• Dru explains the concept of package management and how it is implemented in other communities.  He continues by exposing package management’s absence in the .NET space and how Nu came into being.
• Rob basically shares the typical user experience and how to add open source references with Nu. 
• Kevin asks about the decision to take on the heavy dependency on Ruby.  The guys get into the similarities and differences between Ruby and .NET packaging, the use of the Ruby Gems server and standing up their own Nu server.
• Rob and Dru speak to the Gem Spec and how can contribute their open source packages to Nu.
• The guys talk about dependencies, versions and package upgrade paths with Nu.  Rob and Dru also share the challenges around management of open source projects like MassTransit and NServiceBus which include many cascading dependencies and the practicality of hosting packages for contrib projects which are being updated at breakneck speeds.
• Kevin asks about Bundler and the use of the local gem cache. Dru digs a little more into the differences between Ruby and .NET package management and introduces concepts like freezing references. 
• Rob basically speaks to Semantic Versioning – a formalized policy on bumping version numbers.
• Rob and Dru talk about ownership and how to get one’s packages added to the Gem server.  Scott K speaks of security, evil-doers, and lawyers.
• The group entertains the idea of hosting their own Gem Servers.
• Rob basically walks through another Nu usage with a RoundhousE example.
• Kevin notes that Nu installs are focused on the release of assemblies only. Rob and Dru talk to the distribution of documentation, samples and even executables as well.
• Dru provides the rundown of other .NET package management systems, their approaches and how they differ from Nu.
• Jon talks about open source naming, Google Juice and asks about the origins of the Nu (Nubular) name.
• Scott K asks what happens if Microsoft ever releases a package manager. The guys respond with talk of “bringing the awesome” and Jon shares that having more than one of something is rarely a bad thing.
• Kevin asks about the Nu roadmap. Rob and Dru talk to stabilization, issue/request tracking, and building up their own Gem Server.
• Jon asks about project contributors. Dru gives props to Bil Silmer for his contributions to the project.  He also talks about the development of Nu for Visual Studio and the integrated add reference experience it will offer devs.  Dru also thanks Nick Quaranto and the Ruby Community for the temporary use of their Gem Server. Jon asks how “our” use of the Gem has been received by the Ruby Community.
• K Scott basically dies.
• Dru further pimps Nu and requests that all open source projects submit their packages. Dru teases us with talk of TopShelf, UppercuT and Rob basically pimps database versioning with RoundhousE.

Show Links: 

• Dru Sellers, @drusellers
• Rob Reynolds, @ferventcoder
• Nu – Gems for .NET
• MassTransit
• Nu for Visual Studio
• Michael Carter, @kiliman
• Bundler
• Semantic Versioning
• IronRuby
• Tom Preston-Werner
• universal-.net
• Will Green, @hotgazpacho
• Nu Google Group
• Bil Simser @bsimser
• RoundhousE
• hornget
• Bricks
• NGems
• OpenWrap
• Sebastien Lambla, @serialseb
• OpenRasta
• Nu YouTrack
• GemCutter
• Nick Quaranto, @qrush
• Topshelf
• UppercuT

Show notes compiled by Ben Griswold. Thanks!

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 92: Dru Sellers and Rob Reynolds on Nu

Thanks, listeners, for all of the great questions:

• @mattcasto – What does the herding code crew think of LightSwitch
• @detroitpro – What do you know of orchard? w/ @loudej on board it could be something. #HerdingCode
• @detroitpro – Thoughts on Nu (gems in .NET) #HerdingCode
• @MachaHack – If you were going to learn to program all over again, what would you do differently?
• @mattcasto – What’s your favorite energy drink? #herdingCode #lightninground
• @JimHolmes – Cake or Pie? (In honor of @stevehorn )
• Ross Jempson – Why all the fuss about Microsoft.Data? 
• Ross Jempson – How did you get banned from chat.meta.stackoverflow? 
• Ross Jempson – I have a friend, here in Australia that queued up from 11:30pm one night for 11 hours to get an iphone4.  Is an intervention required?
• @JimHolmes – Failing cake or pie, do y’all think this downturn gives companies pause to rethink approaches to quality and craftsmanship?

And the show wraps with the prospect of turning urine to gold…

Show Links: 

• LightSwitch
• Orchard
• Nu – Gems for .NET
• Microsoft.Data
• David Fowler
• WebMatrix
• Razor
• chat.meta.stackoverflow
• @ehexter
• MvcConf
• @shanselman
• James Senior
• F5

Show notes compiled by Ben Griswold. Thanks!

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Herding Code 91: Listener-Powered Lightning Round

Note: Since we recorded this, Sara was named one of the Top 15 Developer/Hacker Women to Follow on Twitter by Mashable. Congrats!

• Sara kicks off the show by introducing us to Girl Develop IT and its target audience – female entrepreneurs who needs to higher and work with developers and professional women who wish to switch careers and become coders.
• Kevin asks the focus on building projects/products.  Chipps speaks to the series’ curriculum – HTML/CSS, JavaScript, design patterns, data structures and Ruby on Rails.
• Jon asks why Ruby and Rails over ASP.NET MVC and C#?  Good question since Sara is an ASP.NET and C# developer after all.
• The guys and gal talk about the early success of the program.
• Kevin shares that most of the Herding Code hosts are fathers of daughters and asks a twitter question about providing classes and turning girls to coding. Sara expresses the overarching strategy of Girl Develop IT which is to develop rock star programmers which girls can look up to.
• This sparks a conversation about media not telling the real story about developers. Are they any sexy cool female (or male) coders on TV? Is there any way to be a normal girl and a coder?
• Jon asks about dereferencing a pointer in high school.
• Scott K asks about the differences in teaching women compared to men?  Do the gender have different learning styles?  Sara talks about getting the women in the group feeling comfortable to answer questions. 
• The group talks about conferences and open source projects and the percentages of women there within. 
• Sara talks about extending the Girl Develop IT course materials to other chapters.
• Jon asks why this sort of thing (teaching focused on women) isn’t already being done. Sara speaks to what’s happening in the community and the typical women’s group.
• The guys ask “if you can’t get to Girl Develop IT, how can women get involved and learn?” How about online learning?
• The cast considers pretending to be women on Stackoverflow?
• Scott K asks what’s next for the Girl Develop IT? Will the course begin to venture outside of the web space? Lisp development for women perhaps?
• Chipps offers the bundl.it elevator pitch, answers a Twitter question about Mono and the conversation quickly digresses to challenges in international domain registration.
• Sara shares her excitement about last year’s Concept Camp and announces this year’s return.  Be on the lookout for CONCEPT CAMP 2010: A DEV ODYSSEY, puns and steak sponsorship!
• Sara talks about the success of the Devs for Wendy fundraiser held of software developer and loving mom, Wendy Friedlander.
• The show wraps with the boys asking Sara for advice on raising daughters around computers and software and code.  And then Chipps pimps the October release of Computer Engineer Barbie.

Show Links: 

• Sara Chipps, @SaraJChipps
• Girl, Develop It!
• Catherina Fake
• Kodu 
• Small Basic
• NYC Ruby Women’s Group
• Seattle Mind Camp
• Stackoverflow
• CONCEPT CAMP 2010: A DEV ODYSSEY
• Infragistics, Infamous Steak Sponsor
• Matt Podwysocki
• bundl.it
• Jeff Norton
• Simone Chiaretta
• Devs for Wendy
• Charles Petzold
• Miguel Castro
• Peter Laudati
• Steve Bohlen
• Rachel Appel

Show notes compiled by Ben Griswold. Thanks!

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Herding Code 90: Sara Chipps on GirlDevelopIT and Girls Developing Software

• The show kicks off by explaining the IIS Developer Express name.  Why not just IIS Express?
• Vaidy provides an overview of IIS Developer Express and explains it is a lightweight, self-contained version of IIS for web developers.  
• Vaidy speaks about the WebMatrix which includes IIS Developer Express along with the Razor ViewEngine and SQL 4 Compact Edition.
• K Scott asks about IIS Developer Express and its relationship to ASP.NET Development Server (which you may still be calling Cassini).  Vaidy notes that Express will likely integrate with Visual Studio in the future and responds to a Twitter question asking why wasn’t Cassini further developed rather than building out the new product.
• Vaidy notes that IIS Developer Express is based off of IIS 7 which triggers a conversation about Hostable Web Core.
• K Scott and Jon pepper Vaidy which a number of questions including whether or not MSDeploy will work with IIS Developer Express.
• The guys review the environments for which IIS Developer Express and WebMetrix are supported.
• Vaidy talks about IIS.Net.
• Vaidy walks Jon and K Scott through debugging your .NET web applications with IIS Express.
• Jon asks about running IIS Express from the command line. Vaidy talks about the configuration mode vs the application mode.
• Vaidy talks about SSL support, self-signed certificates and custom certificates.
• Jon asks about IIS Express user interface and how it’s implemented.  Guess what. It’s WPF.
• Vaidy speaks to IIS Developer Express logging and how it differs from the full version of IIS.
• K Scott asks if there are IIS Express extensions like FastCGI or UrlRewriting. Vaidy explains that all IIS7 extensions should be compatible except when the extensions were not designed to run on XP.
• Jon wants more. What’s next for Vaidy and IIS Developer Express? 
• The show wraps with talk about distribution and redistribution of WebMatrix and IIS Developer Express.

Show Links: 

• Vaidy Gopalakrishnan
• Introducing IIS Developer Express
• Introducing IIS Express
• IIS Developer Express FAQ
• Debug Your .NET Web Project with IIS Express
• Fun With C# and HP Laserjets, K Scott
• WebMatrix
• Razor
• SQL 4 Compact Edition
• Hostable WebCore
• NetShell
• www.iis.net
• Thomas Deml

Show notes compiled by Ben Griswold. Thanks!

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 89: Vaidy Gopalakrishnan on IIS Developer Express

• The show begins with Julie providing a broad look at the new features and improvements around the EF designer, the run-time, POCO support and disconnected entities.
• Julie talks about her world of database-first development and learning about persistence ignorance, repositories and domain driven development.
• The group talks about the history of Entity Framework and how it is more than a typical ORM.
• K Scott and Julie dive into the designer support for database-generated entities and starting with a blank slate for POCOs.  Julie notes that one can create the DDL in the Visual Studio designer and then generate the database from what is modeled.
• The group talks about green field vs legacy database development and Jon comments on migrations and updating models.
• Scott K asks about hurdles such as generated code being overwritten when using the designer. Julie speaks to updating the model from the database and using views rather than tables to generate the model.  Julie shares complications around foreign keys and RIA services and managing large models in the designer.
• K Scott brings the talk back to POCOs and Julie discusses code generation templates customization with T4 templates. 
• Jon mentions the Visual Studio Extension Manager and how adding template items from the online gallery is just so easy.
• K Scott asks Julie about Code First development with EF 4 CTP4 and compares Code First to  Fluent NHibernate.
• The conversation jumps between versioning, plain old PHP objects, ALT.NET kerfuffle and the Vote of No Confidence.
• Julie and K Scott speak to the two types of POCO support, virtual properties, dynamic proxies, lazy loading and select n + 1.
• Jon asks about EF’s context lifecycle management for ASP.NET and the complexity around disconnected entities.  Julie shares her recommendations on change tracking, entity state properties, self-tracking entities and persisting to the database.
• Julie talks about her book, Programming Entity Framework, the rewrite for EF 4, her Data Points column in MSDN Magazine and the MSDN Development videos.
• The show wraps with comments about Domain-Driven Design and the Norwegian Developers Conference talks.
• Postscript – Jon calls Julie back to talk about the new CTP 4 release.
• Julie talks about how some of the changes are specific to code-first, and others enhance to the core API in CTP 4 to facilitate use of code-first.
• Julie describes the DbContext and DbSet, how they relate to ObjectContext and ObjectSet, and how they’re so much simpler to work with.
• Julie then talks about how the code-first changes make it possible to remove a lot of code because the model is inferred, but you can override things using model builder code or attributes.
• Jon and Julie talk about the Ugly Buddy class, which allow adding attributes to an EF model.
• Julie talks about how the conventions have gotten a lot smarter.
• We talk about Scott Guthrie’s post, and how he’s demonstrating how to take maximum use of the EF / Code First approach.
• We wrap up by talking about improvements in how updates are handled. There’s support for a few workflows – manually keeping them in sync, having EF drop and create, and have EF drop / create / populate. However, as far as we can tell, this drop doesn’t include a migration system.

Show Links:

• Julie Lerman’s Blog
• Programming Entity Framework
• Vermont .NET User Group
• Testability and Entity Framework 4.0
• LLBLGen Pro
• Frans Bouma
• EF Feature CTP4 Walkthrough: Code First
• Fluent NHiberate
• T4 Templates
• Node
• MongoDB
• Raven DB
• Entity Framework Vote of No Confidence
• Scott Bellware
• PluralSight
• MSDN Development Videos
• Julie’s MSDN Data Points Column
• Rob Conery
• Greg Young
• Norwegian Developers Conference
• Eric Evans
• Entity Framework 4 CTP 4
• ScottGu’s post on Entity Framework 4 Code-First with CTP 4
• Julie’s post: What I’m Loving in Entity Framework 4 CTP 4
• List of slang terms for police officers

Show notes compiled by Ben Griswold. Thanks!

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Herding Code 88: Julie Lerman on Entity Framework 4

• Jeff walks us through the genesis of Stack Overflow and how it begot Server Fault, Super User, Stack Exchange and now Area 51.
• Jeff explains Area 51 and the democratic process around establishing a knowledge-based site.  The guys talk about the old Stack Exchange pricing model and how Area 51’s approach is entirely different.
• Kevin asks if there’s a concern that Area 51 will have a geek skew – especially since there’s likely a draw from the existing geek ghetto.
• Scott K asks about bringing experts involvement into communities.  For example, including Alton Brown in a cooking site.
• Jon and Jeff talk about the model of selling software and the magical wonderland that is Coding Horror.
• Jeff talks about the Stack Overflow API and the Stack Exchange API Contest.  There are PRIZES!  The guys consider when an API is necessary and what APIs can provide.  Did somebody say community-built iPhone application for Stack Overflow? 
• Jon asks if the Stack Overflow API will support OData.  Jeff answers “yes”, and then the conversation turns to talk of data analysis and the economics of Q & A sites. Jeff gets back to the OData, “the Sharepoint of sharing data on the web”, and points us to the OData web UI which queries current SO data dump.
• Scott K notes that Stack Overflow is optimized for answerers and asks Jeff for his comments on the Stack Overflow Fatigue article.  Jeff talks about site popularity, community/user issues which don’t occur on smaller sites, and moderation tools.
• Jon asks about expertise and tag-based badges and comments that reputation is self-correcting.  Jeff stresses that the site is really optimized for those who are the best communicators and not necessarily those who are most knowledgeable.
• Kevin asks how Jeff responds to folks who have no chance of gaining enough critical mass to have their interests manifest into a Area 51 site.  Jeff shares his thoughts on community growth and launching and supporting sites with love. 
• Jeff talks about open source, driving forward and evolving his sites and the problem with trying to be all things to all people.
• Jeff fields Twitter questions about Stack Overflow SQL scalability, Stack Overflow’s testing and deployment story and how Jeff’s role has changed with the introduction of many new faces working on the app.  This triggers conversations about hosting on the Microsoft platform, the good and bad of Bizspark, the benefits of servers/hardware being cheap and general happiness with the stack.  Jeff also speaks to continuous integration and argues against unit testing all features.  Jeff speaks of the pointy-haired boss, Metcalfe’s Law, the quite guy problem and how to work with distributed teams.
• The show wraps with Jeff sharing his dependence on human unit tests, cheating, optimizing for the “mistake fixing” and Stack Overflow’s loose web development process.

Show Links:

• Jeff Atwood
• Joel Spolsky
• Jarrod Dixon
• Geoff Dalgas
• Area 51
• Stack Overflow
• Server Fault
• Super User
• Stack Exchange
• Alton Brown
• Creative Commons
• Anthony Bourdain
• Daniel Pink
• Clay Shirky
• Stack Overflow API, Stack Exchange API Contest
• Kevin Montrose
• Code Better
• Stackprinter
• Scott Hanselman
• OData
• ClearBits
• Stack Exchange OData Web UI
• Azure
• Stack Overflow Fatigue, Robert Elwell
• Steve Yegge
• Berkeley Parents Network
• @strickland
• @alexangas
• Bizspark
• Bigtable
• Dustin Campbell
• Michael Stum
• CruiseControl
• Metcalfe’s Law
• Miguel de Icaza
• On Working Remotely, Coding Horror
• Ben Dumke
• Web Camps
• Is Arrogance a Factor of Success?, Phil Haack

Show notes compiled by Ben Griswold. Thanks!

