Download / Listen:

Herding Code 133: Derick Bailey on Backbone.js

Show Notes:

• Derick starts off by explaining what Backbone is not: a JavaScript MVC framework.
• Backbone provides a way to structure and organize your code, separating responsibilities in to easily recognizable pieces.
• Derick points out that Jeremy Ashkenas, the creator of Backbone, said that Backbone is a library. The distinction Derick references is: "a framework calls your code, you call a library’s code."
• Kevin asks what are the main parts of Backbone. Derick mentions models and collections, views, routers, and some helpers: backbone.sync, backbone.events, and history.
• Kevin asks for a clarification on what a single-page application is. Derick cites Gmail as the canonical example.
• Kevin asks if Backbone is mainly used for single-page applications. Derick explains that it is very flexible and can be used as much or as little as necessary for any kind of application.
• Jon asks if using Backbone is an all or nothing proposition or if bits and pieces can be brought in over time.
• Kevin asks for a comparison to other similar JavaScript libraries/frameworks.
• Jon asks if there are any template or boiler plate projects for getting started with Backbone.
• K. Scott asks about Derick’s Memento plugin, which allows you to store and restore your model’s state.
• Kevin asks Derick why he thinks Backbone has become so popular.
• Jon asks about the process and requirements for creating Backbone plugins.
• Jon asks about the debugging story when using Backbone.
• Kevin asks about tools and approaches for testing Backbone.
• Kevin asks if there are any sources for best practices for Backbone.
• Twitter questions from @elijahmanor: "In what type of applications would you not recommend using Backbone?", "Do you plan to consolidate your blog posts into a Backbone book?", "Have you done any mobile development with Backbone?, "Do you use Require.js alongside Backbone?"
• Kevin and Derick discuss server-side rendering of JavaScript with Backbone for the purpose of being easily findable by search engines.
• Derick talks about the on-site training and training videos that he offers.

Show Links:

• Derick Bailey blog
• Twitter
• Backbone
• Jeremy Ashkenas – Founder of Backbone
• Zepto.js
• Backbone.js Is Not An MVC Framework
• SproutCore
• Batman.JS
• Ember.js
• JavaScriptMVC
• Agility.js
• Knockout
• Spine
• CoffeScript
• Knockback
• Dericks Backbone data binding plugin
• Bocoup – Introducing the Backbone Boilerplate
• Backbone mailing list (Google Group)
• Backbone.Marionette
• BBCloneMail on GitHub
• BBCloneMail live on Heroku
• Backbone.Memento
• Underscore.js
• Joey Beninghove
• QUnit
• Jasmine
• jasmine-jquery
• Sinon.js
• Rob Conery refactors the Backbone.js todo list sample
• Derick’s list of Backbone resources
• Require.js
• backbonetraining.net
• watchmecode.net

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 132: Phil Haack, Keith Dahlby and Paul Betts on Git for Windows developers

Show Notes:

