools in the show links, including OWASP ZAP, which does fast penetration testing on your site - you can incorporate it into your build process so that your code is security tested as you're building it! InfoSec isn't optional, you need to make it part of your routine development process!

Concorde is gone, what will replace it? Time for a Geek Out! Richard talks about the aeronautical evolution that led to supersonic airliners, Concorde being the big one that flew from 1976 to 2003. What went wrong? Why did it stop flying? Besides the technological challenges, it all comes down to the sonic boom and laws that make it illegal to fly a civilian aircraft above the speed of sound. Richard talks about how technology has advanced enough now that aircraft can mitigate their sonic boom with specific shapes and flying capabilities. However, in the end, supersonics only get you there faster, typically for more money. Would you pay for to go faster?

How has hardware evolved when it comes to the Internet of Things? While at Build 2016 in San Francisco, Carl and Richard sat down with Jon Bruner from O'Reilly SOLID Con about his experience watching and working with the makers of hardware for IoT. Jon dug into the challenges of making production IoT stuff, especially going to China to get things made at scale. Automation is taking hold in that space, soon where it's done won't matter all that much. The conversation also explores additive and subtractive manufacturing with CNC milling machines, laser sintering and more. Lots of cool hardware ideas!

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 that work better. And if you're headed toward the cross-platform world in the mobile space, or Linux on the backend, these tools can help you be more productive and less frustrated. It's early days yet, but there's lots to check out!

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#. Tom talks about how more and more, performance in games is not an issue, and the price of coding in C++ is just too high, without significant advantage. You want to make games? Make them in C# - with MonoGame!

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, you need to look beyond just Microsoft tools - Alec's team uses tools like Chef, which comes from the Linux world. Blending the two communities together has its own challenges, but the results are worth it!

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 construct exactly what your code should return as well. Templates make life easier - want to return a web page? There's a template for that. Just a service? You can do that too. David also talks about deploying through Heroku and automating the updating of your site with just a check in from GitHub!

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 options for the Microsoft Health app that communicates with the Band and works with iPhone, Android and Windows Phone. You can work natively or with cross-platform tools like Xamarin, so there are lots of choices - The Band is a great wearable device to explore!

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 tags as possible. Aurelia has focused on efficiency from the outset, and Rob is taking it even further. The conversation also dives into the more component-based approaches to web development including ReactJS - there's more to come!

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 hard to optimize it. Things are a bit more integrated on the Xamarin side, and with the recent announcements, a lot more financially feasible also - the hybrid mobile development space is heating up!

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 like OneDrive and the whole Skype Developer SDK so that you can embed Skype functionality into your apps. There's a lot of moving parts here, but the potential is to make it much easier to build the modern mashup of various Microsoft products - more to come!

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 .NET developer going forward: .NET now runs everywhere you could possibly want to run code, and maybe a few spots you've never thought of. It's true, .NET really does rock!

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 handle the deployment of databases using DACPAC. The documentation isn't great, but if you dig around, there's lots of capability there. If you're looking to save money, spend a little time understanding MSDeploy better!

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 so much concern today? Technology has brought much more precision and options to genetic modification, and that raises all sorts of questions on what sort of changes make sense, and what should be done. There's lots of hype around GMO - what are the facts?

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 in Angular 1 has been eliminated, or implemented as part of standard tags. The role of Reactive Extensions for Javascript is significant as well: Everything is becoming asynchronous!

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 notes. If you're interested in being part of what goes into C# 7, that's where decisions are being made. Kathleen digs into some of the new features coming, including local functions, sophisticated pattern matching and more... be part of the discussion!

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 depends on various Mono related elements, although Curtis sees a day when it will all be .NET Core. The mobile stuff works too, so it is possible to build an app that works on desktop, tablet and phone. Is eto more universal than Universal Apps? Check it out!

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, makes the language a lot more, well C#-like. But the implementations in browsers is not as even, and that doesn't account for features coming in ECMAScript 7! Babel deals with this problem by transpiling into Javascript that runs everywhere. Check it out!

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 implements half a dozen different multi-threading strategies, so that you can apply the pattern as an aspect to your objects and make multi-threaded coding simpler and safer. Check it out!

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 the hood, documents are stored as JSONB files - better than BLOBs, they're actually searchable JSON. You can treat Marten like a pure document store, or go under the hood and write SQL. Another cool way to up your data storage game!

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 Manifesto. The question is purely how fast, or rather, how continuous is continuous? Jeff also notes that delivery doesn't mean deployment, but it does mean that you're at the place where you can immediately deploy when you're ready. Lots of tools and thinking on how to get this done, it isn't simple!

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 toolset. The conversation also dives into the challenges around databases when it comes to release management - how do you get your database to be part of your release? Lots to think about here to up your VSTS game!

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 they can't get on the portal. The challenge is to keep everything orderly so that folks using the Portal can actually make sense of it, and that takes a lot of negotiations and management within the teams. Software is hard, but expectation management is even harder!

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? What is the development experience like? What can you build and how do you test it? And what can we really do with virtual reality beyond gaming? Great conversation with a guy who's built a ton of awesome software!

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 different container technologies. When it comes to the microservices, how important are containers? How micro is micro, and how many do we need? Could Azure Service Fabric be an example of how to do microservices at a platform level, rather than container? Lots of questions and discussion on this hot topic!

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 being valued. Matt talks about how money is not a primary motivator at a certain point - that the autonomy that agile practices bring become a more powerful drivers, and that gets great results and provides great value!

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 much compute power as you need when you need it, and turn it off when you don't. That solves a ton of machine learning problems - as Gary explains, you don't have to pick a perfect algorithm, you can just run them all and then analyze them together!

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? Chris talks about managing the risk by making the cost of failure small, effectively lowering the risk. That means being able to measure how things are working so you know when you're failing sooner and can change course efficiently. Change is good - you go first!

Geeking out on agriculture? Of course! While food is rarely the number one issue in the western world, food quality and security always bring out a certain level of anxiety in people. So how did we get here? Are we going to run out of food? Is the population explosion going to doom mankind? Or will it be climate change? Can technology actually work through all these problems? Carl and Richard discuss how agriculture started, how it has evolved and what the future could look like going forward - this is a foundational show for even more conversations about how we feed the world and ourselves - be part of that conversation!

Can React make your web pages more reusable? While on the Scot Net Rocks tour, Carl and Richard stopped in Edinburgh to chat with Chris Canal about his work with React. The conversation turns to a stack of tools you may never had heard of for building reliable, maintainable and testable JavaScript code - no really, check out the links! Chris talks about how React creates objects, mixing JavaScript, HTML and CSS together into something that can be reused effectively, but only if you know how to manage it. And that's where the tooling comes in. Check it out!

Can Agile scale to thousands of people? While at NDC London, Carl and Richard sat down with Dan North (and a bottle of scotch) and had a deep conversation about the limits of agile and how we can get beyond that limit. Agile naturally lends itself to feature teams - 5-10 people who have a variety of skills that can get a feature out the door. But to build more substantial software, you need more people, typically broken into more teams... and that generates the scrum-of-scrums, etc. Dan talks about organizing teams differently to keep productivity high and the quality where it needs to be - scale agile!

How can you learn what your users like about your application and what you can do to make it better? Enter user research! While at NDC London, Carl and Richard talked to Lily Dart about her approaches to doing user research - guerrilla style! Lily talks about being out on street corners asking passersby to look at an application on a smartphone and give their impressions, all for a Starbucks card. The trick is not to take what they say literally, but to actually watch how they interact with the application, what works and what doesn't. In some apps, the camera is always on so they can record the facial expressions of the tester! Lots of cool thoughts on how to collect data from users!

How do you instrument your applications in production? While at NDC London, Carl and Richard talked to Joe Guadagno about his efforts using Azure Application Insights to understand how his web applications run under load. Gathering telemetry from your production applications used to be a very case-by-case scenario, but when working the Azure Web Sites, things get a bit simpler, using Azure App Insights. But its far more than just monitoring your web site - App Insights has agents for every kind of smartphone and desktop client imaginable. You can collect a ton of data from every endpoint your application has - the challenge is sorting it all out!

What patterns make sense with containers? At NDC London, Carl and Richard talk to Ben Hall about some more mature pattern approaches to container implementations, specifically with Docker. Ben talks through a number of key patterns that make containers work the way you expect in production. There are key elements such as immutability, avoiding circumventing the configuration-as-code mindset of containers. Containers should be built, torn down and built again from their scripts, rather than ever updated. Along the way, Ben discusses a variety of tools and resources to support good container patterns - check out the show links!

What does your company do when it brings in new hires? While at NDC London, Carl and Richard talked to Jessie Shternshus of the Improv Effect about how she helps organizations create fun, innovative onboarding processes that actually reflect the culture of the company. Jessie talks about various exercises she uses to help folks get comfortable with a team and communicate effectively. The conversation digs into how every organization has a culture that new people see, the question is only how intentional that culture actually is - is the reality that its a sink-or-swim kind of place? Or do you really support the success of everyone? Lots of laughs and fun while thinking about how to make your company great!

How can you make machine learning simpler? While at NDC London, Carl and Richard talked to Seth Juarez about his open source project NuML. Seth has been working on NuML since 2011, providing tooling to let developers think more about the goals of their machine learning than the specific mathematical concepts involved. But he reinforces that you do need to learn some core concepts of machine learning no matter what! You can run NuML anywhere you like, but if you're working in the cloud, Seth mentions AzureML as having similar concepts to NuML, but built to work at cloud scales. Machine learning is becoming a critical capability for organizations - are you ready?

How are you managing identity? While at NDC in London, Carl and Richard talk to Dominick Baier and Brock Allen about their work Identity Server. Now part of the .NET Foundation (making it easier for enterprises to being open source into their organization), Identity Server can provide the authentication services across all your applications. That naturally leads to a discussion on the authorization side of things, which focuses more on claims-based security specific to each application and the needs for other tools. Getting identity right is hard, but Identity Server takes you down the right path!

What do you know about R? While at NDC London, Carl and Richard talked to Barbara Fusinska about her work using R as part of real system. Barbara talks about the role of statistics and machine learning as well as the various tools that make it easier to incorporate into your application. The conversation turns to MatLab and Revolution Analytics language R. R is focused on machine learning, it's not a general purpose language. Think of it as SQL for machine learning - great at the thing it does, but not for everything. And now that Microsoft owns R, you can expect to see it more and more in the .NET development world!

Service Discovery? Is UDDI back? While at NDC London, Carl and Richard talk to Ian Cooper about service discovery in the microservices world. Ian talks about the effect of microservices in making systems more complex - it's easy to end up with hundreds of services. And you don't want to be hard-coding service locations into your application, what happens when things change? While you could roll your own, Ian talks about a range of tools already out there to help your applications discover the services they need. Everything needs to be redundant and reliable - which is actually hard to build. Check out the links for all sorts of great tools!

What's the current situation with containers in Azure? While at NDC London, Carl and Richard talk to Michele Leroux Bustamante about the continuing evolution of containers in the cloud, especially around Azure. Michele digs into the story of Docker and the idea of configuration-as-code extending to the virtual machine. Then the discussion turns to analyzing the various tiers of container service provide by the major cloud provides, including Microsoft. Ultimately there is a vision of a Platform-as-a-Service offering around containers, but what that looks like is still evolving. Could Azure Service Fabric be the solution? What about Windows 2016? There's more to come!

Are space elevators really possible, or just science fiction? Time for a Geek Out! Carl and Richard chat about the idea of being able to build a cable from the surface of the Earth into space to make space transport 100 times cheaper than rockets. The conversation starts out focused on the concept of space tethers, of which the space elevator is one particular species. Tethers have actually flown in space and demonstrated some amazing properties, including using the magnetic field of the earth to generate electricity. Tethers can also be used as Skyhooks to lift and fling payloads into orbit. Richard then digs into the details of space elevators themselves, including the materials needed for the cable, construction approaches and the sheer scale of what is needed to make an elevator. Possible? Maybe!

Glimpse is moving to version 2! Carl and Richard chat with Anthony van der Hoorn and Nik Molnar about the latest version of Glimpse and what moving from version 1 to 2 really means. Still in beta, Glimpse V2 is very much a rethink of how you instrument a client while still keeping what you love about V1 - a great dashboard to understand what's going on with your web app. Anthony and Nik talk through the changes and the power of taking everything you've learned about a project to a clean slate. Glimpse is only getting better, you need to check it out!

Time for a GitHub sync with Phil Haack! Carl and Richard chat with Phil about the latest developments at GitHub, including the on-going evolution of the extensions to Visual Studio (getting better) and a bunch of other third party components that can help you use GitHub more effectively. Phil talks about Gitter, the chat system associated with GitHub projects. GitHub is not just about source code, there are all sorts of projects going into GitHub, including blogs, legal documents, even creation of new open source fonts. If you haven't gotten into the GitHub community, it's a great time to take a look!

Encrypt all the things! Carl and Richard talk to Stephen Haunts about how to use cryptography properly. And as it turns out, you don't have to be a mathematician to put crypto to work for you! The conversation starts out focusing on password hashing - lots of ways to do it wrong, salting seems complicated, but in the end, there is a built-in, poorly named function in the .NET Framework that will give you proper leading edge password hashing, you just have to know what it is (check the links on the show page). From there Stephen talks about 2-way symmetric and asymmetric encryption. Best used together, and best used on any and all data that you have. Good stuff!

What does it take to successfully implement test automation on your application? Carl and Richard talk to Arnon Axelrod about his work using test automation. The discussion dives into the diverse world of testing, both manual and automated, as well as the variety of tests you can write. How do you go about building tests that aren't so fragile that you have to rewrite them all after every build? What tests are actually valuable to the overall quality of your software? And why automate? What can automation do that can't also be done manually? Arnon also digs into a set of open source libraries he's built to make it easier to automate testing. Check it out!

Messaging is taking over the world! Arguably it already has. Carl and Richard talk to Clemens Vasters about his ten years of work at Microsoft building messaging systems, starting way back with the .NET Service Bus. Clemens discusses his work with OASIS and OPC-UA developing more advanced messaging standards, it's importance in the Internet of Things space, and how versions matter - different protocols have different capabilities, and the need for unified communications is only getting bigger. Messaging is forever - message systems will be passing messages between ever shrinking computing devices for a long, long time.

What is it like managing a mature open source project? Carl and Richard talk to Jimmy Bogard about his experiences with AutoMapper, an open source project he started back in 2009 that is still going strong today. While open source has been around for many years, the ecosystem has been evolving, and Jimmy talks about how site like GitHub and Stack Overflow has made it much easier to stay engaged with your user base and have meaningful conversations about code - without having to repeat yourself over and over. The discussion also dives into the challenges of contributions, people's sometimes unreasonable expectations, and just being patient with the world while you write code you actually use. Great thinking from a guy who's been there!

Microservices built with a functional language? You bet! Carl and Richard talk to Rachel Reese about her work with jet.com building microservices in F#. It turns out that the good practices of building functional code lend themselves neatly to the same principles in microservices. Rachel also talks about the actor model as a natural fit for this architecture as well, writing code with simple entry and exit points as functions in F#, focusing on composability to relate elements together. There are lots of ways to build microservices, but the functional/actor approach makes things easier once you've gotten your head around it - check it out!

Do you have a DevOps stack? Carl and Richard talk to Brian Randell about his experiences implementing tooling for DevOps practices using Visual Studio and other Microsoft tools. The conversation runs the gambit of elements in the DevOps stack, including continuous deployment, package management, configuration-as-a-code and instrumentation in production. The more automation the better when it comes to moving fast and reliably. While DevOps often focuses on the culture and process that goes into building software, great tools can make all of those things happen much more easily - you just have to figure out what stack is right for you!

What is the good and bad of being an old programmer? To wrap up 2015, Carl and Richard chat with Gary Wisniewski about his blog post on the subject and more! Gary is the same Gary of Carl and Gary's VB Home Page, one of the first web sites on Visual Basic way back in 1994. The conversation digs into what's great about having lots of experience, and how it came hold you back as well. There's no magic to being a programmer at 20 years old and there's no magic when you're 60 either - it's got more to do with your thinking than your age! And hey, while we're at it, have a great new year! See you in 2016!

Do you understand how to develop software with GitHub? Carl and Richard walk through the fundamentals of GitHub with Bill Wagner. Bill walks through the key differences between the distributed source control that is GitHub versus the more classic central control style source control systems. Often it is harder for experienced developers to deal with the reality of GitHub than someone new to source control! The conversation explores all the concepts of GitHub - repositories, cloning, forking, push and pull requests, merging and rebasing. There's a lot to know, but there are great tools for getting started. And at the end, a quick discussion about Humanitarian Toolbox and their awesome open source projects to help save lives - you can help!

When was the last time you thought about Windows Workflow? Carl and Richard talk to Blake Helms about the projects he's been building with Workflow - and they're awesome! Blake talks through how Workflow has evolved into the latest version for .NET 4.5, with better visualization tools and a consistent interface that is easy to work with. The conversation digs into how Workflow separates work from flow - activities are code and flows are the relationships between them. This separation lets you see where there are holes in your decision-making system and helps keep code organized and focused. The question is, when wouldn't you use Workflow? Wait. What?

How technical is technical debt? Carl and Richard talk to Einar Høst about how technical debt has more to do with your understanding of a system and the intentional shortcuts we take to make deadlines than anything specific to technology. The conversation dives into the domain driven design thinking of Eric Evans and the challenges of deeply understanding the domain of a system well enough to build great software to model it. As Einar puts it, some complexity is intentional, and some is accidental. That accidental complexity can be considered technical debt, but it is always challenging to measure it. In the end, the key is communications!

So what's the story with Power Apps? While at the Tel Aviv stop of the Azure Tour, Carl and Richard chatted with Julia White about the on-going evolution of Azure and Office 365 including the introduction of Power Apps. Power Apps is a tool for building mobile applications for iOS, Android and Windows Phone without writing code or having to deploy to the store. While it may not be a tool that developers will be keen to use (or will it?), its certainly something to pay attention to - this might be a source of new application traffic in your organization!

So what can you do with Reactive Extensions (Rx)? You know, really? While at the Azure Tour stop in Tel Aviv, Carl and Richard sat down with Tamir Dresher to talk about Rx in the real world. Tamir is the author of Reactive Extensions in Action and he talks through the practical applications that Rx has, and where it can make your software better. This is not an all-or-nothing proposition, you can slide Rx into spots where you want to react to key bits of data while ignoring others, so where you want to focus on the relationship between two different bits of data - this is not just about high velocity streams of data!

Time for the Smart Home Geek Out! Carl and Richard chat about what the house of the future is like. Future homes have been predicted for a long time, and the discussion dives into some of those earlier predictions from the 1960s. When thinking of what smart homes can become, it helps to think like a developer - have an array of sensors that measure the state of the home, its environment, contents and people. Then write code - get all those things talking to each other! Today we're starting to have connected homes, where different elements communicate with us. What will it take to get them communicating with each other? And while we're at it - here's the $5000 draw!

So what does it take to make your web applications secure? Carl and Richard talk to Bill Sempf about his work educating developers on writing secure software. The conversation focuses on the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) and all the resources there for securing your web applications. Bill leads the .NET side of OWASP, providing tools, techniques and links for everything you need to build a more secure web application. You'd be amazed how many great security resources are built into the .NET Framework, you just need to know where to look, and OWASP can help you - check it out!

It's only date and time, how hard could it be? Carl and Richard chat with Matt Johnson about the challenges of really managing dates, times and time zones properly. The world is a complicated place, and time zones are a relatively new invention that is as much driven by politics as geography. And then there's daylight saving time, which is even worse! Matt talks about the simple mistakes that developers can make assuming behavior around dates and time that can lead to significant failures in your application. He also digs into the tools to make your life easier, especially Noda Time, an open source library for doing dates, times, time zones and daylight saving time right. Time to check it out!

So how many shortcuts do you know in Visual Studio 2015? Carl and Richard talk to Joseph Woodward about his conscious efforts to learn more shortcuts and speed his development pace. Every time you take your hand off the keyboard, you slow yourself down, and more importantly, interrupt your flow! But not all shortcuts are created equal - the discussion focuses first on navigation shortcuts to move around your code more efficiently, and then into block editing and moving. Of course there are tools to take it further like Code Rush and Resharper - which ones are your favorites?

Time to revisit MassTransit! Carl and Richard talk to Chris Patterson about his work on MassTransit and more. MassTransit is an open source .NET service bus that is happy running on-premise or in the cloud. The conversation explores the evolution of MassTransit and the way the Enterprise Service Bus has evolved. SOA is a fine idea and SOAP works, but is there an easier way? Chris talks about better queuing with RabbitMQ, to the point that the latest version of MassTransit doesn't support MSMQ. And then there are microservices... does this make sense in the modern service-oriented application?

How do you build a tool that bridges data silos? Carl and Richard talk to Tim Ward about his work on CluedIn, a tool for connecting documents, email and other business resources together so that employees can see what everyone is working on with a minimum of fuss. Tim talks about using different data stores within CluedIn to leverage their strengths - the graph storage of neo4J maintains relationships between documents where ElasticSearch actually finds things. The art of tagging and cataloging is key, so fighting the tools isn't the best plan. Give a try!

The Software Craftsmanship Calendar is back for 2016! After a one year hiatus, Steve Smith and Brendan Enrick have made a new calendar with the help of .NET Rocks listeners and others via Kickstarter. The conversation starts out with the challenges of crowd funding a project like this, including some mistakes made... but overcome! And then the fun starts, talking through some of the hilarious anti-pattern software craftsmanship elements in the calendar - many that were suggested as part of the fund raising process! This is the calendar that software developers want for Christmas!

So what does developing web apps with F# look like? Carl and Richard talk to Henrik Feldt about his efforts to use F# end-to-end when building web sites and web services. The conversation starts out with suave.io, a nodeJS-like web server written in F# that runs in a totally non-blocking fashion across Linux, OS X and Windows. Henrik also digs into WebSharper, a web framework for building functional and reactive .NET applications - a natural for F#, although WebSharper works fine with any CLR language. The list goes on, check the awesome set of links for this show including links to videos to teach you to use the tooling and more great F# content!

HTTP/2? No really! We're only now getting to the second version of HTTP! Carl and Richard talk to Robert Boedigheimer about the next version of HTTP. In truth, this will be the fourth version of HTTP. Robert talks about how long-in-the-tooth HTTP/1.1 has gotten and the need to update the protocol to reflect the reality of the web - much bigger pages with many more resources on them. While a portion of the change represented by HTTP/2 is plumbing - modern browsers already support it, the web servers are coming soon, eventually web page design will be affected, mostly simplifying performance tuning tricks. It'll make a better web!

How do you stop your data lake from being a data swamp? Carl and Richard talk to Tom Kerkhove about Azure Data Lakes. The conversation digs into the impact the cloud has had a data warehousing - when you have as much compute and storage as you need on demand, does it still make sense to jump through all the hoops that data warehousing requires? Tom talks about Data Lakes storing all data as it arrives from a huge variety of sources and leaving that data in its native format, so that it is available for analysis as needed. Universal SQL (U-SQL) is the query language of Data Lakes, which is more LINQ-like, but speaks to the power of being able to join anything to anything with the cloud!