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 87: Jeff Atwood on Area 51 and Stack Overflow

• Saqib talks about his role on the Bing Team, data mining and deep links.
• Jon and Saqib talk about solving problems with a little help from Twitter.
• Saqib explains the function of a screen reader and how some people can listen to computers really fast.
• Jon asks about common frustrations around accessibly when web browsing. Jon considers the tie-in between SEO and accessibility.  The guys dive a little deeper into structuring information, images vs text and learning the few basics.
• Jon asks if there’s a way to do accessibility analysis? Saqib points to the “Check Accessibility.” option which is available when right-clicking on the web project in VS 2010.  (It’s there. I checked.)
• Jon and Saqib talk about coding with limited sight. Saqib shares his general techniques.
• The conversation continues with talk about Microsoft product development and the importance placed on accessibility.
• The show wraps with Saqib introducing the term “Universal Design” of all things.  As a developer, you want to make your applications for the largest number of people to use. Just keep in mind that “there’s a lot of people in this world, and they’re all a little bit different.” “It’s about making cool stuff for a lot of people.”

Show Links:

• Saqib Shaikh
• Bing
• JAWS (an acronym for Job Access With Speech) Screen Reader
• SEO Toolkit
• ARIA
• HTML5
• Clint Nelson from Startup Weekend

Show notes compiled by Ben Griswold. Thanks!

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Herding Code 86: Saqib Shaikh on Accessibility and Developing with Limited Sight

• Clint gives the elevator pitch and a brief history of Startup Weekend.
• Jon talks about how they are incorporating Startup Weekend into Web Camps. The guys talk about project implementation.
• Clint talks about Startup Weekend growth, reach and staff and facilitator involvement.  Clint talks about the management aspects of Startup Weekend.
• Jon asks the types of application which Startup Weekenders are pitching. The guys talk about monetizing iPhone and iPad applications and Jon asks about Windows 7 Phone apps.
• Clint talks about the benefit of having developers at Startup Weekend knowing a common framework/language.
• Jon asks about Startup Weekend success stories like Twitpay and Foodspotting.
• Clint talks about community building, relationships, launch support and current startup funding ratio around 5%.
• Client and Jon talk about startup thinking in the Microsoft community and building a business around MS technologies.

Show Links:

• Startup Weekend
• Clint Nelsen / @clintnelsen
• Marc Nager
• Franck Nouyrigat
• Web Camps
• Twitpay
• Foodspotting
• Microsoft Bizspark
• SXSW (South by Southwest)
• HERDING CODE EPISODE 7: WHY DON’T STARTUPS RUN ON MICROSOFT?
• Global Entrepreneurship Week

Show notes compiled by Ben Griswold. Thanks!

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 85: Clint Nelson on Startup Weekend

• K Scott asks the guests about why they switched. Jeff talks about how his switch from desktop development on Windows to Rails development started around 2005 and was primarily driven by the Ruby language itself. Mike agrees that it’s all about the Ruby language. Scott B talks about how he straddles both worlds but only sees .NET as a smart choice for building Windows applications now. Scott B goes on to talk about how it’s a philosophical thing for him as well, and how he prefers to work on a stack that’s more purely open source.
• Scott K talks about the dichotomy in moving from Windows to get away from a proprietary platform and then you find yourself working on a Mac. Go Debian! Scott B talks about how Vista was a tipping point for him to move to Mac. He felt like Microsoft was too focused on shipping products – even if they weren’t good products.
• Mike and Scott B talk about moving from ALT.NET to ex-.NET, and how they feel like it’s fear and investments in the .NET platform that prevent more people from moving. The guys talk about the “technology treadmill.”
• Scott K talks about the problems in “dropping paygrades” in moving from being a senior .NET developer to being a junior developer on another platform.
• Mike Moore asks why developers are investing in a technology that another company owns. Scott B says it’s not about Microsoft owning .NET, it’s about not being able to make decisions about where the platform is going. He says he sees Microsoft as a manufacturer of 21st century office equipment for large companies with the most influence. It works, but it can be heartbreaking when you see Microsoft moving into markets in a way that’s not as elegant as existing technologies (e.g. Entity Framework) because you know that the surrounding industry will move there, and eventually your work will move there as well. The result is a technology treadmill.
• K Scott points out that as the average developer, you’re not really in charge of where Linux, Rails, or other open source platforms are heading either. Mike and Scott B clarify; it’s not about ownership so much as trusting where the Rails community is going.
• Kevin asks Jeff about some recent criticisms he’s made towards Rails 3 recently. Jeff talks about all the things he likes about Rails, but says that he is disappointed that Rails is making changes designed to broaden acceptance and appeal to the enterprise. Despite that, he says that he hasn’t lost faith in where Rails is headed. He brings up the relative ease of doing TDD on Rails as opposed to .NET as an example of how Rails works more like he wants to work as a developer.
• Scott K talks about how Microsoft has a conflict of interest as a tools vendor, and how a willingness to work with other IDE’s makes moving to other platforms pretty easy.
• The conversation move towards talking about how Intellisense affects system and platform design. Other platforms like Rails are built so you don’t need Intellisense to be productive. Rails was never built to sell anything, and that shows in the platform. Mike talks about how he had to leave the .NET platform to find a place where people really cared about getting from 12 lines of code to 4 lines of code.
• Scott B talks about how Rails committers are all building Rails applications, and points out that WPF didn’t get the attention it needed until Microsoft used it in Visual Studio. He then talks about how Rails will feel free to make modifications (monkey patches) to Rails, which often graduate to plugins and then move into the core. The key is that this is a continuous process rather than focused on a big product release cycle. Scott B talks more about the Ruby/Rails meritocracy.
• The conversation shifts to the entrepreneurial nature of the Ruby on Rails community. Mike talks about how development cost is a major factor and that people who will take a risk in moving to a new platform are also more likely to take a risk in business.
• Mike and Scott B talk about how polyglot programming is much more prevalent outside of the Microsoft development community.
• Scott B talks about how ASP.NET was positioned as a competitor to Ruby On Rails, and how the two differ.
• K Scott asks how much the move away from .NET is based on culture and developers are looking for a new community with different values. Mike talks about how he was on the verge of leaving programming altogether when he found the Ruby community, and how it reinvigorated him. Scott B says that there are things about developing in the .NET space which drive burnout and, in turn, reduces passion in the community. Jeff talks about how stumbling on Ruby showed him that it was just a lot more fun than what he was doing in his current job.
• Scott B talks about how the plugin experience in Rails differs from the .NET development world – where you’re often waiting for services that just aren’t quite there yet.
• Mike and Scott B talk about how they like reading Ruby code. Scott B talks about how the Ruby culture places a value on making code readable to the point that it’s competitive.
• Scott K talks about how programming has become a business now, but he’s always liked to learn things just because it was fun. Scott B says that the skill level in the Rails world seems to be higher, but the people are less intimidating.
• Mike points out that many of the leaders of the Ruby community were previously leaders in the Agile community. Scott B talks about how he’s seen Uncle Bob Martin moving to Rails over the past few years.
• Scott B then talks about the problems in toolmakers who make tools but don’t use them.
• The show ends, but not really. lots of crazy speculation about starting over with a new runtime on top of .NET.

Show Links:

• Jeff Cohen (@jeffcohen)
• Mike Moore (@blowmage)
• Scott Bellware (@ampgt)
• Martin Fowler
• ALT.NET Podcast
• Curt Hibbs
• Lone Star Ruby Conf
• CherryPy
• Basecamp
• RailsConf
• Pragmatic Programmers Resources
• Scott Guthrie
• Rmagic
• authlogic
• merb
• Manifesto for Agile Software Development
• Uncle Bob Martin
• Dave Thomas
• Brian Marick
• Andy Hunt
• SOLID
• Rails for .NET Developers
• Softies On Rails
• MountainWest RubyConf
• Agile Roots
• Norwegian Developers Conference
• Monospace

Show notes compiled by Ben Griswold. Thanks!

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Herding Code 84: Ex-Microsoft Developer Panel with Mike Moore, Jeff Cohen, and Scott Bellware

• The shows starts with a general definition of document databases.  Ayende then contrasts RavenDB with two other popular document databases, Mongo and CouchDB, and comments that RavenDB is much more similar to CouchDB than Mongo.
• Ayende talks about how RavenDB indexes work – they’re written when you store data, but not immediately after. He continues with an explanation of transactions – data is transactional, but indexes aren’t.
• Scott K brings up Node.js and asked if Ayende had looked at the event driven approach over spinning up threads. Ayende talks about how RavenDB previously worked like that, but it made debugging very painful. Instead, the architecture is now focused on the end goal – RavenDB will never make you wait for a write.
• The guys take a question from Twitter about whether there are plans to support Mono. Ayende says yes, but outlines some of the changes that will be required to make that happen.
• Scott K asks if traditional RDBMS performance tweaks based on moving data and indexes to other spindles are possible and useful on RavenDB.
• Jon asks about how this relates to Reactive Extensions, and Ayende discusses how Event Sourcing works in RavenDB.
• Jon and Scott K ask some questions about storage formats – JSON, binary serialization, etc.
• The group digs into how Map / Reduce works.  Ayende explains Map / Reduce in generally terms as well as how it pertains to RavenDB.
• K Scott asks questions about indexing – how it’s done, how indexes are defined and impacts of keeping a lot of indexes. Ayende talks about how indexes are essentially materialized views, and how the RavenDB query engine can use both LINQ and Lucene syntax.
• K Scott asks about transaction support, embedded support, and concurrency.
• The guys talk about the “sweet spot” for RavenDB and document databases. Ayende talks about advantages of working with a document database, and the benefits of working without a defined schema.
• Jon asks if ORM’s just go away in a document database context and the conversation moves on to talking about different architectures and development strategies that come into play when working with schema-less documents.
• K Scott mentions that this seems like it would work really well with Aggregate Roots in Domain-Driven Design.
• Ayende and Jon discuss how aggregate queries compare in the context of some of the inefficient queries in MVC Music Store.
• Kevin drills a little deeper into the versioning challenges.
• Jon asks about the use of .NET 4 features with RavenDB including the Task Library and the Expando object. Ayende talks about how they made heavy use of the Dynamic keyword and MEF in RavenDB. Basically, everything except for storage and indexing is handled via MEF.
• Ayende talks about the extensibility points such as read and index previews.
• Jon begs for punishment by asking for Ayende’s comments on the MVC Music Store. Ayende talks about how he prefers tutorials be very explicit about what they’re not going to cover in detail. He recommends completely removing details which aren’t the focus of the tutorial. Then he goes on to talk about how things like shopping carts just seem to work more smoothly with document storage rather than relational databases.
• Jon asks about the licensing models. Ayende talks about how people were unhappy with the initial pricing model due to the differing deployment expectations, and how he worked with customers to establish a pricing model that works for everyone.
• Ayende teaches the gang the term “Chinese Interesting.”

Show Links:

• Ayende’s Blog
• RavenDB 
• Map / Reduce – A Visual Explanation
• RavenDB – An Introduction
• NHibernate
• Mvc Music Store
• NoSQL
• MongoDB
• CouchDB
• Domain-Driven Design, Aggregate Roots
• Reactive Extensions for .NET (Rx)
• Lucene.NET
• MEF
• Rob Conery
• Glenn Block
• James Avery
• Ryan Dahl, Node.js
• Extensible Storage Engine

Show notes compiled by Ben Griswold. Thanks!

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Herding Code 83: Ayende Rahien on RavenDB

• Kevin kicks off the conversation noting differences between design patterns and best practices in the .NET and Ruby worlds. Kevin opens up a discussion by calling out the .NET developer obsession with persistence ignorance versus the use of the ActiveRecord pattern found in Ruby on Rails. 
• Cory talks about basic CRUD applications vs complex domains and how applications tends to model themselves after organizational structure.  Often times you will find .NET code tends to be more complex whereas simpler domains are often represented in Ruby code.
• Kevin asks about domain-driven design. Cory talks about the expressiveness of Ruby code and how the introduction of the dynamic keyword makes expressiveness a little easier in .NET.  Will talks about Ruby mixins facilitating a different development approach.  Will also comments on the ceremony of creating .NET vs Ruby classes and how easily you can express the business concerns in Ruby.
• Scott K talks about his general impressions of Rails – focus on the presentation layer first rather than a DDD approach which would focus on the model first.
• K Scott talks about manifest typing and states that there is an importance placed on types rather than behaviors in .NET coding.  Will calls out the fact that in .NET coding we often are most interested in what an object is whereas in Ruby we primarily care about what an object can do.  This ties back to static typing vs duck typing.
• Cory speaks to outside-in development in Ruby, exposure to TDD and learning Rails with Cucumber from the beginning. 
• Jon acknowledges the language and framework differences and asks how cultural differences between the two development camps might drive development practices.  K Scott talks about .NET developer dependence on the compiler rather than working with customers.
• Kevin talks about the “need” for viewmodels in .NET MVC whereas models are being passes around throughout a Rails application. Cory talks about the power of meta-programming in Ruby and the shift between classes being parsed in .NET vs classes being executed in Ruby.  He also speaks to how fundamental constructs will shape a development strategy.
• Cory talks more about meta-programming and convention over configuration.
• Kevin talks about the “No Magic String” rule, static analysis, and Resharper-driven development.  Will states you don’t really need refactoring tools or even an IDE when coding Ruby. Cory talks about the emphasis on writing tests for Ruby code and how this acts as a replacement for the static code analysis testing you might get from the compiler. Scott K speculates that there’s so much more code in C# so there’s a larger need for refactoring tools. 
• Cory ask why we are still not testing in the .NET world? Why aren’t we doing migrations?  Why are we so focused merely on what is available in the Visual Studio IDE?  Scott K feels .NET developers are still unsure of what they should test.  Scott K also thinks it is hard to mock stuff and .NET developers aren’t used to writing decoupled code. Will speaks to the fact that Ruby all classes are open all the time and nothing is sealed.
• For better or worse, Jon notes that it’s easy to think of the compiler as the first .NET test and, though it could be considered a crutch, the IDE provides one with a lot valuable coding help with intellisence. Cory talks about craftsmanship and how the primary audience for IDE support and refactoring tools is not the TDD developer.
• Kevin speaks to the fact there’s no need for an IoC container in Ruby and Cory shares the dangers of becoming married to any framework in .NET development.
• Jon asks if Ruby development can become unwieldy because it’s so easy to get started. 
• Scott K asks about new language features (for examples, lambdas, dynamic keyword, optional parameters) and how this adds to the complexity of .NET development. Will talks about complexity vs power and Cory adds that new features allows developers to approach problems differently.
• Kevin asks about techniques which can be used with the dynamic keyword.  Scott K talks about the addition of Eval() in C# 5.  Jon jokes about the “Compiler as a Disservice.”  Cory talks about fundamental challenges with Dynamic and Eval() in a statically typed language.
• The guys talk about dependency injection.
• Cory talks more about craftsmanship and code quality. Will talks about values and taking a stance when promoting a frameworks and points some blame at Microsoft for giving .NET development dozens of ways to complete a single task.
• Kevin asks about the focus around Behavior-Driven, integration testing in Ruby rather opposed to the fine-grained unit testing approach often found in .NET development.  Will speaks to the outside-in testing approach but also the importance of unit testing in Ruby.
• Scott K asks if IronRuby makes .NET development easier.
• The show wraps with Will and Cory pimping their up-coming presentations in Florida and Norway.

Show Links:

• Cory Foy’s Blog, @cory_foy
• Will Green’s Blog, @hotgazpacho
• IronRuby
• IronRuby for the .NET Developer Presentation from MIX10
• Day of Ruby
• Cucumber
• FubuMVC
• Eric Evans
• Uncle Bob
• Cory Haines
• The Tampa Ruby Brigade, Why use IronRuby over MRI/JRuby?
• International Conference on Agile Software Development, Innovation Games
• Agile 2010 Conference
• WinDBG

Show notes compiled by Ben Griswold. Thanks!