• Paul begins with talking about why he thinks Git is cool, starting with the ability to create a clean source history that’s based on intent.
• Phil says some people who aren’t used to distributed version control get the wrong impression of rewriting history. The idea is that you’re rewriting history as you work locally to build a clean commit. You don’t generally rewrite history once you’ve pushed to the master repository.
• Keith says he tells people that when you push, it’s permanent. Until then, you can pretend you’re perfect. It’s just a save point – this reminds Jon of a quote from Dave Ward that this is like the ability to create save points anywhere in a video game.
• Scott K says this is all great in theory, but he never sees people taking advantage of history rewriting. He goes on to say that he loves GitHub but hates Git because Git hates developers – rewriting history is way too hard.
• Phil says that this makes more sense when you think of this in terms of replaying changes.
• Phil says that he really started liking Git after reading the site Think Like (a) Git.
• Paul says that he thinks this would be a lot easier to understand if you could see and work with things visually. Scott K says gitk kind of works but it’s clunky. Keith talks about gitk a bit more.
• Scott K talks about how he regularly ends up with a corrupted state and asks for recommendations. Paul says the solution is to use either git reset or git rebase and explains what they mean. Jon asks for more info, and Paul talks about git reset –hard.
• Phil talks about the importance of following an established workflow to avoid problems or getting in a state you don’t understand. He talks about the published workflow they use for the NuGet Gallery. Paul talks about how he and Phil are working on improving the interface to make it easy to follow working patterns.
• K Scott talks about one confusion is that there are so many commands and parameters. Keith says that you can get by with a tiny subset, and can grow as needed.
• Kevin asks if it’s possible to get your repository into a corrupted state, or if users are just getting confused by a valid state. Paul talks about some finer points of how things are stored and wraps up by saying really the only way to lose work with Git is to mess up or delete uncommitted changes or files.
• Twitter question from @LeeFlannery: "can you discuss how command line git for Win isn’t so scary – stop waiting for integrated VS tooling to use git." Paul talks about how the MSysGit makes things unnecessarily confusing by making you think you need to use the Bash prompt.
• Twitter question from @JavierLozano: "Why use powershell instead of bash for a console client? What are the gains?" Keith explains how posh-git gives you a Windows native experience (e.g. Windows style file paths). Phil talks about how the posh-git tab extensions give you an IntelliSense-ish experience with Git. Keith explains that posh-git does things like keeps track of which file have been added, so you can autocomplete files you’re adding rather than have to type them out.
• Scott K says that posh-git was slow when he tried to use it and asks if performance has been improved. Keith says that posh-git calls git status on every action to offer contextual tab expansions and explains how to disable that for faster performance.
• Keith talks about installing posh-git using psget, and more advanced use by cloning the posh-git repo and customizing it. Jon asks why installing posh-git in command-line didn’t work in the PowerShell ISE, and Keith explains that there are separate profiles for PowerShell command line, PowerShell ISE, and the NuGet Package Manager prompt in Visual Studio.
• Question from John Sheehan: "What are some of the other things outside of tooling that are impediments to Windows users adopting Git." Paul lists several: line endings, SSH keys, the MSysGit install, and the git commit using vi in compatibility mode.
• Keith says that MSysGit isn’t Git for Windows, it’s Git for Linux developers on Windows – it doesn’t behave like Windows at all. Keith asks who runs MSysGit.
• Phil says there are a lot of conceptual obstacles to adoption, and says that he thinks it’s necessary to make it easier to do simple things without worrying about obscure and advanced options.
• Jon talks about the frustrations in typing in the SSH passphrase and asks for suggestions. Paul talks about ssh-agent.
• Jon asks for specifics about what Paul and Phil are working on. Paul say the idea is similar features to GitHub for Mac – not necessarily in design, but featureset.
• Jon says that he likes how the TortoiseHg tooling shows the command-line version you could have typed when you perform operations in the GUI. Paul agrees that’s useful, and Keith points out that it’s available in Git Extensions.
• Scott K says that he likes the built in Mercurial server and says it’d be nice if Git made it easier to run a Git repo on Windows. Paul says that it’s really easy to set that using a fileshare. Scott K says he uses that, but it’s not as discoverable as the Mercurial webserver. Keith talks about how setting up he’s seen this set up using per-user shares.
• Twitter question from @jeremydmiller "Are you concerned that folks spend so much time debating and tweaking their Git workflow that they’ll forget to actually code?" Phil and Keith discuss two popular GitHub workflows: GitHub Flow and git-flow.
• Twitter question from @kppullin "why must line endings be so painful!" Paul explains the source of the problem and how autocrlf tries to solve that, and there’s a general about how problems occur.
• Keith talks about using gitattributes to do things like telling Git to use C# differencing with .cs files.
• Jon asks finding good, non-hostile documentation. Scott K says that all the books focus on happy path documentation rather than useful stuff. Some useful online resources are listed, including Think Like (a) Git, The Git Parable, and ProGit.org.
• Keith jokingly asks if we can talk about why Git is better than Mercurial. Jon takes the bait, and hilarity ensues.
• There’s a long discussion about the usefulness of a clean history and the ability to accurately use "blame" to understand when a bug was introduced.
• Things start to wrap up and K Scott asks for last thoughts. Paul mentions GitPad, which sets Notepad as your Git commit editor. Keith recommends Console2. Phil points out a neat hidden feature on GitHub – using T to get incremental search.

Show Links:

• Phil Haack – @haacked
• Keith Dahlby – @dahlbyk
• Paul Betts – @xpaulbettsx
• GitHub
• Think Like (a) Git
• posh-git
• Phil’s recent post about posh-git: Better Git with PowerShell
• gitk
• GitHub Flow
• git-flow
• Git Extensions
• GitHub for Mac
• The Git Parable
• ProGit.org
• ProGit chapter on gitattributes
• GitPad
• Console2