How do you make the Single Page Application (SPA) better? Carl and Richard talk to Benjamin Howarth about his experiences with building SPAs and solving some of their limitations. Users love the look of a SPA, its responsiveness and styling are powerful. But SPAs have problems - they are very hard to test properly, they resist search engine indexing, are bandwidth hungry and not accessible to folks with visual impairments. Benjamin talks about his library RomanSPA (see what he did there?) that builds a normal MVC app behind the scenes and then can selectively render pages via MVC or the SPA approach as needed. Could this be the better SPA?

Microservices and Azure together! While at the Stockholm stop of the Azure Tour, Carl and Richard chatted with Corey Sanders in front of a live audience about the announcement at the Microsoft Connect event about Azure Service Fabric's direct support for microservices. Corey digs into the core concepts of microservices, focusing on single domain APIs that use HTTPS and REST to connect and communicate. The challenge of microservices is proliferation - between redundancy and scalability, a large application can have hundreds, even thousands of instances. Azure Service Fabric provides tooling and resources to manage the complexity of microservices while keeping the flexibility and power. Check it out!

So what does the future hold for commercial air travel? Carl and Richard chat about the on-going evolution of airliners, starting with the latest generation: the Airbus A380 and the Boeing 787. They represent the pinnacle of traditional airliner design so far. But is it time for a radical break? How can airliners be improved to lower costs, emissions and so on? Richard digs through the on-going evolution in turbofan engines, and looks to the future of more radical engines. Will supersonic flight ever make a comeback? And why stop there, what about hypersonic flight? Nothing is easy, but there's lots to think about!

How is mobile development evolving? Carl and Richard talk to Lino Tadros about his current work building mobile apps with lots of different technologies. Lino talks about build mobile apps natively with Objective-C and Java as well as a variety of hybrid approaches: C# using Xamarin, Javascript/HTML with Cordova and even good old fashion responsive web design. So what works best for you? Lino highlights some strengths and weaknesses of the different platforms, recognizing that it mostly comes down to skillset - what tools are you most comfortable with? That's what ultimately makes the difference. No matter how good a tool is, your ability to use it has the largest impact on how well your mobile app turns out.

So what are microservices anyway? Carl and Richard talk to Paul Mooney about his work architecting applications with microservice principles. Paul talks about getting granularity right, and keep services simple using REST. Gone are the monolithic, verbose and complex services from the SOA age, it's all HTTP and simple language. The conversation digs into key architectural elements like queuing - in this case, with RabbitMQ. This is a tricky design pattern, but allows for lots of scalability and creates natural separation points between application elements. Microservices are still emerging as a cloud-centric way to build applications!

How does the .NET Foundation change the way you build software? While at the MVP Summit, Carl and Richard met with Martin Woodward and Beth Massi to talk about how the .NET Foundation was created and is evolving to carry .NET open source software forward. As Martin explains, even though key platform tools like the .NET Core, ASP.NET and MVC are all part of the foundation, Microsoft still makes a retail build of the products - so if you don't want to use open source, you don't have to! But if you and your organization are looking at open source, the .NET Foundation provides a certain level of coherence and structure to open source projects so that you can be sure the code will be there when you need it. Check it out!

When will ASP.NET 5 ship? While at the MVP Summit, Carl and Richard talk to Damian Edwards about his work getting ASP.NET 5 out the door. The answer to the question is the first quarter of 2016. Damian talks about the experience of building ASP.NET vNext out in the open, on GitHub, using YouTube to publish all of the standup meetings with the team about the product. It's a new Microsoft building software a different way!

Have you taken Visual Studio Code out for a spin yet? While at the MVP Summit, Carl and Richard talk to Sean McBreen about his work building Visual Studio Code. VSCode was released back in the Build time frame of April 2015, and has put out a major update almost every month since. Sean hints about some major announcements coming for Visual Studio Code coming at the Microsoft Connect() event in New York November 18 2015. The conversation also digs into the choices you can make in your development platform with a mix of VSCode, Visual Studio Online and all sorts of other tools.

Can you be a software craftsman and not test? Scott Nimrod says no! Carl and Richard chat with Scott about his experiences using TDD practices to build software and how that affected his approach to craftsmanship. Scott talks about how writing testing code to quickly test your app code is a far more efficient use of time compared to repeatedly compiling and running an application, then manually navigating to the feature in question and playing with it. Proper tests are faster, more accurate and repeatable, resulting in better code. And they're even more important when the app gets bigger, the number of developers increase and time passes - build your software right!

How can Azure change your business? Carl and Richard talk to Jason Zander, one of the original developers of .NET and now a corporate vice president, about the power of Azure to affect change in your business. Jason talks about the landscape of Azure today, and how the engineers are able to push out a feature almost every week - 500 new features in the past year! You may not need to move that fast, but it's nice to know if you build against Azure, that's what is possible. The conversation ranges over the role of IoT, security, web sites and more - there's a lot of things that can be built in Azure, and the opportunities are massive!

How do you build a cloud-oriented application? Carl and Richard talk to Vishwas Lele about his views on making software that takes advantage of features of the cloud, including dynamic resource allocation, resiliency and reliability. Vishwas runs down a list of ideas, starting with error handling - how many failures can be recovered in the cloud with new resource allocation, etc? Next up, instrumentation and logging - the cloud offers a lot of tooling to make real-time instrumentation a possibility. How do you take advantage of the costs of computing? What about scaling your application? Vishwas digs into it all!

Can you really built virtual reality apps in .NET? You bet! Carl and Richard talk to Matthew Wilson about his work with Novus-Res, building VR apps for businesses. The conversation ranges over the typical hardware set - primarily focused on the Oculus Rift. Matthew talks about the different skills and tools needed to build a VR space, including 3D modelling. But when it comes to programming, Unity 3D leads the way, and you can write C# with Unity! What makes sense as a VR app? How do you keep folks from getting motion sick, and really make the VR experience real? Lots of cool thinking here, and we're still at the beginning!

What does it take to make web pages that work in multiple languages? Carl and Richard talk to Diego Iastrubni about localization and internationalization. The conversation focuses first on the complexity involved - its very easy to forget how different languages and cultures apply to information being display. Does text go left-to-right, or right-to-left, left-aligned or right-aligned? And how does it apply to numbers? Diego goes on to explain core concepts in web localization, focusing on UTF-8 for character set and CSS for direction and alignment. There are frameworks to make this easier! Things get harder when you look at mobile and desktop apps, and every dev environment approaches it differently!

Visual Studio 2015 came out in July 2015, and with it, a new version of F# - version 4.0! Carl and Richard talk to Lincoln Atkinson, late of Microsoft, about the cool new features and capabilities in F# 4. The conversation ranges through the thinking around functional programming and new very functional features added - like TryList, as well as the more hybrid capabilities that let F# be a more general purpose language. And most impressively, F# 4.0 was built out in the open, as an open source project, including having third party contributors. Sure, the bulk was built by Microsoft folks (including Don Syme), but check out the contributors list!

Have you seen The Martian? Don't listen to this show until you do! WARNING: SPOILERS! But if you've seen it (or don't care), have a listen to this Geek Out about the movie and a deeper dive into the challenges of Mars, picking up where the last Geek Out on Manned Mars Missions left off. How is the movie different from the book? (they're both great, read or watch in either order) And how sciencey is the science? The movie is remarkably technically accurate, but there are some bits that are Hollywoodised, as well as dramatized for effect. But who cares? It's an awesome movie and a fun Geek Out! Have a listen!

Test-Driven Development (TDD) is a mature methodology now, right? So how do you get it right? Carl and Richard talk to Justin Searls about his experiences helping teams implement TDD. As Justin says, TDD is just a tool in the toolbox for making long-lived software. In its maturity, different flavors of TDD have emerged, and Justin digs into the Detroit or Classical TDD versus the London TDD. It's all about testing, but with some style variations. How do you keep your tests resilient as software evolves? Justin talks about the right amount of abstraction and organizing a hierarchy of tests so that you can manage change effectively. TDD works!

Ever heard of property-based testing? Carl and Richard talk to Mark Seemann about doing property-based testing with F#. As Mark explains, functional programming techniques work especially well for property-based testing, allowing you to define parameters (properties) that will generate ranges of values to test against. The conversation digs into tooling, specifically FsCheck, an open source library for doing property-based testing in F#. If you'd rather work in C#, Mark's project AutoFixture can do similar work in that language. But Mark talks up the advantages of F# from a functional perspective, creating very terse, easy to read tests. Check it out!

How do you handle credit card payments in your applications? Carl and Richard talk to Craig McKeachie about his work with different payment solutions, including Stripe. The conversation digs into the challenges of building your own payment system versus using a third-party system - starting with PCI compliance! Craig talks about different tooling for embedding payment, including the stripe.net library on GitHub for plugging into Stripe, and so on. Taking payments is important, so is doing it right - you have to think about security in a deep way. Don't build what you don't have to!

Hang on to your hats, here comes a ServiceStack update! Carl and Richard talk to Demis Bellot, who for the past couple of years has been full time on ServiceStack, and wow, a ton of development has been done! Demis (at very high speed) rattles through the feature list of ServiceStack, talking about the array of platforms it supports - which is pretty much everything from the phone to the cloud. While the focus has always been on providing web services, Demis also talks about running the entire stack inside a machine so that you can provide local services as well. Check it out!

How much can a language do with only 25 keywords? Carl and Richard talk to Michael Van Sickle about Google's Go Language. The focus in Go is on simplicity and structure - it's amazing what you can do with so few keywords, plus fixed locations for braces, indentations, and so on. The benefit of Go is easy-to-read code that has great concurrency capabilities - the Actor model is a standard pattern of development for Go. Michael also digs into the tooling around Go, using Atom for an editor and various plug ins to make coding and debugging easier. So how good is Go? Docker is written in Go! Check it out!

There's more great stuff in Studio than you realize! Carl and Richard talk to Charles Sterling about the web performance testing tools built into Visual Studio 2015. Actually, the testing tools have been there since 2008, but only in the test edition, and after that they were moved to the Ultimate Edition - they were part of what made that product so expensive! But as of 2015, the testing tools are available as part of Visual Studio Online, which means they're free for teams of five or fewer as well as all MSDN subscribers! Chuck talks about what it takes to build really great load tests - the kinds of questions you can answer, and how to build those tests into your continuous deployment system. Check it out!

If you've been listening to the latest episodes, you've heard Omnisharp mentioned - time for a show on it! Carl and Richard talk to David Driscoll about his efforts contributing to Omnisharp. Omnisharp is a set of tools to bring .NET development to all sorts of different development environments, including Visual Studio Code. David discusses the impact that working on a dev tools project like Omnisharp has had on his own career, changing the way he thinks about development - for the better! If you're digging into open source web development in the new Microsoft stack, you really should know about Omnisharp!

Rob Conery has the Elixir bug! Carl and Richard chat with Rob about being on show 1200, and how Elixir has sucked him in. Elixir is the syntactically friendly language over top of Erlang that has gotten a lot of attention lately. The conversation digs into the strategies around learning a new language, starting with building a good old fashion forms-over-data application. Rob used the Phoenix MVC framework with Elixir to build web pages quickly. He also talks about changing your thinking - how his Elixir code rapidly evolved from an old way of thinking to new, with terser syntax and taking advantage of the language style to build in a new way!

Kathleen Dollard has been exploring different development environments and wants to tell the world! Carl and Richard talk to Kathleen about her experience using Python and Django with JetBrain's IntelliJ development environment. As Kathleen says, it's the whole development suite, not just a given language, that you have to evaluate as a whole. But if you're going to live in the dynamic language like Python, you need to take testing seriously - and Kathleen dives into her experience of doing semantic testing to build resilient tests that are easy to read and have comprehensive coverage. The conversation turns to the story of how all this came to pass - Kathleen's new job and new leadership role with a consulting firm has pushed her to try new things!

Ready to do some method interception? Carl and Richard talk to Ricardo Barbosa about CodeCop, his method interception library that you configure with JSON. The conversation starts out talking about why you would want to do method interception in the first place - aspect oriented programming, instrumentation, isolating plumbing code, and so on. There are a bunch of ways to address these problems, and method interception has some advantages. Ricardo talks about building the tool and its gradual evolution as he got a deeper understanding of the underpinnings of .NET. There's a free version of the product, take it out for a spin!

Document databases as a service? For sure! Carl and Richard talk to Ryan CrawCour about Azure DocumentDB. DocumentDB is a JSON store - with an amazing set of features, including SQL querying. What? Ryan talks about how DocumentDB provides a fast, scalable place to store objects and write your queries any way you like. You write the rules for how your data partitions between collections, as well as the performance of each of those collections, and you can change them on the fly. More sophisticated than a simple key-value-pair store, but less structured that a relational database, DocumentDB sits in a great spot in your data storage needs. Check it out!

The most requested (and most postponed) Geek Out of them all - Quantum Computing. How much is hype, and how much is real? Richard walks through the history of quantum computing, starting with the understanding of quantum mechanics in the first place, and how modelling that in a classical computer created problems. As it turns out, there are many approaches to quantum computing, and no "one right way" has appeared yet. The state of quantum computing today is like the state of classical computing in the 1950s before the advent of the transistor. Possible, but very difficult and not broadly applicable. Let us know what you think!

So what does a web development stack look like today? Carl and Richard talk to Dan Wahlin about his explorations with the new ASP.NET vNext stack, checking out Angular2 (as opposed to the separately developed Angular1) and getting into using containers for development. Containers take virtual machines to the next level, with lower resource requirements and detailed manifests. As Dan points out, container technology comes after the configuration-as-code movement, and is a key part of the container approach. The focus is on Docker, but there are other container solutions out there that are well worth exploring!

It's been on the news, but do you really understand what happened with the Ashley Madison hack? Carl and Richard talk to Troy Hunt about his experiences around his web site <a href="https://haveibeenpwned.com/">Have I Been Pwned</a> and how the Ashley Madison hack blew up his traffic and made him think deeply about privacy. You may not care for the company, but you can't deny the significance of a multi-million dollar business blown up by hackers. Digital security is no joke - a failure can cost millions and destroy lives.

Universal Apps are all about XAML! Carl and Richard talk to the original XAML believer, Billy Hollis, about the new Universal App model and its focus on XAML. As Billy says, both Windows 10 and Office 2016 are using XAML now, so it's not going away. But first a quick digression on Windows Phone and Android - is the Universal App model going to save Windows Phone? Or should it all be Android in the end anyway? The conversation also ranges over some of the new opportunities coming in the future, like HoloLens, and the importance of XAML in that space as well. There has never been a better time to dive into this tech!

Heard of NativeScript? Carl and Richard talk to Sam Basu from Telerik about NativeScript, a dev stack using JavaScript to build native mobile applications. Sam describes how NativeScript is different from Cordova, since it doesn't use HTML or a runtime that essentially hosts a browser - instead it has a custom UI markup language that is rather similar to XAML and compiles into native code on iOS and Android (Windows Phone coming soon). So if you like working in Javascript but want native performance, you should take a look at NativeScript!

Ci with SQL Server? Are you crazy? Carl and Richard talk to Ike Ellis about what it takes to get databases changes happening as smoothly as application changes. Really! Ike talks about the concept of database lifecycle management and how it is orthogonal to application lifecycle management. The tricky bit is managing the data! And to help with that, Ike discusses a great tool chain of source code management, testing and deployment tools that work with databases like SQL Server and integrate into your usual development lifecycle toolchain as well. This is some next level DevOps thinking!

So what about building apps with Unity 3D? Carl and Richard talk to Brice Fernandes about what it takes to build using this cross-platform 3D framework. Brice talks about the important elements of gaming, including the art, user experience and game play itself. You need all three to some degree, great games do all of them well. The conversation digs into the variety of styles of games and the strengths and weaknesses of Unity in those different roles. Could you build things other than games in Unity? Yes, but would you want to?

Ready to React? Carl and Richard talk to Cory House about his experiences building applications using Facebook's React library. The conversation digs into the philosophical differences to web page design that React is focused on - and how they upset a lot of folks! Cory describes React as an approach for building UI components, which means combining HTML, Javascript and even CSS together! He also digs into the challenges of assembling the right tool stack - React is not an all-in-one library, you have some choices to make. The conversation also digs into Flux and it's alternatives as approaches to your overall web page architecture. Lots of options!

So what's it like to build web apps with ASP.NET 5? Carl and Richard talk to Rick Strahl about his experiences with the rapidly evolving open source project that is ASP.NET today. As Rick says, it might be called a beta, but it is acting more like an alpha at this point - new features and breaking changes are occurring regularly as the toolset develops. On the plus side is the server-side cross-platform of running on Linux and OSX, plus a design that is far more focused on what modern web development looks like. The original ASP.NET is nearly fifteen years old, this is an awesome update!

Are you a social developer? Carl and Richard talk to Jeremy Clark about his experiences trying to draw developers at events out of their shells. In the end, especially at an event, people want to talk - you just have to get the conversation started. The conversation turns to skills that can benefit your career, including public speaking and writing. Being able to communicate effectively in various forms can help your whole team be more productive by getting people on the same page of an idea. It's a skill like any other, and well worth cultivating!

Web development is moving fast, and John Papa is in the race! Carl and Richard talk to John about his current views on Angular and other SPA frameworks - coming to <a href="https://anglebrackets.org/">Anglebrackets</a> this fall! The conversation dives into the inevitable comparisons between Angular, Aurelia and others - but there is no one right way. Then John talks about the new Visual Studio Code, which really hasn't got much to do with Visual Studio at all - it's an editor, rather than an IDE. This leads to a conversation about development work styles in general - do you like having everything all in one place in the form of Visual Studio, or happier with a more roll-your-own solution with separate editors, debuggers, etc. So many choices for development today!

Roslyn is out - and it's awesome! Carl and Richard talk to Dustin Campbell about his work building Roslyn over eight years. Eight years is an awful long time, but when you're rebuilding a codebase from scratch, it's hardly unprecedented. Dustin talks about some the decisions made in the re-engineering of C#, including whether or not to keep in the bugs! Taking Roslyn open source is also a huge aspect of Roslyn and it's impact on the rest of the open source products Microsoft is making including the new ASP.NET. Great insight from someone who's been there!

What will it take to send humans to Mars and back? And what about actually colonizing Mars? Time to Geek Out! Richard talks through the history of manned missions to Mars, starting with Werner Von Braun's own Das MarsProjekt. The story evolves with Robert Zubrin's Case for Mars and the idea (and technology) behind In-Situ Resource Utilization - refuelling ships on Mars by making methane. That's the beginning elements of humans actually living on Mars. Elon Musk talks about creating an independent colony on Mars, requiring one million colonists. What would it take to make that possible?

How do you make a mobile web site go fast? The same way you make any web site go fast! Carl and Richard talk to Chris Love about his strategies for making fast web pages. The conversation starts out discussing how mobile apps are even more performance sensitive than regular web pages, because mobile devices typically have less bandwidth and more limited processing power for rendering. Chris points to one of his favorite tools - WebPageTest, as a great starting point for knowing where to look for performance gains on web pages. This leads to discussion on image compression, CDNs, time-to-live settings and more!

Unifying your Git GUI experience! Carl and Richard talk to Amy Palamountain from GitHub about how GitHub Desktop is bringing together the separate GitHub for Mac and GitHub for Windows products. Amy explains that in the past, there were separate GUI clients for Mac and Windows, with separate feature sets and styles. Bringing the codebase together keeps the releases more consistent, but it also represents an interesting unified coding approach using technologies like Reactive Extensions and other cross-platform tooling. Check it out!

So how do you get to "yes" with business decision makers? Carl and Richard talk to Eileen Fisher about how tech folks can be more effective communicating with folks that aren't in technology but make decisions on what technology to use. Eileen runs through seven key points for talking to decision makers - staying clear of technical jargon when dealing with business people and focusing on the things that matter with those folks. They may think differently than you, but that doesn't mean they aren't thinking - you have to meet them where they are!

So what happens when you dive head-first into the latest Javascript libraries? Carl and Richard chat with Julie Lerman about her experiences playing with Rob Eisenberg's Aurelia library. Of course, it doesn't stop there: If you're going to learn Aurelia, you're going to change the whole stack - including node, expressjs and DocumentDB! Julie walks through the process of adding each of the bits into the stack, learning online through search engines and twitter, and what she brought back from this exploration that changed the way she works with C# and Entity Framework!

Have you automated your deployment infrastructure? Carl and Richard talk to Matt Wrock about his tool chain for doing deployments. The raft of tools is long, but largely familiar: NuGet, Chocolatey, Boxstarter, Vagrant. Matt continues on with Atlas, Packer and Boxcutter to put together a completely automated process to build new VMs with services, tools and your software all pre-configured and ready to go. More good thinking about getting your configuration down as code!

How do you manage version numbers? Carl and Richard talk to Jake Ginnivan about his open source project called GitVersion. GitVersion works to automate the semantic versioning of your software. The conversation starts out focused on the details of semantic versioning - beyond the major.minor.patch, there are the alpha, beta and release candidate builds. Jake walks through the process of automating versioning, being able to understand what changes you've made to your code to know what numbers need to increment. This is a cool tool to check out!

Messaging in browsers? Carl and Richard talk to Derick Bailey about messaging patterns in Javascript. Yes, browsers always use messages, that's what HTTP is about - but there are messages, and there are messages. Derick talks about using the publish/subscribe pattern with RabbitMQ to build a highly scalable system. These are patterns that are popular outside of the web, but the modern web can do anything any other system can do - so it's time to put these messaging patterns to work in your web applications!

How does Windows 10 change NuGet? Carl and Richard talk to Jeff Fritz about the new features being added to NuGet to support Windows 10 Universal Apps. The core feature is the ability to build a NuGet package that will run on all the Windows 10 universal platforms - PC, tablet and phone. The conversation then switches to the Visual Studio 2015 launch and the crazy three day hackathon preceding it that Jeff participated in, building the AllReady applications for Humanitarian Toolbox and the RedCross. The project is now open source on GitHub and ready for lots of contributors, check it out!

One girl shy of a Mondays - Carl and Richard try and stay on topic with Mark Miller while they explore the science of great design. The truth is that Mark has been working for decades to build software that is truly intuitive to use, and the talks about all the subtle, but broadly applicable details that can make an application truly a pleasure to use. As is typical of Mark, this is nothing vague, but concrete, detailed and repeatable steps for making better designed software. You need to check out his amazing videos on the subject, it can make your software better!

And he's back! Carl and Richard talk to Shawn Wildermuth about his year-long journey around the world, part honeymoon, part working trip. The tour ended abruptly when an accident broke Shawn's arm, but he's home now and on the mend. The conversation digs into the huge array of developers and cultures that Shawn spent time with in Europe, Africa, and Asia. Shawn also talks about some ideas around building VR apps - is there something beyond games worth making? Is this technology going to take off this time around? Always fun to catch up with a very productive member of the community!