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Herding Code 82: Cory Foy and Will Green Compare .NET and Ruby Development

• Jon talks about his impressions on the effectiveness of hands-on learning at Web Camp Toronto.
• K. Scott questions if people really learn at Code Camps, and Scott K. talks about hack-a-thons at Code Camps.
• We talk about open source contributions as development. Jon demonstrates that he’s bad at doing math while he talks.
• Jon asks Scott K. about what works for him with his training classes with Pluralsight.
• We all talk about the MVC Music Store, and the gaps between marketing, introductory training, and advanced training.
• Jon and K. Scott talk about the difficulty in finding the correct focus and simplicity level in introductory training.
• Jon talks about the mistake he’s made several times in not clarifying the level of content he’s presenting.
• Kevin talks about how he expects to see unit tests in any samples, but Scott K. says that won’t save you from public shame.
• Scott K. asks if we should be focusing on concepts and “why?” questions rather than products or frameworks.
• Jon and Scott K. talk about the fun of looking at the ASP.NET MVC source code.
• Kevin comments on the difference in complexity he sees in .NET code and Ruby source code. Scott K. talks about how Fubu MVC code is pretty easy to read, too.
• Jon asks about the difficulty of doing “real world” samples, and K. Scott asks whose real world we’re talking about.
• K. Scott drops a surprise mini-lightning round on us with a question about the effectiveness of video as a learning tool.

Show Links:

• Web Camps
• MVC Music Store
• Robby Ingebretsen’s talk at MIX10
• ASP.NET MVC source code
• FubuMVC
• Beatrix of the Netherlands

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Herding Code 81: Simplicity, balance, and focus in teaching software development

• Matt talks about how he’s been involved with RxJS.
• Jeffrey talks about how RxJS and Reactive Extensions came out of the the Volta project.
• Matt talks about how RxJS simplifies the callback model in Javascript.
• Jeffery adds on how this also has benefits to asynchronous operations.
• Jon asks about how this works with queries over events which will happen in the future.
• Mat talks about how this works with jQuery’s bind and live events.
• Jon asks the standard question about querying over mouse move events. Matt and Jeffrey use the example to explain about how composable operations over events can be really powerful.
• Jon asks how Reactive Extensions relates to functional reactive programming, and to functional programming in general.
• Kevin asks about how RxJS interoperates with jQuery.
• We take questions from Twitter about jQuery integration and use of RxJS to manage script loading and script scoping.
• Kevin asks for some concrete usage examples.
• Kevin asks about the library size and the overall release status.
• Jon asks about Jeffrey’s blog posts on using RxJS with Node.js and Script#.
• We talk about Matt’s extensive blog post series on RxJS.
• We talk about recent RxJS presentations: Erik Meijer’s talk at MIX10, Jeffrey’s talk at JSConf, and Matt’s at the Imagine Cup.
• Jon asks about what exactly is involved in adding RxJS support to different Javascript libraries.
• Scott K asks about the tradeoffs of bringing the CLR to the browser vs. bringing things like RxJS into the browser via Javascript.
• We talk about how Javascript development has gotten easier with development environment improvements, testing systems, etc.
• Matt talks about how it’s often easier to do things in Javascript than in a statically typed language like C#.
• Scott K asks about how scope is handled in RxJS.
• Jon asks about how the code is licensed.
• Kevin asks about the naming conventions used in RxJS, supported browsers, release plans.
• Jon asks about Reactive Extensions for .NET, and we talk about how it’s especially useful in Silverlight.
• Jeffery mentions that Reactive Extensions will be included in Windows Phone 7.
• We pretend to end the show, but the discussion keeps going and K Scott joins the party.

Show Links:

• Matt Podwysocki’s Blog
• Jeffrey van Gogh, Reactive Extensions 
• Microsoft Live Labs Volta
• JSConf EU 2010
• Rey Bango’s Blog, JSConf 2010 – Video Interviews with Top Javascript Developers
• YUI
• 280 North, Socratic Documentation Tool
• Node.js
• Script#
• Imagine Cup
• Erik Meijer
• Rhino
• John Resig, Sizzle
• WebSharp

Show notes compiled by Ben Griswold. Thanks!

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Herding Code 80: RxJS with Jeffrey van Gogh and Matt Podwysocki

• Chris begins the show with a conference overview which will leave you chomping at the bit for JSConf 2011 registration to open. Hackers’ Lounge. Multiple tracks. One killer speaker list. Hyper-caffeinated, hyper-intoxicated privates! Salmagundi. And lots of JavaScript!
• The guests discuss their favorite parts of the conference. Beyond the quality of the talks, Rey and Chris both comment about the invaluable conversations which were had out-of-session in the Hacker’s Lounge and at the ScurvyConf. Quote of the Show: “I am a firm believer of drinking beer, and shooting the poop, and when you do that, magic happens.” – Chris Williams
• Chris talks about the excitement around Tobias Schneirder’s presentation on Gordon, an open source Flash runtime written in pure JavaScript.
• The guys talk about Alex Russell and Google Chrome Frame and how IE6 must Die.
• Chris praises Billy Hoffman’s JavaScript’s Evil Side presentation.
• K Scott and Chris talk about JavaScript outside of the browser and functional programming,
• Chris and Scott K talk about a seemingly new found interest in Server-side JS
• Jon asks about JS library duplication in competing platforms. Rey talks about what Resig has done with Sizzle and how each library has their own niche.
• Chris talks about the need to learn JavaScript and how we should be JavaScript developers, not just developers who use JavaScript libraries.
• Matt teases us by mentioning that he’ll be talking about Reactive Extensions on next week’s Herding Code episode.
• Jon asks which percentage of cool JavaScript stuff is just waiting on browser adoption.  Chris doesn’t think too much and prompts Matt talks about progressive enhancements.
• Chris talks about the importance of security and how we shouldn’t only be taught how to write good code but also how to break bad code.
• Kevin asks what is happening with JavaScript, the language itself.
• The show wraps with talk of diversity in computing, JSConf EU, JQuery Conference, JQuery UI 1.8 release, JavaScript conferences and craft beers in the D.C. area.

Show Links:

• JSConf 2010, JSConf EU 2010
• Chris Williams’s Blog, @voodootikigod
• Rey Bango’s Blog, jQuery, Ajaxian
• Matt Podwysocki’s Blog
• Ken Henderson
• Dojo, Prototype, MooTools, YUI, ExtJs
• Brendan Eich
• Peter Higgins, Dojo, plugd
• Salmagundi
• Aaron Quint, Sammy.js, Making Bacon / Making Code
• Tobias Schneider, Gordon
• Greenhouse, Sproutcore, Ajaxian Post
• Alex Russell, Google Chrome Frame
• Douglas Crockford
• Scott Guthrie, IE9
• Narwhal, Tom Robinson, 280 North, Kevin Dangoor
• Ryan Dahl, Node
• V8
• nginx
• CouchDB
• Jaxer, Helma, Persevere
• Rhino
• SquirrelFish Extreme, Nitro
• Jeffrey van Gogh, Reactive Extensions
• CoffeeScript
• Jison
• Francisco Tolmasky, Socratic Documentation Tool
• Cappuccino, Objective-J
• Ross Boucher,
• John Resig, Sizzle
• NWMatcher, Acme (aka query.js)
• John-David Dalton 
• Sam Stephenson
• JavaScript and Web Standards Sitting in a Tree, Jenn Lukas
• Billy Hoffman
• ha.ckers.org, xssed.com
• JSConf 2010 – Video Interviews with Top Javascript Developers
• Makinde Adeagbo
• JSON Hijacking, Phil Haack
• HTML5
• ECMAScript5/Harmony
• @SaraJChipps
• JSConf Diversity in Computing Drive 
• JQuery Conference
• JQueryUI
• ChurchKey, Dogfish Head, Carpool, Rustico
• NoVALang
• nosqleast
• Tom Hughes-Croucher
• Scandinavian Web Developer Conference (SWDC)
• TXJS (Texas JavaScript Conference)

Show notes compiled by Ben Griswold. Thanks!

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Herding Code 79: JSConf Recap with Chris Williams, Rey Bango and Matt Podwysocki

• The show begins with talk of Kevin’s recent dabbling into Ruby on Rails. The guys talk about Ruby 2 vs Ruby 3, how MS developers love their IDEs and finally Rack.
• Jon mentions Jimmy Shimenti’s demo of Visual Studio 2010 File > New > Ruby on Rails with IronRuby.
• The conversation segues into the benefits of trying out other platforms and how trying out other platforms doesn’t necessarily mean one is jumping ship.
• Kevin shares why he has a hard time getting excited about IronRuby.
• Scott K introduces a recent Alt.NET Seattle Fishbowl Topic – Is C# is the best language for writing views or should dynamic languages be used instead?
• Rob Conery shares why he loves the Haml view engine and Kevin speaks to why he really likes Spark?
• The guys talk about html encoding and XSS vulnerabilities.
• The guys consider advanced techniques one can implement with jQuery and how really learning javascript can affect the way one writes C# code.
• Scott K briefs us on his recent Alt.Net open space presentation on Node.js.
• The guys passionately discuss the business of Twitter, hovercards, Twitter’s @Anywhere API, the Library of Congress, and the importance of security and password management.
• The guys talks about why Apple Changed Section 3.3.1.
• The guys talk about the Visual Studio 2010 installation and developer experience.
• Rob pimps TekPub with background music .

Show Links:

• Rob’s Blog
• TekPub
• Jetbrains RubyMine
• ReSharper
• Jimmy Schementi, IronRuby.Rack
• Ryan Riley (@panesofglass)
• How-to: Use Cucumber with .NET and C# under IronRuby
• RSpec
• NHaml, Hmal
• Spark View Engine
• ha.ckers.org xss cheat sheet, Anti-XSS Library
• @Anywhere Javascript API
• Hovercards
• Mongo
• Jaxer
• Bertrand Le Roy
• Mustache.js
• jQuery Gives Us a New Way to Zebra Stripe
• NoRM
• Andrew Theken
• James Avery
• Machine.Specifications (MSpec)
• Node.js
• Brad Wilson
• Simon Willison
• Merb
• Node.js, YUI 3 & Dom Manipulation. Oh My!
• Twitter CEO Ev Williams: Revenue Is A Feature
• Oops! Twitter Server Password is "Password"
• myOpenId, Infocard
• OpenID: Does The World Really Need Yet Another Username and Password?
• Why Apple Changed Section 3.3.1
• MonoTouch
• Louis De Jardin
• MEF
• Mozilla Labs: Bespin
• coderun
• Gary Bernhardt, String Calculator Kata 
• Code optimized web profile for Visual Studio 2010

Show notes compiled by Ben Griswold. Thanks!

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Herding Code 78: Ruby on Rails, View Engines, Web Security, Section 3.3.1 and Visual Studio 2010 with Rob Conery

• Eric talks about his role as consultant and Director of Open Source at Headspring.
• The guys walk through Hexter’s impressive resume.   Eric is the co-founder of MVCContrib, he established the Community for MVC (C4MVC) virtual user group and is currently coordinating MvcConf, the Virtual ASP.NET MVC Conference scheduled for July.  No wonder the most popular listener question for this week was “How is Hexter so awesome?”
• Eric takes us through the general theme of MvcConf  – “interactive” presentations around extensibility, testability and building maintainable, high-volume, enterprise applications with a focus on best practices like database migrations. 
• Eric issues a call for speakers. Who’s interested?
• Jon asks about Portable Areas in MvcContrib and Eric digs into the embedded view engine and synchronous message bus.
• Kevin asks a question.
• The guys talk about Input Builders, Dynamic Scaffolding and Fluent Html Helpers.  Jon also asks about MvcContrib Grid’s popularity.
• Scott K asks about extending ASP.NET MVC, “Are you fighting with the framework or at least fighting with the C# language?”  Have you gotten the feeling that Scott likes a good fight?  Scott considers how and why various frameworks are developed and Eric praises ASP.NET MVC for having all of the the right extension points in place. These leads to a group discussion about the ASP.NET MVC team releasing source drops and not working in a bubble.
• Eric and Jon talk about the MVCContrib TestHelpers and the importance of testing routes.  Hexter tells us about the UI Test Helpers built around WatiN and the benefit of strongly type views. Jon oohs and ahhs.
• Kevin asks another question.
• Scott K comments on SubControllers.  Eric tell us if SubControllers smell and shares the general argument against RenderAction.
• Jon talks about model validation via data annotations and how one might test.  Eric shares some of the patterns they have established (strongly-typed views, 1:1 mapping between view and viewmodel) and how he uses data annotations for data type validation and how complex validation is handled via a command processor’s rules engine.
• The show wraps with Eric singing about a few of his favorite things – continuous integration and testing. He pimps the early access edition of ASP.NET MVC2 in Action and Tarantino Database Migrations and announces that the Virtual ALT.Net folks and he will be open sourcing their video recording management scripts.
• Final question, “How does Eric get so much done?”  “Automate, automate, automate!”  Of course!

Show Links:

• Eric Hexter’s Blog
• Headspring Systems
• Community For MVC 
• MVC Conf
• MVCContrib
• Jeremy Skinner
• Austin .NET User Group
• Javier Lozano
• Brad Wilson on C4MVC
• LiveMeeting
• Viddler
• OpenRasta
• MonoRail
• FubuMVC
• Rob Conery, TekPub
• MVC Futures
• T4MVC
• MvcContrib Grid
• jqGrid
• jQuery DataTables
• Spark View Engine
• WatiN
• Steven Sanderson’s Light Test Automation Framework
• Oxite
• Orchard
• Eilon Lipton
• MVC Turbine
• Jimmy Bogard C4MVC on UI Testing
• Castle Validators
• AutoMapper
• Fluent Validation
• ASP.NET MVC2 in Action
• Tarantino database migrations
• Virtual Alt.NET

Show notes compiled by Ben Griswold. Thanks!

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Herding Code 77: Eric Hexter on MvcConf, C4MVC, and MvcContrib

• John talks about his exciting new evangelist job at Twilio. Twillo provides a web-service API for businesses to build scalable, reliable communication apps. Wait! The evangelist is going to tell you all about it.
• The guys quiz John about RestSharp. John talks about what RestSharp has to offer and the direction of the project. 
• The gangs talk about the oddities of .NET open source project development – forking, closing source, project naming, boredom and a plea for project takeover.
• Jon leads the group into dangerous territory and forces an OData discussion. Is OData good? Is it REST?  Hear what the guys have to say. 
• K Scott dazzles us with a power-packed Lightning Round.  Don’t step away for a second or you’ll miss it!  Just like lightning.
• John kicks off our first Official Pimp Your Stuff segment talking about ManagedAssembly – a community for .NET developers which is poised to be taken over.  Just ask.  Please.

Show Links:

• Twilio
• John’s Blog
• RestSharp
• Hammock for REST
• TweetSharp
• Daniel Crenna
• OData
• Darrel Miller
• IE9 Testdrive
• jQuery Snippets
• ManagedAssembly
• James Avery
• SubSonic
• NerdDinner’s OData Service
• NerdDinner JSON response Note: this is a json link so IE will show a file download prompt
• MIX10

Show notes compiled by Ben Griswold. Thanks!

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Herding Code 76: John Sheehan on RestSharp

• Scott K shares that public facing applications and services seem to get the least attention when it comes to security – until there’s an audit. Barry talks about the lack of security education and how training should be baked in from the ground up.
• Jon notes that folks don’t start off projects thinking about security.  First you code and then you worry about the risk.  Barry speaks to the Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) and continuous threat modeling.
• Scott K asks if there is a security checklist which developers should consult when developing a web application.  Barry references his book, OWASP, CDE and Miter.  Barry states that can’t think like a hacker but you can think about the risks and “what happens if this goes wrong” or “I leak this information” or “there is a cross site scripting attack.”
• Jon notes there are some security measures which are baked into the .NET Framework.  Barry talks about a defense in depth strategy and the Web Protection Library (WPL.)
• Barry dives into a few of the security and code analysis tools like CAT.NET and FxCop which are available for Visual Studio.  But how, by the way, no tool offers a silver bullet.
• Scott K asks where emphasis should be placed when implementing security measures.  Barry responds by putting his security hat on and assuming that all users are scum.  Trust no one!
• The guys get into encoding rules (when and where), XSS, SQL Injection and Cross-site request forgery.  Jon asks more about the measures built into ASP.NET Webforms and ASP.NET MVC which help prevent attacks.
• Kevin asks a question about automatic encoding by the framework.  Barry states this is a tricky solution to implement and suggests that frameworks should provide tools but developers should handle the encoding manually. Jon notes the new syntax in MVC 2 which facilitates this approach.
• Jon asks about testing frameworks and asks Barry for a checklist of steps which developers must complete if they wish to secure their applications.  Barry rattles off a bunch of must-dos actions, pimps his book and pokes fun at American money.
• The guys talk about RIA, Silverlight and Flash and briefly touch upon security benefits and issues.  And then they discuss social engineering security/privacy issues.
• Scott K moves away from web applications and services.  What about client applications?  Barry talks about trusted sources, and the .NET and Java sandboxes.  And the guys speak of OS sandboxes and vitualizing applications and Code Access Security (CAS.)
• Barry talks about FoxPro thanks to a Twitter question from @jglazano and the show finishes up with talk about blue and black hats, security snake oil and scary security stories.  But wait!  Jon remembers he wanted to talk about OpenId and the show continues with a discussion about OpenId, CardSpace and OAuth and OAuth WRAP.