• Jon asks Chris to catch us up with what’s happened since we last talked to him, just after jsConf.us 2010.
• Chris starts with his jsConf.eu 2010 talk, including Promote.js and the reminder not to forget the roots of the Javascript community.
• Chris doesn’t speak at the jsConf.us conference, mostly because he organizes the US conference and doesn’t want to present an appearance of unfairness.
• Chris then moves on to his jsConf.eu 2011 talk, An End To Negativity.
• Chris says that the negativity is rampant in the programming community, and it feeds on itself. There are far too many people who participate in community conversation just to cheer on the fights. Our profession has a unique opportunity to create and try new things, but the negativity in the community stifles that. We need to stop the negative “hating” in private conversations, not shouting matches in online forums.
• If you disagree with a technology, put your energy to constructive use via open source contribution (fork and create) rather than writing scathing blog posts.
• Scott K says that negative discussion’s everywhere – all online discussion, politics, media. Rather than discuss ideas, people just call others idiots. Chris says you’ve got to start locally. His recommended solution involves beer.
• Matt says it’s easier to lob bombs from afar, and personal discussions solves that. Kevin says one on one discussions over beer aren’t always possible, and Chris says even the offer is what’s important.
• Jon says that he’s never tried to resolve issues one-on-one and come away convinced that the other person is just plain evil. Usually there’s some unspoken history that explains why people think as they do. Chris applies that to prejudices against Javascript that were formed by bad experiences people may have had long ago.
• Jon says he’s noticed that Chris’ speaking style is disarmingly humble. Chris says he really values humility in developers, and that the current rock star ninja terminology is too self promoting.
• Jon says that the online discussion forums like Reddit and Hacker News are all about voting up or down, which encourages negativity. Chris talks about trite these arguments often are, such as focusing on features which aren’t yet implemented in new technologies.
• Scott K. says he’s amazed at the overall positivity on StackOverflow. Chris says he thinks it’s a matter of time before it creeps in. Jon says he thinks that he thinks the vote engineering and overall problem solving focus of StackOverflow is designed to produce overall positive results.
• Jon reacts to Chris’ Fork and Create call by saying that when he’s releasing code publicly, it’s a lot harder to criticize others. Chris says that people who are busy creating don’t have time for trivial arguments, and Matt says that working publicly gives you a healthy dose of vulnerability.
• Chris talks about the negativity he encounters in putting on conferences. At jsConf.us 2011 they raised over $3000 to contribute towards increasing gender diversity and it received no attention at all, while a negative incident at the conference got a lot of attention.
• Jon says that in teaching his daughter some basic programming, he’s reminded of the fun of creation that got him started in development. That’s got to be our focus. Chris and Matt talk about how their parents spent time introducing them to computers, and would love to see parents introducing their kids to computers.
• Scott K says that he’s seen the community as a whole move from a focus on writing code to macho chest thumping.
• Jon says he liked the part of Chris’ keynote that welcomed Dart and CoffeeScript. Chris said that innovation and new languages are great since they move things forward. Chris points out that people bash on Flash, but forget that it was instrumental in the development of Javascript through things like JIT compilation.
• Scott K wonders if we’d do better to just create new languages more often. Jon says that’s tricky with Javascript since it runs on so many platforms, but Scott K says that he thinks there’s more room for extending Javascript inside the language itself. Chris says both can be powerful, and mentions ClojureScript. He says that the velocity of change for Javascript is accelerating with more frequent browser releases and the things he’s seeing in Windows 8. He says we need to embrace that change by being more willing to drop support for older browsers.
• Christ talks about how TeamJS is raising money in the Mozilla Firefox Challenge (please join in!).
• Jon reacts to Chris’ keynote question, “What would you do if you knew you could not fail,” noting that most of his personal failures come from not attempting things. Chris says that quote is inspirational to him, and agrees that we fail in 100% of things we do not attempt.
• Twitter question from @elijahmanor – “Recently Chris tweeted that the trolls may be right. What did he mean by that?” Chris says that a reaction to hype around node.js, and there’s a general discussion about node.js.
• Jon asks Chris about his reactions overall to Microsoft getting involved with things like node.js and Javascript on Windows 8. Chris says that the community sometimes has an initial shock, but Microsoft-of-new is a different company that’s doing a lot of great stuff. He says he’s happy to see talks from Microsoft developers that aren’t “Microsoft presentations.”
• Matt talks about a recent node.js talk focused on maximizing node.js hosting efficiency.
• Jon asks Matt and Chris to give us a heads up on some emerging technologies in JavaScript land. Matt mentions emscripten, jsmad, and RiverTrail.
• Jon asks if people (himself included) will eventually realize that Javascript isn’t inherently too slow for these computationally intense applications. Scott K and Matt talk about how things like V8, JITing, and investment by big companies continue to make Javascript faster and faster.
• Jon asks Chris what trends he’s noticing, and he mentions dynjs, pdfjs, and jslinux. He mentions browser vendors moving towards extension systems based on Javascript. Jon talks about how he thinks Mozilla’s XUL was so far ahead of the game, using HTML/CSS/Javascript as a development platform.
• Matt brings up JSIL (a compiler that transforms .NET applications to Javascript). There’s a discussion of Javascript as a VM for other languages. Matt mentions Microsoft’s Volta initiative.
• Chris and Scott K talk about putting other languages in the browser. Chris says that Javascript has been battle tested in a way that no other language has.
• There’s a discussion of the node.js work that Microsoft’s been doing – not just getting it to run on Windows, but in making Windows / IIS hosting for node.js compelling.
• Jon asks Chris and Matt for their current recommendations, and an argument over spring beers erupts.

Show links:

• jsConf.us, jsConf.eu
• Chris Williams’s Blog, @voodootikigod
• Matt Podwysocki’s Blog
• Promote JS
• bcrypt
• Issue 28
• The Problem with Implicit Scoping in CoffeeScript
• Raganwald: CoffeeScript is not a language worth learning
• ClojureScript
• TeamJS donating to the Mozilla Firefox Challenge
• denser – an experiment with high density server side java script
• Erik Corry – Garbage Collection in JavaScript
• emscripten – an LLVM-to-JavaScript compiler
• jsmad – a Javascript MPEG audio decoder
• RiverTrail – a ParallelArray abstraction for JavaScript
• Atwood’s Law
• dynjs – (almost) 100% invokedynamic js impl
• pdfjs – PDF Renderer in Javascript
• jslinux – Linux shell running in Javascript
• Mozilla XUL
• JSIL
• Microsoft Live Labs Volta

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 131 – Chris Williams and Matthew Podwysocki on the Javascript community