So what does it take to make scalable, resilient services in the cloud? Carl and Richard talk to Mark Fussell about Azure Service Fabric, the underlying infrastructure inside Azure to provide these capabilities. And the Azure Service Fabric doesn't only run on Azure - it runs on Windows Server too! Mark talks about creating your application in a way that allows it to scale into the cloud, whether its running there or not. In theory the fabric is just plumbing, but its the kind of plumbing that's hard to do right, and easy to mess up - and you don't want to find out you got it wrong when your customers are growing and demanding more!

You write a lot of code, but how often do you read it? And how do you read it? Carl and Richard talk to Tudor Girba about getting better at reading code by using tools that help you organize it. The conversation starts out with a simple idea - how do you get to understand the codebase of an existing application? Do you really just open a code window and start reading? Couldn't you use some tools that would help organize the code into some sort of summary that could get you moving faster? Tudor talks about Moose, a platform for doing software analysis. This leads to an idea called humane assessment, making it far easier to understand code - even your own!

So what's happened with Glimpse? Carl and Richard talk to Anthony van der Hoorn and Nik Molnar about the latest developments with their web instrumentation library Glimpse. First news - Anthony and Nik have joined Microsoft's cross platform team! The conversation digs into the history of Glimpse, its support by the community and Red Gate, and how it has progressed to live as an open source project with Microsoft. If you haven't worked with Glimpse, you're missing out on a great way to understand what's happening with your web site. And it continues to evolve - check it out!

How much of a language is essential? Carl and Richard chat with Mark Seemann about what features are critical to a language, and which ones are redundant. Who would put redundant features in a language? Mark talks about how languages evolve, and how more advanced features can supercede older features, but the old features can never be removed without breaking existing code. And worst still, when building a language is your business, you'll add features whether they are needed or not - you need something new to sell! The conversation also digs into understanding languages more deeply - do you really need that if statement? Just because a feature exists doesn't mean you need to use it!

So what is the state of Artificial Intelligence today? Carl and Richard geek out about what AI means today. The conversation starts out as usual with a bit of a history lesson - many things that were once called AI are now common, reliable technology like speech synthesis, natural language recognition, even vision systems. Once they work, they aren't AI any more. But the idea of an Artificial General Intelligence is much more challenging - and potentially risky. Richard digs through the key elements of AGI, the concept of the Singularity, comparing modern computers to the human brain and how close we may well be to making an AGI. But should we?

Peer-to-Peer is more than BitTorrent! Carl and Richard talk to Matthew Podwysocki about the Thali Project, using peer-to-peer technology to put more power in the hands of the users. Matthew talks about being able to communicate between your various devices using WiFi and Bluetooth while maintaining privacy and not bouncing off a cloud server. The cornerstone is security, using TLS to encrypt all traffic in and out of your device. Messaging strategy, data synchronization and more are all part of the Thali Project, making this great technology all open source for anyone to use!

What's your DevOps plan? Carl and Richard talk to Vishwas Lele about taking a comprehensive, model-driven approach to DevOps. What does it mean to be model-driven? Working with a strategic approach that is agnostic to any given technology or platform - but in the end, the tools do matter! Vishwas talks about common elements like a single repository for all assets, repeatable deployment processes, instrumentation and feedback mechanisms that enable the entire team to see how the software is being used and improved. He also talks about the Azure templates for getting infrastructure up and running quickly - and the on-going evolution to let this model work anywhere, not just in the cloud!

How do the SOLID principles apply to .NET? Carl and Richard talk to Chris Klug about his experiences using SOLID to build reliable, maintainable and scalable project. The conversation walks through the five principles of SOLID with an eye to practical applications in .NET - what does a well implemented single responsibility look like? How does it work with patterns like MVVM? Chris shares his thoughts and coding approaches on a great debate about practical vs ideal implementations in SOLID.

How do you debug browser problems in your web apps? Carl and Richard talk to Kenneth Auchenberg about RemoteDebug, an open source tool to bring a common debugging solution across browsers. And Ken really means across browsers - you can connect Chrome, Opera, FireFox, Safari and Internet Explorer up simultaneously and see how your code changes affect the rendering of your page on all those browsers at the same time! Oh, and it works for mobile browsers also, so you can experiment with rendering on multiple phones at once, and see how the pages really look while you make changes. You need to check this amazing tool out!

What's missing from the DevOps story in the Windows world? While at NDC in Oslo, Carl and Richard sat down with Jon Arild Tørresdal to talk about his struggles to have an effective DevOps practice in his organization using Windows technology. Jon talks about getting his teams to continuous deployment, rather than continuous delivery, so that there is a human interceding before software is deployed to the customer. Lots of conversation about instrumentation approaches, and getting to a place where code is deployed effectively for testing, but not visible to the customer. There's lots of challenges to a DevOps practice in the Windows world, but you can make it work!

Isn't all functional programming lean? What does that even mean? While at NDC, Carl and Richard chatted with Bryan Hunter about lean principles and how they apply to functional programming. After a quick debate around the merits of object-oriented programming vs functional programming, the conversation turns to the history and principles of lean. Bryan shows how lean informs your approaches to programming, how you can evaluate your tooling and techniques to build the best software possible. Is functional programming the ultimate manifestation of lean?

So what does it take to develop ASP.NET web sites on Linux? While at NDC in Oslo, Carl and Richard sat down with Mark Rendle to talk through the ins and outs of ASP.NET on Linux. And we're not just talking servers either! Mark talks about what it takes to set up a desktop version of Linux and be able to do ASP.NET development with it, including debugging! The .NET framework is evolving for Linux beyond the Mono project, but there are a bunch of tools out there to help you be productive building ASP.NET on whatever client platform you want. Check out the links!

Why in the world would you want to build a compiler? While at NDC, Carl and Richard talked to Philip Laureano about why he makes compilers! Philip starts out talking how building compilers helps you think about parsers and how that can help your development in every day life. The conversation turns to building your own language, or your own interpretation of a language, such as LISP! Philip digs into understanding IL directly - using tools like ILDASM and PEVerify to manipulate the underlying code made by Visual Studio languages like C#. Get a deeper understanding of the tools you use!

How do you estimate your projects? While at NDC, Carl and Richard talk to Woody Zuill about delivering software WITHOUT estimates. Woody starts out with a clarification - it's not zero estimates, just no estimates around particular features for an application. But how? Your customers want estimates, the trick is to deliver so quickly that there isn't time to estimate before you've delivered code. And does it have to be code? Isn't our goal to solve problems, and code is only one possible solution? Lots of great thinking about how you provide value to your customers!

While at NDC, Carl and Richard talked to Chris McCord about Elixir - the friendly language on top of Erlang. Chris talks about his Phoenix framework which brings an MVC-style development approach to building web sites in Elixir. And because its the Erlang VM under the hood, it scales brilliantly! The efficiency of Erlang is remarkable as well, reducing the number of servers needed to provide a service, to the point where folks have been running a web site off of a Raspberry Pi 2! Phoenix is racing toward a version 1.0, and its a great time to get involved!

While at NDC, Carl and Richard chat with Justin James about his deployment tool chain of NuGet, Chocolatey, Boxstarter and Vagrant. Each of these tools builds on the other, starting at the lowest level with specific libraries, working up through package managers, configuring operating systems, even provisioning cloud services. Justin talks about using the tools to get you to a configuration-as-code scenario, making installation not only reliable, but fast. There are lots of different ways to get to a reliable and efficient deployment solution - here's another one!

While at NDC in Oslo, Carl and Richard talk to Troy Hunt about all the scary stuff going on in security today. The conversation starts out recapping some discussion on passwords - how do we get past them? Troy also digs into the on-going issues of SQL Injection, still the number one security risk for web sites. You can still use Google to find vulnerable web sites, and there are great free tools out there to find and exploit insecure SQL databases - don't be one of them! The discussion turns to Strict Transport Security, making sure SSL is on all the time for a web site. Still gotta fix the basics, but new capabilities are coming!

Where will .NET go next? Carl and Richard talk to Rocky Lhotka (who happily is still alive after having his entire aorta replaced) about the resurgence in .NET. Between the open sourcing of .NET creating a common codebase for Windows, OSX and Linux. But that codebase is server focused - what does it take to get to the client? And to that idea, should XAML be open sourced? Rocky drills into the challenges of making cross-platform mobile apps - it's still not simple enough yet. But things are looking up, and there is only going to be more choice. Rocky is optimistic!

If it's on the cloud, it'll scale and perform, right? Carl and Richard talk to Christopher Bennage about his work at Patterns and Practices helping understand where performance can go wrong with Azure. It's on GitHub to provide code samples and analysis on the various problems you can find with scaling your Azure app. Christopher discusses eight different anti-patterns the PnP folks have found in their travels that can impair performance. Included in each are code samples and analysis of performance on Azure to show improvements - and you can run the code yourself on Azure to compare!

Time for an Energy Storage Geek Out! The most requested Geek Out on <a href="http://feathub.com/RichardCampbell/GeekOut">FeatHub</a> as Battery Technology, Carl and Richard discuss a wide range of aspects of energy storage. The conversation starts out on electrochemical batteries, which are only about 200 years old. Richard digs through the technical aspects of anode, cathode and electrolyte, dry cells, wet cells and polymer cells. And why do some batteries explode, anyway? Then the focus is on Tesla's new PowerWall battery products, what they're good for and what they aren't. And before the end, some other storage techniques like superconductors, ultracapacitors and flywheels!

So how are you instrumenting your applications? Carl and Richard talk to Jason Taylor of Stackify and Michael Paterson of Carbonite about the power of great instrumentation to make awesome software. Stackify provides a set of free tools if you're working in Azure. And speaking of Azure, Carbonite lives on Azure and uses Stackify for instrumentation. Michael talks about how Stackify helped Carbonite understand performance problems and errors that were occurring in production that were very hard to see from logs or customer service requests - deeply instrumenting their application made all the difference!

How do you extend C#? Carl and Richard talk to Simon Cropp about his open source project called Fody. Simon talks how Fody allows you do do "weaving" of .NET assemblies to add capabilities. Sounds simple, but it's not - it's hugely powerful and has to be handled carefully. To make it even more amazing, there are a ton of add-ins built for Fody to open the door to all sorts of aspect-oriented programming, simplifying testing, instrumentation and other sorts of coding extensions. So many possibilities, you should check it out!

So how deep are you into Domain Driven Design? Carl and Richard talk to David Rael about his work applying DDD principles to the systems his customers develop. David focuses in on the idea of the ubiquitous language, something Eric Evans admits he wishes he'd put earlier in his seminal book on DDD. The ubiquitous language is the assembly of all the terms needed and agreed upon about the particular domain that the application has being built for. Most of what you need to know to build an application lives in that language, and most of what can go wrong goes wrong there. Great, focused conversation from someone living the DDD life!

Microservices? Carl and Richard talk to Howard Dierking about his work building microservices starting with the name - Howard hates the term microservices. He prefers to call them focused services, which only makes sense. The goal is to write as little code as possible while delivering the capabilities needed, not all that different from most modern development approaches. The conversation turns to how we've twisted service design because deployment and versioning were so difficult. Today its better and we can take advantage of granularity to keep our services small, independently updated and flexible!

Have you been building web apps with TypeScript? Carl and Richard talk to Steve Ognibene about his work with TypeScript projects. The discussion starts with dispelling myths about TypeScript - no, it doesn't exist just to make C# developers more comfortable in web development! Steve compares how development is different in the strongly typed world of C# where the compiler does a bunch of testing for you versus the dynamically typed space of JavaScript where you're responsible for managing type related errors - something that TypeScript can help with! In the end its all JavaScript, and that is evolving also - Steve talks about how ECMA 6 looks a lot more like C#... is there a middle point here we're all racing toward?

What do developers like on their calendars? Carl and Richard talk to Steve Smith and Brendan Enrick about the making of the new 2016 developer calendar. They have been the team behind the NimblePros and later Telerik developer anti-pattern calendars for years. But there was no calendar in 2015 for a variety of reasons, leading to an outcry. In an effort to bring back the calendar, Steve and Brendan have launched a kickstarter campaign to raise enough funds to make the calendar, and a feathub site to take suggestions for the various pictures and ideas of each month. Check them out!

Do you fear the CSS? You're not alone! Carl and Richard chat with Elijah Manor about his experiences becoming a "real" front end developer and embracing CSS development. Elijah talks about making the leap from hiding behind Twitter Bootstrap and actually starting to think about CSS as its own thing. The conversation turns quickly to tools - LOTS of tools. Elijah explains his CSS stack of Sass, CSSLint and AutoPrefixer. But many other tools get mentioned along the way for the variety of services they provide. The tooling is getting better, now is a great time to dig into CSS!

Remember Orleans? Once an MSR project to scale Halo 4 multiplayer mode, it has grown into a full blown actor model implementation. Carl and Richard chat with Barry Briggs about bringing Orleans to your project. Barry talks through some great ideas on the actor model and it's focus on building distributed highly scalable applications. Orleans is now an open source project hosted on GitHub, and is worth a look - compare it to Akka.NET!

Time for a Geek Out experiment! Richard dives into his notes on a bunch of the past Geek Out episodes to bring you up to date on current developments. This includes solar, wind and wave power, automated driving, various developments on the fusion power front and some space related news as well. It's a grab bag full of goodness, but does the format make sense? The Geek Outs are still experimental, and we take ideas from the listeners at <a href="http://feathub.com/RichardCampbell/GeekOut">FeatHub Geek Out List</a> so send us what you'd like to hear!

What happens when a bunch of developers get in a room with a bunch of IoT devices? Carl and Richard talk to Josh Holmes about the amazing workshops he's been running to get people looking at the potential of small computing devices in the world of Internet of Things. Josh focuses in on the key bits of what it takes to make something useful in the IoT space - the difference between prototype and production hardware, the role of the cloud, and how critical the security situation is. Lots of great links!

So how are you using Azure for your apps? Carl and Richard talk to Mark Brown about his work inside and outside of Microsoft - after fifteen years at Microsoft, Mark is out on his own now and still working hard with Azure. The conversation digs into the amazing tool that is Web Jobs, letting you automate tasks based on time and events. Mark also talks about machine learning as his new focus, recognizing that the huge amount of data we're gathering needs to be analyzed too. Lots of great thinking about the cloud!

So what does it take to be a craftsman, software or otherwise? Carl and Richard talk to Bob Reselman about his work building software and guitars. Trained as a musician, Bob found software later in his life, and guitar making later still. But the process of getting good at making guitars makes it no different than making good quality software. The path to craftsmanship involves hard work, making mistakes and sometimes injury!

So how will you build mobile apps going forward? Carl and Richard talk to Atley Hunter about the impact of Windows 10 and various announcements at Build on your strategies for building mobile apps. After a quick conversation about the awesome that is HoloLens, the conversation dives into issues around Windows Phone adoption and app creation. Do the new tools make it more likely for companies to build Windows Phone apps?

So what has happened with the .NET Core? Carl and Richard talk to Jay Schmelzer about his involvement from the very beginning of the .NET Core infrastructure and the interesting future it has as an open source project. But first a call back to a project that Jay led for years - LightSwitch. So where has it gone and where is it going? Then the conversation turns to the .NET Core. Jay talks about how the development team at Microsoft is starting to do their development in public on the open source project that is now the .NET Core. And then there's OS/X and Linux! How do you separate off capabilities of .NET that are actually part of the operating system, rather than the .NET codebase? Lots of complexity to support cross platform like this, but it opens the door to .NET being everywhere!

Can biology inform computing? Or computing help biology? Yes! Carl and Richard talk to MSR scientist Colin Gravill about biological computing. Alas, the conversation is not about making computers out of biological materials, but there is some discussion about using DNA to do some kinds of computing as well as building synthetic life from modified cells. Colin talks about the tools they're building to be able to simulate cell generations and understand how stem cells evolve into specialized cells. A cool technology/biology Geek Out!

What does it take to grow new developers into something more experienced? Carl and Richard talk to Jeff Casimir about his approach to shepherding developers, helping them to grow into experienced developers. But what sort of experiences should you have? The conversation digs into the ideas around intentional practice, something rarely done in software. Jeff also talks about the scarcity of mentors and what it takes to get your code reviewed on a regular basis with an expert - and what an expert review even looks like! It's a challenge we need to rise to: there are more new developers all the time!

So where does BizTalk fit into your Azure application? Carl and Richard talk to Sam Vanhoutte about his work using BizTalk technology to integrate systems together with Azure in the middle. The conversation pokes a little fun at BizTalks's on-going battle for relevance - for the customers that really need it, it is awesome. But now it's available as a cloud product in Azure which can save a ton in hardware fees, enough to run the infrastructure for a long time. Sam also digs into Enterprise Service Buses and their role in the modern infrastructure. Good stuff!

How does your organization leverage open source? Carl and Richard talk to Jeff Strauss about open source coming into the corporate space and the challenges that exist there. Microsoft has gone into open source in a big way, how does that affect our development going forward? The conversation starts out talking about Microsoft's approach to open source, especially around the open source promise. From there Jeff dives into the range of open source licenses out there, from the various copyleft concepts in the GPL to the more permissive licenses of MIT and BSD. There's also the whole area of Contributor Licensing as well. You may not love the legal side of software, but that doesn't mean you can ignore it!

We're back from Build! On the last day of Build, Carl and Richard went up to the TWiT.tv studios to record a Windows Weekly with Leo LaPorte, Paul Thurrott and Mary Jo Foley. That show went more than two hours, so we thought we'd make a more condensed version and focus on our favorite bits of Build. And feeing Leo lots of Scotch, you wouldn't want to miss that. The conversation starts out with a bit more of an IT bent, talking about data lakes and docker virtualization. From there Carl digs into the Universal Apps bridges, allowing developers to build iOS and Android apps in Visual Studio with native languages, but across platforms. Check out the link for signing up to the previews of all the Universal App Bridges. What an amazing Build!

Akka.NET ships! Carl and Richard talk with Aaron Stannard about Akka.NET, a toolkit and runtime for building highly concurrent, distributed and fault tolerant event-driven applications. Akka.NET is a port of the original Akka framework in Java/Scala. Aaron talks about the reactive manifesto as the driver for Akka.NET, to provide tools for responsiveness, resiliency, elasticity and message driven.

Ready for a GitHub Extension for Visual Studio 2015? Phil Haack is back and talking smack about the cool code being build at GitHub. The announcement about the product was made at Build, but this show dives deeper into the technology involved. This new tool goes well beyond Git integration, diving deeper into the social media aspects of GitHub and making it easier for cross-platform teams to collaborate at GitHub. You need Visual Studio 2015 to take advantage of this, but that's pretty easy to get - try it out!

What are the habits that make a successful developer? Carl and Richard talk with Llewellyn Falco about the ongoing process of being the best developer you can be. Llewellyn discusses his role as a consultant to different organizations, and how often he discovers that there are simple practices just not happening within a team that would make everyone more effective. How do you create change in that scenario? How many times do you have to repeat a new approach to things before it actually sticks? Lots of psychology to actually gathering the habits that will make you the best developer you can be!

So what is the state of open source in the .NET community? While at the .NET Fringe conference, Carl and Richard moderated a panel of Ian Cooper, Amy Palamountain, Scott Hanselman, Sebastian Lambla and James Nugent as they explore the past, present and future of open source and the .NET stack. Obviously having Microsoft open source huge tracts of the .NET stack is a huge topic on its own, but so is the role the Microsoft should play in the open source community. What makes this community different from other open source communities? Are things moving in the right direction, is it getting better? Listen for some significant debate and thinking from a broad spectrum of open source folks!

So when will Moore's Law end? Time for a Geek Out! In honor of the 50th anniversary of Gordon Moore writing the article that 10 years later would be known as Moore's Law, Richard digs into how much work goes into keeping the Moore's Law promise and its impact on society. The conversation delves into the complexities of manufacturing microchips at the nanometer scale, and all of the problems that companies like Intel and Samsung have to overcome for each incremental improvement that leads to a doubling of density every 18-24 months. The laws of physics dictate that Moore's Law will eventually end, but there are still a few years to go... and even when it does end, so what? Is Moore's Law holding back innovations in other areas? Lots to think about!

So what JavaScript libraries are you focused on today? Scott Allen is back to talk about the latest bits he's excited about, including Rob Eisenberg's Aurelia! The conversation starts out focused on the on-going evolution of Javascript, with ECMA 6 and 7 picking up more and more features of modern programming languages - it's not the JavaScript you remember from the old days! This also impacts JavaScript libraries and opens the door for the on-going evolution of those libraries. Some change radically like AngularJS and some stick with their patterns so that new tools can get built, like Aurelia. While it's still early days for Aurelia, Scott is so keen that he's dived in as a contributor to the open source product. You should check it out!

So how do you track errors in production? JD Trask talks to Carl and Richard about <a href="https://raygun.io/">raygun.io</a>, a service for instrumenting your clients and servers in production and feed errors directly to your project tracking and bug reporting systems. The conversation digs into how to deal with errors in your application in a way that actually delights your users - sending emails letting them know you saw they had a problem and are working on it, and being able to see the details of the problems early and often without waiting for complaints. These are the tools for taking your application quality to a higher level!

Are you taking care of your personal brand? Eileen Fisher talks to Carl and Richard about what it means to have a personal brand, how to define, cultivate and care for it over time. In the end, a personal brand is simply what people know you for, and everyone has one, whether they're working on it intentionally or not! Eileen dives into what makes an effective brand and why you want to own and grow it - whether it is to get new projects or a promotion. This leads to a conversation around professional social media product like LinkedIn. There are places to maintain your personal brand, its worth spending a little time to get it right. Check out the show links for more tools and ideas!

The Three Ps: Passion, People and Participation. Carl and Richard talk to Mike Benkovich about his passion around the three Ps. The conversation starts first with a tour of favorite technologies, including a long conversation around the evolution of XAML and the challenges of modern development with a diverse set of clients. That impassioned discussion turns meta as Mike brings up the three Ps and what it means to work on things you truly care about with people that matter you. Can you really call it a job?

So how does Docker change development? While at the Nebraska Code Camp, Carl and Richard chatted with Seth Lachner about his work with Docker and the impact it has had on him as a developer. Seth comes from the old school open source world of Linux and C, and has worked with Docker for a long time - he recognized the potential early on. The conversation digs into the concepts of Docker as a virtualization entity on top of an operating system, hooking tightly into the kernel of the operating system to provide isolation for applications without the heavy footprint of traditional VMs. The conversation ranges over the cloud, server and workstation uses of containers, even into the idea of Docker as a virtual application implementation. This tool has far reaching consequences, no wonder there is so much buzz around it!

How do you deal with failure? Carl and Richard talk to Dustin Thostenson about his experiences with failure and how they made him a better developer. The conversation starts out with a discussion of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and how that ultimately maps to our needs as developers as well. The needs build on each other, and you can have a higher-level need without a lower-level need being fulfilled. Dustin talks about how this hierarchy informs his understanding of a prospective employee during the interview. The questions you ask say a lot about who you are!