Show Links:

• Barry Dorrans’ Blog
• Beginning ASP.NET Security, Barry Dorrans
• Google Buzz
• Writing Secure Code, Michael Howard
• Developing More-Secure Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0 Applications, Dominick Baier
• Threat Modeling, Window Snyder and Frank Swiderski
• DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper!
• PCI Compliance
• OWASP Top 10
• WebGoat Project
• CWE/SANS Top 25
• Web Protection Library (WPL) – Evolution of Anti-XSS Library
• Microsoft Code Analysis Tool .NET (CAT.NET)
• FxCop
• NDepend
• StyleCop
• XSS Attack Tool
• XSS (Cross Site Scripting) Cheat Sheet
• Tamper Data Firefox Add-on
• Enough Rope to Shoot Yourself in the Foot: Rules for C and C++ Programming
• Foxit
• NoScript Firefox Add-on
• App-V (Microsoft Application Virtualization, formerly Microsoft Softgrid)
• We Should Be Virtualizing Applications Not Machines
• Javier Lazano
• Microsoft BlueHat Security Briefings
• Black Hat Technical Security Conference
• OpenId
• CardSpace
• LastPass
• OAuth / OAuth WRAP
• Kim Cameron’s Introduction to the Laws of Identity

Show notes compiled by Ben Griswold. Thanks!

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Herding Code 75: Barry Dorrans on Developer Security

• Javier provides a twitter-like overview of his open source project: “MVC Turbine helps you build modular applications on top of ASP.NET MVC and that’s pretty much it.”
• K Scott asks about the advantages of using MVC Turbine to add features to your applications. Javier talks about MVC’s extension points, controller factories, view engines, and “the blade.”
• The guys talk about MVC Turbine’s support for multiple IoC containers and whether or not MVC Turbine is merely “IoC for IoC.”  Javier speaks of his design approach and the need to register components on the fly.
• K Scott notes that though ASP.NET MVC has many extensibility points it may not have been built with IoC in mind. Javier talks about the pros and cons of this and how it factored into his design.
• Scott K asks if there are any features Javier would like to implement into his project which he hasn’t been able to address because of limitations with the MVC framework.  
• K Scott asks about Action Filters and Inferred Actions. Javier explains.  Jon comments on Inferred Actions’ awesomeness and how they really reduce your controller code.
• Scott K asks about Inferred Actions and strongly typed views. Javier talks about how the current implementation effectively serves up static pages without a model but the ideal implementation (which is doable) would provide an inferred models and more. 
• Scott K talks about defaulting return types.  For example, if request doesn’t include the mime type then default to Json.
• The guys talk about general extensibility in ASP.NET MVC and how various open source applications are addressing concerns.
• K Scott gets back on topic and asks Javier to dig deeper into filters.
• Jon and Javier talk about MEF and how it might play a roll in MVC Turbine. Bingo!
• K Scott notes that MVC Turbine is hosted on Codeplex and asks how it’s going?  Javier notes the source code is now hosted at GitHub, and Jon asks if recent Codeplex support for Mercurial might lure Javier back to Codeplex. The guys talk/joke about version control systems.
• The guys talk Visual Studio 2010 versions and games of yesterday.
• Javier turns the tables and asks the guys about their thoughts on compositions in general.  Scott K has thoughts – it’s painful. Jon states that MVC Turbine is doing it and you can use Attributes so what’s missing in the .NET framework that makes composition so painful.
• Javier talks of folks interest in contributing to his framework, producing documentation and video, and what’s next for MVC Turbine. 
• Jon asks if MVC 2 provides features (validation or templating, for example) which may be leveraged in MVC Turbine.
• Lightening round! Have you used Google Buzz?  What’s the funniest comment thread you have ever read?

Show Links:

• Javier Lozano’s Blog
• Herding Code 43: Javier Lozano on the “M” in MVC
• MVC Turbine
• Iowa .NET User Group and Iowa Code Camp
• StructureMap
• Ninject
• Castle Windsor
• Unity
• Common Service Locator
• ASP.NET  MVC Extensibility
• FubuMVC
• Glenn Block
• Rob Conery
• Registering External Routes
• Alan Stevens
• Tom Janssens (@ToJans)
• MVCExtensions
• S#arpArchitecture
• Louis DeJardin
• MVC Contrib
• Jeremy Skinner
• MEF
• Automapper
• Ben Scheirman
• MVP Summit
• Google Buzz
• The Confusing New Facebook Login Page (on ReadWriteWeb)
• Community for MVC.NET
• Eric Hexter

Show notes compiled by Ben Griswold. Thanks!

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Herding Code 74: Javier Lozano on MVC Turbine and Composed Applications

• Daniel speaks of the primary development roles at Microsoft and how the MEF team addresses testing concerns. Guess what.  Developers write tests, too.
• Daniel talks about Model-Based Testing and validation of transitions and states.
• Scott K is reminded of a presentation he attended at Northwest Python Day which spoke of protocol and framework testing.
• Daniel shares the need of trim test cases to manageable sets which will still ensure adequate coverage.
• Jon asks about mapping out the endless states that may be found when testing MEF. 
• Jon asks about test frequency. Are tests run on each check-in?  Are they scheduled?
• The guys address the difference test types – unit, functional, performance and stress tests.
• Kevin asks about coordination of developer and tester efforts.  Who produces which tests and where is each group’s focus?
• Daniel explains Exploratory Testing
• Scott K asks about Heisenbugs and how closely testers work with developers to resolve hard-to-reproduce defects.
• Jon asks if the MEF testers use any debug/test tools which are built into Visual Studio.
• Kevin asks if any special considerations must be made when QAing an open source project. 
• Daniel explains how model-based testing works well for verifying cache states.
• Scott K asks about test environment setups and how deep the MEF testers need to dive into the bugs in order to adequately report on them.
• Jon asks Daniel to share tips to help developers improve their own unit tests and improve broader testing.
• Daniel talks about MEF’s beginnings. It’s not an IoC container.  Oh wait. It is.
• What type of tester are you?  The guys speak of a recent Google Tester Blog post on tester types.
• Kevin ask if the progressive approach which MEF takes is gaining traction throughout Microsoft.
• Jon asks how Daniel became a tester, a Microsoft MEF tester.
• Kevin asks how much collaborating occurs between the various testing teams at Microsoft.
• Daniel briefly talks about Synchronization Coverage.

Note: The audio’s a little rougher than usual this week. Sorry about that.

Show Links:

• Daniel Plaisted’s Blog
• @dsplaisted
• Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF)
• Model-Based Testing
• Northwest Python Day
• Heisenbug
• Castle Windsor
• Google Tester Blog
• Interviewing Insights and Test Frameworks

Show notes compiled by Ben Griswold. Thanks!

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Herding Code 73: Daniel Plaisted on Model-Based Testing in Action on the MEF Team

• Uncle Bob recently published two articles which are a little down on DI, IoC and Mocking. Was he merely trying to get a rise out of the community or was he sending a subtle message about poor use of our tools?
• K Scott attended Craig Andera’s Clojure Presentation at a recent DC Alt.NET meet up. This sparks a discussion about Clojure Magic – functional programming, transactional memory, concurrency and multi-threaded programming.
• The guys talk about the polyglot programmer, Scala running on the JVM and Java interop. Scott K shares his interest in getting a Clojure, Scala and F# guy in the same room and Kevin gives his thoughts about the language explosion.
• Scott K leads a conversation about managed javascript, node.js, and IronJS.
• The group offers their opinions on Codeplex support for Mercurial and address questions like “Why not Git?” and “Does this make Codeplex more appealing?”
• Lightning Round Question #1: Who’s going to buy an iPad?
• Lightning Round Question #2: What non-technical blogs do you read?

Show Links:

• Dependency Injection Inversion
• Mocking Mocking and Testing Outcomes
• Moq
• Rhino Mocks
• Matthew Podwysocki
• DC Alt.Net Group
• Craig Andera’s Clojure Presentation Materials
• Clojure Refs
• Clojure CLR
• Scott K’s Clojure Gist 
• Audacity
• Chris’s Dynamic Compressor
• Gimp
• IronJS
• node.JS
• Simon Willison
• Ruby EventMachine
• Twisted
• Codeplex
• Mercurial, bitbucket
• Git, GitHub
• Rails Commits comparison from SVN to GitHub
• Larry O’Brien – Tablet PC Programmer Responds to Apple iPad
• Michael Ruhlman
• Topless Robot
• Swiss Miss
• Indexed
• Nathan Bowers, UX Hero
• Jin Yang (jzy) 8164.org
• Strange Maps
• Ex Unum, Pluribus!
• FakeSteveJobs
• Art of Manliness
• Archie McPhee
• Monkey Goggles
• Handerpants
• Dave Barry

Show notes compiled by Ben Griswold. Thanks!

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 72: Questioning Uncle Bob, Clojure Magic, Mercurial Support at Codeplex, Thoughts About the iPad and Handerpants

• Kevin asks Rob and James to share their views on NoSQL and the use of object and document databases.  James challenges the idea that all data must reside in a relational databases. Are ORMs so last year?   What’s going to be happening in 2020?
• Rob claims he wouldn’t accept a ride to the bar in an 18-wheeler.  Whatever!
• Jon asks what we’re saving with object databases – don’t ORMs abstract the database away?  So what’s the point?
• James pimps TekPub
• Rob talks it bit about domain-driven design and how we marry relational tables to object-oriented system. K Scott fails to see how the choice of a UI pattern is influenced by the type of database one is using. Rob explains.
• Jon asks about maintainability and supportability issues and what’s your boss going to think if you suggest moving away from your current relation database solution. James gives examples on why non-relational solutions are easy to maintain and support.  Rob talks about quick ramp up time, scalability and performance like he’s given the speech 1000 times before.
• The guys pleasantly discuss MSDN.and VB.and ASP.NET Web Forms.
• K Scott shares his opinion on the future of MVC, Web Forms, Silverlight and Sharepoint as they will exist both inside and outside of the firewall.  Scott K, James and Rob also offer their opinions (shocking) and Jon’s chance to interject is taken away when the luminous “Page Lifecycle” crashes down upon him. 
• James and Rob dig a little deeper into object and document databases and normalized database nightmares are exchanged.
• Kevin asks how versioning works in an object database, the guys speak of Json and Bison, and serialization and deserialization.  James speculates that object databases will ultimately be more popular than document databases.
• Rob addresses the idea that he’s condescending and rude.  The group talks about opinions and share their views on recent technical debates – ASP.NET MVC vs Web Forms, VB vs C#, ORMs vs Stored Procedures, and Jets vs Sharks. Can’t we all just get along?
• Rob and James pimps TekPub again.
• K Scott kicks off a flash lightning round – one question about VB6.
• Rob answers Twitter question from @elijahmanor about TekPub’s technology stack and elaborates about video options.
• James pimps DotNetKicks.

Show Links:

• Rob Conery’s Blog
• James Avery’s Blog
• Hello from 2020
• Ayende
• db4o
• MongoDB
• DocumentDB ??
• mongomapper
• CouchDB
• redis
• NHibernate Profiler
• NHibernate
• TekPub
• AutoMapper
• MVC or Web Forms? A Dying Question
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM
• Dynamo
• Bison
• MUMPS
• Victory in Software Development
• Ask the Mountain to Come to You
• Whither Alt.Net?
• Art of War, Sun Tzu
• MVC Storefront Series
• Git
• Cucumber
• BDD
• Javier Lozano
• Elijah Manor
• SubSonic
• @BillGates
• DotNetKicks
• The Lounge
• Joe Brinkman

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 71: James Avery and Rob Conery on NoSQL and a bunch of other stuff

Length: 1:18:38

Show notes compiled by Ben Griswold. Thanks!

• Sean talks about how Fluent Migrator originated from Migrator.NET
• Sean discusses how the benefits of a semantic model in Fluent Migrator
• K Scott and Sean discuss how you’d start using Fluent Migrator in a project
• Sean talks about some useful features, like InsertData\
• Jon asks about support for different databases
• Scott K asks about the benefits of a migration framework over a simple directory of T-SQL scripts
• We take a question from Aaron Lerch (@aaronlerch) on Twitter about how Fluent Migrator would work with Fluent NHibernate
• Kevin asks about Schema Update
• Kevin and Sean talk about possible inefficiencies with objects being added, changed, and removed in successive migrations
• K Scott asks about extensibility hooks
• Scott K asks about stored procedures, functions, user defined types, etc.
• Jon asks about how Fluent Migrator relates to other .NET migration frameworks
• We take a question from Aaron Jensen (@aaronjensen) on Twitter about the benefits of a migration framework since T-SQL is already a DSL
• Lightning round: K Scott starts the lightning round by asking what refactoring operations everyone uses most
• Lightning round: What’s your favorite VM software? (spoiler: VirtualBox wins by a wide margin)
• Lightning round: What’s your favorite movie that involves an android?

Show Links:

• The Fluent Migrator github repo
• Sean’s blog: http://schambers.lostechies.com
• Sean’s photo blog: http://www.full-fx.com
• Migrator.NET
• RikMigrations
• SubSonic Migrations
• 31 Days of Refactoring
• VirtualBox
• Josh Coffman
• Steve Hodgkiss

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 70 – Sean Chambers on Migrations in .NET

• Scott talks about the frustrations in working with “HTML Specialists”
• Scott discusses the team issues caused by specialists in a software team who aren’t in touch with the entire product development cycle
• The problem with handoffs: loss of workability
• Eventually, things turn to the technology issue involved in working with HTML and CSS
• Are HTML tables necessarily evil
• Scott and Scott K discuss whether CSS purity is a premature optimization
• Jon and Scott discuss whether clean markup can be deferred until the end of a project
• Scott talks about the lunacy of delivering design work as “final”
• Scott talks about how optimization fights with workability
• Scott enumerates some of examples of websites which might not benefit from accessibility
• Jon posits that tables might not be easier than CSS design, it’s just what we learned first
• Scott K talks about how CSS floats drive him nuts
• Scott talks about how crazy CSS is when viewed as a programming language
• K Scott talks about some technological workarounds like lesscss
• Scott talks about how he doesn’t see Silverlight as an improvement, because it brings along a lot of other challenges
• Scott talks about how working in teams and in “small batches” solves the problems with handoffs
• Scott talks about the joy of a January 1st project date

Show Links:

• Scott Bellware’s Blog
• Scott’s consulting company, ampersand GT

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 69 – Scott Bellware on HTML Specialists

• How will the guys manage the show in 2010?  Google Docs and listener requests?
• Are you bitter because today’s coder has little appreciation for how rough devs had it 10 years ago?
• Phone wars. Big, smart ones. Will Android dethrone the iPhone?
• Place your bets!  Biggest box office hit in 2010: Ironman 2 or The A-Team Movie?
• You don’t see the Fail Whale quite as often, but it’s still fun to listen to the guys continue to complain about Twitter and its clients.
• Next ten years – will C# continue to rule the .NET roost?
• Ever ask WolframAlpha “Who uses this site?”
• What secret project is John Lam working on?  Will IronRuby live on?
• You love maps, right? K Scott does too.   Who knew?
• Ever wonder if the iSlate will take over the (Kindle) world?
• Are you planning to improve your skill set in 2010? How?
• Really? Jon’s default search engine is Bing! How’s about that Infinite Scroll!

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 68 – New Year Shenanigans

Show notes compiled by Ben Griswold. Thanks!

• Jon kicks off the show by asking Udi if one can run a high-availability and high-scalability site (like stackoverflow.com) on two servers with ASP.NET?  Udi asks “how high is high” and talks about the importance of defining the scope of the architectural problem.
• Udi comments on the how site behavior (high reads or writes, static or dynamic content, etc) dictates the way availability and scalability concerns can be handled.
• Udi talks about how websites can be broken into fragments and how one can take advantage of content distribution networks and caches.
• Udi stresses that high-availability inherently makes scaling more difficult and how scalability is a multidimensional cost function.
• Kevin asks about common scalability mistakes and solution patterns. Udi replies with talk of SOA, web services, REST, one-way messaging, pub/sub and offloading things to the background in an asynchronous way.
• Kevin follows up with additional questions: Why don’t more developers turn to messaging patterns to solve their scalability issues and can one introduce scalability changes incrementally?
• Udi discusses the scalability patterns employed by RIA Services for Silverlight and gives his opinion on Azure as a scalability system.
• Scott K asks about geographical distribution and Udi gets to the heart of the matter – high-availability means writing data to multiple places which means you are slowing your system down.
• K Scott asks Udi about the AppFabric service bus provided by Microsoft and how it compares to already available distributed cache solutions like .NET Service Bus, MassTransit, and NServiceBus.