• Dave runs Markkup, a consulting company and is building Loggr, SaaS application that provides real time logging and monitoring.
• He was one of the founders of Chili!Soft, which was an implementation of Classic ASP that ran on Linux, Solaris, IBM software, and Windows.
• Dave tells the story behind Chili!Soft, which is now Sun Java System Active Server Pages.
• Dave goes into the main features/benefits of Loggr.
• Jon asks about reports and queries provided by Loggr.
• Dave mentions there is an HTML5 version of the dashboard that works well on a tablet as well as an iPhone app. There is also an Android app in the works.
• Jon and Dave discuss the freemium model that Loggr employs.
• The guys move to talking about the stack that Loggr is developed on.
• It is built on ASP.NET MVC2.
• It uses Backbone.js for the client side JavaScript.
• MongoDB is used as the database.
• SignalR is used for the client-server communication to provide live user monitoring.
• Kevin asks about the decision to build a startup on the .NET platform.
• The guys touch on the VB.NET vs C# debate.
• Jon asks about the backup/redundancy story for MongoDB.
• Dave talks about the HTML5 client vs the native iOS app vs the Android app.
• Jon asks about the experience developing the iOS and Android apps.
• There are agents for .NET, Java, ColdFusion, PHP, Ruby, JavaScript.
• You can configure log4net to log to Loggr.
• Dave mentions Loggr uses Rapleaf to display demographics for a user, such as age and gender.
• Loggr also uses FullContact to display the social networks and avatars of a user.
• Jon asks Dave for advice for anyone interested in starting a similar venture.
• Jon asks about the Loggr road map.
• Jon asks about the business and marketing side of Loggr.
• Jon asks if any companies are leveraging the Loggr APIs to create other offerings.
• Jon asks if there is any demand for customers to host Loggr internally.
• Kevin asks if there have been any issues related to versions of the Loggr APIs.
• Kevin asks about downtime and SLAs.
• Jon asks about the process to get started with Loggr.

Show links:

• Loggr @loggrnet
• Dave Weaver’s blog @davidweaver
• Markkup
• Joel on Software post about Chili!Soft
• Sun Java System Active Server Pages (formerly Chili!Soft)
• Mission Research
• Blog post referencing Google Analytics
• Irony on CodePlex
• Loggr code on Github
• Backbone.JS
• MongoDB
• Official MongoDB C# driver
• SignalR
• MonoTouch
• Mono for Android
• Nlog writes to Loggr
• log4net
• Rapleaf
• FullContact
• Evernote
• Exceptioneer

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 130: Dave Weaver on Loggr – a realtime analytics service built with MVC MongoDB and SignalR

This week’s show notes were typed up by @RossFuhrman – Thanks!!!

• Rob talks about how Nu helped shape the direction of NuGet.
• Chocolatey is a tool for installing system wide applications such as Notepad++ or Git.
• Rob explains that it is built in PowerShell on top of NuGet.
• The guys talk about the simple process to install Chocolatey and install an application.
• Rob explains how Chocolatey was born.
• John S. asks what the process is to create a new Chocolatey package.
• The PowerShell command to install Chocolatey is: iex ((new-object net.webclient).DownloadString(“http://bit.ly/psChocInstall”))
• Jon G. asks what Chocolatey does behind the scenes when installing a package.
• Jon G. asks how to use Chocolatey to uninstall software Chocolatey installed.
• John S. asks if Chocolatey has been used in a way that wasn’t expected.
• The guys discuss the various ways of setting up a process to install multiple packages at once.
• Rob explains the difference between Chocolatey and Ninite.
• Kevin asks about the silent installs and how it works if the application doesn’t support silent installs.
• Kevin asks about the update story.
• The guys discuss learning and understanding PowerShell.
• Rob discusses the Chocolatey integration with Web Platform Installer.
• John S. asks about the reason behind writing Chocolatey in PowerShell.
• Kevin asks about Microsoft’s package manager, CoApp and how it relates to and is different from Chocolatey.
• John S. and Rob discuss how Chef, Puppet and Chocolatey could be used to spin up a new machine for a production deployment.
• Kevin asks about the fact that Rob is the owner of most of the Chocolatey packages and how he keeps track of updates to all those packages.
• Rob talks about the Chuck Norris framework and the following components of the framework:
• WarmuP -allows you to define templates for entire projects and change them as technology changes and you learn new things.
• UppercuT – is a conventional automated .NET build framework (templated NAnt). UppercuT is the insanely easy to use build framework.
• RoundhousE – is an automated database deployment (change management) system that allows you to use your current idioms and gain much more.
• DropkicK – is a fluent deployment framework that seeks to make deployments easier.
• Jon asks if the company Rob and Dru worked for when they were working on these projects was receptive to their open source development.
• Rob will be speaking on NuGet at CodeMash (it’s sold out) in January.

Show links:

• Chocolatey.org
• Rob Reynolds @ferventcoder
• Guest Host John Sheehan
• Nuget
• April video for creating a new Chocolatey package 6:46
• Keith Dahlby
• James Tryand
• Octopus
• Vagrant
• Ninite
• Web Platform Installer
• Pester
• CoApp
• Chef
• Puppet
• Change Detection
• Chuck Norris Framework
• Dru Sellers @drusellers
• Fluent Migrator
• Tarantino
• CodeMash

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 128: Rob Reynolds on Chocolatey and the Chuck Norris Frameworks

This week’s show notes were typed up by @RossFuhrman – Thanks!!!