What does it mean to be a modern mobile developer? While at the Nebraska Code Camp, Carl and Richard talked to Heather Downing about her recent dive into mobile development. In only a few years, Heather has been involved in a number of cool projects and talks about learning on the fly to build native, hybrid, and web-based mobile applications. The conversation explores the advantages and disadvantages of each of the stacks, and the enthusiasm that comes from being effective and successful even without decades of experience. As Heather says, when a new framework comes out, everyone is a novice, no matter how much experience you have. There is no substitute for working hard to learn and understand what the framework brings to the table.

How did you learn to debug? While at the Nebraska Code Camp, Carl and Richard talked to Joel Kauffman about debugging practices. Rarely is debugging taught in classes, arguably because all school code is perfect. But code in the real world has bugs, and finding those bugs can be challenging. Joel talks about helping developers understand how debugging works, utilizing stack traces, working backward through code, using watches, and so on. The conversation also digs into various tools available for assisting in debugging production applications, including open source JavaScript libraries and much more expensive dedicated instrumentation products. But good debugging is worth a lot - it's a worthy skill to cultivate!

At the Nebraska Code Camp, Carl and Richard moderated a panel discussion with Mads Kristensen, Lee Brandt, Josh Broton, and Robert Boedigheimer exploring the state of web development on the Microsoft stack. Of course, the first topic is the upcoming ASP.NET vNext and its switch over to open source, along the way letting go of some legacy features including Web Forms. The panel also discussed various JavaScript libraries, when they should be used and when plain old VanillaJS is a better way to go. Conversation also explored design tooling and whether we all should be running Visual Studio or stick with dedicated design tools and editors. Lots of viewpoints from a great panel!

How are you thinking about UX these days? Carl and Richard chat with Danielle Cooley about her talk at the Nebraska Code Camp around user experience, efficiency and effectiveness of design. Danielle talks about her background in biotechnical design and the challenges of bringing biology (that's us) and technology together in an effective way - including web design! The conversation explores a variety of effective designs: it's not just about speed and simplicity, sometimes it's more important to make things discoverable and clear! Danielle focuses on user-oriented design and how developers can decrease confusion, increase satisfaction and generally make the world a better place. Lots of great tips and thoughts from someone who works on the problem every day!

What's the difference between an Azure Web Site and Web App? Not at thing! Carl and Richard talk to Scott Hunter about the latest announcements from Microsoft about Azure App Service. Azure App Service brings together Azure Web Sites, Mobile Services and a whole bunch of other goodness. Scott explains how Microsoft has unified all of these services under one umbrella to make it easier to buy and use. If it speaks HTTP or HTTPS, it's an Azure App Service. Then on to the new stuff, including Logic Apps, which lets you manage your mashups using workflow and interconnection tools. You need to check out this great set of technology!

How do you do agile faster? Carl and Richard talk to Dan North about accelerating agile - but Dan has changed the name to Software, Faster. And even that is controversial, as Dan talks about focusing on delivering business needs, which may or may not involve code. The conversation also calls back to the Agile Manifesto and its abuse - it's not code with no documentation, its code over documentation! There's a great digression about the BBC giving away a million tiny computers to children to help create a new generation of makers... it's a fun time to be in computing! And as Dan says, the only code that has no bugs at all is no code at all.

Where can iBeacons take you? Carl and Richard talk to Greg Shackles about some of the opportunities available using beacon devices with smartphones. While iBeacons are specifically an Apple technology, there are lots of third party implementations that are more open. The balancing act of power and capability is a constant struggle for beacons. Things get really fun when you start looking at all the ways you can locate someone in an interior space using beacons - opening the door to a huge number of applications. Beacons are also part of Google's Physical Web, creating the idea of "interaction on demand." Cool stuff!

Are you building in WPF? Are you using PRISM? Carl and Richard talk to Brian Noyes and Brian Lagunas about the PRISM project, which is a set of tools for building WPF apps. As Brian Noyes says, PRISM is the AngularJS of WPF! The conversation dives into the on-going evolution of PRISM, including support for Windows Phone and Universal Apps. The point of PRISM is composability, helping you to organize the elements of your application into something more maintainable, easier to test and continue to evolve. Brian and Brian also announce that they are running the PRISM project now and have moved it to GitHub - they will take your pull requests!

Is Spaced-Based Power viable? Time for a Geek Out! Carl and Richard chat about the state of space-based power, reviewing a number of designs going back to the 1970s. Can you really transmit enough power to make it worthwhile? How big does the satellite need to be? What's the best place to put the satellite? Is it a giant weapon when its done? Who will build it and why... and just how much is this going to cost? It's not all good news, but its interesting stuff - have a listen, and don't forget to <a href="http://www.google.com/moderator/#15/e=216d87&t=216d87.40">Vote for the Next Geek Out episodes!</a>

Programming in Swift? Want to build Android apps too? Carl and Richard talk to Marc Hoffman of RemObjects about his Silver project - using Swift to program for Android. Swift is Apple's cool new language for developing iOS apps, making life easier than Objective C. Don't use Swift? No problem, how about Pascal - because RemObjects has Oxygene, which is a moderized version of Pascal. That doesn't work for you? Then how about C#? Because this tool set lets you write C# across all the platforms too. And you can use it in the development environment of your choice, including Visual Studio. Mind blown? Ours too!

So when do IT Pros become developers? Carl and Richard talk to Steve Evans about his operations folks writing code and dealing with all the challenges that everyone finds when they write, own and operate code. The code in question is primarily PowerShell, used to automate deployment. It needs testing, source control and everything else that code requires. Steve talks about how his operations folks have come to learn the same things that all developers need to learn, and for the most part, end up using the same tools. PowerShell may have its own IDE, but more than ever the IT Pros want to use Visual Studio for its richness of tools and integration with resources that they realize they need. Now all we have to do is convince Microsoft that just because you operate systems doesn't mean you don't program!

The awesome Kinect applications keep coming! Carl and Richard talk to Tim Huckaby about the on-going revolution of applications utilizing Kinect. While not especially popular in the traditional desktop setting, the Kinect is finding remarkable traction in retail and commercial spaces, as interactive signage and for connecting with customers. Tim talks about battling the creepiness factor - the ability of tools like Kinect to figure out who you are and what you're doing can be rather disconcerting. The challenge is in using the capability well to make retail transactions faster and more enjoyable.

Like beer? Are you using Untappd? Carl and Richard talk to creator Greg Avola about the phenomenon that is Untappd. What started as a simple tool to keep track of what beer he liked and didn't like has turned into a super popular app with millions of downloads. Greg talks about what it took to keep the app working as the number of users grew immensely, and how he and the team built the app to work on all sorts of different phones. In the end, the cornerstone of Untappd is the back end with an amazing catalog of beers and user preferences that help the lovers of beer and the makers of beer connect together to make beautiful beery music!

What an amazing year for ScriptCS! Carl and Richard talk to Glenn Block about the latest developments in ScriptCS - comparing the state of affairs to the last time he was on a year previously. With Roslyn all but shipped, ScriptCS is going mainstream - perhaps it will even be bundled with Studio someday! In the meantime, Glenn and a host of other contributors have continued to extend ScriptCS to make it easier to deploy, share scripts and add additional functionality without having to work in Visual Studio if you don't want to. ScriptCS is putting C# into everyone's hands!

Are you user accounts secure? Carl and Richard talks to Troy Hunt about all the ways you can get your accounts stolen. So what should you store and how should you store it? Troy digs into the various encryption and hashing techniques available - and the many mistakes that have been made with them. Along the way expect yet another discussion about password management, it is an endless process. And while we're at it, SQL Injection is *still* the largest vulnerability out there. Fix it first!

How are you dealing with mobile testing? Karen Johnson talks to Carl and Richard about thinking through the big picture when it comes to testing. The conversation starts out with a discussion about the tools we've had for desktop and web testing for years that are still hard to come by on the mobile platform - like UI capture of touch, gestures and typing. Its just not that easy to do capture on a phone. The diversity of products is a huge part of the problem, but its also the rapidly evolving operating systems and technology. Karen also digs into other devices like wearables and other physical instrumentation devices. The scope of the testing problem is only getting bigger!

ASP.NET continues to evolve! Carl and Richard talk to Mads Kristensen about the many amazing things he's working on in the web space, starting with Web Essentials! Mads explains how Web Essentials is a way to experiment with new features for ASP.NET, and that success comes when the feature is pulled into Visual Studio itself - and you get to be part of that process, it's all open source! The conversation turns to Visual Studio embracing the web development ecosystem to use the best tools for the job, whether that is browser and performance testing, package management and workflow. Use whatever tools you want from whomever, and Visual Studio will work with them - 2015 is shaping up to be an amazing version!

So what IoT device have you built? Carl and Richard talk to Suz Hinton about her experiences building IoT devices. Suz starts out talking about Meow Shoes, a pair of shoes she added sensors and an Arduino too - and used cat meows to test with. All sorts of hilarity ensues, but there are a number of interesting applications can be made from capturing someone's movements, even through their feet. The conversation turns to the dev stack - all Javascript, front and back! There are all sorts of libraries and tools now for anyone to build low cost IoT devices. Suz also talks about her fascination with 3D printers and their relationship to IoT and the maker movement in general. It's becoming a Makers world!

How do you test your mobile applications? James Montemagno talk to Carl and Richard about various testing approaches for mobile apps. James talks about the Xamarin Test Cloud with thousands of different devices you can test against... for a fee of course. This leads to a conversation about automating UI testing, testing against local devices and only going to the cloud when you're ready to test on a larger diversity of phones. James also talks about the broadening range of devices out there, not just phones but tablets, wearables and IoT. Everything needs testing, and there are tools to make it easier!

So where is Azure at today? Carl and Richard talk to Michele Leroux Bustamante about her work with a number of customers utilizing Microsoft Azure. The conversation digs into what Michele considers new Azure vs. old Azure. She still has customers depending on web and worker roles, while many have moved purely over to WebSites. And the evolution continues, with better analytics, the beginnings of container technology taking over from regular VMs... we're still at the beginning of the cloud revolution, and it's only getting more interesting!

How do you test your cross platform applications? Carl and Richard talk to Paul Mooney about building software in .NET and Java and wanting to use a common set of testing protocols. Tricky, but possible! The conversation focuses in on abstractions, which are key to creating sufficient separation of functionality to allow you to insert testing code regardless of what language you work in. And it turns out you can write tests for multiple languages if you're careful. Java and .NET are more similar than we care to admit, and it opens the door to other approaches to testing. TDD is not platform specific!

So how do you build your cross-platform mobile apps? Carl and Richard talk to Troy Miles about his experiences building mobile apps with the Ionic Framework. Built over top of Adobe Cordova, Ionic takes over a lot of the plumbing code that you find yourself building in every mobile app. Ionic brings controls to the table in two forms - pure CSS components and CSS/JavaScript. You could write the CSS yourself (or maybe you couldn't), but why would you? Troy talks about some of the applications out in the marketplace built with Ionic and how well they look and act like native apps, without having to write the app from scratch multiple times. Check it out!

Jez Humble is back and building a lean enterprise! Carl and Richard talk to Jez about continuous delivery and all that amazing DevOps stuff - but then we get to the serious bit, which is really about how DevOps is a manifestation of organizational change. You need buy-in from the top to make it happen, but it can't happen all at once. How do you make gradual improvements to present the power of a better culture with deeper understanding? Jez talks about the importance of metrics and measuring the performance of your software. And in the end, the best metrics are the ones that relate to the business - which is a great way to talk to management!

Well, there goes another milestone - show 1100! Since Richard actually joined as co-host starting with show 100, that makes ONE THOUSAND .NET Rocks episodes together. Sure, there's 130 Tablet Shows, but who's counting? The conversation digs into a bunch of the gear used to make .NET Rocks and all the PWOP podcasts. We may not take ourselves too seriously, but we sure do take podcasting seriously. You wanna know how it's done? Have a listen!

Are you ready for ECMAScript 6? Carl and Richard talk to Jafar Husain about some of the great new features coming in ECMAScript 6 - the next version of JavaScript, at least for now. Jafar talks about the fun and challenges of participating in the TC39 committee that developed the ES6 standard which is now being implemented by browser developers. Jafar digs into Promises, Yields, Proxies and more - lots of discussion about features you've come to love in languages like C# appearing in JavaScript! And the process isn't done, the JavaScript 7 spec is already being developed!

Are you ready for C# 6? Carl and Richard talk to Bill Wagner about the latest changes to C# 6, with some features being dropped (perhaps to appear in a later version), some syntax changes, and digging deeper on some of the more complex features available. Now that everything around C# is open source, you can see the process of developing new features going on, and even participate in it! Bill and Richard also talk about Humanitarian Toolbox, their ongoing effort to build open source software for disaster relief organizations. And even a little discussion about C# 7!

So what comes after Durandal? Rob Eisenberg talks to Carl and Richard about Aurelia! The conversation starts out focused on AngularJS and Rob's role with the open source project and ultimate departure. But that was back in November 2014 - what happens next? Aurelia is Rob's vision of what web developers need to build effective browser-based client applications. Rob talks about implementing Aurelia to utilize ECMAScript 6 and 7 while still polyfilling back to ES5 - the Javascript you recognize. This leads to a whole discussion on transpiling and how its possible to move a language forward without breaking backward compatibility, even a language as diverse as Javascript!

Are you ready to build web pages with web components? Cory House is! Carl and Richard talk to Cory House about the web component specification and what that will look like in your modern web development. As Cory explains, the key idea behind web components is to provide a framework for Javascript library extensibility that doesn't force you to own the library yourself. While the standard is still being discussed, Cory mentions some libraries that have already gone ahead and implemented a variation of this extensibility, such as Steve Sanderson's amazing KnockoutJS. Web components make Javascript that much better to use!

Looking at moving from WinForms to WPF? Phil Japikse can help! Carl and Richard talk to Phil Japikse about the changes in thinking that have to happen to make WPF work for you if you're coming from a WinForms world. The conversation starts out discussing the strengths of WinForms and why they persist to this day - it just works! And there's no designer experience like it, including WPF. No matter where you go, after WinForms, you're going to spend more time looking at code for your UI. Do you have to learn MVVM? It depends! Phil talks about the different approaches to making WPF work for you, and taking your UI to it's full potential.

Time for a craftsmanship update from Uncle Bob! Carl and Richard talk to Bob Martin about the growth of developers, and how the number of new developers is overwhelming the available teaching and mentoring resources available today. The discussion turns to the fact that customers would rather have mentors writing code than teaching new developers - better to throw the new folks in a room and let them fend for themselves, maybe software will come out! Uncle Bob talks about the rise of professionalism, the need for professional associations or guilds, taking on the liability of software - the challenge is getting there.

Are you building mobile first? Carl and Richard talk to Chris Love about his work building mobile apps - in two styles! First Chris talks about working with a startup, with the latest tools and lots of experimentation. On the other side, there's the corporate development world, which is far more conservative and resisting change. Then the conversation turns to progressive enhancement, making new versions of web pages using modern tools and letting the old pages serve older browsers until its no longer needed. IE8 has one year of life left, its time to move!

Still resisting going to WPF? Billy is here to help! Carl and Richard chat with Billy Hollis about the ever-improving ability of WPF to build great looking desktop applications. Billy talks about techniques for getting the most from WPF and paths for new developers to take to be successful. There's a huge array of options out there in WPF, it can be terribly confusing to know where to get started. WPF is eight years old - as old as Visual Basic ever got! Shouldn't everyone be using it by now?

One more alternative energy Geek Out - generating power with water! The conversation starts with hydroelectric power, but then moves to tidal and wave power. Some work, some don't, and it's not just about the technology either, how the business models are built matter a lot. But there's a lot of energy from wave and tides to be had, the trick is knowing how to capture it! From tidal barrages to underwater turbines, buoys, snakes and air turbines, there are a lot of approaches to capturing this massive power resource.

Duck punch your JavaScript lately? Todd Gardner talks to Carl and Richard about the practice of changing object behaviors in JavaScript for good or evil. After an explanation of how duck punching (or monkey patching, pick your favorite silly term) works, the discussion turns to the dark side of how hackers can intercept your Javascript library calls, capture keystrokes and otherwise subtly change your web pages. Could you tell? Then Todd dives into using your powers for good - strategies for testing, aspect-oriented programming and so on. Duck punching does have significant limitations, so use sparingly, but when it works, its amazing! (NOTE: no ducks were harmed in the making of this podcast)

Carl and Richard talk to Dominick Baier and Brock Allen about the new version of Thinktecture IdentityServer. As Dominick explains, as soon as you have more than one web application that needs authentication, you want to go to a centralized authentication and authorization scheme, and that's where IdentityServer comes into play. Working with oAuth2 and OpenID Connect, you can create identities for your users from Active Directory, other IMAP stores or just a plain old SQL Server. Take your authentication strategy to the next level!

Ready to think beyond the SPA? John Papa talks about the continuing evolution of HTML 5. Carl and Richard chat with John about web components, an evolving standard to make JavaScript libraries more extensible and organized. AngularJS comes out in the conversation as well, especially version 2 with its breaking changes - but you don't need to migrate if you don't want to. V1 will continue development. John also digs into his current suite of tools for building, deploying, and debugging web pages. The technology is maturing, and that means better tools!

Can computing cure cancer? That's Evelina Gabasova's goal! Carl and Richard talk to Evelina about her work using machine learning and data analytics to understand the genetics of cancer, its variations and subtypes. Part of her goal is to get to personalized medicine - where your doctor uses your genetic information to determine the ideal treatment, custom-made for you. So how does that involve statistics? Evelina talks about her evolution from computing into informatics and the various tools used to analyze data deeply, rather than widely - including F#!

How many different ways can you store data? David Simons knows at least ten! Carl and Richard talk to David about a wide variety of data storage approaches. Some are SQL, some are NoSQL, but David digs into each one talking about strengths and weaknesses. The conversation digs into the idea that using one data store for all purposes is archaic - while it always depends on your application's needs, have two, three, or four different data stores isn't crazy! David talks about various classes of data stores including graph, object, time series, relational, and more... there are lots of ways to store your data, and with the right store, coding and maintaining get easier! The trick is to deal with the essentials of every data store: reliability, backup, and recovery. Here's a great list of choices for your app!

What does Sharepoint Development look like today? Carl and Richard talk to Sahil Malik about the amazing changes that have happened to the Sharepoint development community with the impact of Azure and Office 365. Sharepoint used to be a very insular development environment, separate from everything else, but today it is expected to interact with cloud services, on-premise system and a variety of clients, including iPhone, Android, WinPhone and more. Sahil talks about gluing all the pieces together - you can't build it all yourself!

Do you know about Google Cloud? Brad Abrams does! Carl and Richard talk to former Microsoftie Brad Abrams about the other big cloud player - and there's a lot to say. Brad starts out focusing on the Platform-as-a-Service offerings of Google such as the App Engine which lets you run Python, Java, PHP, and Go in the cloud with all the scaling options you could ever want. Rather a virtual machine? The Google Compute Engine handles that, with Windows as an option coming soon! Then the discussion turns to containers: lightweight, OS-agnostic virtual machines that work with Google Container Engine and scale with Kubernetes. And that's still only the beginning; there's storage options of all sorts and Brad's favorite bits, great tracing and debugging tools. There's room for a third player in the public cloud world!

While at NDC in London, Carl and Richard moderated a panel of Ben Hall, Peter Mounce, Jeff French and Enrico Campidoglio to talk about the state of DevOps in the .NET world. While DevOps is going strong in the open source world, it is coming slowly to .NET. The panelists discuss their preferred toolchains for speeding deployment, testing and instrumentation of software, as well as the cultural changes that have happened in their organizations as an effect or demand of DevOps. The conversation also turns to looking at the tools Microsoft is building to support DevOps vs. the open source tools that are adding Windows and .NET support. There's still a long ways to go!

Jonathan Pepper is back with another great Xamarin case study! Carl and Richard talk to Jon about the Hanx Writer, an iPad application made with the help of Tom Hanks to recreated the mechanical typewriter experience on a tablet. Remember skeuomorphism? Here is an awesome manifestation! Jon talks about the process of creating the effects of three different mechanical type writers in an iPad application, including the keyboard, sounds of keystrikes, even the fonts! But most amazingly, the app is built using Xamarin, and not just for the cross-platform capabilities, since the app is only out for iPad at the moment. Jon just loves C#!

While at NDC London, Carl and Richard talked with Bryan Hunter about the language Elixir. Bryan tells the story of how the folks behind Ruby got interested in Erlang, thinking to bring some of Erlang's features to other languages - but then discovered it was impossible, since Erlang is its own operating system. So instead, they created a new language within Erlang, and that is Elixir. Taking the favorite features of many languages including Ruby, C#, F# and others, Elixir makes for a pleasant programming experience while still having the power of Erlang behind you. Check it out!

While at NDC London, Carl and Richard talk to Enrico Campidoglio about including databases in your continuous delivery process. Enrico talks through a few different strategies for getting your database moving as fast as your application, without losing data along the way. The conversation digs into issues around version control for databases, keeping schema and reference tables in your source control system, and recognizing that database updates don't happen at the same time as application updates - there can be updates before and after, or otherwise independent of the application itself. Lots of little tips and tricks for managing your database updates more effectively!

While at NDC in London, Carl and Richard sat down with Mark Rendle to talk about the latest version of Simple.Data - version 2! Simple.Data started out years ago as a simple abstraction for data access, all open source with numerous additional projects built on it to support a huge variety of data stores. Mark talks about going back into his old V1 project and realizing he did some interesting twists and turns to make it work, and how a rethink of the design brought out the idea of V2. The conversation also digs into the fundraising efforts he did to incentivize getting an alpha version of V2 together. Lots of fun digressions on various projects and ideas as well!

Another great show from NDC London, Carl and Richard talk to Ben Hall about Docker. Docker has been taking the industry by storm, bringing a lighter-weight approach to virtualization by getting the operating system out of the package and focusing on automated configuration and implementation. Ben talks about the origins of Docker and its focus on the Linux world - but that is rapidly changing with Microsoft promising an implementation running on Windows. The potential of Docker for facilitating efficient development is obvious, but could this change how we use applications as a whole?

Carl and Richard got the amazing opportunity to go to the NASA Goddard Space Flight center to see the James Web Space Telescope in person. And while there, they sat down with Craig Tooley, the Project Manager of the Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission (MMS) to understand a bit more about space weather and the remarkable science and engineering that goes into a mission like MMS. The MMS mission utilizes four identical spacecraft flying in formation to measure plasma interaction effects between the Earth's magnetosphere and the sun. The goal of MMS to capture (by flying through) a magnetic reconnection event, where a huge amount of plasma energy is discharged. As with most things in the universe, reality is a complex thing, and the MMS is at the forefront of our understanding of the universe, at least around our planet!

At the NDC London conference, Carl and Richard talk to Steve Sanderson about his work on the Azure Portal and building arguably the greatest Single Page Application (SPA) around today. Steve talks about the approach the Azure Portal team has taken to deal with memory management as well as a flexible plugin architecture that allows the various Azure related teams to plug into the common "shell" component of the Azure Portal. The conversation digs into the challenges of SPAs as the scale and utilization goes up. You can make it work, but it isn't always simple! Steve also discusses the choices you can make around SPAs, it's not just about AngularJS, there are many ways to build a SPA toolchain.