[Note: The sound quality for Udi's voice is kind of rough. We tried to clean it up, and this is as good as it's going to get. Just pretend we're talking to him on a CB and things will be fine]

Show Links:

• The Software Simplist
• NServiceBus
• Udi Dahan Scales Web Applications! on .NET Rocks
• Reverse Proxy
• Content Distribution Network (CDN)
• RIA Services for Silverlight
• Azure
• AppFabric Service Bus
• .NET Services Bus
• MassTransit
• Rhino Service Bus
• Dublin

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 67 – Udi Dahan on Scalability

Show notes compiled by Ben Griswold. Thanks!

• In case you’ve never heard of them, Brad and Scott D introduce themselves and share their interest in the Mac and iPhone development.
• Brad and Scott D talk about Objective-C as it compares to other languages including SmallTalk, C, Ruby, Python, and C#. 
• In order to be a great Cocoa developer, do you need to be a good C developer?  Brad and Scot D discuss.
• The guys talk about pointers, memory management and the benefits of following language conventions.  Not to be a shill, but Brad notes the brilliance of P/Invoke.
• The guys talk through Interface Builder, Xcode, Blend, Visual Studio, the difference between Mac and Windows developer workflow, and the passion around UIs in the Mac world.
• Scott K asks about ADO.NET vs Core Data. Jokingly, he asks if there’s even a way to save anything using Core Data.
• The group quickly discusses available charting APIs for Cocoa and Core Animation libraries.
• Brad and Scott D explain that Mac plists are sets of name/value pairs or bastardized xml and Jon asks for clarification on how Mac installations work under the hood.
• Kevin asks if MonoTouch is best for C# developers due to language familiarity, the benefits of the rich libraries, garbage collection and potential productivity gains.  Brad and Scott D agree that learning the CocoaTouch platform is most crucial. In comparison, one’s language choice a insignificant. So, if one already knows Objective-C, is MonoTouch a waste of time? 
• The show starts winding down with a quick discussion on how MonoTouch may be providing views to run on Android, the status of Moonlight and the unbelievable pace in which the Mono team develops.
• The group leaves iPhone-land to talk about real-life work. Brad talks about the ASP.NET MVC 2.0 Template and Model Validation work he’s been up to, and Scott D notes he’s been working on bringing ASP.NET MVC applications the cloud – the Azure Cloud, that is.

Show Links:

• Brad Wilson’s Blog
• Scott Densmore’s Blog
• Xcode
• MonoTouch
• Cocoa Bootcamp
• Big Nerd Ranch
• Aaron Hillegass
• AppKit
• NeXTSTEP
• Wil Shipley
• Carbon
• Rory Blyth
• Matt Gallagher, Cocoa with Love
• Marcus S. Zarra and Matt Long, Cocoa Is My Girlfriend
• Core Data
• Miguel De Icaza
• Moonlight

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 66 – Brad Wilson and Scott Densmore on iPhone Development

Show notes compiled by Ben Griswold. Thanks!

• Scott H talks about how, other than the obvious request to get Scott Koon removed from the show, there’s no need to fear any changes to Herding Code.
• Scott H bemoans the fact that people are so quick to attribute opinions to “working for the man”.
• The group discusses whether Scott’s demonstration of a datagrid in Scott Guthrie’s PDC keynote constitutes “selling out”.
• Scott K asks about what Jon’s new job is, and what Scott Hanselman’s STO group does. Scott Hanselman describes the difference between all the different developer community program manager groups at Microsoft.
• Scott K asks about the lack of diversity on the STO team, and whether there will be more of a focus on data programmability in the future.
• Kevin asks if working for Microsoft makes it tougher to criticize Microsoft. Scott K asks if working for Microsoft makes it hard to criticize competitors.
• Scott Hanselman talks about the irritation of ad hominem attacks which discount opinions under the assumption that they’re job-motivated.
• Scott H mentions that he’s been test driving Linux and other operating systems on his netbook in passing, which prompts a 5 minute geek-fest between Scott H. and Scott K. about Linux driver troubleshooting.
• Scott K asks Jon what his top priorities are in his new job.
• Scott K comments on the recent lack of focus on Web Forms, e.g. all the PDC videos he saw were using ASP.NET MVC.
• Scott H clarifies who exactly is on his team, and how useful it is to have a team that’s got internal Microsoft access but is separate from the product teams.
• Scott K takes us on a discussion of Microsoft certifications – whether the STO team can add some more realism to certifications. Best part: Scott K inadvertently complains about some of the VB6 exams that Scott H had written.
• Scott H and the gang finish thing off with a discussion of certifications, education, and interviews as indicators of effectiveness as a programmer.

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 65 – Scott Hanselman on his Ninja Squad and Jon’s new job

• Phil starts with the new <%: code block syntax, IHtmlString, HtmlString, MvcHtmlString
• Jon asks about DisplayFor, EditorFor improvements
• Phil discusses validation improvements – validation extensibility and client-side validation
• MVC 2 is built on .NET 3.5 SP1
• Phil talks about the productivity focus for MVC 2
• New minimal templates, minimized web.config
• Phil comments on the recent trend in software development towards streamlining – Windows 7, Snow Leopard, and how that’s also being applied to MVC and Webforms
• Phil talks about his work on the Webforms Menu Control to clean up the markup, and how developers will opt-in to new but possibly breaking features
• K. Scott asks about the new Areas feature 
• Phil talks about Virtual Path Providers working in medium trust, but not until .NET 4
• Kevin asks about what other features weren’t available due to maintaining .NET 3.5 support, and Phil ruminates on how the dynamic keyword could work
• Phil speculates how named parameters could be helpful
• Scott K asks about when MVC will get more opinionated, perhaps including dependency injection by default.
• Phil talks about how MVC has never really been weak on the Model side, and how often people are really complaining about data access. Nothing new on that now, but it might be a focus in MVC 3.
• Jon asks about bringing in some focused project templates.
• Scott K (again) asks Phil about bringing dependency injection into MVC. Phil talks about why it’s not in there yet, and that you should vote for it in connect if you want it.
• Phil discusses how bugs are prioritized on the ASP.NET team.
• Scott K asks if Phil has a favorite feature. Phil likes the HTML Encoding syntax best of all.
• Kevin asks the standard “when will the Spark view engine replace the webforms view engine” question.
• Jon asks about which frameworks and community projects Phil’s taking inspiration from.
• Phil talks about how he’s using Subtext to get personal experience with how the new features are working.
• Scott K asks about adding in auto-mapping
• Jon introduces a new Herding Code segment: Abusive Question From Twitter. We start with one by @alanstevens: why we should care about ASP.NET when there are so many other web frameworks out there?
• Scott K talks about how people conflate languages and platforms.
• Scott K tries to sneak in an abusive Twitter question, but fails.
• Kevin asks what’s changing to make TDD work better in .NET and Visual Studio.
• K. Scott talks about how he’s converted his blog over to run on Subtext.
• Phil talks about his experiences in developing Subtext, and how that’s been a great way to get exposure to other open source projects and developers.
• Jon asks about how improving the data access system for Subtext, because stored procedures make him cry.
• Jon asks about the CodePlex foundation, and Scott K complains about how it’s not very transparent.
• Phil starts complaining about how newborn babies make it hard to sleep, and things fizzle out.

Show Links:

• Phil Haack’s Blog
• HTML Encoding Code Blocks
• Brad Wilson’s post on Enterprise Library Validation in MVC 2
• Spark View Engine
• Subtext blogging engine
• MVC Turbine
• AutoMapper
• Autofac
• Our interview with Ted Leung
• CodePlex Foundation

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 64 – Phil Haack on MVC 2

Show Links:

• Victory in Software Development
• Concept Camp 2009
• Sara Chipps
• Matthew Podwysoki
• The Inmates are Running the Asylum, Alan Cooper
• Extreme Programming Explained, Kent Beck
• Debunking the Duct Tape Programmer (Jeffery Palermo)
• WinFS

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 63 – Victory in Software Development with K Scott Allen

Show notes compiled by Ben Griswold. Thanks!

• Jon asks Geoff Norton, engineering lead on the MonoTouch project and founder of the Cocoa# and Objective-C# projects, to give the elevator speech about MonoTouch and why one might choose it over other iPhone development tools.  Geoff explains that MonoTouch is a commercial product from Novell. They have ported the Mono runtime to run on the iPhone thus allowing developers to write full native iPhone applications in languages which target the CLR.  Some might be attracted to MonoTouch because they feel C#, for example, is fluent and expressive compared to Objective-C.  Others might use the product so they can reuse existing components or code when moving to iPhone development.
• Miguel shares that there is a strong pattern in Objective-C where you respond to objects through messaging between classes.  In the .NET space, you are most familiar with listening to events with attached methods such as lambda expression or delegates and MonoTouch uses this programming model and expose Cocoa API to be similar to the way C# does things. For example, the use of events, properties, delegates.  He continues by stating you also have access to .NET APIs in addition to all iPhone APIs.
• Scott K asks if there are any disconnects with which .NET APIs are available. Geoff shares that MonoTouch is not the entire .NET 2.0 BCL.  In fact, development was started with the Silverlight BCL and additional namespaces were included as development proceeded. 
• Geoff mentioned Silverlight. Jon’s Pavlovian Trigger is fired, he starts to drool and programmatically inquires about the potential of running Silverlight applications on the iPhone (even though, as Jon mentions, Apple is currently disallowing it.  Miguel speaks to the MonoTouch’s use of the Silverlight profile drops unnecessary dependencies upon the .NET framework thus providing for a leaner precompilation.  Geoff talks about what would be required to getting Silverlight on the iPhone.  Miguel states that Silverlight on the iPhone would not be a standard Silverlight experience.  Most notably, one would have to go through the AppStore and download a Silverlight enabled application rather than access a Silverlight application through the browser.
• Jon asks about the cost associated with developing iPhone applications with MonoTouch. Miguel shares that Mono and Moonlight were basically developed to improve the Linux ecosystem.  As for Mono for the iPhone, it was difficult for Novell to justify the investment for this highly desired feature request so they decided to charge for it. Geoff notes they have a 100% free, non-time limited evaluation version which works with the simulator. It’s only limitation is you can’t get your application onto the device. Please note that you get a $150 discount on MonoTouch if you register for MonoSpace.
• Jon asks Geoff for an overview on how to get started with MonoTouch development. Geoff provides the high-level steps – get the iPhone SDK from Apple, pay Apple $99 to become registered iPhone developer, load up Mono Develop, create a new iPhone project from template, start typing C# code, you will be using Interface Builder for layout, build and run.
• Scott K  calls out how Interface Builder traditionally integrates with XCode.  Geoff comments about Interface Builder with C# and the generation partial classes as code behinds which automatically connects outlets to MonoTouch engine.  Miguel speaks to the advantages of the MonoTouch approach.
• The guys talks about XIB (pronounced zib) and NIB files and freeze drying.
• Scott K shares listener questions from @hugeonion: Is there is anything that you can’t do using MonoTouch.NET that you could using Objective-C?  Can you mix Objective-C and .NET when you are writing a MonoTouch project?  Geoff gives the liberal-minded answer and then Miguel finishes with the short answer — “There’s really nothing that you can’t do with MonoTouch that you can do with Objective-C". “I guess you could argue it’s a Turing machine so you can do anything on anything.”
• Scott K asks another listener question from @shamel: What are the plans to improve the MonoTouch debugging story?  Miguel says the debugger will be available faster than you might think.  It’s coming but the decision was made to push to product out sooner than waiting for MonoTouch (and debugging, profilers, code-generator, more APIs) to be perfect. Geoff talks about the updated compiler and the ability to back-trace crashes using DWARF, the standard debugging format which Apple uses.
• Jon and Geoff talk about graphics , MonoTouch development on a Power PC Mac and static compilation. Miguel talks about coding on paper (desk checking.)
• Jon distills MonoTouch development down to two steps: binding to the iPhone APIs and then doing the static compilation to run on the iPhone.  Geoff speaks of support for generics, Cocoa#, Objective-C#, Monobjc and binding the CLR to Objective C. 
• Scott K asks if they’ll be moving Mono onto the Android. Miguel speaks of Android, Java, managed language, garbage collection, native compilation, current demand and their current focus being Mono for the iPhone. Jon asks if there’s a story for Mono support on Windows Mobile.  After all Windows Mobile does run the .NET compact framework. Jokes and laugh follow…
• Jon, Miguel and Geoff talk about MonoTouch iPhone application size.
• Miguel talks about embracing cross platform and getting Windows developers working on Mac – and looking cool at Starbucks.
• The guys discuss XNA for Silverlight, XNA game developer studio, XNA hosting on iPhone or the fact that you can’t distribution XNA games to the Zune. They also touch upon Mono running on the WII and PS2.
• Geoff and Miguel finish up the conversation comments about the MonoSpace, the Open Source and Cross-Platform Conference for Mono and .NET which will be held in Austin this October 27-30.

Show Links:

• Miguel de Icaza
• Geoff Norton
• MonoTouch
• MonoSpace
• Mono
• Moonlight
• Austin’s Cocoa Coders iPhone Developer User Group – Oct 27th.
• Prio Conference in Munich – Oct 29th.
• Scott Bellware
• Scott Hanselman
• Objective-C
• XCode
• Apple Developer Connection
• Cocoa
• Cocoa# and Objective-C#
• Silverlight
• Chris Toshok
• GTK+
• Jeffrey Stedfast
• Interface Builder
• Getting Started with MonoTouch
• monotouch.info
• Michael Hutchinson
• The Huge Onion
• MonoTouch Binding for AdMob (discussing binding to Objective-C from C#)
• Unity
• Cecil
• Christian Beaumont, Foundation 42
• OpenGL
• Larry Ewing
• Rodrigo Kumpera
• Mono.Simd
• DWARF
• Monobjc

Quote of the Show:

• “Do your HTTP Get and parse the result like a man!” – Miguel

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 62 – MonoTouch with Miguel de Icaza and Geoff Norton

Show notes compiled by Ben Griswold. Thanks!

Show Links:

• CodePlex Foundation
• Bellware’s CodePlex Foundation Write-up
• jQuery Foundation
• The Apache Software Foundation
• The Eclipse Foundation
• Mozilla Foundation
• Bing Visual Search
• Office Space
• NHibernate
• NUnit
• Jeff Atwood
• Damien Guard
• Google Code
• Google’s Summer of Code
• ScrewTurn Wiki
• Gimp
• Audacity
• Inkscape
• SourceForge
• Oren Eini
• Microsoft Ajax CDN
• CodePlex Foundation Board of Directors
• Miguel de Icaza, Novell
• Shaun Walker, DNN
• SugarCRM
• Rob Conery
• Bil Simser (@bsimser)
• Log4Net
• Zune HD Release
• jQuery Validation Library
• Akamai
• Barry Dorrans – Quick thoughts on the Microsoft AJAX CDN
• Brad Wilson
• Zune Pass
• Last.fm
• Pandora
• The Hype Machine
• Hanselminutiae-seven (Scott Hanselman with Richard Campbell)
• Miles Davis Kind of Blue
• Kind of Bloop

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 61: CodePlex Foundation, Bing Visual Search, Microsoft Ajax CDN, Zune HD Release

Show notes compiled by Ben Griswold. Thanks!