• Scott asks Corey to start by explaining his software journeyman thing, or as Scott calls it “couch surfing in return for coding.” Corey describes how he transitioned from a traditional software developer job to training and speaking.
• Scott describes his experiences at a Coderetreat in Seattle – a series of 45 minute pair programming exercises with Conway’s Game of Life under a variety of constraints.
• Corey explains how Coderetreat got started at CodeMash 2009 as a way to intentionally practice writing beautiful code outside of the pressure of day to day work.
• Corey talks about how deleting your code at the end of every 45 minute session means you can concentrate on learning rather trying to complete anything.
• Jon asks if people are working towards any kind of graphical output, and Corey says that the focus is really on the code, and learning how to respond to changes and constraints.
• Twitter question from George Dinwiddie (@gdinwiddie) “What was the most interesting starting point for the Game of Life” Corey talks about people often start with traditional object oriented noun/verb approaches in the morning and move towards an outside-in mentality in the afternoons. He’s seen some interesting work with functional languages such as Clojure and J.
• Jon asks about the breakdown of programming languages that he sees people using.
• There’s a discussion of how setup and install can often eat up a lot of time at this kind of event, and Corey talks about how that’s not such a problem here: people show up with working development environments, are working at the testing level, and can just pair with someone who
• Jon asks what common patterns he sees people learn. Corey talks about some big changes in TDD focus and application design.
• Scott and Corey talks about the benefit of pairing with a lot of people at differing skill levels.
• Twitter question from Steven Proctor (@stevenproctor) “How often do you get to pair at these events” – Corey says that the facilitator role means you don’t get to pair, so he’s only been able to a couple times.
• Kevin asks how new pairing is to attendees, and if there’s any specific focus on learning how to pair better. Corey talks about some specific exercises which focus on paring techniques, including a Mute session (no talking, all communication through code) and Find The Loophole (in which the the coder purposefully tries to write the wrong algorithm while passing all tests).
• Scott says he
• Twitter question from from Maggie Longshore (@MaggieLongshore) “How he makes each code session unique so it doesn’t get monotonous. Share some tips for facilitators.”
• Jon asks about the upcoming Global Day of Coderetreat on December 3. Corey explains what will be going on worldwide, and how he’ll be exploiting a flight over the international date line to attend the full day sessions in both Sydney and Hawaii.
• Jon asks about some of the guidelines for listed hosting a Coderetreat, including a good (non-pizza) lunch and no cost to attendees. Corey says that in some cases there’s a deposit which is fully refunded provided you show up.
• Jon asks Corey how people can find out about a Coderetreat near them, and if it’s still possible to set up a Coderetreat if there isn’t one in your area. Corey says yes, and points us to Coderetreat.org for all information about the Global Day of Coderetreat on December 3.
• Jon asks Corey about his MercuryApp, a micro-journaling system with analytics that he and Sara Gray run.
• The guys chide Corey for slacking off by setting his Global Day of Coderetreat so low, and he talks about his difficult decision to exclude astronauts this time around.

Show Links:

• Coderetreat.org (Global Day of Coderetreat site)
• Coderetreat.com (Information on the Coderetreat format)
• Corey Haines (@coreyhaines)
• Conway’s Game of Life
• J Programming Language
• MercuryApp

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 128: Corey Haines on Global Day of Coderetreat