While at NDC London at the Excel Center, Carl and Richard talked to Phil Trelford about building your own compiler. First off, why would you do that? Phil talks about the various ways that compiler technology can be used and help improve your own understand of languages and tools. You probably don't need to replace the C# compiler for your applications, but you might want to use parsing technology to provide algorithmic support in your applications. The power of F# is apparent when you start working on compilers, with its amazing pattern matching and parsing capabilities. Phil also mentions some toolsets to make experimenting with compilers easier, check out the show links for more info!

While at the NDC London conference, Carl and Richard talk to Liam Westley about building your own software business. It starts with the idea that the most destructive thing to your software business is support calls - or more broadly, the accumulated cost of your past business. The conversation digs into the power of being a business of one, rather than having employees, and thinking beyond just your development work, digging into all the other aspects of business: marketing, sales, accounting, and so on. As Liam says, starting a software business is easy, staying in business is hard!

While at NDC in London, Carl and Richard talk to Shay Friedman about the Chrome Developer Tools. The conversation starts out talking a bit about the state of web development, the jump in JavaScript performance, and the huge increase in the complexity of web applications - which naturally leads to the challenge of debugging said JavaScript-based applications. Enter the Chrome Developer Tools. Firefox was the original web developer browser, but Chrome has slid into that slot with more capabilities than ever. More than just element inspection, the Chrome Developer Tools let you look at your web application executing on the browser. Shay talks about tracking down memory leaks in complex Javascript code, where many variables are created, but few are destroyed. You need these tools in your kit!

While at NDC London, Carl and Richard talk to Ian Cooper about hexagonal architectures. Turns out the important part is not the six sides - it's the idea of ports and adapters. Originally talked about by Alistair Cockburn, this is an architectural approach that focuses on being tolerant to testing as well as separating commands from querying. It's not quite Command Query Responsibility Segregation (CQRS), but you can see it from there! Ian discusses testing in a hexagonal architecture and how Test Driven Development (TDD) works so well with the separation of concerns that ports and adapters offers. If you're working on a long lived application that needs to be maintainable, you should be looking at hexagonal architecture!

Julie is back and all about the latest version of Entity Framework - version 7! The conversation starts out with a bit of a state of the union, with Julie describing how moving Entity Framework to GitHub has opened up an amazing level of communication between the EF team and regular developers. Which leads to the scarier part of the discussion: The breaking changes coming to EF7 from EF6. Like ASP.NET vNext, EF7 represents a substantial break. But Julie says you shouldn't worry, there are lots of solutions. Oh, and did she mention that they are planning on including support for non-relational (NoSQL) data stores? Really!

Carl and Richard talk to David Božjak about the Lumia Imaging SDK... or is it the Nokia Imaging SDK? Caught in the midst of a name change since the acquisition of Nokia phones, the SDK is called Lumia Imaging on the blog sites, but is still Nokia Imaging on NuGet. Certainly it'll all be Lumia some day. David talks about the huge array of features available in the SDK to take photos, apply filters and effects to them, and then render the images. The conversation digs into how to handle huge images when you have limited memory, so that thumbnails and partial renders keep the memory footprint down, and streamed rendering lets something phone size still render the full image. Cool stuff for your mobile app!

Carl and Richard talk to Rocky Lhotka about where universal apps in Visual Studio are really going. But first, a bit of a landscape discussion, especially a laugh about the "comeback" of .NET and C#. Did Xamarin save the day? Rocky talks about how universal apps aren't all that universal, but with Xamarin in the mix, you start to look at a common code base for desktop, laptop, tablet and mobile development. Almost. Maybe. It's always more complicated than you think! But Rocky is optimistic that things are going the right way, so that everyone can start building cross-platform applications for their customers really soon.

Carl and Richard talk to Itamar Syn-Hershko about adding search technologies to your application. The conversation starts out focused on what SQL Server can do for search... the LIKE operator. What about NoSQL? Itamar talks about the role that data stores like RavenDB can play as far as finding data. But then you get to dedicated indexing and search tools like Lucerne.NET, ElasticSearch and Solr. Itamar talks about the advantages of using these tools in terms of speed of indexing and search, as well as the ability to bring multiple data sources together under a common indexing strategy. How do you do search in your app?

Carl and Richard talk to Jonathan Stark about the wearable landscape today. But first, a crazy story about a Starbucks card. Jon is the guy behind Jonathan's Card, where he put a Starbucks card online for folks to add money to and buy coffee with. Crazy! Next up is a deep dig into the spectrum of watch like devices available today - Samsung Gear, Pebble, the Apple Watch and more! The variety of programming opportunities is just getting bigger.

While at the MVP Summit, Carl and Richard sat down with Pratap Lakshman, Peli de Halleux and Nikolai Tillman to talk about automating unit testing in .NET. Originally a Microsoft Research Project, PEX is now part of Visual Studio 2015, and digs deep into the IL of your application to generate a huge variety of unit tests. The team also talks about some of the other cool projects they've built using the PEX engine, including CodeHunt, a tool using testing to teach you to program. Check out PEX on Microsoft Research, and get ready for Studio 2015!

Carl and Richard talk about two space accidents that happened in the same week - the explosion of Orbital Science's Antares Rocket on October 28 and the breakup of Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo on October 31. Richard begins with the Orbital Science's mission to supply the International Space Station. Part of NASA's Commercial Resupply Services, the ORB-3 mission included the Cygnus spacecraft carrying supplies to the ISS as well as a number of smaller payloads, including the Arkyd-3. The Antares rocket exploded a few seconds after launch. The discussion digs into the origins of the rocket design and Orbital's subsequent actions to deal with the loss of the rocket - they're still responsible to get those supplies to the station! The second part of the show is even more serious, since it involves a fatality - the breakup of SpaceShipTwo during a test flight, resulting in the death of co-pilot Michael Alsbury. Is making space commercially viable worthwhile even at the expense of someone's life?

Carl and Richard talk to Rob Irving and Simon Jackson about advertising on mobile apps. The conversation starts out with Ad Duplex, which is an ad exchange and a way to advertise your mobile app on other mobile apps like yours - all in an effort to get more users. Rob talks about alternative ways to get users, such as pursuing reviews, using crowdsouring and in general taking marketing seriously. Simon digs into more traditional advertising using the open source Adrotator library, which takes the discussion into the complexity of advertising - multiple providers, different systems for different locations, and how often you don't actually *get* an ad!

Carl and Richard talk to Scott Ford about taking over existing software projects. There's lots of negativity around existing code, calling them "brownfield" and "legacy projects." Scott looks at existing projects more like an older home that has been well used, but needs updating. The conversation digs into how to understand not only the code of the existing application, but also the intent of the app - more focus on why things are the way they are, rather than just the how parts. But once you understand the why, there's no reason to stick with old tools and techniques, and Scott talks about using modern tools to quickly take control of an existing codebase and make it more reliable, understandable and sustainable.

Carl and Richard talk to David Dennison about his complete change of development career: From C# and .NET to Scala and the JVM! David talks about getting work at iTrellis, and their move to a services stack of Scala, Akka and Spray. The discussion focuses on the many things that are the same between the platforms, as well as the differences - it's all managed code in the end! David also talks about getting into the mindspace of the new platform he is working in, as well as dealing with entirely new development tools and infrastructure. Could you change platforms if the opportunity arose?

Carl and Richard talk to Greg Shackles about making continuous deployment work in the mobile apps space. The conversation starts out with the projects that Greg is currently working on, and the need to get them deployed routinely to iOS and Android devices - this means, of course, deployment to the AppStore, which only goes so fast. Greg talks about avoiding the AppStores by finding ways to make changes internally, rather than a full deploy. The discussion goes down his preferred toolchain and inserting as much automation as possible - not so much for speed as for repeatability! Check out Greg's talks and slides in the show notes on this subject.

Carl and Richard talk to Michael Van Sickle about developing web applications using the Dojo Toolkit. Not heard of it? You're not alone, but Dojo has been around since 2006! Michael talks about Dojo's focus on backward compatibility, making sure that web applications built with the framework continue to function as HTML, Javascript and CSS evolve. Heck, Dojo started before HTML 5 browsers were even available! If you're concerned about the longevity of your web applications, you should check out Dojo.

Carl and Richard talk to Roger Johansson about Akka.NET, a library to help you build concurrent and distributed applications. Akka.NET is a port of Akka for Java, and is open source on GitHub. As Roger explains, Akka.NET uses the actor model to create a level of abstraction ideal for building concurrent applications. This is similar to the Orleans Framework from show 969, but with some distinct advantages. The conversation gets into how folks focus on object orientation can struggle with concurrency and Akka.NET solves these problems differently that TPL and reactive extensions.

Carl and Richard talk to Laurent Bugnion about Xamarin Forms. Now that the forms capability has been out for a few months, Laurent digs into the strengths and weaknesses of the approach. The goal of Xamarin forms is to simplify cross-platform mobile development between iOS, Android and Windows Phone. Has it delivered? Laurent focuses in on building one project, but different builds with different bits of code for each device. You can't have one code base run everywhere, nor do you want to - there's still a need for tailoring for each device, but Xamarin Forms makes that smaller and simpler.

Carl and Richard talk to Brian Randell about the latest on Visual Studio Online (VSO). As Brian explains, this isn't about putting Visual Studio itself into the cloud, but rather surrounding your copy of Visual Studio with services in the cloud that make development easier. The conversation goes down the list, starting with source control in general and TFS specifically. One huge advantage of VSO - you don't have to deploy TFS yourself! Beyond source control and task management there are deployment tools and testing, all of which can be run in the cloud, where you're only billed for what you use. This is modern development at it's finest!

While at the NSBConf in Brooklyn, New York, Carl and Richard moderated a panel of Udi Dahan, Ted Neward, Oren Eini and Yves Goeleven about the future of the service bus. And the future is bright! Without much contention, the panel focused in on the advantages of message passing and creating coherent boundaries between application layers to make scaling and management much easier when building large applications. There is also a discussion about rendering the update of components asynchronous, so that not everyone has to be ready to upgrade at the same time - less big bang, more continuous delivery!

Fresh from the keynote at Tech Ed Europe in Barcelona, Jeremy Thake talks to Carl and Richard about the latest announcements around Office 365. The development story in the cloud continues to evolve, and Jeremy talks about the Office 365 APIs going into general availability, along with an Android SDK. The iOS SDK is right behind it, currently in preview and ready for you to start building apps for iPhone and iPad that work with Office 365. The story is huge - new programming models for Exchange and Sharepoint in the cloud mean its easier than ever to create automation and make your company's Office experience even better!

Carl and Richard talk to Jen Myers about user interface design on the web. The conversation starts out with a broad focus on what has been happening on the web with HTML 5 - the emergence of the Single Page Application (SPA) and the improvements on separation of data, structure and formatting. Jen focuses in on the challenges of the least mature of the trifecta of web applications - CSS. CSS is only at version 3; HTML and JavaScript are older and more mature. And while CSS3 is a pretty good version, there are still challenges there and there are tools to address them.

A Geek Out with a real astrophysicist! Carl and Richard get giddy geeky with the amazing Dr. Amber Straughn who is part of the Project Science team for the James Webb Space Telescope. Considered the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, Amber talks about how the JWST is bigger and different - with a six meter reflector and orbiting 1.5 million kilometres from Earth. The conversation digs into why the JWST is looking into the infrared spectrum, what the cosmological red shift is all about and a whole ton of other amazing concepts around what it means to look back in time to near the beginning of the universe!

Ready to be scared? Carl and Richard talk to Troy Hunt about the security concerns of the Internet of Things. Troy does what he does best - run down a series of scenarios with existing IoT devices like the LIFX Light Bulb and talk through how they can be exploited. Exploit a light bulb? Sure - to get access to your WiFi! The conversation explores key ideas for protecting your gear, why you need defence-in-depth and what a robust API really looks like - especially if you hack it first!

Carl and Richard talk to Miguel Castro about his work building modern web pages for his clients. After a couple of years working hard on WPF applications, coming over to the web world was a challenge - but as Miguel discovered, the MVVM pattern he used in WPF apps works great on the web as well! Miguel talks about working with Knockout and other libraries on his way to discovering a comfortable pattern of development using AngularJS and ASP.NET MVC together. That's right, using ASP.NET MVC to do MVVM page design! Miguel talks about how his approach to web pages creates something testable and maintainable, which is what you look for in a great business web site.

Carl and Richard talk to Jeff Palermo about building new applications without making the mistakes that end up creating legacy projects. The conversation starts out with Jeff describing ClearMeasure, his new organization focused on end-to-end services for his customers - Jeff considers his organization an outsourced IT department, handling development and operations. This leads to the topic of building sustainable applications. Jeff details key steps he takes to make better quality applications, many of which are simple steps like keeping individual code files small, having create source control and a plan for using that source control properly. He also talks about getting the infrastructure right at the beginning so that it's an asset to building software, not a liability. And when it comes to selecting technology for the project, the key measure is the certainty of success. Business software is pretty well understood these days, how do you build it as cost-effectively and reliably as possible?

While at the NSBConf in Brooklyn, Carl and Richard talk to Oren Eini about the latest version of RavenDB. Oren talks about the huge number of changes that have happened in version 3 of RavenDB - it's come a long way from a little transactional document store of years ago! The conversation digs into how the feature set was developed; Oren talks about digging into various customer projects to see how they have pushed his product in ways he had never considered before. The discussion also digs into other document stores, including Microsoft's recently announced Azure DocumentDB - and Oren is not that impressed, but it *is* a preview after all. Oren also talks about his views on MongoDB and what its strengths and weaknesses are. There are lots of different ways to store data, and you can pick the one that is right for you... there is no one way to do it!

Kate Gregory is back! Carl and Richard chat with Kate about the state of C++ today. The conversation starts out with a discussion about the recent C++ conference in Redmond that brought the best-and-brightest in the industry together to talk about how C++ is currently being used and how the standards can continue to evolve. Kate talks about the challenges of the language, how it is not typically used for CRUD apps, but rather applications that live on rovers on Mars, in games, in drivers, operating systems and a whole host of diverse platforms. That's what makes C++ amazing, it's everywhere! The discussion continues on how C++ does continue to evolve, adapt the best ideas from other language (looking at you, lambdas!) and today's code is dramatically different from just a few years ago. Check it out!

Carl and Richard talk to Jimmy Bogard about his experiences scaling an MVC web site to thousands of pages and thousands of users. The conversation starts out focused on why to use MVC - comparing original ASP with ASP.NET Web Forms and MVC. Jimmy talks about the early days of MVC and the challenges of making a very new product work, but in exchange for some substantial benefits - but perhaps not the ones you'd think! Jimmy also digs into scaling an MVC web site across multiple servers, dealing with state management (Session is evil!) and what you can do to web pages to keep them performing well with large numbers of users. The discussion also moves to managing huge number of pages and developing patterns for UI and object naming to simplify development and testing. Automation is key when you're working at scale!

Carl and Richard talk to Jim Holmes about managing technical debt - while still getting your work done. The conversation starts out talking about what exactly technical debt is... it's not just the code you're afraid of! Jim also digs into the business justification for reducing technical debt, focused on how you can show the cost of your technical debt in the form of tech support or how it slows down the development of new features. Once you've got cycles for mitigating technical debt, how do you go about it? Remember that this was the code you were afraid of in the first place, so tackling it takes time and care to do well. Jim digs into how to split your time between new features (and keep the lights on) as well as retiring the technical debt in your organization. After all, getting too deeply in debt is also a way to turn out the lights on your business - you need a plan to fight back!

While at the NSBCon in Brooklyn, New York, Carl and Richard talk to Udi Dahan about CQRS. CQRS is the acronym for Command and Query Responsibility Segregation. Udi begins the conversation talking a bit about the history of CQRS and how it derived from Bertrand Meyer's work on CQS back in the 80s. The cornerstone of CQRS is a separation between commands (insert/update/delete) and querying in databases - not just relational databases, of course, but certainly the focus is there. The power of the pattern is its ability to handle huge volumes of data in both directions, simplifying application design as the load increases. Great thinking from Udi as usual!

Carl and Richard talk to Steve DelBianco about taxation and software development - including the new Marketplace Fairness Act. But first the focus is on the history of sales tax, which as Steve explains, is focused on physical goods transacted in person. The first crisis of sales tax came in the 30s when catalog sales became popular and more consumers starting buying products from other states. This presents the idea of Use Tax, effective a self-declared sales tax collection process for good you buy out-of-state. Yeah, that's right, you're suppose to assess sales tax on yourself! Steve has been involved for more than a decade in the effort to modernize sales taxes to handle internet sales, which leads to the current situation around the Marketplace Fairness Act - which is not at all what the name should be. The states are trying to garner the right to collect taxes and demand from anyone in any state - and this law might actually pass! Check out the links below for ways to make your voice heard.

Carl and Richard talk to Lino Tadros about his viewpoint on doing mobile development using the plethora of cross-platform development tools available today. First up - Xamarin's tools for building iOS and Android apps. Windows Phone also makes an appearance, especially with Xamarin Forms. The Xamarin stack continues to evolve and improve, and Lino is pretty impressed. Then it's over to the HTML/JavaScript world of Adobe Cordova, with implementations in Visual Studio as well as the Telerik Platform. Lino talks about its strengths around working beyond even the three top mobile platforms for when you really want to deal with the long tail, but the implementations vary a bit, leading to the ecosystem of plugins to fill in the gaps. Both these approaches work, Lino focuses in on the skillsets needed, and reminds of the reality - there is no cross-platform solution out there that doesn't demand you understand the platforms you're working with.

Carl and Richard talk to Ben Watson about his work around writing high performance .NET code. Ben talks about how the Bing team decided to use .NET code internally, which seems like an obvious choice for a Microsoft group, but it isn't really - when milliseconds count, does .NET makes sense? Ben says it does, and he's done the work to prove it. Ben's book "Writing High Performance .NET Code" focuses not only on coding techniques, but also the larger practice of having a deep understanding of how .NET works, and the processes that take place to turn .NET code into machine code. The conversation also digs deeply into the need for performance measurement, especially Event Tracing for Windows. .NET can be fast when you do it right!

Carl and Richard talk to Mårten Rånge about his efforts to contribute to the open source project that is F#. F# is really open source and taking public contributions, but as Mårten explains, it's not that simple. You need to get engaged with the project on CodePlex and actually get to know the team and where the project is at to hope to make a difference there. As Mårten says, everyone is very nice, but they do have a vision of where the project is going - and you can contribute to that vision! The conversation digs into what it takes to actually build your own version of F# as well as the art of making a contribution to a project that will ultimately be delivered in Visual Studio. This is just the start for Mårten, and perhaps for you also!

Carl and Richard talk to Trevan Hetzel about writing CSS code to do JavaScript work in modern web pages. When you're a coder, you tend to code. When you're a designer, you're more likely to style. Trevan discusses the many things that CSS can do that most coders tend to write JavaScript for instead. And once you see what's possible in CSS, the question drills in on - is this a good idea? Are we writing JavaScript that is better served as a behaviour in a style? Where do you want your stuff to live? Trevan also digs into a bunch of great tools for taking your CSS to a higher level, check them out in the show notes!

Carl and Richard chat with Mike Hostetler about his work with Node.js and the Sails.js MVC Framework. The conversation starts out with a recap of Node itself, how it takes on the web services problem with a minimal footprint at first, and how you can add in the bits you need with the Node Packaged Manager. Then Mike digs into Sails.js, an MVC framework to help you build well-structure web pages in JavaScript against Node on the backend - JavaScript everywhere! The discussion also deals with the state of the Node community, including the announced departure of TJ Holowaychuk, one of the most prolific Node library developers out there. Node is moving into the mainstream, have you checked it out? Lots of links below!

Once more into the breech for the last of the fusion power GeekOuts, at least for now. Carl and Richard dive into the most controversial aspect of fusion power, so-called "cold fusion." This is a sensitive topic in the scientific community, so much so that it's name changes on a regular basis. The current popular name is Low Energy Nuclear Reactions. And the name is a big deal - Richard starts off the conversation by digging into the idea that there is more than one kind of cold fusion. Then the history lesson starts, with a study of what led up to the dramatic announcement by Fleischmann and Pons in March of 1989 - and the catastrophic fallout that led to the concept of "pathological science" and forcing it essentially underground. So what's real and what is snake oil? Is there something to cold fusion after all? The answers, as always, are complex and interesting!

Carl and Richard chat with IdeaBlade man Ward Bell about the latest in Breeze and the whole concept of building web clients that can function in a disconnected state. It's possible with modern browsers to store information locally, which can help your web app survive an intermittent connection. Ward talks about how Breeze, his open source tool for caching, validation and querying, helps solve the disconnected problem. The challenge is finding the right patterns of development so that you don't have to litter your code with connectivity testing, just handle failures when they come without losing the user's work. Easy, right?

Carl and Richard talk to Kathleen Dollard about her deep dive into Roslyn. The conversation starts out with a great question from a listener about using Roslyn to step into the compiler and understand how syntax trees would look... and what the potential for visualization is. Kathleen talks about her own open source project RoslynDom to help understand what's going on inside of Roslyn. The discussion also gets into some of the cool new capabilities coming in the next version of Visual Studio, and how Microsoft has changed the shipping process entirely - it's not the Studio you once knew!

Carl and Richard chat with Robert Bogue about the adventure that is requirements gathering. The conversation starts out with a sharing of war stories, talking about finding the right people to talk to in order to understand the overall application requirements in general, much less individual specifications. Robert talks a bit about a variety of techniques for requirements gathering, referencing some of the Agile Manifesto in the process, but recognizing that requirements themselves are largely methodology independent - it just takes relentless investigation and a goal of thoroughly understanding the system. Check out Robert's videos on Pluralsight!

Carl and Richard talk to Paul Sheriff about his work building mobile web apps using ASP.NET WebForms. Yeah, that's right, WebForms! Paul talks about the problems with WebForms and how they can be overcome with some careful configuration and understanding of how WebForms really works. The conversation digs into adding Responsive Web Design to a WebForms page to make it work well on a mobile browser using Twitter's BootStrap - and also how to use WrapBootStrap to make your pages not look like BootStrap pages. Not every mobile web app should be a WebForms app, but it makes sense in some cases - Paul compares approaches to help you choose!

Carl and Richard chat with Dan Wahlin about his latest open source project, building a Single Page Application (SPA) using AngularJS interfacing with Microsoft Azure Active Directory Services (MAAD) and Office 365 API. Called OfficeDev and published on GitHub, this project demonstrates interacting with Office documents, Sharepoint and traditional enterprise authentication systems from within a browser. Dan discusses the thinking behind the project and some of the more challenging parts to it - but you can check all that out for yourself on GitHub, the code is all published.