• Louis talks about how the Spark View Engine was inspired by NVelocity and hatched from a comment thread on Phil Haack’s blog.
• Kevin asks about the HTML-like syntax syntax in a Spark view – how it was designed, how it looks, and some of the benefits of a view engine that looks like HTML.
• Scott K asks about some of the similarities to Cold Fusion markup. After making Louis squirm a bit, Scott points out the big difference in his eyes is that Spark works as part of an MVC pattern, while Cold Fusion embedded too much logic in the markup.
• Jon sets Kevin up to look really good by asking about a feature Kevin requested – safe by default HTML encoding.
• Kevin asks about how Spark’s strongly typed ViewData and strongly typed models work.
• Jon quizzes Louis about how Master Layouts differ from ASP.NET Webforms MasterPages, Kevin tries to stump him with questions about partial page caching.
• Scott K and Louis talk about how Spark was developed, and how TDD made writing a view engine easy.
• Kevin and Louis discuss how Spark is being used to generate more than HTML.
• Jon asks about how he got all the smarts to write a parser / templating engine.
• Scott K speculates about the potential for a custom view engine enabling vendors to offer controls for MVC. Louis tells him that he’s crazy, and the two discuss options for visual designers in the MVC world.
• Jon asks some questions about how an HTML-based syntax like Spark could allow for a better designer surface, but Louis convinces him that an HTML-based syntax is probably the best design interface, both for developers and designers.
• Kevin asks Louis about the Visual Studio integration for Spark.
• Louis takes a listener question from Jeremy Miller about caching compiled views.
• K Scott asks about using Spark’s JavascriptViewResult to do JSON powered updates with the same template for both initial and update rendering. Louis points out that it’s possible to write code that’s both c# and Javascript compatible, so it can be used both client-side and server-side. We all agree that’s crazy, but the right kind of crazy.
• K Scott asks about his selection of different tracking, source hosting, etc. services for the Spark project.
• Vladislav II asks about Dynamic Language support.
• Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer asks about runtime vs. development time compilation, and how Spark runs under medium trust.
• Louis explains how Macros allow you to simulate creating reusable helpers inside your templates.
• Faustus of Byzantium asked about partials are integrated into views.
• Edward I asks about how performance compares to the Web Forms view engine, and if there are any important tips/tricks to get the best performance out of Spark.
• Ned Ryerson remembers talking to Louis at PDC, when Louis was pitching Spark to Jeff Atwood The Terrible. Jeff went with the Web Forms view engine which led to his eventual demise in 2012.
• Duke Konrad I of Masovia asks Louis about the use of multiple view engines in a website to ease transition.
• Kevin closes with some questions about Spark, such as how it plays with ASP.NET MVC 2 and where the name Spark came from.
• Postscript – Jon catches up with Louis to ask about his new position at Microsoft.

Show Links:

• Lou’s Blog
• Spark View Engine
• docu
• @loudej
• K. Scott’s post about the JavascriptViewResult in Spark
• Migrating from .aspx to .spark

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 60: Spark View Engine with Louis DeJardin

• The show kicks off with Milan’s explanation of semantic markup – thinking first about content and then presentation – and the Web Standards Trinity which includes Structure (HTML, XHTML, XML), Presentation (CSS), and Behavior (JavaScript). 
• Milan talks about Quirks Mode vs Strict Mode. Jon asks about the benefits of XHTML especially with XHTML 2 recently being shot down in favor of HTML 5. 
• Milan states that CSS has always been more of a recommendation rather than a true standard.  He asks why anyone would use skins and/or themes. Jon bites and guesses because it is a typical Visual Studio control-first option and themes (unlike cascading style sheets) are always applied last and may enforce corporate design standards. Milan also shares his frustration with the bloated, non-standard markup generated by ASP.NET Server Controls and he names names.  That’s right, DataGrid!  He’s talking about you.
• Milan provides an overview of his impressive Microsoft.com redesign experiment and speaks briefly of Section 508 and his Color Blindness Simulator.
• K Scott asks what a .NET developer should do to better adhere to web standards. Milan talks specifically about control development, ASP.NET MVC and the shift back to client-side development.
• Milan speaks his mind about Silverlight’s poor usability.  He states Silverlight is being marketed to the wrong audience and it is not a replacement for JavaScript. Milan also calls out the educational gap for developers needing to act as designers. Shall I continue?  Jon agrees but provides a rebuttal. 
• K Scott seeks Milan’s opinion on new technologies, big conferences, independent consulting, the Microsoft MVP Program and ALT.NET.  Milan shares that you’ll go insane if you try to learn everything which is coming out of Redmond and suggests that developers specialize.  Milan describes big conferences as nothing more than “booze and noise” and recommends developers avoid conferences like Mix and participate in the local community instead.  Milan talks about life as a business owner/independent consultant, job security and building one’s personal brand. Milan questions the motivation of the Microsoft MVP program and suggests it is merely another marketing channel for Microsoft.  Milan shares his positive impressions of ALT.NET and comments on the “remarkable crap” published by Patterns and Practices.  Scott K calls Milan out for being too much of a kiss-up marketing shill. Fin.

Show Links:

• Milan’s Blog
• @MilanNegovan
• ASP.NET Resources
• Microsoft.com Home Page Design: Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 
• Developing Web Applications with ASP.NET and Web Standards
• Bait Station Ahead  – How to keep your sanity in this onslaught of new technologies
• Color Blindness Simulator
• A List Apart
• Smashing Magazine
• Section 508
• Josh Holmes
• Joe Stagner
• Ted Neward
• South by SouthWest
• Bill Buxton
• Steve Andrews
• Alan Stevens
• Keith Elder
• Mary Jo Foley
• ASP.NET MVC
• MEF
• Patterns & Practices
• Implementing the Singleton Pattern in C#
• Boston Code Camp
• Connecticut Code Camp
• Utah Code Camp
• Richmond Code Camp

Book Recommendations from Milan

• Universal Principles of Design
• Non-Designer’s Design Book
• Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability
• Stop Stealing Sheep & Find Out How Type Works
• Transcending CSS: The Fine Art of Web Design

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 59: Web Standards with Milan Negovan

Show notes compiled by Ben Griswold. Thanks!

When we last left our heroes, Jeremy Miller, Ward Bell, Rob Eisenberg and Glenn Block were in the thick of their discussion.  Jeremy had just finished explaining the role of the Screen Conductor and Ward was ready to start flushing out implementation strategies.  That is, implementation strategies which might work across most solutions. 

But thankfully, Glenn starts by stepping back a bit and asking how the presentation patterns discussion fits in the context of mainstream development.

Will the guys provide a single answer to the age-old question, “Which came first the View or the ViewModel?”  Is there a one size implementation which fits all solutions?  Will this conversation ever end?  Find out this week on Herding Code.

Show Links:

• Jeremy Miller, Dovetail Software
• Ward Bell, IdeaBlade
• Rob Eisenberg, Caliburn, Blue Spire
• Glenn Block, Microsoft
• Expression SketchFlow
• Expression Blend
• Balsamiq Mockups
• Jonas Follesoe
• NDC2009 – Norwegian Developers Conference
• Windsor
• Pattern and Practices
• Build Your Own CAB Series by Jeremy Miller

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 58: Presentation Patterns with Jeremy Miller, Ward Bell, Rob Eisenberg and Glenn Block (Part 2)

Show notes compiled by Ben Griswold. Thanks!

• Kevin asks the four guests to introduce themselves and then turns the podcast up to 11.
• Jeremy kicks off the conversation with the “View First vs ViewModel First” discussion.  Jeremy talks about Views, ViewModels, Presenters, Behaviors, Implementation Detail, Separated Presentation, Passive View, iView Interface, Screen Activation, and User Controls… In summary, he’s pro-ViewModel or Presenter first.
• Ward asks if anyone wishes to defend the View First position.
• Rob shares that he tends to create his View and Presenter at the same time (although he’s mostly a Model kind of guy.)  Rob also calls out that he does a lot of prototyping in his workflow.
• Ward talks about where his development always starts – sketching out the UI with his clients.  The ViewModel is ultimately developed to support the interaction discovered in sketching. 
• Rob agrees. Talks more about prototyping first, gathering requirements, user feedback, workflow, architecture and conventions.
• Jeremy considers application navigation, behavioral aspects of screens and the contract for view.
• Glenn calls out the difference between Balsamiq mockups and screens which are maintained by a designer in Blend.  Which approach best supports the tooling experience, maintainability, and testability?  Glenn references Jonas Follesoe and how his designer girlfriend couldn’t function unless he defined the View first.  Glenn initiates conversations about Service Locators.
• Jeremy questions whether one needs that level of detail.  Do you need to fake in a service locator for your designer experience or are there alternatives?
• Glenn stresses that we must think about the designer (albeit there aren’t many right now), consider tradeoffs with varying approaches, talks about Prism and Patterns and Practices experiences, and tooling – particularly Blend.
• Rob talks about providing simple conventions which are taught to designers in lieu of using an inversion of control containers like Windsor.
• Glenn asks what the designer would see inside of Blend in this case and Rob isn’t aware of  any limitations with this approach.  Is this an issue of designer not having sample data to work with?
• Jon shares his experience at Vertigo – applications favor design and tooling, applications don’t have complex business rules, applications are Blendable.
• Jeremy appreciates that appearance may be the most challenging aspect of some applications.  In this case, maybe View First is the most appropriate approach but having Blend driving workflow is a case of the tail wagging the dog.  We need to consider the line of business applications and in that case ViewModel or Presenter must come first.
• Glenn notes that the View being created first as part of instantiation does not correlate to whether the ViewModel drives behavior from that point on. View First is at the point of activation.  Whether the view is injected into ViewModel or the ViewModel get set into the View, the ViewModel is the guy which is in control.
• Jeremy explains the Screen Activation pattern and some fairly complex scenarios where logic is executed before the view is activated. 
• Ward states that he is not a fan of the view determining the ViewModel or the ViewModel selecting the View and prompts Jeremy by asking if a factory could pull the right pieces together and sequence them.
• Jeremy takes Ward’s queue and talks about the Screen Activator acting as the gatekeeper which puts screens together.  Jeremy reference the Caliburn approach.
• Rob clarifies the Caliburn ViewModels hierarchy and the use of screen activators and the composite pattern.
• Glenn talks a bit about complexity, CAB, debugging hierarchies, event aggregators and messaging.
• Jeremy calls out the benefit of using a composite pattern on a dashboard type application where a part of the screen may act as an application itself but an event aggregator would be best of cross-piece communication.
• Rob notes that communication in Caliburn is local – it is parent to child or child to parent and this approach can really simplify development.
• Jon and Rob discuss the approach of simply navigating between two tabs.  Would you use event aggregation, publishing event, commanding or what?
• Jeremy gives detail to the Screen Conductor role and pattern and Rob stresses the value of methods such as Initialize, Activate, Deactivate, Shutdown and CanShutdown. Jeremy and Glenn walk through an example.
• Glenn, Rob and Jeremy consider roles and patterns and if they vary from application to application.  Is there an established best practice?  Jeremy believes roles seem to be consistent but implementation changes from project to project. 
• Ward wraps up Part 1 stating that he agrees with the idea of like roles but not ready to lock into any implementation.  He suggests we call out the actors and see how it plays… 
• This conversation just won’t end.  Be sure to tune in next week for Part 2.

Show Links:

• Jeremy Miller, Dovetail Software
• Ward Bell, IdeaBlade
• Rob Eisenberg, Caliburn, Blue Spire
• Glenn Block, Microsoft
• Expression SketchFlow
• Expression Blend
• Balsamiq Mockups
• Jonas Follesoe
• NDC2009 – Norwegian Developers Conference
• Windsor
• Pattern and Practices
• Build Your Own CAB Series by Jeremy Miller

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 57: Presentation Patterns with Jeremy Miller, Ward Bell, Rob Eisenberg and Glenn Block (Part 1)

Show notes compiled by Ben Griswold. Thanks!

• K Scott leads the discussion asking about developing with Eclipse. Jon asks how Eclipse’s plugin model compares to that of Visual Studio.
• K Scott introduce the topic of model-driven development and DSLs. Markus steps back and takes some time to talk about terminology.
• Markus shares why UML can’t be used to appropriately describe one’s domain and jokes that Microsoft has been ignoring UML for years but that are now gravitating toward it just as everyone else is moving away.
• Markus discusses the difference between modeling and programming.
• Kevin asks Markus his opinion of Oslo and M, the Oslo Modeling Language. Markus says it is difficult to compare Oslo to Textual Modeling Framework (TMF) found in Eclipse, talks about code generation being incorporated (or not) into Oslo and shares his thoughts about competition between groups at Microsoft. K Scott and Markus discuss their concern with Oslo becoming an extension of SQL and the mixed messages Microsoft is sending.
• Markus talks about the blurring lines between External vs Internal DSLs.
• K Scott and Markus discuss productivity gains when incorporating modeling into one’s development.
• Markus shares the things which changed and influenced his career – design patterns and modeling. Markus stresses that building languages and generators is more applicable to software development than learning the API-of-the-day. K Scott and Markus talk about learning, focusing on the important stuff and separating technical and domain concerns.
• Jon asks about Microsoft Axum. Markus explains Axum as “Erlang for .NET” and expands upon the benefits of concurrent and functional programming.
• The show finishes with Markus providing a very nice overview of Product Line Engineering.

Show Links:

• Markus’ Site
• Markus’ Blog
• Software Engineering Radio
• Code Generation Conference
• Steve Cook
• DSL (Domain-Specific Language)
• UML (Unified Modeling Language)
• OMG (Object Modeling Group)
• Windows Workflow Foundation (WF)
• OOPSLA (Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications)
• Eclipse
• Textual Modeling Framework (TMF)
• Oslo
• M (Oslo Modeling Language)
• Don Box
• DSL DevCon
• Scala
• Converge
• Laurence Tratt
• MPS (Meta Programming System)
• Jetbrains
• Textual DSLs and Code Generation with Eclipse Tools (Markus’ DSL DevCon Presentation)
• Visual Studio 2010
• WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation)
• MEF (Managed Extensibility Framework)
• DSL Toolkit
• Martin Fowler
• Gang of Four Book
• Microsoft Axum: “Erlang for .NET”
• Microsoft Axum
• Erlang
• Pipes and Filters Design Pattern
• Product Line Engineering
• SPLC (Software Product Line Conference)
• Models Conference

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 56: Markus Völter on Model-Driven Development, DSLs and Product Line Engineering

Show notes compiled by Ben Griswold. Thanks!

• Kevin sets the tone of the show and notes that the guys are going to steer clear of the questions already addressed on a recent Hanselman show.  This talk will focus on technical and startup details.
• Nate comments on why he build his application using the Microsoft stack.  After all, most startups don’t chose this path. 
• The guys talk about multiple browser support, jQuery, jQuery Plugins, CSS and Firefox Add-ons.
• Jon asks about architectural patterns.  Nate talks about ASP.NET MVC with the Spark View Engine.
• Kevin asks about online payment integration? Was it painful?
• Nate discusses hosting and scalability.
• Scott K asks about the brains behind the operation and how her background may have inspired Zen’s UI and overall flow.
• Kevin asks Nate for any “words of wisdom” for those thinking about launching a startup.
• Kevin wraps up the show asking Nate about what’s to come with Ninject and Zen.

Zen Coupon Code: KAIZEN 
50% off the first month, last to the end of July.

Show Links:

• Nate Kohari’s Discord & Rhyme
• Nate Kohari on Twitter
• Ninject
• Zen
• Lean Software Development
• Hanselminutes
• Nicole Kohari
• James Avery
• Mike Eaton
• Jayme Davis
• Sean Chambers
• NHibernate
• LINQ to NHibernate
• jQuery
• jQuery UI
• Ruby on Rails
• Mono
• ASP.NET MVC
• Phil Haack
• MonoRail
• Spark View Engine
• jQuery Metadata Plugin
• BrowserShots
• Xenocode
• IETester
• Firefox Firecookie Add-ons
• amCharts
• Chart Basics
• CSS Browser Selector
• Akamai
• Google CDN
• Rackspace, Rackspace Cloud (Mosso)
• Amazon CloudFront
• BrainTree Payment Solutions
• Telligent
• The Dip by Seth Godin
• Mary and Tom Poppendieck
• 37signals

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 55: Nate Kohari brings Your Moment of Zen

Show notes compiled by Ben Griswold. Thanks!

• The guys try to explain the value of Twitter to Rob. “Twitter makes me more productive.” “You must cultivate your network.” “It is all about who you follow.” “Twitter is a fishing net.” “I can quit at anytime.”
• Jon shares how Herding Code started with an inadvertent Skype conversation.
• Scott K talks about Herding Code’s diverse guest list which doesn’t consist of the usual list of suspects which might be regulars on other shows.
• The Kevin Dente Roast continues…
• Rob compares the Herding Code with The View, identifies each cast members role and announces that Herding Code needs to build in the happy hour aspect of podcasting. Have another beer, Rob.
• Jon talks about cannibalism and attacking oneself.
• The guys discuss Rob’s new spokesmodel spokesman position at Microsoft, ongoing Kona development and a bit about community outreach.
• Are you missing K Scott? Tune into this week’s show to find out what he’s doing now. You may be utterly surprised.

Show Links:

• Rob Conery
• Jeff Atwood
• Scott Hanselman, Hanselminutes
• John Resig
• Phil Haack
• Alan Stevens
• G. Andrew Duthie
• Greg Young
• Shawn Wildermuth
• Joe Brinkman
• Shaun Walker
• DotNetNuke
• TechSmith, SnagIt, Jing
• V8 JavaScript Engine
• Leon Bambrick – New Synchronization Idea Overlooked By Microsoft Live team
• Glenn Block
• Ted Leung
• Markus Völter
• Matt Podwysocki
• Shawn Burke
• Bertrand Le Roy
• Stephen Walther
• DotNetRocks
• Elegant Code Podcast

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 54: Rob Conery interviews the Herding Code guys

Show notes compiled by Ben Griswold. Thanks!