• Kevin and K Scott both just got MacBooks, they discuss what they are doing with them, such as using the emulator to test HTML5 apps for iPhone/iPad.
• Jon asks, “When you get a new mac, you open it up and rainbows come out of it. Do you have to install anything? How does that setup process work?”
• Kevin talks about development tooling such as HomeBrew and XCode. They discuss different tools and apps that they need to do development.
• Jon asks about twitter apps. K Scott uses the browser; Kevin is using the official Twitter app which seems pretty good except when it won’t launch the browser when clicking on the links in tweets.
• When upgrading, do you go through fresh install or remove programs? Jon talks about using Ninite to install programs you use a lot such as 7Zip, Audacity, Chrome, FileZilla, Skype, etc, because it manages everything for you and you don’t have to click through all the install dialogs.
• Also talks about using the Microsoft Web Platform Installer to get all of the web development stuff.
• They talk about the pros and cons of using Microsoft Office, and discuss using the Mac apps or Google docs or Office.Live.com.
• Jon is using Mesh to share between computer and sky drive; what kind of file sharing? K Scott is using Dropbox, says Live Mesh is important because of the remote desktop feature of Mesh. They talk about different file sharing companies and features, and talk about iCloud.
• Jon talks about the Windows Home Group feature, and how easy it is to share files, printers, media, etc., and talks about doing backups. Uses Space Sniffer to find big files.
• Jon got an SSD, so he made the old drive his D drive and used the SSD as his primary drive. If the SSD failed (which it did), he could just boot off the D drive.
• They discuss the placement of the files on the computer, whether to move to a second hard drive or partition, etc., and whether to use Libraries; they talk about searching for files in Windows. Some software apps disable the file indexer in Windows. When you install on an SSD, they disable some services like defrag, prefetch – it also disabled search.
• K Scott asks what kind of SSD Jon is using that is failing. Jon says it’s an OCZ Vertex 2, but he’s not sure it’s the drive versus the computer – gets blue screen on Windows, thinks it might be a hardware problem with his evil computer.
• Jon asks if they use Hibernate or Sleep? How often do they reboot?
• Kevin never uses hibernate. Jon will have a bunch of stuff running and will hibernate to save the battery on his laptop. Kevin thinks it burns slowly enough on Sleep, only hibernates when doing a full day of travel. Not worth it for a couple of hours.
• With newer laptop (16gb of ram), hibernating is a big deal. Jon ended up setting hibernate file size and tweaking the hibernate settings.
• MacBooks have pretty good battery life. The Air says it has almost 8 hours remaining; thinks that’s a little high, but it’s pretty good. Jon’s ThinkPad W520 is big, but gets around 7 hours, doesn’t have to worry about battery life; some optimizing settings make it difficult to use a projector.
• They discuss how often they repave their machines and the effect of using beta versions of software, how they go about getting back to work after repaving. How do you save your settings and reapply them after repaving?
• K Scott – windows get stuck off screen, can’t get them back on the main screen. Kevin has a utility that can help with that; it’s on his blog. Shows list of off-screen windows – can pick one and it will move it back to the main window.
• Jon finds uninstall really works pretty well now, whereas before it was just a cruel joke.
• K Scott talks about pulling pictures off of a Windows 6 phone. Doesn’t attach as an external drive, it installs Windows Mobile Device Center. Nooooo!!!!!
• Jon finished his office and moved into it. What about a standup desk? Found something simple from IKEA that could be used for part of the day. They talk about the idea of a standup desk.
• What about doing your work on a treadmill with a laptop? (Idea from a Neal Stephenson book). What if you did that for 15 to 30 minutes a day? Several people on twitter responded with information about their setups doing this.
• Simple way – found something for forty bucks on amazon that the laptop would rest in. Would just walk, not jog. Others have taken the control thing apart and put in a desk. Let us know if you’ve tried something like this.
• They discuss ergo keyboards, and using Synergy or Input Director for sharing a keyboard and mouse across multiple computers.
• K Scott has a problem with the keyboard on the Mac; bothers his hands, especially when using it for hours. They like Lenovo keyboards.
• Jon – some keys don’t map between Mac and Windows. Kevin uses a Microsoft ergo keyboard with the Mac, and out of habit still uses those keys, and it sometimes has a weird impact.
• They talk about Vim and Mac Vim.
• Jon switched from using a mouse to using a tablet. Mouse is what really hurts your wrist. Kevin moved his mouse to the left for years for the same reason. K Scott likes the TrackPoint pointing stick on the Lenovo.  Kevin’s never been a fan of the trackpad on the laptops, but the Mac trackpad is brilliant.
• Talk about using different software to help readability, like Readable, which uses Google web fonts. Can customize it to meet your needs. Makes it easier to read web pages.
• Jeff Atwood posted a blog entry about backlights behind the monitor like LED glowstrips. You can have a dark workspace and lower the contrast using backlights.
• And now for something completely different . a lightning round.
  • What’s your favorite browser?
  • What’s your favorite Javascript library this week?
  • Did Adobe really kill Flash? Does the lightning round really work? Does anyone expect the Spanish Inquisition? Why do people keep making websites that exclusively use Flash, especially restaurants? Is the future of video really animated gifs?

Show Links:

• Homebrew (OSX)
• Ninite (Windows)
• Web Platform Installer (Windows)
• Dropbox (Web)
• Windows Live Mesh (Windows, Web)
• Front And Center! (utility from Kevin that locates offscreen windows)
• Ikea Utby Bar Table
• REAMDE (book which mentions treadmill desk)
• treadTray
• Llewelyn Falco’s Treadmill Desk
• Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000
• Mouseless Computing (blog post from Jon)
• Synergy
• InputDirector
• Boot Camp mappings for Windows
• VIM
• Readability
• Readable
• Bias Lighting (Jeff Atwood)
• Backbone.js
• Raphael
• Underscore.js
• Flash to Focus on PC Browsing and Mobile Apps; Adobe to More Aggressively Contribute to HTML5
• Animals Being Dicks (animated GIF’s)
• If We Don’t, Remember Me (cinematic animated GIF’s)

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 127: Setting up your Computer and Work Area

This week’s show notes were typed up by @RobinDotNet – Thanks!!!