Time for some more IoT! Pete Brown checks in with Carl and Richard to talk about Microsoft's continuing announcements in the Internet of Things space. The conversation starts out with a discussion about Pete's work in the music side of things and the Windows 8 API for MIDI - helping musicians use a Windows 8 tablet as the hub of a music system. Then it's on to several important announcements, including the implementation of C# with the Intel Galileo board, and the announcement of two new hardware platforms: SharksCove, which is essentially a tablet-sized prototyping platform and MinnowBoard, a Arduino-sized board running actual Intel hardware and capable of running a full version of Windows and .NET! The hardware is getting amazing, and your .NET skills are even more valuable!

Carl and Richard talk to Glenn Howes about Apple's new programming language for IoS and MacOS: Swift. As Glenn explains, Swift builds on the same compiler that Apple's Objective-C uses (LLVM), but optimizes a number of key aspects that were known to be slow. Swift goes beyond performance improvements to add language features like generics, type safety and more! The conversation also digs into the future of Swift running on Mac OS X as well, which then digs into the differences between apps on the iPad and apps on the Mac. Great Apple conversation!

Carl and Richard talk to Bill Wagner about some of the features coming in C# 6.0. The conversation starts with the history - the internal Microsoft project known as Roslyn has become an open source project on Codeplex. Bill runs down a number of cool features coming in C# 6.0, including primary constructors, improvements to Await and more. No idea when the shipping date is, but C# 6.0 is in the Visual Studio 2014 CTPs and is available for download any time you like!

Carl and Richard talk to GitHub denizen and former Microsoftie Phil Haack about what it means to build open source software. The conversation starts off with a reminder that back in Phil's Microsoft days, he was a huge advocate of taking various Microsoft products open source - and today it's actually happening! Phil may have moved on to GitHub, but the spirit of open source has permeated the web team at Microsoft, the ultimate manifestation being ASP.NET vNext! So what about your projects? What does it takes to make them open source, and what benefits can you expect?

Carl and Richard circle back with Mark Miller for a whirlwind discussion on the biology of user interface design. Actually, it's the biology of humans as it relates to UI, focusing (no pun intended) on the eyes - how exactly does eyesight work? What cultural and psychological conditioning affects how you see? And ultimately, how can we apply the understanding of eyesight to make applications that are easier to use, easier to understand, and more enjoyable? Mark has years of experience in building great UI, and has distilled the core elements down to the biology of the user!

Carl and Richard talk to Daniel Piessens about building continuous delivery solutions. The conversation starts out with an explanation of the differences between continuous integration, deployment, and delivery - and the fact that there are business decisions to deal with there, not just technical decisions! Daniel also digs into the challenges around getting Operations deeply involved in the testing process so that they have control over features as they are developed and can be turned off and on of your canary servers when needed. Lots of cool thinking about the future of software development with DevOps practices.

Carl and Richard talk to Denise Jacobs about creativity. Denise starts out talking about her work with developers, mostly focused around understanding just how creative the software development process is. The conversation digs into the idea that flow state, which has been a talking point in a number of shows of late... is it inherently a creative state? Denise also digs into the battle with your internal critic, how to stop that critic from holding you back. Lots of personal empowerment thoughts, writing your goals down, experiments with improv, and more - it's a creative world!

Carl and Richard talk to Chris Love about building mobile web apps for the enterprise. The conversation starts out with a reference to a comment made on a previous show about the problems with web apps not being built well enough for your device - that they feel too webby. And Chris agrees - it's very challenging to build a web app that feels great on a mobile device. So what's the problem? Chris digs deep into what it takes to make web pages render fast and clean on phones and the biggest bugbear of them all - building a great, compatible touch interface for a web app on a mobile device.

Carl and Richard talk to Julie Lerman and Steve Smith about the fundamentals of Domain Driven Design (DDD). Julie and Steve have collaborated on a very popular Pluralsight course about DDD that has made the methodology more approachable for more people. The conversation digs into the fact that DDD has been around for more than a decade, but hasn't caught on near as much as it should - and why is that? There's at least one alphabet soup moment: What about DDD, BDD, TDD, PDD, ADDDD and SJDD? Listen to the show for definitions of these acronyms and more!

Well, here we go - the second installation of the fusion power geek out. While the first show focused on the "Big Science" fusion power projects like NIF and ITER, this time around Richard digs into smaller hybrid projects, like General Fusions Magnetized Target Fusion as well as Colliding Beam Fusion Reactors being built by Helion Energy and Tri Alpha Energy. These fusion approaches combine magnetic and inertial plasma confinement to make fusion a little less extreme and more manageable - with more focus on how to actually make electricity. Also, they seem to be funded by tech billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Paul Allen. Is that a good thing or bad? Is this stuff all snake oil? There's more to talk about!

Carl and Richard chat with Scott Hunter about how Microsoft is working to evolve web development for ASP.NET developers. While the focus of the discussion is on ASP.NET vNext, you can't talk web without also talking cloud, and that means Azure. Scott digs into many of the new features in Azure that can make a web developer's life easier, before digging into ASP.NET vNext. No punches are pulled - vNext represents some breaking changes, especially for web forms developers. But web forms continues to be supported and added to in future versions of ASP.NET, just not at the rate that vNext is capable of. ASP.NET developers? Have a listen!

Carl and Richard talk to Seth Juarez about the latest developments in the machine learning space for the Microsoft space. The conversation starts out focused on Seth's open source library for doing machine learning in .NET. Seth talks about the challenges of getting your head around machine learning, building models and testing data. Then the discussion turns to the Azure Machine Learning tools, at the moment in preview. This can greatly simplify your experiments with machine learning, providing a huge range of tools for novices and experts a like. It's an exciting time for machine learning, you should check it out!

Carl and Richard chat with Dan Rosenstein about his work bringing the Windows Developer Program for Internet of Things (IoT) to life. The conversation starts out with a discussion about Microsoft's focus on IoT and the recognition that this a thing that is happening, and developers need tools to be productive. Dan focuses on the work Microsoft has done with Intel's Galileo device, which can work with Arduino, but uses a full x86 chipset. And while there isn't .NET available for the system yet, "one could speculate" that this is coming. Check out the links below to get involved!

Carl and Richard chat with Rick Strahl about his latest efforts to build mobile web applications. The conversation starts out with a recap of the continuing debate about native vs web on mobile devices. As Rick says, there are no easy answers there. Every approach to cross-platform development (and different browsers on different phones represent different platforms) have compromises that need to be made. There is no "one size fits all" available. But the web continues to evolve, and Rick is optimistic that it is all coming together. Also, check out his open source, free-to-download web load testing tool!

Carl and Richard talk to Mike Wood about migrating your applications to Azure. The conversation starts out thinking through the fundamentals of working in the cloud - how architecture and deployment are different. This inevitably leads to the hardest debate: Is your organization okay with data in the cloud? After that, Mike gets into some of the more interesting angles on cloud development - actually using virtual machines for your development environment. Is it cloud or is it virtual? Is there a difference? And a great list of resources for getting started with Azure!

Carl and Richard talk to Adam Tornhill about his work understanding the psychology of programming. The conversation starts out with some thinking around getting into "the flow," being able to focus effectively on programming. Adam then digs into where bugs come from and the role of complexity in code. He has been studying code repositories to determine where bugs are likely to appear based on the idea that complex code changes more than simple code. The discussion also explores the idea that while coding parallel code is challenging, parallel development is even harder - can you really get multiple people working on the same project at the same time? You think you do, but do you really! Time to study your source tracking system!

Carl and Richard talk to Rocky Lhotka about what it means to build modern apps today. In past shows, Rocky has been pretty frustrated with the native development options and focused primarily on web development with HTML 5 and JavaScript. But things on the native side have gotten better, and Rocky talks about his experiences with Xamarin and the potential of the universal app template in Visual Studio. Could native be making a comeback? Rocky talks about the advantages of the native model with cross-platform development techniques and a sense of an improving future. It's a fun time to be a developer!

Carl and Richard chat with Jeff Fritz about ASP.NET vNext - and yes, ASP.NET is now open source! So what does that really mean for ASP.NET developers? Jeff digs into the impact of taking open source on the development process of ASP.NET and how we can all get more involved! This leads to a discussion about the expanding reach of .NET into other platforms such as Linux using OWIN and Katana, and the Microsoft stack being a friendly place for developers of all kinds to hang out. Azure is also a big part of the future web story, and Jeff digs into the cloud-optimized stack and how you can get your web app there.

In what is likely to become a multi-part series, Richard and Carl chat about fusion power, focused on the "hot" side of fusion - megaprojects like the National Ignition Facility (NIF) and the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). But first, a review of what is actually involved in fusing atoms together and how it differs from fission (as discussed in the older nuclear power shows. Richard then delves into a quick history lesson of power demand and why we need fusion as well as the stories of the first nuclear fusion projects before hitting the big time: NIF and ITER. Do they work? Will they work? Does it make sense? What is the impact of Big Science (tm) on getting science actually done?

Carl and Richard talk to Atley Hunter about how he monetizes phone apps. A newcomer to .NET Rocks, Atley was a regular guest on the TabletShow and has talked about monetization before - but now he's learned even more techniques! Atley talks about the advantages of in-app purchases over try-before-you-buy, as well as asking for donations. He also digs into the idea that you can offer a variety of prices and how to encourage your customers to spend more! Lots of great thinking on how to make an income from your apps from one of the masters!

Carl and Richard talk to Daniel Simmons about his work with PasTrak, building RFID tools for small businesses. The first half of the conversation focuses on what RFID is all about - different types of tags, scanners, security concerns, and so on. There's a lot of choice out there when it comes to RFID and its cousin Near Field Communications (NFC). Then Danny digs into the coding side of things - the various APIs you work with to handle different readers, how your code responds, how to deal with duplicate data and data overload...all the fun things that happen when you interact with the real world!

Carl and Richard chat with David Graham about what it takes to create a new developer. David starts out the conversation talking about the shortage of developers today, and how the shortage is getting worse, not better. This leads to a conversation about existing training approaches, such as a four-year computer science degree. While we all agree that the best way to learn to program is to actually program, what are the best tools to start out with? How do you get out into the industry and continue to grow?

Carl and Richard talk to Jason and Brian Kriesel about their work building Amazon Fire Tablet applications. The conversation starts off talking about the differences between the Android world and the Amazon world - they aren't that far apart! The brothers Kriesel talk about what it takes to maintain an application that runs in regular Android tablets and phones as well as the Amazon Fire world - what features Amazon brings to the table and the strengths of their platform and app store. The discussion also digs into the new Amazon Fire Phone and the concerns around the FireFly SDK. There are pluses and minuses to all the platforms!

Carl and Richard talk to Michelle Smith about building great development teams. Michelle talks about what a great team looks like, the differences in productivity and focus. This leads to a conversation about team building, creating trust within the team and dealing with remote workers - how do you create trust when you can't see each other. Then there's the process of recruiting and interviewing, where Michelle focuses on the interaction with the team even more than technical skills. Great teams don't just happen, but how much management does a great development team need?

On the last day of the NDC 2014 Conference in Oslo, Carl and Richard assembled a panel of speakers: Robert Virding, Steve Sanderson, Venkat Subramaniam, and Anthony Eden. The discussion focused initially on the motivations around building software, but ultimately evolved into the best way to build sustainable software. Is the profit motive for software development a good one? What about open source? How do you know when your software is 'done?' How do you decide what features to add and what to leave out or even remove? Great thinking from a remarkable set of minds!

Carl and Richard talk to Rob Eisenberg about the crazy changes going on in his life - starting with joining Google! Rob talks about meeting the AngularJS folks at the ng-conf conference and deciding that upcoming versions of DurandalJS and AngularJS are on a collision course. So why duplicate effort? Rob talks about the significant rethinking going on with AngularJS 2.0 to be more effective in mobile environments, dealing with rendering performance and connectivity issues. The whole process is taking place in public on GitHub. You should check it out!

While at NDC, Carl and Richard chat with Troy Hunt about specific common web security breaches and things you can do about them. The conversation starts out with a continuation of an earlier show, talking about the vulnerabilities around open WiFi connections. From there, Troy talks about the most common breach of them all - SQL Injection. Yes, it's still a problem. Troy also digs into the importance of transport layer security, typically using SSL. There's a reason all the big web sites have switched to HTTPS all of the time. Maybe it's something you should consider also?

While at NDC is Oslo, Carl and Richard talk to Martin Jul about the state of visual computing technology today. As Martin says, the future is very bright - amazing free libraries are now available that make it simple to do image and character recognition with all sorts of cameras, even one on the Raspberry PI! The conversation digs into a project that Martin built to identify when the pizza guy is at his front door, exploring what it takes to recognize a pizza box in video. There are digital cameras everywhere today, shouldn't we be building apps to take advantage of them?

While at NDC in Oslo, Carl and Richard talked to Nik Molnar and Anthony van der Hoorn about instrumenting web application. Of course the conversation starts out with a catch-up on Glimpse, the awesome session-based instrumentation tool for your web pages. Then the conversation moves to looking at instrumentation end-to-end on web applications, in the aggregate, so that you can see where your pain points are and where to focus your attention on tuning. Nik talks about starting at the high level view point so that you focus on the right things - it's not always about the code!

Carl and Richard chat with Paul Stovell, one of the principals behind Octopus Deploy. Octopus Deploy is all about getting your organization to continuous delivery - by automating every step. Paul talks about how the product came to be, from the frustrations he was having with deployment using Word documents and remote desktop. Octopus Deploy is free to download and use for small projects. Once you're addicted to one-button deployment, you can pay for larger projects and teams. And under the hood, it's technologies like PowerSshell that make it all work. This is a great addition to your DevOps toolkit.

While at the Norwegian Developers Conference in Oslo, Norway, Carl and Richard talk with Mark Seemann about his thinking around how developers 'get into the zone.' As Mark explains, this behavior isn't all that unusual - psychologists call it 'flow,' and it is a common state for athletes, musicians, writers and more. The conversation digs into the truth around flow, primarily that it doesn't guarantee productivity. Mark discusses techniques for getting into flow faster, so that you're less sensitive to interruption, and the conversation ultimately spins into thinking around how we can practice more effectively using flow and put in the hours it takes to become truly proficient in our area of focus. Throughout the conversation there are references to great books you should read - check the links!

Celebrate the millennium with us in this special episode of .NET Rocks! We do a little looking back, a little looking around and a little looking forward. Jason Olson joins us for a mini-show about audio and MIDI in Windows - and an epic giveaway. Mary Jo Foley shares her story of how the world is a better place because of .NET Rocks!, as do you, our listeners! You told us your stories of success, and now it's your turn to shine.

Carl and Richard talk to Stephen Forte about the continuing evolution of wearables and their role in the workplace. The conversation starts out focused on the most visible of the wearables today - Google Glass. Does it have a role in the enterprise? That's a tricky concept. Steve talks about retail and more industrial applications, places where workers in motion get additional contextual information to improve their work. Human instrumentation is a big part of the wearable market as well, like FitBit. Steve talks about making sure workers move enough - not sitting too long, not walking too far, and so on. And there's more instrumentation to talk about, check out the links in the show notes!

Well here we go - a tough geek out topic if ever there was one. The most requested Geek Out we haven't done yet: nuclear weapons! Starting back before World War II, Richard digs into the science history that created the first proposals for nuclear weapons. The war ultimately provided the catalyst in the form of the Manhattan Project, culminating in the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Then the story continues into thermonuclear weapons and other variations. What defense is there against nukes? And what about non-proliferation and arms reductions treaties? How safe is the world today from nukes?

While at NDC, Carl and Richard chat with Cory House about his experiences building Single Page Applications for the automotive industry. Cory talks about the challenges of the industry, including supporting both IE7 and IE8 running on Windows XP and iPad devices. Quite a span of technology there! The conversation digs into UI design, the integration of third party services and meeting the expectations of a customer that is not all that focused on technology. Cory digs into the idea of SPA as a classic desktop application replacement - it can be done!

While at NDC, Carl and Richard talk to Michael 'Doc' Norton about his experiences figuring out the right metrics to measure in productivity of a development team. The discussion focuses in on the key issue - that velocity is a dangerous metric. As Doc explains, pushing developers to do more features per sprint creates serious problems. So what measures make sense? Great thinking around what makes people productive, what impairs productivity, and how to do the right things the right way.

While at NDC in Oslo, Carl and Richard talked to Bryan Hunter about his experiences building communities around functional programming. Bryan talks about the transformative moment he had first encountering functional code in the form of an Erlang service. The conversation digs into the thinking around the weaknesses of object orientation, it's motivations and the idea that maybe, today, it is obsolete. Is functional programming really the way? Bryan discusses how communities are forming around functional that are inspiring and forward thinking. Maybe it's time for a change?

While at NDC is Oslo, Carl and Richard talked to Chris Hardy about Xamarin's latest work - Xamarin.Forms. As Chris explains, Xamarin.Forms brings a XAML-like experience to building forms for iOS, Android and Windows Phone. The conversation focuses in on what Xamarin.Forms is best suited for, when you should stick to the standard class based tools for building clients, and what it takes to have 100% code sharing. Is it worth it? Depends! Chris also digs into the role of MVVMCross in Xamarin development as well as Xamarin Test Cloud and University. Cool stuff from the Xamarin team as usual!

While at NDC in Oslo, Carl and Richard chat with Dominick Baier and Brock Allen about their latest thinking on consumer and enterprise identity solutions. Dominick talks about the conflict between WS-Federation, the confusion that is OAuth2 and how OpenID-Connect is bringing them together in a better solution. Brock digs into how a centralized security service simplifies coding for developers as well as strengthening the overall security of the system. Overall, the news is good - granular authentication and authorization is getting easier to implement, deploy and manage.

Carl and Richard chat with Anthony Eden about his work creating DNSimple and the languages he uses to create awesome. Yeah, the boys fangirl a bit on DNSimple, since they do love it so. But so what? It's a great product and you should use it. Anthony talks about his inspiration for building DNSimple, his experiences working in Erlang to build parts of the server, as well as Google's super-cool language Go. This is what polyglot programming is all about - using the best languages for the job.

Carl and Richard bring Stuart Lodge back to talk about the latest development in MvvmCross. Previously on The Tablet Show, Stuart talked about how he helped lead the MvvmCross open source project to make cross platform mobile applications easier to build. Now as MvvmCross moves into its third version, the number of contributors has jumped and its capabilities have also. Check out the awesome links for more info on MvvmCross!

Carl and Richard talk to Clemens Vasters about his latest work at Microsoft around making the Internet of Things (IoT). Clemens starts with a definition of IoT, describing massive numbers of devices sharing data seamlessly... and confusing people at the same time. What's an IoT device and what isn't? The conversation digs into the challenges around connectivity, thinking through the architecture and security necessary to deal with huge numbers of occasionally connected devices with data demands - such as cars! The foundations are being laid to bring IoT to life, have you got your head around the ideas?

Carl and Richard talk to Shawn Wildermuth about his experiences in code reviews - what good and bad reviews look like and what he's learned reviewing lots of different projects. Shawn runs down the challenges of team dynamics when it comes to code reviews, how some folks don't dare show their code, and how to get past those types of hurdles. Then the conversation turns to the brass tacks - common problems, different styles of coding, and so on. The more code you look at, the more you learn!

Carl and Richard talk to Amir Rajan about an amazing tale of getting to the number one spot on the Apple App Store! The app in question is called A Dark Room, a simple text-based game with an awesome story and experience. Originally a web game, Amir helped build an iOS version of the game. The conversation then digs into all the subtle things done in the game to help encourage players to promote it - when to ask for a review, when to put the game on sale, the impact of magazine reviews of the game, and more!

Carl and Richard chat with Vishwas Lele about the architectural patterns of cloud development. Vishwas talks about how the cloud influences application design, focused on more asynchronous, scalable and flexible messaging focused architecture. While the patterns could be applied to any cloud technology, Microsoft Azure is particularly well-suited to these architectural patterns, providing services that cover each pattern approach for optimal results.

Carl and Richard chat with SharePoint legend Ted Pattison about his experiences with the latest version of SharePoint. Microsoft is pushing hard to make SharePoint a service that you pay by the month for - but is that what customers actually want? Ted discusses his customer's ongoing focus with on-premise SharePoint, how development models are evolving, and the best opportunities for developers going forward. Ted sees SharePoint changing significantly in the next few years - both users and developers will be impacted.

Carl and Richard chat with Jonathan Peppers about his experiences building phone games for different languages and cultures. The conversation starts out talking about Jon's game Draw a Stickman, originally made for the US market. The game was also very popular in China, but as a pirated game. Jon tells the story of how they evolved Draw a Stickman to be a free game with in-game purchases and culturally oriented for China to make it profitable and successful there. Can your game be successful across multiple countries and cultures?

Carl and Richard chat with Brian Randell about the latest version of Team Foundation Server and it's ability to support a DevOps practice in your organization. The conversation starts off with Brian's thoughts on DevOps in general, focusing on automation of deployment and package management. Brian also talks about the role of the cloud in building software fast, as well as the challenges around instrumentation in production. While the tools are still evolving, Microsoft is making some serious strides - you should check them out!

Carl and Richard welcome coffee roaster Hugh Griffin to chat about liquid sleep, otherwise known as coffee. Coffee has a *ahem* rich history, and while we know what we like, many of us don't know our blonde from our Sumatra from our Colombian. So pour a cup and listen up!

While at DevIntersection in Orlando, Florida, Carl and Richard chat with Douglas Crockford about the better parts of JavaScript. Douglas wrote <b>JavaScript the Good Parts</b> back in 2008 and was a key influencer in making JavaScript the important language it has become. The conversation digs into the strengths and weaknesses of JavaScript and how it is evolving. Douglas also talks a bit about JSON and the wonders of not recreating the wheel. Great thinking from one of the important minds of the Web today!

Carl and Richard chat with Christian Weyer about his experiences working with cloud technologies in Germany. The conversation starts out pretty grim, digging into how the NSA revelations have chilled interest in cloud technology because of security and privacy concerns. Christian talks about how the technology of Azure is more compelling than ever, but customers just aren't willing to use it. This leads to a conversation about Windows Azure Pack for Windows Server, which brings many Azure technologies to your own internal networks. There's a number of different ways to use Windows Azure Pack, including as a self-service portal to provide testing infrastructure for developers - talk to your ops folks and try it out!

Carl and Richard chat with Mary Jo Foley about her impressions at Build. The Build conference in San Francisco had six hours worth of keynotes including the first keynote given by new CEO Satya Nadella. MJ talks about what she saw as most important at Build, including Windows 8.1 Update, Phone 8.1, the Internet of Things and more! Ultimately, the conversation focuses in on how Microsoft is changing and what MJ is looking forward to for Microsoft in 2014.

While at DevIntersection in Orlando, Carl and Richard talk to Billy Hollis about WPF. Having established that WPF is not dead a few weeks back at Build, Billy admits that he's never stopped developing for it. His work is all about client applications, and HTML just won't do. The discussion digs deep into user interaction patterns that WPF is strong at and how user interfaces and interactions continue to evolve. Touch is not the end of the road!