• Jon kicks off the show asking Rob for some clarity on his job at Microsoft. Rob refuses to answer the question and unveils his plan to completely derail the podcast.  This leads into the first ever Kevin Dente Roast.
• After things settle down, Rob announces SubSonic 3.0 and the “technical part of the podcast” is initiated.
• Rob talks to SubSonic details – specifically, ActiveRecord, REST Handler, Linq engine, SimpleRepository, templating system, the use of the iQueryable Toolkit, the new docs site, and auto migrations.
• “What’s so difficult about building a freakin’ expression parser?”  Rob states that coding is hard and the fact that LINQ leaves him a little afraid. He then speaks a little Mandarin and speaks of going shopping.
• Jon and Rob have a discussion about the use of ORMs and performance concerns.  Rob states No one ever got fired for using Microsoft and adds a quick comment about SubSonic’s failed acquision of NHibernate
• Scott K asks what it is like to write your own provider for SubSonic and notes that a SQL Data Service provider would allow one to scale to the cloud.
• The guys field listener questions from Jeff Atwood (“Why is SQL so awesome?”) and Chip Cray (“How has your view of DDD changed since you started the StoreFront?”)
• The conversation comes full circle with Jon asking Rob (again) about his job at Microsoft and if he’s paid to work on SubSonic.

Show Links:

• Rob Conery
• Scott Hanselman
• SubSonic 3.0 is Released Announcement
• SubSonic 3.0 Download
• SubSonic 3.0 Docs
• Ruby on Rails
• LINQ
• LINQ to SQL
• Jeff Atwood, Joel Spolsky, Stack Overflow
• iQueryable Toolkit
• Matt Warren
• gzip
• Rick Strahl
• SQL Data Services
• NHibernate
• Sharding
• POCO
• Entity Framework
• T4 Templates
• db4objects
• SQLite
• Ayende
• Damien Guard
• Scott Guthrie
• David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH)
• ASP.NET MVC StoreFront
• StackOverflow DevDays
• Intro music – Chicago Remix – requested by Rob

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 53: SubSonic 3.0 Release Party with Rob Conery

Show notes compiled by Ben Griswold. Thanks!

• Kevin kicks off the show by announcing our two fighters. Ding. Ding.
• Alan throws the first punch – He likes Herding Code because it’s about real software development rather than development in the Microsoft bubble.  It’s about the tool users rather than the tool builders and it’s about honest feedback.
• Andrew jabs back – He likes the stories from the trenches but he feels more credit must be given to the folks at Microsoft who are doing the right thing. In other words, don’t always assume the worst and snark about it.
• Scott K keeps both fighters on their toes – First taking jabs at Alan because some DevDiv developers dogfood Microsoft’s stuff (e.g. Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0) and then lands a sucker punch on Andrew noting Entity Framework is developing in the dark.  Who could have seen that punch coming?
• The fight continues with talk about general disgust in drag and drop demos, the role of the Developer Evangelist, Microsoft’s goals and constraints, and the need for candid feedback.
• If you missed the Twitter exchange, you will definitely want to listen in as The Alan Stevens vs G. Andrew Duthie Debate continues this week on Herding Code.

Show Links:

• Alan Stevens, @alanstevens
• G. Andrew Duthie, @devhammer 
• CodeStock Conference in Knoxville
• devLINK Conference in Nashville
• Community Megaphone
• Brad Wilson
• DevExpress
• JetBrains
• Damien Guard
• Scott Hanselman
• Phil Haack
• Rob Conery
• Joel Neubeck and Tim Heuer‘s Silverlight Video Player
• Josh Holmes
• Windows Internet Explorer 8: Get the facts
• Microsoft Vine
• Serenity Movie
• Scott Guthrie
• Don Box
• Pete Brown
• T4 Templates
• Brian Noyes

Note: Ward Bell transcribed a part of the discussion on drag’n'drop demos here.

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 52: The Alan Stevens and G. Andrew Duthie Debate Continues

Show notes compiled by Ben Griswold. Thanks!

• Greg talks about how we’ve failed our so completely that they now base their success on our always failing in the same way. He starts with your classic Hello World use-case, the common sex change
• Greg talks about how we’ve forced our customers to work with data when they’re naturally behavior-centric
• The problem with losing the historical record – we’ve lost the value of context and intent
• Scott K asks about determining software behaviors by observing user behavior
• Greg describes how Command Separation and the Event Sourcing pattern can help in solving this
• K Scott asks about how this fits in with REST-ful architectures which are generally data-centric
• Jon asks about the UI space efficiency of designing for behavioral interaction instead of data interaction
• Some examples from HR: Jon likes to promote people, K Scott enjoys discussions of termination procedures
• Kevin asks how what Greg’s proposing is different from task based UI’s we’ve already seen
• Jon asks how to sell this to management, who sometimes doesn’t feel the need to share business process information with the software developers
• Greg and K Scott talk about how data-centric style applications lose valuable context – educational tracking, shopping carts, medical records, and financial systems.
• Scott K and Greg talk about how data-centric applications don’t handle histrory well. Greg points out that there’s a big difference between an event and a snapshot model.
• Jon asks how we persist this kind of event information – do we need to move away from relational databases?
• Greg talks about why the implementational details are less important than grasping the high level concepts.

Show Links:

• Greg Young’s blog
• Command Query Separation 
• Domain Driven Design – Yahoo Group
• Herding Code Trivia Contest – (Diskeeper Pro Premier)

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 51: Greg Young on Our GRAND Failure – Thoughts on DDDD

• Damien assures us that LINQ To SQL is not at all dead and talks about some of the new features in LINQ To SQL 4.
• Damien discusses the T4 templates in EF/VS2010 as well as the LINQ to SQL T4 templates he’s released on CodePlex as L2ST4.
• New features in EF 4 (LINQ operators, ObjectSet)
• Additional LINQ To SQL mocking with ITable<T>
• Some general discussion of query performance optimization in L2S and EF, including some enhancements in v4.
• Code-only configuration to enable fluent configuration for EF
• Kevin compares the code-only configuration to Fluent NHibernate
• K Scott asks about how code-only configuration would enable TDD with EFF
• Damien talks about the challenges of TDD and DDD when developing a framework
• Jon asks the “Should L2S be on CodePlex” question
• Damien mentions Matt Warren’s LINQ IQueryable Toolkit
• Jon asks about the experience and improvements to migration from L2S to EF
• K Scott asks about common L2S mistakes
• Jon asks about POCO support in EF
• Kevin bemoans the lack of support for refreshing a L2S model when your schema changes
• The talk shifts over to the programming font Damien designed, Envy Code R
• Damien explains the intricacies of TrueType, bitmap fonts and hinting
• Discussion of font editing software, from FontLab ($500) to FontForge (free, open source), and Microsoft Visual TrueType (free, weird license agreement which must be faxed in)
• Damien’s crazy font hack to get italic comments in Visual Studio
• Jon asks about the new typography features in Windows 7, including the new DirectWrite API
• Damien prefers Mac font rendering for quick glances, Windows for long use
• Discussion of how fonts affect eyestrain
• Jon talks about font rendering on Kindle and how he’s using it as an RSS aggregator

Show Links:

• LINQ to SQL changes in .NET 4.0
• L2ST4 – LINQ to SQL T4 templates
• LINQ IQueryable Toolkit
• Envy Code R
• TrueType
• FontLab
• Microsoft Visual TrueType
• Windows 7 font changes and Gabriola
• DirectWrite
• Amazon Kindle

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 50: Damien Guard on LINQ to SQL, Entity Framework, and Fontography

• Jon digs into the Bing’s core feature list and shares that he is generally impressed with the specialty searches around travel, health, traffic, images, shopping and maps.
• When it comes to search, the guys ask if Microsoft can really complete with Google. And does it really matter?
• Scott K talks about Microsoft rebranding and questions what Microsoft is doing with its web properties? He compares Microsoft to Google which does everything web-based. Kevin chimes in and state that he doesn’t use a single Microsoft online property and Microsoft just doesn’t have a good story for this space.
• The guys discuss usability features in Bing – specifically image and video search, search history and preferences.
• K Scott brings up Bing’s nice use of Silverlight and speak to tweets stating Bing is Microsoft’s way of tricking you into installing the Silverlight plugin.
• Jon and Scott K talk about conspiracy theories.
• Jon kicks off a conversation about Wolfram|Alpha and shares how you can ask just about anything and you will even get an answer if you know exactly how to phrase the question.
• Kevin states that calling Wolfram|Alpha a search engine is a misnomer. Really, it’s a computational knowledge engine made for academics by academics.
• Scott K calls out that anything claiming to be related to search must live up to Google. After all, you google information. You don’t altavista.
• K Scott compares Wolfram|Alpha to a restaurant where the food’s not great but the atmosphere is pretty funky.
• Jon and Scott K discuss search aggregators, explorer federated search and Kevin compares Wolfram|Alpha to Stack Overflow.
• K Scott comments on search in general and how competition is a good thing. K Scott is not completely comfortable with Google dominating the market share. It’s the same uncomfortable feeling he had when Microsoft dominated the browser wars and look how that turned out. Take note!

Compliments of K Scott, another Lightning Round Strikes!

• Twitter on the Xbox 360
• last.fm and Zune
• E3 (Electonic Entertainment Expo), Project Natal, Milo Demo, Peter Molyneux
• Adobe’s BrowserLab is a rip off of SuperPreview
• Windows 7 October Release, adoption rate and boot from VHD feature
• Google Wave and Google Orkut, HTML 5, Canvas and SVG

Show Links:

• Discover Bing
• Farecast
• Powerset
• Splogs
• Google vs Bing Results
  • http://blackdog.ie/google-bing/search.php
  • http://blindsearch.fejus.com
• Young Jeezy
• Silverlight
• Google Gears
• Wolfram|Alpha
• It’s Time For Microsoft To Face Reality About Search And The Internet, Henry Blodget
• Who is Stephen Wolfram? Go ahead and Bing him too!
• Jon Udell
• Stack Overflow
• The Elephant in the Room: Google Monoculture, Coding Horror
• Chris Pirillo
• Geekologie
• Engadget
• Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF)
• Johnny Chung Lee
• Adam Kinney
• With Wave, did Google jump the (Microsoft) shark?, Mary-Jo Foley
• Google Web Toolkit (GWT)

Scott K’s Wolfram queries:
How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
Do these pants make me look fat?

Jon’s Wolfram queries:
GDP of Moldovia divided by Ernest Goes to Camp box office?
Escape velocity of Saturn divided by top speed of a cheetah?
Population of Vatican City divided by the square root of the number of hours in a leap year?
How to cook a Welshman?

K Scot’s Wolfram queries:
How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

Jon Udell’s Wolfram query:
(H1N1 Mexico Deaths / Mexico Cases) / (H1N1 US Deaths / US Cases)

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 49: Search with Bing and Wolfram Alpha

Show notes compiled by Ben Griswold. Thanks!

• The show kicks off with Jon commenting about the evolution of Visual Studio. Dustin then takes us down memory lane sharing how Visual Studio has been torn down and stitched back together over the years – this time with a new WPF-based IDE and an impressive extensibility model.
• K Scott notes that F# is now being shipped with Visual Studio 2010 and teases Dustin about working on Project Euler problems in F# with his wife. (There’s a hot dating tip for you.) Dustin squirms a little and then talks in more detail about the latest F# release and the many language refactorings.
• Scott K asks if dynamic languages like IronRuby and IronPython are scheduled to be shipped with later versions of Visual Studio and Dustin suggests that those languages may not find benefit in doing so.
• Scott K asks if Microsoft is trying to kill off the competition by introducing IDE features already provided by CodeRush and ReSharper?  Dustin shares that the new extensibility model within VS2010 actually promotes third-party development and refers to the DevExpresses, JetBrains and Whole Tomatoes of the world as “partners” rather than competition.
• Scott K asks if rewriting the VS2010 editor in WPF will elevate WPF’s exposure inside and outside of Microsoft and effectively force the framework to continually improve. Scott K also asks if componentizing Visual Studio (think Perspectives in Eclipse) is something we might see in future bits.
• Jon asks about team size and what it takes to build a product like Visual Studio at Microsoft.
• Scott K calls out Parallel Programming, a highlighted new feature in VS2010, and Dustin drills into IDE support for parallel programming with parallel debugging windows and profiling views.
• Kevin and Dustin talk about improved TDD support with features like "Generate From Usage."
• The show wraps up with the guys beating Dustin up a bit with talk about Visual Studio issues such as the Add Reference Dialogue slowness and the "Visual Studio is busy" dialogue.

Show Links:

• Dustin Campbell’s Blog
• Project Euler
• Visual Studio 2010 Beta 
• Visual Studio 2010 Beta Download Options (including Web Installer)
• FREE DevExpress CodeRush Xpress for C# and VB
• DevExpress’ CodeRush and Refactor!
• JetBrains’ ReSharper
• Whole Tomato’s Visual Assist X
• Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)
• Visual InterDev
• Managed Extensibility Foundation (MEF)
• May F# CTP add-on for Visual Studio 2008
• F# Interpreter (FSI)
• IronRuby
• IronPython
• Perspectives in Eclipse
• IronPython Studio
• Team Foundation Server (TFS)
• SmallTalk
• PowerShell
• The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 48: Dustin Campbell on Visual Studio 2010

Show notes compiled by Ben Griswold. Thanks!

• Joe explains that the Webforms vs. MVC debate boils down to a component based vs. object-oriented based approach to web development. Joe also shares that one shouldn’t only think about Webforms when doing the comparison. After all, let’s not forget web services, HTTPHandlers and HTTPModules are also part of the ASP.NET stack.
• Joe speaks about the lack of a reusability model in ASP.NET MVC and Scott K offers solutions that go beyond mere copy and paste operations. Joe and Kevin explore how the absence of the component model in ASP.NET MVC is rescued by rich functionality packaged within the Javascript frameworks.
• K Scott and Joe talk about core issues with Webform development. That is, ClientId management, .ASPX in URLs and maintainability concerns around Webform’s event model in the code behind and forcing statefulness in a stateless web environment. K Scott notes that .NET 4.0 will offer URL routing and greater control over ClientId generation so key areas of concern may soon be addressed, but it will take further framework improvement to provide greater control over the Webform abstraction layer.
• Everyone agrees that Microsoft, vendors and community will provide components to pave the way to richer, easier to implement, ASP.NET MVC applications. Additionally, advancements will continue in the Webforms space.  Most notably, the guys assume there is bound to be a push towards a better Webforms testability story.
• Kevin gives historical context to Webforms and why the abstraction model was revolutionary and arguably necessary. Knowing full well that hate mail is to come, Jon talks about using the “right” tool for the job and how he plans to continue to use Webforms where appropriate.
• Jon and Joe summarize four big reasons why EVERY developer should learn MVC and Scott K asks what can be done with senior web developers who just don’t want to learn the new framework?  This leads into a conversation about honing one’s craft, mentorship, leading by example, and following through with supervision and code reviews.  
• Now that ASP.NET MVC is in the picture, the group wrestles with what to call ASP.NET Webforms.  Classic ASP.NET is kind of catchy (and a little confusing.)
• Jon and Joe talk about changes in Open Source – inside and outside of the Microsoft community – over the past six years. 
• Scott K talks about the “promise” of being able to contribute to an open source project and asks about the managing patches – specifically on large open source projects.
• The guys also dive into open source definition, licenses, legal considerations, protections around intellectual properties and implicit copyright on code.
• The episode wraps up with a Joe providing a nice overview of DotNetNuke’s past, present and future.

Show Links:

• Joe Brinkman’s Blog
• I Spose I’ll Just Say It: Still Waiting For a GOOD Reason to Learn MVC
• DotNetNuke
• DotNetNuke Professional
• DotNetNuke OpenForce
• August Capital
• Sierra Ventures
• ASP.NET MVC
• Telerik
• DevExpress
• WordPress
• Jeremy Miller
• Chad Myers
• Scott Watermasysk
• Community Server
• Scott Guthrie
• DRY Principle – Don’t Repeat Yourself
• SOLID Principles
• TDD – Test Driven Development
• BDD – Behavior Driven Development
• FubuMVC
• Oxite
• jQuery Grid Plugin
• jQuery
• Prototype
• Script.aculo.us
• Open Source Definition
• Open Source Licenses
• SCO vs Linux Controversies
• Cargo Culting
• Reflector

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 47: Joe Brinkman on Webforms vs ASP.NET MVC 

Show notes compiled by Ben Griswold. Thanks!