• Jeff talks about video games as a gateway to programming. Jon and Jeff talk about how video games teach a skill which is valuable in programming – the ability to accept and work with arbitrary rules.
• Jeff talks about the crappy games he has created.
• The guys talk about how Rocksmith can teach you how to actually play a real guitar. The guys compare Rocksmith to Rock Band and Guitar Hero, and Jeff talks about how really learning guitar skills takes work, and Rocksmith and Rock Band take two very different approaches.
• There’s a discussion of how well Rocksmith senses what you’re playing, and how musical performances are by nature interpretive and imprecise.
• The guys talk about how video games can lead to real world knowledge and skills.
• Jeff brings up the concept of gamification and how it can be used to get people to learn something worthwhile. He discusses the balance of fun and learning, and the importance of keeping learning fun.
• Jeff talks about Khan Academy, and how it leverages gamification.
• Jon talks about Codecademy – free, interactive programming classes with some game-like features.
• K. Scott talks about the Roblox game and using Roblox Studio to do some basic programming.
• Jon talks about the World of Goo, and how he’d helped his own daughters build their own levels in World of Goo.
• Jeff talks about incidental learning and how games can encourage it.
• Jeff says programmers need more points of reference than XKCD to explain things.
• Jeff and Kevin talks about the power of gamification as a psychology hack, and how it can be used for good and evil.
• Kevin brings up the idea of addiction to Stack Overflow. Jeff talks about the ways that Stack Overflow tries to prevent burnout of contributors.
• Jeff talks about the balance of effort and reward, and how Stack Overflow sometimes over-rewards people for minimal work on their part.
• The guys talk about video games that encourage teamwork, such as World of Warcraft, Battlefield 3, and Half-Life.
• The guys discuss Microsoft Kinect and compare it to the Nintendo Wii. There’s a discussion of the controller responsiveness and selection gestures for these systems, and the importance of writing a game that’s native to these new platforms as opposed to simple ports.
• Jon takes from questions from Twitter about Jeff’s favorite retro games, and Jeff says video game nostalgia is overrated – he’s really excited about the new games like Battlefield 3.
• Kevin asks about MAME and home arcades. Jeff says it was interesting to have build two home arcade machines, but it’s not something he’d want to spend anymore time on.
• Jon talks about Braid, and the hidden insanely tough extra game of finding all 8 stars.
• The guys congratulate Jeff on his recent news that he’s expecting twins, and he signs off to play Battlefield 3.

Show Links:

• Jeff Atwood (@codinghorror http://www.fakeplasticrock.com http://codinghorror.com)
• Separating programming sheep from non programming goats
• An Empirical Comparison of the Accuracy Rates of Novices using the Quorum, Perl, and Randomo Programming Languages
• RocksmithRocksmithRocksmith / Rock Band 3
• Penny Arcade – Extra Credits
• Joi Ito: Leadership in World of Warcraft
• Khan Academy
• Codecademy
• Roblox game
• Roblox Stack Exchange
• Roblox Studio
• World of Goo / World of Goo Level Editor
• SE Podcast #23 – James Portnow
• Loss aversion
• The Sunk Cost Fallacy
• 59 Seconds
• Battlefield 3
• XKCD – The Problem With Wikipedia
• John Resig joins Khan Academy
• Xbox Kinect
• Dance Central 2
• Your Shape 2012
• Braid / Braid – All 8 Stars
• Yars’ Revenge
• Bitcoin crash

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 126: Jeff Atwood on Video Games and Gamification

This week’s show notes were typed up by @rossfuhrman – Thanks!!!