Carl and Richard talk to Francesco Balena about migrating VB6 applications to .NET. Yes, that's still happening! With Microsoft ending support for Windows XP in April 2014, folks that have been hanging onto old platforms and applications are taking another look at migrating. Francesco makes an amazing tool called VB Migration Partner that analyzes VB6 apps to identify what parts of an application can be converted into VB.NET (or C#) and what parts need to be rewritten. While migration is never simple, Francesco provides great advice on how to make it possible. Still got some VB6 in your life?

Carl and Richard chat with James Montemagno about his experiences building Xamarin applications. But first, a little history, James first getting involved in mobile development, finding Xamarin, culminating with being hired by Xamarin and going on the road trip with .NET Rocks! James talks about the kinds of apps he's been building using the tools, how he organizes his projects for cross-platform development, what's in his toolbox and what he's adding to the community-at-large to help developers be successful.

Carl and Richard talk to Udi Dahan about the state of NServiceBus. NServiceBus is Udi's on-going development effort to make the development and maintenance of complex, distributed systems easier. The conversation digs into how developers fall into the N+1 trap of adding more and more interactions between different applications until the system becomes unmanageable - or force the interaction to take place at the very back end of the system, like the database, leading to slow interactions and complexity in the database that shouldn't be there. Whether you use NServiceBus or not, Udi's thinking on bus-based application design will open your eyes!

Carl and Richard talk to Tim Thomas about his thoughts around holistic design. And Tim means it - thinking about all levels of design, not just the UI, but how the whole application goes together. The conversation digs into the debate around skeuomorphism and how technology users themselves are evolving. Lots of broad thinking about the state of technology and how to best interact with your users to inspire and delight!

Carl and Richard talk to Neil Black from the XBox team about SmartGlass. SmartGlass is Microsoft's technology for utilizing smartphones and tablets as an extension of the XBox. Neil talks about the various roles that the 'second screen' can play in XBox applications and games. The conversation digs into how SmartGlass works with television events to create a more social experience, how you can provide secret information to game players on an otherwise shared screen, and more! If you're up for doing some SmartGlass development, grab the SDK, the link is included in the show links!

While at DevIntersection in Orlando, Carl and Richard sat down to chat with Zoiner Tejada about his work instrumenting cloud-based web sites. Zoiner talks about using a wide variety of features in Google Analytics to instrument his Azure apps, including going directly to the Analytics APIs to do instrumentation of other kinds of apps, connecting up just about anything that can speak HTTP! The second half of the conversation dives into utilizing this analysis - with a long chat about what a real Minimal Viable Product means and how the Lean Startup principles can be abused. Great conversation from a brilliant guy!

Carl and Richard chat with Brian Noyes about the state of affairs with WPF, Windows 8 and the Prism project. Brian starts out the conversation talking about WPF is far from dead - Microsoft continues to invest in it, and lots of folks, including Brian's customers, are building great applications with WPF. This leads to a discussion about how the changes to Windows 8 at Build affect the WPF story and development in general - a huge topic area that warrants a bunch more shows. Finally, Brian digs into Prism, Microsoft Patterns and Practice group toolset for building great Windows apps for all sorts of versions of Windows, including Windows 8. Prism has moved beyond Silverlight, and is worth a serious look!

Carl and Richard talk to Burke Holland about building mobile apps. But the conversation starts out with an announcement - Telerik's KendoUI is going open source! Burke talks a bit about the history of KendoUI and how it has evolved over the years, including a KendoUI Mobile (which is also open source). That leads to a discussion about mobile development as a whole, including his preferred tools and styles for building apps across different mobile platforms, comparing native, hybrid and web development on the smartphone and where tablets fit into this story.

Carl and Richard chat with Richard Astbury about the Microsoft Research project known as Orleans. Orleans brings the Actor model of development to C# - the Actor model is typically found in functional languages, but you can write functional C#, so why not? Richard talks about Orleans being used to run Halo 4, where hundreds of thousands of players connected with each other between hundreds of Azure instances. Orleans was officially released into the wild at Microsoft Build. Looking at scalable software strategies? Take a look at Orleans!

Carl and Richard go back to space with Uncle Bob! What started at NDC last Fall finishes today! But first, a quick conversation about an episode with Alan Stevens around the software craftsmanship movement, which Uncle Bob is a key part of. Then off to interstellar space! Bob pulls no punches, jumping straight into why nuclear technologies are key to significant space travel. Lots of history in this show too, talking about NERVA engines, Project Orion, Bussard Ram Engines and more! No warp drives or wormholes, what could we build today to go to another star?

Carl and Richard talk to John Papa about the current state of Single Page Application development. John digs into his latest focus on libraries, the constant evolution in the Javascript world, and how AngularJS is still a big pile of awesome. The conversation also turns a bit philosophical, with a discussion of Javascript being the assembly language of the web, and how languages like Dart, CoffeeScript and TypeScript create abstractions over assembly language to make web applications more maintainable.

Carl and Richard chat with Nicholas Blumhardt about his work on Serilog, a structured logging tool. But first, the conversation dives a bit into Octopus Deploy, an awesome tool for helping you manage your application packages and help deploy them to testing, pre-production, production, and so on. Then on to the main event - Nicholas' amazing Serilog product. Logging is a pain, and Serilog makes it as painless as possible - one line per log entry, and configuration to write your log anywhere: text files, other logging products, even Event Tracing for Windows!

Carl and Richard talk to Hugh Jones about EU Data Protection laws. But first, a long discussion about the NSA revelations and the surveillance culture we're living in today. Hugh talks about the evolving perceptions around privacy and how data needs to be better protected. From there, Hugh dives into the EU Data Protection laws, which apply not only to companies doing business in the EU, but companies outside of the EU that are handling EU citizen data. The focus is on personally identifiable information - what is it, how do you handle it, how do you protect it, when does it become too risky to keep. Good thinking around data protection!

The first of the new Tablet Shows as .NET Rocks episodes, Carl and Richard talk to Scott Allen about the continued evolution of JavaScript. The conversation starts out with a comment from a listener about a past show with Scott on Modernizr, and Scott talks about how things have changed since then - the focus on newer browsers (if IE9 counts as new) means that the tool needs change. Scott also talks about what new features are moving into the browser, reducing the library load your web page needs. Is the browser becoming a smart client platform?

A flash from the past! Carl and Richard chat with Robert Scoble! Carl and Robert go back to the VBits days and the beginning of the public internet, the first blogs and Robert's time at Microsoft. Then the conversation turns briefly to Robert's work at Rackspace and their attempt to make the cloud even better. Robert also talks about his book the Age of Context, the stories they collected to create the book and a vision of the future!

Carl and Richard talk to Marcel de Vries about CodedUI - the test functionality built into Visual Studio that nobody knows about. CodedUI tests are tests built to automatically operate your UI so that you can test your application top-to-bottom, no short cuts. Marcel talks about how CodedUI tests are actually built using a test recorder and then tweaking the tests to increase coverage. You can build tables of data to use for entry to challenge boundary testing, add additional assertions and validations - it's very clever! If you own Visual Studio 2013, you need to check this out!

Carl and Richard chat with Micheal Learned about modern release management with Visual Studio. The conversation starts like many do when it comes to ALM: what's hard, and what's easy. And let's face it - releasing software properly is often hard! Micheal talks about the various pitfalls that folks fall into around releasing software and how today's environment just won't tolerate those mistakes any more. This leads to a discussion about release pipelines (check out the great doc in the show notes) and Microsoft's acquisition of InRelease by InCycle Software. If you've got an MSDN license, you have to take a look at Release Management! And if you don't, take the trial out for a spin, it's worth it!

Well, you knew this was coming - a geek out on the not-fun topic of nuclear accidents. Richard runs down the fundamentals of nuclear accidents, with some story telling around what happened at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. Then on to the main event - Fukushima. The situation is serious, but progress is being made and the Japanese remain committed to fully cleaning up the mess made there. So is nuclear power worth the risk? Be part of this conversation; it's certainly not done yet!

Carl and Richard talk to Amber DeRosa and Alicia Hatter about usability testing. The conversation starts out by digging into what usability testing is all about - actually looking at how users are using your software... or perhaps would want to use your software. Amber and Alicia talk about working through usability studies even before the software is built to get a feel for what the user would really like. And while software is being built, routine testing digs deeper into how the software will be used, what users actually like to do with it and how that can affect the final product. The discussion also digs into the dynamic between the developers, QA, project management and usability testing - they all have important roles in building great software!

Carl and Richard talk to Alan Stevens about his views on software craftsmanship. Well, if he just agreed with it, it wouldn't be much of a show now, would it? Alan starts off talking about what it really means to be a craftsman - referencing such wonderful talents as Kevin Ryan Guitars and Steinway pianos as examples. This leads to a discussion about function, construction method and artistry - they're all part of making anything great. The conversation also digs into the whole medieval guild model that software appears to be grabbing onto, with apprenticeships, journeymen and masters. Does it make sense? Does it keep us humble? Does it really ship better software?

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 why. Rob mentions a ton of cool GitHub projects around storage (links in the show notes), and how much fun it is to be a developer today.

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 all now use. Later the conversation turns to the evolution of Application Lifecycle Management, with concepts like Continuous Delivery and DevOps becoming essential skills for the modern developer. Great thoughts from an awesome thinker in our industry!

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's SOLID principles can be applied to functional programming.

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 should you be doing? What are the right answers to classic questions like 'do you have any questions for us?' And check out the link below for David's video on the subject.

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 parts, and someone has to take charge of them. If you're keen on SharePoint, you owe it to yourself to have a listen to Hilton's own podcast, The Moss Show!

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 it can save you time, where you need to write code, and why you'd want to. This is open source the way it should be!

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 Python bits!

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 Bitcoin since it's the big kahuna. Is it the Napster of its time, or the iTunes? Check the links and write comments below!

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 your thinking has to change to really take advantage of all your choices.

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 mentioned is a document for application developers created by ACT Online for what to do if you receive a patent demand letter. Check out the links in the show description for the document!

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 comes mind control and more! The NUI continues to evolve - jump in and explore!

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, and the craziness around converting from AC to DC at every LED light. So what about distributed LED lighting in the house? It opens the door to many more DC based solutions!

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 organizations.

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 NOT to use technologies like AngularJS - as well as when there are times that these tools provide a huge advantage. And prepare for some CSS bashing!

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 complains. The conversation digs into performance, tuning and creating maintainable data that works well with EF. And most importantly, Julie discusses how Entity Framework is now entirely open source and on CodePlex! More great thoughts from Julie!

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.

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 like kickstarter and indiegogo.

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 ignorance, better that we all figure out how to treat Javascript like a first class language citizen with source control, testing and proper management. You know, like a real language!

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. ScriptCS represents some of the awesome potential of Roslyn!

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 going. Long range thinking from an amazing mind!

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 change, and the disconnect within a team on intention, risk tolerance and reward! It all starts with talking to your people!

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 building a responsive web design web page that works well with desktops, tablets and phones. Next up for zud.io - series A funding!

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!

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, and how easy it is to lose sight of our long term goals in the midst of the day-to-day battles to build the best software you can. Great insight from one of the legends!

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 talk about the effects of plugins on browsing for mortals and some thoughts on what web apps will look like in the future.

While at Øredev in Malmö, Sweden, Carl and Richard talk to Björn Granvik about being a lifetime learner. The conversation starts out with a history lesson about Øredev - Björn has been involved since the beginning. He talks about how the development firm he was involved with tried to improve learning with their developers... which ultimately led to creating a conference! Björn talks about understanding how you learn for yourself, and making time to continuously improve.

While at the Atlanta stop of the ModernApps2013 Road Trip, Carl and Richard talked to Joel Semeniuk about the latest on TFS 2013. Joel talks about how TFS 2013 changes your thinking about source control, requirements planning, work tracking and more. Great conversation about what it means to do 21st century application building!

The day before the US Road Trip started in Boston, Carl and Richard sat down with Bill Wagner to talk about the latest version of TypeScript. But first Bill talked about <a href="http://htbox.org">Humanitarian Toolbox</a>, a charity building open source software for disaster relief organizations that he and Richard are deeply involved in. Then the conversation turned to TypeScript, a language for bringing types, classes and modules to Javascript. Originally a separate installation off of GitHub, TypeScript is part of Visual Studio 2013. Bill talks about the challenges of building maintainable Javascript and how TypeScript makes things better!

While at Øredev in Malmö, Sweden, Carl and Richard talk to Scott Barber about testing for performance and in production. Scott discusses his history that leads him to getting involved in making systems more efficient - sometimes that means faster, sometimes it means something else! The conversation digs into the essence of meaningful testing - having a team that has each other's backs when it comes to delivering good quality software. Great thinking about testing, performance and DevOps.

While at Øredev in Malmö, Sweden, Carl and Richard talk to Fred George about implementing programmer anarchy in your organization. This is the good form of anarchy - the kind that focuses on self-organization, rather than blowing things up. Fred talks about the roles of management in software, and which ones make sense and which one don't... and how developers can take over those roles in conjunction with development. Autonomy and mastery, that's what keeps developers motivated!

While at Øredev in Malmö, Sweden, Carl and Richard talk to Mads Kristensen about the amazing set of features that have been added for web development in Visual Studio 2013. First up is browser link, a method to automate the connection between your development environment and various browsers being used to test your app while you code. Auto-refresh and more! Mads also talks about Web Essentials and SideWaffle - tools and templates for helping you to build web applications the right way. Visual Studio 2013 is a must have for the web developer!

A rockstar geek out at Øredev in Malmö, Sweden! Carl and Richard chat with Randall Munroe of XKCD fame! Randall talks about how he left NASA to focus on drawing web comics (?!) and the fun that has ensued since. The conversation digs into a bunch of the thinking of various XKCD comics. If you're a fan, you're in for a treat, and if you're not, you need to get reading!

While at Øredev in Malmö, Sweden, Carl and Richard talk to Rachel Reese about her fun with F#. Rachel's background in mathematics led her to experiment with functional languages like Erlang and F#, and ultimately to solve problems more effectively utilizing techniques like parallelism from F#. The conversation also explores the actor model (and agents, and a bunch of other Hollywood terms) as well as the cool new type providers that are in F# 3.0. Another huge F# fan - have you taken it out for a spin yet?

Carl and Richard chat with Steve Smith about the latest Software Craftsmanship Calendar put out by Steve's team at Telerik. Steve runs through many of the anti-patterns in the calendar - lots of laughs about the silly things we've done over the years trying to build software. <a href="http://sites.fastspring.com/telerik/product/featured-gear">Pre-order a copy today!</a>

While at Øredev in Malmö, Sweden, Carl and Richard talk to Patroklos Papapetrou about Sonar. Sonar is an open source project for instrumenting your code quality, looking for various 'deadly sins' of programming, such as duplication, lack of documentation, etc. Patroklos talks about each of the 'deadly sins' and how Sonar can help you make better quality code.

Carl and Richard chat with Mark Greenway about his work using MongoDB on Azure. The conversation starts out talking about fundamentals - why NoSQL? From there, Mark talks about his web based application, running as an Azure web site, that started out using SQL Azure, until he ran across MongoDB. Now his application uses both, but in the future, he sees it all as MongoDB. NoSQL in the cloud!

Carl and Richard chat with Matt Wynne about Cucumber, a tool for building requirement statements that are actually testable in your development environment. Matt starts out with a discussion about behavior driven development and how Cucumber evolved as a way to not only capture behaviors effectively but to actually make them part of the testing process using a language called Gerkin (and yeah, the whole show is full of pickle references). Matt also talks about SpecFlow, which is Cucumber for .NET and talks about all the different flavors of Cucumber out in the world. This naturally leads to a discussion about the state of Ruby since Cucumber started there. Great thoughts about how technologies evolve by branching and merging ideas!

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.

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.

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!

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 <a href="http://comparethemarket.com">comparethemarket.com</a> where Matt is the lead architect. The conversation started out talking about the challenges that <a href="http://comparethemarket.com">comparethemarket.com</a> 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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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! <a href="http://www.dotnetrocks.com/azure">Make sure you activate your Windows Azure credits in your MSDN Subscription! You could win an Aston Martin!</a>

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! <a href="http://www.dotnetrocks.com/azure">Make sure you activate your Windows Azure credits in your MSDN Subscription! You could win an Aston Martin!</a>

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! <a href="http://www.dotnetrocks.com/azure">Make sure you activate your Windows Azure credits in your MSDN Subscription! You could win an Aston Martin!</a>

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! <a href="http://www.dotnetrocks.com/azure">Make sure you activate your Windows Azure credits in your MSDN Subscription! You could win an Aston Martin!</a>

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? <a href="http://www.dotnetrocks.com/azure">Make sure you activate your Windows Azure credits in your MSDN Subscription! You could win an Aston Martin!</a>

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! <a href="http://www.dotnetrocks.com/azure">Make sure you activate your Windows Azure credits in your MSDN Subscription! You could win an Aston Martin!</a>

While at That Conference, Carl and Richard moderated a panel on women in technology. Before the panel started the audience watched <a href="http://vimeo.com/63877454">She++ the Documentary</a>. Great thoughts on how to address the inequality of gender in technology! <a href="http://www.dotnetrocks.com/azure">Make sure you activate your Windows Azure credits in your MSDN Subscription! You could win an Aston Martin!</a>

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! <a href="http://www.dotnetrocks.com/azure">Make sure you activate your Windows Azure credits in your MSDN Subscription! You could win an Aston Martin!</a>

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!

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!

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!

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!

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 <a href="http://aka.ms/azurerocks">activate your MSDN Azure account and be automatically entered to win an Aston Martin V8 Vantage!</a>

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 <a href="http://aka.ms/azurerocks">activate your MSDN Azure account and be automatically entered to win an Aston Martin V8 Vantage!</a>

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 <a href="http://aka.ms/azurerocks">activate your MSDN Azure account and be automatically entered to win an Aston Martin V8 Vantage!</a>

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 <a href="http://aka.ms/azurerocks">activate your MSDN Azure account and be automatically entered to win an Aston Martin V8 Vantage!</a>

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!

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!

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.

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.

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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.

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.

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.

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!

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!

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!

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.

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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.

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!

Carl and Richard talk to Pablo Santos about Plastic SCM. Plastic SCM is a free ALM tool for managing source and tracking for up to 15 developers - after that you have to pay. The conversation starts out with the concept of task-driven development, letting many developers work simultaneously on a project while each focusing on individual tasks. The challenge is excessive forking of the code - how do you get everything merged together again? Pablo talks about the powerful merge system of PlasticSCM to help identify identical code by functionality, not just syntax. Other strengths include great cross-platform support, integration with multiple IDEs, and support for lots of third party tools. Well worth checking out!

Carl and Richard talk to Lynn Langit and Llewellyn Falco about how developers can teach their kids to program. While Lynn and Llewellyn have been teaching all sorts of kids how to program (check out the links below), they've recently published a Pluralsight course specifically for developers to teach their own kids how to program. The course is completely free - you don't need to sign up for anything! And the course lets you as a developer work with your children step by step to learn how to develop in Visual Studio - yes, with your own tools. Want to show your children what you do for a living? Take it out for a spin!

Carl and Richard talk to Mårten Rånge about Microsoft's Text Template Transformation Toolkit (T4). Don't call it code generation - Mårten talks about how T4 takes away code repetition and keeps you focused on the important stuff. The challenge is learning to build your own maintainable templates. The conversation explores a variety of examples of using T4 effectively for SQL, XAML as well as C# and C++. Mårten has a project on GitHub called T4Include to help you utilize them more effectively. The tooling isn't perfect, but there are alternatives - check it out!

While at DevIntersection, Carl and Richard host a panel discussion on the state of cloud development. No clouds were harmed in the making of this podcast.

Carl and Richard talk to Hendrik Lösch about his experiences doing testing with Visual Studio 2012. Henrik starts out talking about unit testing, the different approaches with various tools, including mocking, moles and fakes. He talks about how MSTest has substantially improved in Studio 2012, but still needs help in the form of NUnit and/or xUnit.net. The conversation also digs into new generation tools like NCrunch and SpecFlow, rationalizing BDD, TDD and ATDD and ultimately dealing with the social challenges of making testing and quality a core part of your development experience.

Carl and Richard talk to Donald Larson, a combination technology and nuclear scientist, about power from thorium. The conversation begins with thorium, a low-level radioactive metal that is three times more abundant than uranium and available all over the world, often found as a byproduct of other mining efforts. Don talks about the advantages of the thorium fuel cycle, how it cannot be used to make weapons-grade radioactives and doesn't require expensive pre-processing to be usable for power. From there the topic of molten salt reactors (MSR) is explored. MSRs can use radioactive materials besides thorium and have a number of safety advantages, not the least of which is being able to continuously refuel, have passive safety systems and an ability to utilize radioactive fuel more efficiently. The future of power is thorium!

Dominick Baier returns to talk to Carl and Richard about the current state of security in .NET 4.5. Dom starts out talking about how WebAPI has impacted the development of web services without much in the way of new security features - so he built some for everyone to use (check the links below). The conversation then digs into the challenges around OAuth 2 and the challenges of building specifications by committee when you're dealing with security. Also listen for a great dig into the real goals of identity technologies that largely haven't come to pass yet - there's still a ways to go!

Carl and Richard talk to Anthony van der Hoorn and Nik Molnar about their open source project called Glimpse. Glimpse provides instrumentation for the server and client side components of your web app, displaying it in a tabular format at the bottom of your browser. Anthony and Nik discuss the extensiblity model allowing additional components to be instrumented with Glimpse - and how they've only built five of the thirty packages available today! This is open source at its best, and an awesome way to understand what is happening in your web application.

Carl and Richard talk to Justin Beckwith about the recently released WebMatrix 3. Justin talks about the vision of keeping web development simple while still having access to all the latest features of the Web. And yes, sites built with WebMatrix can be worked on with Visual Studio as well! The conversation also digs into building mobile web sites and the various modules you can add into WebMatrix to extend functionality including Git integration, LessCSS and more... lots of links!

Carl and Richard talk to David Pitcher, part of Microsoft's internal IT team, about his experiences instrumenting applications. The conversation digs into the application in question, a Windows Phone app for allowing tech support personnel manage tech support problems on the go. Then David discusses the impact of instrumentation on the application in the form of PreEmptive Analytics, a free version of which is included with Visual Studio 2012. David describes how instrumentation has changed the way the team does error handling in general, prioritized features and bug fixes, and in some cases created whole other features to be designed! Instrumentation is a key part of the DevOps movement and it makes software better!

Carl and Richard talk to Amir Rajan about his Oak project on GitHub. Amir discusses his approach to building Single Page Applications (SPA) using an array of open source tools including Rake (from the Ruby stack), nSpec, Canopy, Growl and more. The conversation digs into how C# fits into the equation and how Oak provides the dynamic typing that C# needs to work well in the JavaScript driven world of SPA. Amir also talks about how this development stack works well with different editors since it is file focused for compilation, testing and deployment. There's a little taste of DevOps in this great conversation on modern web development!

Carl and Richard are geeking out again, this time about geothermal energy. The conversation starts out focusing on household geothermal heating, which is really a form of heat pump technology. After that, the boys dig into the hard stuff - geothermal energy. After talking through the various techniques of generating power from the ground, the focus goes to the key to all power systems: water.

Carl and Richard talk to Andreas Hakansson and Steve Robbins about NancyFX. NancyFX is an open source project to provide a lightweight framework for building web applications. Andreas and Steve talk about NancyFX focusing on the Super-Duper-Happy-Path of web development. The conversation also digs into the diversity that NancyFX supports, running in IIS, with ASP.NET (or not), WCF, Azure, OWIN, Umbraco, even Nginx on Ubuntu! Andreas and Steve also dig into how NancyFX handles testing, different view engines, authentication and cryptography. If you're considering WebAPI, you should look at NancyFX also!

Carl and Richard talk to Brian Summers and Dave Harrison of Columbia Sportswear about their work with Team Foundation Server. Brian and Dave discuss how TFS has allowed them to build a common work planning environment for almost all of the developers at Columbia, including .NET, Java and ABAP (SAP) programmers. The conversation dives into how the different teams are able to collaborate, how they've built a service bus based on Biztalk and the future of even more rapid application development with TFS 2012.

Carl and Richard talk to Jeff Fritz about how ASP.NET has evolved over the years. Jeff talks about the continued dominance of Web Forms in relation to MVC and how the different libraries can be used together. In fact, there's ONE ASP.NET, and everything - Web Forms, MVC, Web API, SignalR - all work together. It's a web stack of love!

Carl and Richard talk to Mark Heath about audio in Windows. Mark is the leader on the nAudio codeplex project that is a .NET audio and MIDI library. The conversation digs into the fundamentals of digital audio as well as many of the codex and APIs associated with audio - it can be confusing! Mark also talks a bit about the history of audio gear around AdLib, Soundblaster, Voyetra and the like. Mark has some other open source projects involving audio including a Skype voice changer and MP3 decoder in managed code. Check 'em out!

Carl and Richard talk to Glenn Block about his open source project called ScriptCS. Glenn talks about his inspiration for the project, taking the principles of node.js and applying it to C#, using the RoslynCTP. The conversation digs into the speed at which ScriptCS has taken off - at the time of the recording it had only been around for a week and there were 18 contributors on GitHub! This is the non-subdued version of Glenn Block we all know and love!

Carl and Richard talk to Kord Davis about the ethics of Big Data. As developers we tend to focus on the technology, rather than the impact it has - and big data gets into some serious moral hazards. Kord talks about some of the issues that companies have gotten into around Big Data, deriving facts about individuals that they have intended to keep private. Legislation is coming around Big Data - be part of that conversation.

Carl and Richard talk to Tomas Petricek about functional programming and F# in particular. The conversation starts out talking about type providers, one of the newest features of F#. Tomas digs into other aspects of F#, comparing it to C#, and talks about the functional programming mind set and how it changes the way you think about coding. Check out all the links below for F# resources and community!

At the MVP Summit, Carl and Richard talk to Steve Smith about the Software Craftmanship calendar. While filled with good messages like Separating Concerns and YAGNI, it also has hilarious images of why you should follow these principles. The conversation digs into each of the topics with different ideas and approaches to being successful. A fun Thursday show!

At the MVP Summit, Carl and Richard sit down with Vishwas Lele to talk about the new app development models available in Sharepoint 2013. Vishwas talks through different scenarios and approaches to building these modern apps, utilizing Javascript libraries to access SharePoint as well as web services, Azure and more. Building SharePoint applications has transformed into SharePoint apps, check it out!

Carl and Richard talk to Mike Hadlow about EasyNetQ, a simple API for .NET developers to communicate with RabbitMQ. The conversation starts out dealing with the fundamentals of queuing, it's advantages (and disadvantages) and how it impacts your architecture. Mike also digs into Microsoft Message Queue (MSMQ) and how it differs from RabbitMQ. From there Mike digs into the role of EasyNetQ and how it relates to products like MassTransit and nServiceBus. Whether you're new to queuing, just digging into MSMQ or keen to go deep on queuing, this show is for you!

Carl and Richard talk to Brian Noyes about Microsoft's Patterns and Practices Kona Guidance for developing Windows Store Line of Business Apps. The conversation digs into the evolution of 'Prism for WinRT' into Kona and how they are substantially different because Windows Stores are substantially different. Brian digs into specifics about Windows Store apps, like Suspend, Terminate and Resume and its impact on guidance. If you're interested in Windows 8 development, check out <a href="thetabletshow.com">The Tablet Show</a>, especially the shows in the links below!

Carl and Richard talk to Yan Cui about his experience building games with F#. Yan talks about his experiences working with games through Facebook, the client side being predominantly Flash, but the back end systems being initially Java, then converted to C#, and now to F#. As Yan explains, F# is faster, smaller, easier to maintain and to read. The conversation spans over dealing with parallelism, massive scale, cloud implementation and data analytics as well - lots of cool stuff!

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.

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.

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!

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!

Carl and Richard talk to Jamie Wright about what .NET Developers can learn about Rails.

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!

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!

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.

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.

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 Chocolatey

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

On the .NET Rocks! Visual Studio 2012 Launch Road Trip, Carl and Richard stopped in at the <a href="http://novacodecamp.org/">NoVa Code Camp</a> 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!

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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.

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.

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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.

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#.

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!

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.

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?

Carl and Richard talk to Chris Jackson of Microsoft about all the tricks and techniques he uses to make applications compatible from one version of Windows to another, or one version of Internet Explorer to another. Chris digs into the mistakes that developers make, such as checking what version of an operating system or browser a user has. He also points out the cool tools built into Windows to lie to applications to overcome these problems. The conversation also digs into moving your application to Windows 8 and Internet Explorer 10. A must if you're ready to upgrade!

Carl and Richard talk to Sahil Malik about the upcoming 2013 edition of SharePoint. Sahil digs into the new features in 2013, including better workflows, content management and performance - document updates send only the deltas to SQL Server! The conversation turns to the new app model in SharePoint 2013, its power and potential for exploitation. Sahil finishes up talking about the cloud, search and mobile features. Sharepoint 2013 is a great step forward!

Carl and Richard talk to Microsoft tech fellow Brian Harry about Application Lifecycle Management with Visual Studio 2012 and Team Foundation Server. Brian digs into the thinking around the latest version of Microsoft's ALM offering, including the new tools for gathering requirements using storyboards, video, audio and annotations around applications. The conversation also digs into the core 'lather-rinse-repeat' cycle of developers getting work assignments, building and checking in their code. Then onto the amazing new features in testing and providing early look versions of applications for gathering feedback. Finally Brian talks about Team Foundation Services, TFS-in-the-Cloud so to speak, which while not directly tied to Studio 2012, does point to Microsoft's future focus for ALM. A great conversation with a guy at the center of everything ALM at Microsoft!

Carl and Richard talk to Microsoft VP Jason Zander about the release of Visual Studio 2012 and .NET 4.5. Jason addresses many of the key points around building Studio 2012 - the deep integration with Windows 8, how the teams worked together to allow the C++/XAML, C#/XAML and HTML5/WinJS development approaches... even why the Studio 2012 UI looks the way it does! The conversation then jumps to developing for ARM, some time talking about cloud development, even a mention of Sharepoint and Office tools. Great insight from a guy who has been part of .NET since the beginning!

Carl and Richard chat with Julie Lerman about Entity Framework 5. EF5 ships with .NET 4.5 - yep, they broke the number synchronization this time around. Julie explains that the big number change is for a good reason - this is a big update to Entity Framework. The conversation digs into the new features, including performance improvements, enumerations and spatial datatype support. Julie also talks about a huge number of little things that are added to make EF a much more useable project. Has the magic version three happened again at Microsoft?

Carl and Richard talk to Jay Schmelzer and Chris Finlan about LightSwitch. Jay is one of the leaders of LightSwitch at Microsoft and talks about some of the new features coming in LightSwitch including HTML 5 clients. Chris works for SAP and builds line-of-business applications there, including building in LightSwitch.

Carl and Richard talk to Andrew Arnott about DotNetOpenAuth. DotNetOpenAuth is an implementation of OAuth, OpenID and InfoCard technologies is an easy-to-use-package for .NET developers. Andrew talks about the evolution, features and challenges of each of the respective technologies. DotNetOpenAuth is available today and will be bundled with Visual Studio 2012. Get on the identification and authentication bandwagon today!

Carl and Richard talk to Darth Vader, a.k.a. Jon McCoy who shows developers how to hack .NET apps in memory and on disk. This turns into a pretty dark discussion about how challenging it is to secure in depth - infiltration and exfiltration vectors, how protection tools (like anti-virus) are great mechanisms for spreading malware. And according to Jon, .NET is a great tool for hiding malicious code. He talks about how he can modify a .NET application while it is running and use it to manipulate and steal information. Not a happy show!

Carl and Richard talk to Michael Heydt about the Task Parallel Library Dataflows feature added in .NET 4.5. Moving beyond the basics of the TPL, Michael digs into how the various pattern blocks of TDF help you build real-world parallel executing applications. There's a lot to learn, but TDF makes building parallel applications far more management. Get away from parallel plumbing and into what matters!

At NDC, Carl and Richard talk to Bruce Lawson about responsive web design. Responsive web design from Bruce's point of view is web pages that are able to adjust to the browser and device that they are being viewed on. From the huge displays on desktop PCs to the tiny screens of smartphones, you can make your web pages work effectively! Bruce talks about some of the tools and libraries available to simplify responsive web design, so check out the links from the show!

At NDC in Oslo, Carl and Richard talk to Lucian Wischik about using Async and Await in .NET 4 and 4.5. Lucian talks through some great scenarios of how you can use Async and Await effectively, as well as the mistakes developers can make. Method blocking and Async don't get along! The conversation also explores the differences between asynchronicity and parallelism, they aren't the same thing at all. Get ready for some awesomely lucid thinking about Async and parallelism!

Carl and Richard talk to Bob Martin about where object orientation is going. Bob starts out talking about the fundamentals of where object orientation came from and how it has progressed over the years. The conversation then digs into how hardware has changed - the CPU manufacturers have stopped making faster processors and switched to making more processors. The impact of this change means developers have to write parallel executing code, something that object orientation makes difficult. Bob talks about the resurgence of functional programming as a reaction to the need for parallelism. Has object orientation run its course?

While at NDC is Oslo, Norway, Carl and Richard talk to Hadi Hariri about MVC. Hadi talks about his experiences building MVC applications, starting with where WebForms taught some bad habits in web application construction, how some of the new Javascript libraries (like jQuery) made MVC more palatable and the performance advantages of well designed MVC. The conversation also digs into some of the mistakes novice MVC developers make, like putting far too much (and repeating) code in the controller. There's also a discussion about different data storage options as well as Hadi's position on utilizing REST.

While at the Norwegian Developers Conference in Oslo, Carl and Richard talk to an actual Norwegian! Sondre Bjellås sits down with the boys to talk about building applications in Facebook. The conversation starts off with discussion about oAuth, specifically authenticating with Facebook. Sondre talks about how Facebook provides information back to you as the developer about the users that log into your web site or application - provided the user gives permission. The conversation continues into the different species of Facebook applications you can build, running inside Facebook, separately and using the social graph. A great starting point for getting into Facebook programming!

While at NDC, Carl and Richard talk to Remy Sharp about HTML 5. Remy discusses the state of things, how the diversity of browsers is as much a strength as a problem. He digs into the idea that you need to build your web app for the audience you have - perhaps it needs more support for older browsers, or focus on the latest features for the newest browsers. Check out the great collection of links to different services and sites that Remy mentions in the discussion!

While at DevTeach, Carl and Richard hosted a panel discussion on development methodology. Panelists James Kovacs, Mario Cardinal, Charles Max Wood and Rob Daigneau explored the state of development methodology today. The discussion roamed over Waterfall, Agile, XP, Lean, Scrum But, Scrum And... and more.

Carl and Richard talk to J Sawyer about StreamInsight. Part of the SQL Server platform, StreamInsight is a stand-alone install that allows you to do complex event processing (CEP) applications. Complex Event Processing is a pattern of dealing highly parallel, high velocity data streams to do real-time analysis. J talks about how StreamInsight simplifies CEP handling all the parallelism and memory management for you. The conversation also digs into the relationship between Reactive Extensions and StreamInsight - they compliment each other. This is about taking logging to a whole new level!

Carl and Richard talk to Paul Betts and Tim Clem of Git about the new GitHub for Windows. GitHub has always been accessible by Windows, but far more Linux friendly. GitHub for Windows addresses this with a standalone client for GitHub. No Visual Studio required!

At NDC Carl and Richard talk to Venkat Subramaniam about functional programming. Venkat digs into the idea that functional programming is less about language and more about practice, exploring how C# can build functional code just as well as F#. The conversation also drills into the advantages of functional programming for parallelism and the specific types of business applications that can benefit from this style of programming. Venkat's enthusiasm makes it hard to resist writing everything functional!

While at the Norwegian Developers Conference in Oslo, Norway, Carl and Richard moderated a panel of luminaries from the agile world about the state of the agile today.

Carl and Richard talk to Stephen Toub about how the beta of Studio 11 has impacted parallelism. The conversation starts with a solid discussion about the difference between asynchronous, concurrency and parallelism. From there, Stephen talks about how Studio 11 has matured async and await, largely under the hood, to take advantage of more hardware and better concurrency with no additional code. He mentions the ASync Targeting Pack bringing async and await to Silverlight 5. Finally Stephen talks about some of the new instrumentation in Studio 11 to understand how parallelism is working in your application to assist with debugging and performance. Parallelism is moving forward in Studio 11!

Carl and Richard talk to Stephen Bohlen about architecture. The conversation starts with Stephen's work on spring.net and the relationship between Java and .NET. Then Stephen digs into the evolution of architecture, comparing his experience as a 'real' architect designing buildings to building software. He discusses how using the term software engineer is part of what led to the waterfall approach of software development and how agile is fighting back against the term and behavior.

Carl and Richard start out talking to Scott Hunter about what's coming up in ASP.NET - but then he goes beyond! The conversation starts out talking about where the .NET Framework as a whole is going - Scott reveals some of the internal discussions they're having about how to evolve the .NET Framework. Scott also talks about Single Page Applications (SPA), which are part of the beta of ASP.NET 4.5 but will not be making the shipping version. SPA will be back in an update to ASP.NET after the Studio 11 ship date. The conversation then goes into some of the features coming in ASP.NET 4.5, including performance features for JavaScript and CSS, as well as implementing OpenAuth.

Carl and Richard catch up with Dominick Baier to talk about the changes to identity in the 4.5 Framework, Windows 8 and Server 2012. Dominick lets us know that claims-based security is everywhere in 4.5 - built right into the System libraries. No more separate WIF to install! The conversation also digs into the fact that Windows 8 and Server 2012 are rolling claims-based security into Active Directory, making implementation even simpler. Role-based security continues to function, but everything under the hood is a claim.

Carl and Richard talk to Joel Semeniuk about various styles of agile development. The conversation starts with addressing a comment from a listener on dealing with decomposition of user stories so that they fit into sprints and how to manage research spikes. Joel talks about splitting time in sprints between feature building, bug fixing and research. Next the topics of lean and Kanban and how they connect together with agile development. A great refresher on agile practices!

Carl and Richard are back in space! With the SpaceX launch to the International Space Station, the boys decide they have to talk about space again. A big chunk of the conversation focuses on how a billionaire boys club has grown up around space - folks like Elon Musk who made their money in technology are now spending it to expand mankind's reach into space, and perhaps make a buck or two along the way. Beyond SpaceX there is Planetary Resources, a gathering of a bunch of internet billionaries to mine asteroids. Is this how mankind will expand into space?

Carl and Richard talk to Beth Massi about the latest incarnation of LightSwitch. In 2011 LightSwitch shipped as a separate install, but the upcoming version of LightSwitch is part of every SKU of Studio 11. Beth talks about how LightSwitch has evolved to be an awesome consumer and creator of data, making it simple to create oData interfaces over anything. The conversation also digs into the role of Silverlight, the evolution of the client and how LightSwitch makes apps in the cloud much simpler.

On Sunday, May 6th, Carl went to Washington, DC for a Fly-In at the Association for Competitive Technology (ACT) for the purpose of talking to Senators and Representatives about issues around technology. He also talked to many of the developers and IT people who were attending these meetings, some of whom are regulars on .NET Rocks! This is a very special .NET Rocks! We hope you enjoy it.

Carl and Richard talk to Micheal Learned about the new ALM features coming in Visual Studio 11.

Carl and Richard talk to the one-and-only Rob Conery about CoffeeScript. Why would you use a language to generate Javascript? Rob talks about how CoffeeScript is designed to be human readable while JavaScript is much more machine-readable. Indents matter! No curly braces! Dogs and cats living together! It's chaos! But it's a happy chaos. Check it out!

Carl and Richard talk to Brian Noyes about the Single Page Application (SPA) feature coming in MVC 4. Brian talks about the similarities of the design patterns for SPA to the more classical Silverlight or WPF application with RIA or WCF services on the back end. While hardly new to the web space (SPAs can be traced back to Outlook Web Access circa 2002), SPAs are going to be part of Studio 11. Brian talks through the strengths and weaknesses of the approach.

Carl and Richard catch up with Ted Neward - it had been too long since he was on! The conversation starts off talking about the maturity of .NET and how unimpressed Ted is with Async and Await. Ted also talks about Javascript and Ruby and the evolution of languages as a whole. Finally, NoSQL makes an appearance with a discussion around the issues of ORM. Has Ted Neward become a grumpy old man?

Carl and Richard talk to Glenn Block about node.js on Azure. Glenn digs into how node.js has grown in popularity, and points to the Cloud9 IDE as a development environment in the Cloud as an example of a node.js application - which happens to be able to build node.js applications. And Cloud 9 can deploy node.js to Azure. The conversation digs into the Azure stack and the diversity of technologies (including node.js) that run great in the cloud.

Carl and Richard continue the Geek Out series on alternative energy with wind power. The conversation starts with the admission that as much as has been done with wind power so far, it's just a tiny drop in the bucket of total power consumption - less than 1% of US power comes from wind. Then the boys dig into the different types of wind power generation, the challenges that the power grid has incorporating wind power into the grid, and the kinds of problems that home owners have with wind power also. Wind has potential, but also problems. But long term it's part of the solution.

Carl and Richard talk to Jeroen Hulscher about web accessibility. Accessibility challenges come in lots of different forms, and the way we build web pages can make it impossible for some to use your site. Jeroen talks about the tools and techniques to help developers understand what you need to do to make your site easy to use no matter what challenges you might have. As Jeroen says, at some point all of us are going to have some accessibility issues - the web site you make accessible may one day help you!

Carl and Richard have a discussion with a vegetable. Yeah, that's right, we interviewed a leek named Ricky Leeks. Beyond all the endless puns, is a great conversation about memory management in .NET. Ricky also lets us know about a free e-book on .NET Memory Management you can download from the links in the show. Check it out!

Carl and Richard talk to John Bennett and Colin Hicks from MSNBC along with Oren Eini about the role RavenDB has played in building applications. John talks about how MSNBC was using SQL Server essentially as a blob store, storing stories as XML documents inside of the database. The conversation digs into the challenges of running a web site with well over a billion page views a month, the impact of breaking news on traffic, and how RavenDB solves the document storage problem effectively for MSNBC.

Another panel discussion from DevConnections, this one focused on how cloud computing is impacting developers. No holds are barred as the panel digs into virtualization, infrastructure-as-a-service, platform-as-a-service and more.

A panel discussion at DevConnections in Las Vegas digs into different styles of web application development in 2012 - comparing web forms to MVC to the up-and-coming Single-Page style of web app. Carl handles questions from the audience while Richard causes trouble on the panel.

Carl and Richard talk to Bart de Smet about the beta of Reactive Extensions (Rx) Version 2. Currently in beta when the show was recorded, Rx 2.0 works with .NET 4.5, both for desktop and metro, as well as Silverlight 5 and Windows Phone 7.1. Bart talks about how Rx lets you write LINQ expressions over top of events, completely changing the way you think about responding to events. If you're tired of cluttering up your UI code with event handlers or you've got a back end process that needs to deal with millions of incoming events, you owe it to yourself to look at Rx!

Carl and Richard talk to Bill Wilder about Hadoop on Azure. Hadoop is a technology for analyzing massive (petabytes) amount of data efficiently. Originally developed by Yahoo, it was given to the Apache Foundation as an open source project. Google, Facebook and others have all contributed to the project. Microsoft has come late to the game, but with a very compelling offering - you can run Hadoop on Azure and use Visual Studio to work with it. There's lots to learn about Hadoop, this show is just the starting point!

The first of many alternative energy geek outs, Carl and Richard talk about solar power. The boys talk about using solar in the home in the form of thermal as well as photovoltaic, at utility scale with solar thermal, even space-based power. The conversation explores the huge diversity of photovoltaics, including concentrators and quantum dot technologies, the advantages and disadvantages involved. There's also a brief discussion on battery technologies, since solar power doesn't work all that well at night. In the end there aren't easy answers, but things are advancing forward - the amount of solar power being generated these days is increasing!

Carl and Richard talk to Bryan Hunter and OJ Reeves about programming in Erlang. Erlang is a language built by the telecommunications industry for maximizing concurrency, distribution and reliability. If you're looking to develop applications that take advantage of parallelism, you owe it to yourself to look at Erlang!

While at the Prairie DevCon in Calgary, Carl and Richard moderated a panel discussion on the future of the web with panelists James Kovacs, Andrew Nurse, Bil Simser and James Chambers. The conversation ranged over the quality of web content today and a general push to try and improve it, discussions around monetization, the fragmentation of HTML 5, the role of mobile and some of the cool new technologies coming down the pipe to make the web an even more amazing place to build applications for.

Carl and Richard talk to Mike Diehl about Data Quality Services (DQS) in SQL Server 2012. DQS is a new tool for SQL Server, as Mike points out, Microsoft acquired it. It adds into the suite of tools in SQL Server including Integration Services (SSIS), and Master Data Services. Mike talks about how DQS improves the quality of data by cleansing and de-duplication. Not a typical developer tool, but something any developer working with data needs to know about!

While at the Prairie DevCon in Calgary, Carl and Richard chatted with Steve Rogalsky about User Story Mapping. Steve explains how User Story Mapping helps with visualizing beyond a serial list of features into categories of features in the product. The conversation also explores how Kanban, Scrum and other techniques work with User Story Mapping, as well as the struggles of using Microsoft Project.

Carl and Richard talk to Phil Haack about his life after Microsoft. Phil talks about his viewpoint on open source, both software and projects (not the same!). The conversation also digs into how NuGet works in the open source world and Phil's on-going role with it. Finally, Phil talks about his work at GitHub - he's all about making GitHub more appealing to .NET developers.

Carl and Richard talk to Tim Huckaby about his work with the latest version of Kinect, Kinect for Windows. Tim talks about his work building interactive kiosk applications for hotels, airports and the like. Gesture is a huge part of the interactive kiosk applications - and Kinect is at the front. The conversation digs into how Kinect for Windows changes the API dramatically, but opens the door to cool new features like facial and finger recognition.