• They talk about their backgrounds and combining their different skills to build something pretty awesome.
• K. Scott says Truffler has a REST API and can be called from several languages (.NET, Java, js). How to send queries, where is the data?
• Joel explains they’re using Elastic search, which indexes JSON documents; you push data to it in the form of JSON, then query it using JSON. The data is stored, but the point is to build awesome search.
• Marcus points out you can get a Truffler in a box, where you get a server to your house so you can run it inside your own internet if you like.
• K. Scott mentions the examples using the C# API on the Truffler home page. Do you convert that to a URL for your service?
• Joel talks about using Elastic Search and the bits they’ve added on top of it, including the various integrations or client APIs they are making available.
• K. Scott says he ran through their example; was able to just bang his way through it without having to dig into the documentation too much.
• Joel: Instead of bringing your data to the search engine, we’re trying to bring the search engine to you, so you can query it in a way that feels natural in C#. That’s the whole point of Truffler.
• Jon Asks about being able to search for a keyword and also have a geographical search and how that works.
• Joel says they search for the keyword and then filter by coordinates, which does not affect relevance. Can specify that matches for the keyword have double the relevance of non-matches.
• Talking about the ability to modify relevance and rank criteria higher and lower.
• K. Scott asks if they contribute any patches or make any patches or augment anything to the technology they are building on?
• Henrik has gone through the elastic search source code quite a few times. Found bugs, but not trying to augment it, just trying to find a way to package it in a nice way.
• Jon asks about the document search capabilities (pdf, xml, word, etc) – part of elastic search? Or did you have to do some of that work?
• Marcus replied that most features are basically from the elastic search core functions. The mods we have are just bug fixes. Not exposing any new functionality, just providing some features that are a little different from the core project.
• They’re trying to make search easier so you don’t have to analyze and then index your data; they’ll do that for you.
• Jon asks about highlighted words and bacon. Joel says it’s configurable. Can ask for one big fragment with highlighted keywords, or several small fragments, comes back as a separate fields in the JSON document. To make it as easy as possible, they are using LINQ syntax. Example: Select.As Highlighted()
• Discussing how to add search to your website/blog.
• They’re using JSON.NET. Discusses client class and using extension methods.
• They discuss how to do a Google-type search – typing in textbox, brings results.
• K. Scott: Any support for Word and PDF? Joel: Yes, it’s out of the box with Elastic Search; handles all kinds of formats.
• K. Scott asks what the biggest challenge is. Joel: Everything. Branding, building the product, figuring out the market.
• K. Scott says this is actually a product and a business now; was that new for the three of you? Joel says yes; were forced into it when working for a customer together who needed to search and query data not stored in a normalized database. Was the initial seed idea of Truffler.
• K. Scott asks about node. Henrik said they use node as a reverse proxy to do authentication for Elastic Search.
• They know what it can do; they can control how it’s used. It’s scary and exciting to see how people are using it.
• Marcus said have to know what queries they want before they come; they are adapting it to handle so many queries without knowing what people are going to use it for.
• Jon asks about performance / caching results on client side. Joel says servers can handle a lot, but there’s always latency. With .NET, allow you to cache search queries, which are serialized. For Get requests, don’t have caching; they’re pretty quick, but will add them in the future.
• K. Scott asks what’s next. Lots of features; very interested in feedback. Have partners/customers testing with large sets of data. Lots of things in the .NET API they don’t expose but would like to. Want to provide as much flexibility as possible.
• K. Scott asks about storing his own metrics. Providing some metrics about how his search is being used? They’re working on that, and SSL, encrypted indexes in planning stage.
• Jon asks about support for custom synonyms; they explain what that means.
• Plans and prices – free for developer. Then have basic and premium plans depending on how much you’re using it, what features you want, etc.
• Joel says they have support for inheritance.
• Jon asks about pricing. With developer license, if have open source project, get quite a bit of functionality and features.
• Joel says that for developers, they want to encourage use. Would like feedback.
• Jon asks how this compares to other search engine options and other document databases like RavenDB? Joel says you can use it for a document database, but that’s not the primary purpose of it. Raven is an awesome document database with text search, where this is awesome text search with basic document database capabilities. Henrik says if you take hardcore search, their main idea is not to provide hardcore search, but to enable developers to utilize search without being search experts.
• Released client for Episerver, used widely in Sweden. Truffler will take care of indexing and hook up to events for you. They have the concept of filtering (using the LINQ where method), and have the ability to extend that.
• K. Scott asks if this is open source. Joel says not exposing the source code at the moment. The .NET API is a very important part of their product, do some really cool things with it, would like to keep it to themselves. May release it in the future.
• Truffler web site is truffler.net. On the about page, there are links to twitter and Joel’s blog.

Show Links:

• http://truffler.net
• Joel Abrahamsson: Twitter, Blog
• Marcus Granström: Twitter
• Henrik Lindström: Twitter
• elasticsearch
• Raven DB
• Truffler package on NuGet
• Read-only service at http://sample.truffler.net/ (downloadable from https://github.com/200OK/TrufflerSample)

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 125: Truffler with Joel Abrahamsson, Marcus Granstrom and Henrik Lindstrom

This week’s show notes were typed up by @RobinDotNet – Thanks!!!

• Jon asks why Glimpse was created.
• Anthony gives a high-level explanation of what Glimpse does.
• Glimpse is for your server what Firebug is for your browser.
• Glimpse exposes a plugin architecture that allows it to be extended as necessary.
• Kevin asks if Glimpse can be leveraged from application code. Nik explains it is possible, but 99% of the functionality you need will not require any extra code in your application.
• You can point your logging framework to Glimpse and then you can see log entries relevant to the request.
• The guys talk about how Glimpse fits in with NLog, ELMAH, mvc-mini-profiler, etc.
• Nik says Firebug + Fiddler + Glimpse is the trifecta of development tools.
• Jon asks how Glimpse can be used to help a user experiencing trouble with a production site.
• Jon asks about running Glimpse in production.
• Twitter question from @danielauger: “What was the most difficult metric to tap into?”
• Anthony and Nik explain all the detail that is tracked in the Execution tab of Glimpse.
• Anthony talks about how they decided to display all the data that Glimpse has.
• Jon and Anthony talk about how Glimpse could be used to improve page response times.
• Kevin asks about the performance overhead of using Glimpse and using it in production.
• Nik explains how Glimpse plugins are enabled/disabled.
• Jon asks about seeing the validation rules for a particular request.
• Anthony talks about what is added in to core Glimpse versus what goes in to Glimpse plugins.
• Jon asks about how Glimpse handles Ajax.
• Kevin asks about record-and-replay functionality in Glimpse.
• Jon asks about the implementation of the client side display of Glimpse data.
• Nik explains how to configure Glimpse to easily compare differences between test, staging and production environments.
• Jon asks about the future of Glimpse.

Show links:

• Glimpse: git repo, Glimpse for ASP.NET NuGet package, Glimpse for ASP.NET MVC NuGet package
• Anthony van der Hoorn (@anthony_vdh)
• Nik Molnar (@nikmd23)
• CodePlex documentation for adding Glimpse manually
• NLog
• ELMAH
• mvc-mini-profiler
• Firebug
• Fiddler
• C4MVC talk on Glimpse
• Fluent Security

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 124: Anthony van der Hoorn and Nik Molnar on Glimpse

Note: Thanks to @rossfuhrman for typing our show notes this week!