• Hear tales of recursive website spidering, rogue mass emailers, and hardware snafus which end in puffs of smoke
• Learn from Jon that simulating nuclear fission on a Cray supercomputer can get wildly out of control
• Find out why you should think twice before optimizing a relative’s computer on New Years’ Day
• What’s the quickest way to realize the benefits of a Transaction Server?  Why listening to K Scott’s ATM story, of course.
• Discover why you might want to rethink flying Kevin out to your company to perform any hardware magic (but if you need to reconstruct a FAT table, he’s your guy.)
• And get the most sage advice ever offered by K Scott on Herding Code.

As a bonus, the Extended Lightning Round!

• Windows 7, Windows XP Mode and Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V)
• Windows Server 2008 SP2 and Windows Vista SP 2
• Office 2007 Service Pack 2
• Microsoft Vine – It’s like Twitter for Emergencies
• Pink – Microsoft’s Smart Phone
• Glimmer

Show Links:

• TimeSnapper
• CallGraph
• VMWare Fusion’s Unity
• Virtual PC
• Parallels Coherence
• Lounge Podcast Survey

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 46: Mistakes and News Recap 

Show notes compiled by Ben Griswold. Thanks!

• Larry and K Scott summarize their thoughts on the recent DSL DevCon
• Scott K shares that the hardest part about DSLs is defining what they are and what they aren’t. For example are SQL, CSS or XSLT Domain Specific Languages? Lucky for us, Larry provides a reasonably simple breakdown of Internal and External DSLs and touches upon Functional, Dynamic, Compositional, and Computational DSLs.
• K Scott questions why one might create a DSL and proposes that communication and productivity are primary drivers. Larry concurs and talks about the miscommunication and inefficiencies associated with programmers translating domain expert’s preferred notation or diagrams into code.  This sparks a conversation about Microsoft’s claims regarding OSLO’s order of magnitude productivity increases and the premises required for this claim to be achieved. 
• Kevin asks if DSLs and the new tools are targeted to replace developers. Don’t worry, you’re safe for now especially since the idea of letting the business people write programs has been failing since COBOL.  As Larry explains, it isn’t about putting programmers out of work, it’s all about communication, readability and offering domain experts a way to validate our code.
• Larry explains why writing a language – specifically an external DSL – is hard. 
• Jon and Kevin recognize similarities between Domain Specific Languages and Domain Driven Development and Larry speaks to their shared concepts – primarily expressing a domain in code.
• Larry answers listener questions from Shawn Wildermuth and Ben Griswold regarding the difference between an internal and external DSLs and the role of the fluent interfaces and the relationship between functional programming and DSLs, respectively.
• The guys also talk a bit about growing and roasting your own coffee, Hawaii, magazines and how a Mai Tai can disrupt one’s plan to take over the world.

Show Links:

• Larry O’Brien’s blog
• Larry’s recent article in SDTimes 
• DSL DevCon
• Lang.NET Symposium
• Chris Sells
• Meta-Introduction to Domain Specific Languages, Martin Fowler
• Using IronPython 2.0 as a script engine in MS Dynamics AX, Roman Ivantsov 
• Functional vs Dynamic DSLs: The Smackdown, Ted Neward and Bradford Cross
• Ted Leung’s overview of DSL DevCon 
• Intentional Software
• Martin Fowler’s Writings on Language Workbenches
• Intentional Software talk at Qcon 
• Intentional Software presentation at DSL Dev Con 
• OSLO Developer Center
• Eclipse
• Boo
• Herding Code 42: Scott Bellware on BDD and Lean Development
• Fit and FitNesse
• Tcl (pronounced Tickle) Scripting Language
• Functional Programming
• F#
• LINQ – .NET Language-Integrated Query
• jQuery

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 45: Larry O’Brien on Domain Specific Languages 

Show notes compiled by Ben Griswold. Thanks!

• Scott K starts off the show with a list of free online invoicing and financial tools along with a number of services which provide free disk space.
• Jon notes that advertising and micropayments are cheap and easy to setup in minutes.
• Kevin talks about his recent endeavor, review2Q, an ASP.NET MVC application, hosted in the Azure cloud, which helps automate the management of his Netflix’s queue. It was an itch that he just needed to scratch and, with little overhead on his part, it’s now available for you, too.
• The guys discuss super cheap hosting and the numerous APIs and Services which provide tons of data available to re-mix.  They also discuss using Azure or Google App Engine to scale up as one grows. 
• Jon comments on how free site templates and store/blog theme systems can make design a snap. 
• Jon also calls out the fact that for most web developers the barrier to entry is so low.  Thus, one is somewhat susceptible to having their idea quickly copied.  This raises the question; will your investment pay off long-term? 
• Kevin jokes that there’s an alternative approach to implementing your own, self-serving solution – just wait long enough and someone else will implement your idea.
• Kevin and Jon discuss why the web is such an appealing platform to start a venture. It is all about the low barrier to entry, the instant gratification and immediacy of making your product available and easy accessibility.  Not to mention many sites are self-sustaining.
• The guys brainstorm a few one-man startup website and mobile development ideas, wonder if they would ever again hear from Jon if he came upon 4 million dollars and question whether or not K Scott has fallen asleep.

Show Links:

• Google Docs
• Zoho
• Office Online
• Skydrive
• Box.net
• Dropbox
• Google App Engine
• Markus Frind, Plentyoffish.com
• Adsense
• Kevin’s Dente’s review2Q
• Netflix
• ASP.NET MVC
• Azure
• SQL Data Services
• RSS
• RESTful API
• Trusted Database Interpretation (TDI)
• Open Source Web Design
• WordPress
• OneNote
• Yahoo Pipe
• Stackoverflow
• Hanselminutae-five with Richard Campbell
• iPhone Development
• Windows Mobile
• 37signals

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 44: Microbusiness

Show notes compiled by Ben Griswold. Thanks!

• The guys discuss the various patterns as they relate to ASP.NET MVC, Silverlight and WPF and dig into the differences between ViewModels and Models.
• Scott K brings up the question: “What’s the difference between MVC and MVP?” and then quotes Jeremy Miller in stating, “MVP denotes a stateful conversation between presenter and view whereas MVC is just linear.”
• K Scott discusses the differences between building applications “the Rails way” and how you can build any type of application any way you want with ASP.NET MVC.
• The group fields a question via Twitter from Steve Bohlen: "ask about the (relative) importance of persistence ignorance in the M in MVC."
• The guys talk at length about action filters, custom model binders and object-object mapping.
• And the show closes with Scott K reintroducing THE LIGHTNING ROUND!

Show Links:

• Javier Lozano’s Blog
• Eric Hexter’s Blog
• LosTechies
• CodePlex
• Community for MVC
• Model View Controller
• Model View ViewModel
• Model Model View Controller
• Model View Presenter
• Jeremy Miller’s Blog
• Shawn Wildermoth’s Blog
• Jimmy Bogard’s Blog
• Rob Conery’s Blog
• Chad Myer’s Blog
• Putting the M in MVC Series
• Putting the “M” Back in MVC (with SubSonic MVC Templates)
• The Power of Programming With Attributes
• Ruby on Rails
• MVC.NET 1.0
• NHibernate
• Monorail
• ActiveRecord
• Windsor
• Linq 2 SQL
• Entity Framework
• NerdDinner.com
• jQuery
• Silverlight
• WPF
• Domain Driven Design
• AutoMapper: Object-Object Mapper
• Repository Pattern
• YAGNI
• Splitting DateTime – Unit Testing ASP.NET MVC Custom Model Binders
• A Better Model Binder
• Autofac – An addictive .NET IoC Container
• David Foley
• MVC Contrib
• ASP.NET MVC Tips – Return Specific Views for Specific Errors
• Charlie the Unicorn Goes to Candy Mountain
• FubuMVC
• WCF
• Service Locator Pattern
• Action Filters
• RIA Services
• Scott Guthrie and The Other Scott

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 43: Javier Lozano on the M in MVC

Show notes compiled by Ben Griswold. Thanks!

• Hear the REAL last word about TDD.  You know it is more about design and little about testing, right?
• True or false?  Scott Bellware practices BDD.  The answer will shock you!
• Learn why you need let go of your inner geek and commit to being a business person.
• Discover how Context Specification can help you get a date (or your money back.)
• Pick up some catchy phases like “focal depth”, “theory of constraints”, “quality at the source”, “working forward” and “Docksiders.”
• And much, much, much more.

Show Links:

• Scott Bellware’s Blog
• Dan North
• Test Driven Development (TDD)
• Behavior Driven Development (BDD)
• SpecUnit
• NUnit
• RSpec
• Aaron Jenson
• NBehave
• XUnit
• MBUnit
• MSTest
• Entity Framework
• CodeBetter.com
• theRuntime.com
• Jay Kimble
• Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation
• The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement
• The Toyota Way
• Extreme Toyota: Radical Contradictions That Drive Success at the World’s Best Manufacturer
• Mary and Tom Poppendieck
• Audible.com
• Mono
• Moonlight
• Android Development
• iPhone Development
• Monospace (or Mono Space) will be a workshop conference on Mono in Austin this fall – http://explore.twitter.com/bellware/status/1427781203
• everbetter.me will provide person to person mentoring and targeted for launch in June – http://twitter.com/bellware/status/1470820727

Download / Listen:

Episode 42: Scott Bellware on BDD and Lean Development

DISCLAIMER: This was recorded in a noisy room, and while I’ve done what I can to eliminate background noise and even out the vocal levels, the audio quality is poor (even by Herding Code standards). You’ve been warned.

Thanks to Tim, Chris, and Alan for giving their permission to publish this.

Show Links:

• Tim Heuer – http://timheuer.com – @timheuer
• Chris Bennage – http://bluespire.com/blogs – @bennage
• Alan Le – http://alanle.com/ – @a7an 

Download / Listen:

Episode 41: Next Generation Twitter Client Discusion At MIX09

• Shawn talks about shared code, validation rules logic and general line of business application development with RIA Service and the guys become skeptically about RIA Service’s good and bad magic.
• Kevin’s draggy-droppy spidey senses kick in and asks if RIA Services merely demos well.  Shawn speaks candidly about nobody knowing if RIA Services will work well in the wild (will it scale, for example) and encourages everyone to download and play with the bit and provide feedback. 
• Scott K asks why he should even care about RIA Services, comments on how this is another example of building plumbing code frameworks in a vacuum, scoffs at Microsoft products like Silverlight, OSLO and Windows Workflow Foundation and goes so far to ask if is it too early for a RIA Service Vote of No Confidence.  In response, Shawn has some fun with Scott K and defends RIA Services along with some of the Microsoft development teams.  Shawn also shares his enthusiasm about OLSO.
• Kevin questions Microsoft’s choice in terminology.  Does RIA Services really speak to what the framework does?
• K Scott and Shawn briefly discuss the RIA Service’s TDD story and touch upon SilverUnit.
• Jon and Shawn discuss their favorite new Silverlight features which include direct writing of pixels and audio, Silverlight out of browser, and behaviors.
• The guys do a quick wrap up of Mix09 announcements and talk about Sketchflow’s designer focus and cynically talk about its unavailability.
• To the delight of those on the call, Jon talks about Expression Web SuperrrPreeevieewww!
• And there’s a special guest question from Rachel Appel and a Twitter question from Scott Watermasysk.

Show Links:

• Shawn Wildermuth’s blog – http://wildermuth.com/
• Silverlight Tour – http://silverlight-tour.com/, http://agilitrain.com
• Shawn’s MSDN Article on MVVM – http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/dd458800.aspx
• Shawn’s MSDN Articles on OSLO and DSLs – http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd441702.aspx, http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd548006.aspx
• Shawn’s Recent Articles – http://wildermuth.com/Articles
• Shawn’s MSDN Article on Prism – Coming soon
• Rachel Appel – http://rachelappel.com/
• Nikhil Kothari – http://www.nikhilk.net
• Brad Abrams – http://blogs.msdn.com/brada/
• Nikhil Kothari’s MIX09 Session: http://videos.visitmix.com/MIX09/T41F
• Brad Abrams’ MIX09 Session: http://videos.visitmix.com/MIX09/T40F
• Rocky Lhotka – http://www.lhotka.net/
• Scott Watermasysk – http://simpable.com/
• SilverUnit – http://cthru.codeplex.com/
• Silverlight ToolKit (with Test Framework) – http://silverlight.codeplex.com/
• MIX09 – http://live.visitmix.com/
• Sketchflow – http://videos.visitmix.com/MIX09/C01F
• SuperPreview – http://expression.microsoft.com/en-us/dd565874.aspx

Download / Listen:

Episode 40: Shawn Wildermuth on Silverlight 3 and RIA Services

Show Links:

• Scott C. Reynold’s blogs – http://scottcreynolds.com, http://lostechies.com/blogs/scottcreynolds
• Scott C. Reynold’s on Twitter – http://twitter.com/scottcreynolds
• Apple Developer Connection – http://developer.apple.com/
• Mac Developer Program – http://developer.apple.com/products/mac/program/
• iPhone Developer Program – http://developer.apple.com/iphone/
• Mac OS X Leopard [oh-es-ten lep-erd] – http://www.apple.com/macosx/
• XCode – http://developer.apple.com/TOOLS/xcode/
• Objective-C (ObjC) – http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/ObjectiveC/Introduction/introObjectiveC.html
• Beginning Objective C for the C# Guy – http://www.scottcreynolds.com/archive/2009/02/05/beginning-objective-c-for-the-c-guy.aspx
• MacRuby – http://www.macruby.org/trac/wiki/MacRuby
• Cocoa & CocoaTouch – http://developer.apple.com/technology/cocoa.html
• OCUnit – http://developer.apple.com/tools/unittest.html
• Interface Builder – http://developer.apple.com/tools/interfacebuilder.html
• Carbon – http://developer.apple.com/Carbon/
• Human Interface Guidelines – http://developer.apple.com/documentation/userexperience/Conceptual/AppleHIGuidelines/XHIGIntro/XHIGIntro.html
• AppStore – http://www.apple.com/iphone/appstore/
• Mono – http://www.mono-project.com/Main_Page
• Miguel de Icaza – http://tirania.org/blog/
• Unity – http://unity3d.com/
• Boo – http://boo.codehaus.org/
• Day of Ruby – Tampa (May 16th, 2009) – http://tampa.dayofruby.com/

Download / Listen:

Episode 39: Scott C. Reynolds on Mac and iPhone Development

Show Links:

• NHibernate – http://nhforge.org
• Ayende’s blog – http://ayende.com
• David Penton’s blog – http://pentonizer.com
• Ben Scheirman’s blog – http://flux88.com 

Download / Listen:

Episode 38: NHibernate performance with Ayende, David Penton, and Ben Scheirman

Show Links:

• Jon Udell’s blog – http://blog.jonudell.net/
• Byte Magazine – http://www.ddj.com/
• Practical Internet Groupware – http://oreilly.com/catalog/9781565925373/
• InfoWorld – http://www.infoworld.com/ 
• USASpending.gov – http://usaspending.gov/
• Azure – http://www.microsoft.com/azure/default.mspx
• IronPython – http://ironpython.codeplex.com/ 
• ElmCity – http://elmcity.info/ 
• Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) – http://www.xbrl.org/Home/
• Drupal – http://drupal.org/ 
• Google calendar – http://calendar.google.com/ 
• RSS – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_(file_format)
• Yahoo! Pipes – http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/ 
• Doug Day, .NET iCalendar Library – http://www.ddaysoftware.com/Pages/Default.aspx
• Ben Fortuna, Java, icalforJ – http://ical4j.sourceforge.net/ 
• iCalendar Specification (RFC 2445) – http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2445.txt
• Delicious – http://delicious.com/
• iCalender Validation – http://icalvalid.wikidot.com/
• LibriVox – http://librivox.org/
• Douglas Purdy – www.douglasp.com
• Oslo – http://www.douglaspurdy.com/2008/09/06/what-is-oslo/
• DSL – http://martinfowler.com/bliki/DomainSpecificLanguage.html
• Don Box – http://www.pluralsight.com/community/blogs/dbox/
• Dynamic Languages – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_programming_language 
• Chris Anderson/Don Box Keynote – http://channel9.msdn.com/pdc2008/KYN03/
• Live Services – http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/live/default.aspx
• REST – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_State_Transfer
• OpenId – http://openid.net/
• CardSpace – http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa480189.aspx
• Phil Windley – http://phil.windley.org/
• Kynetx – http://www.kynetx.com/
• Digital Identity – http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596008789/ 
• Kim Cameron – http://www.identityblog.com/ 
• Gillmore Gang – http://gillmorgang.techcrunch.com/ 
• IT Conversations – http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/
• Web Hooks – http://webhooks.pbwiki.com/
• SpokenWord.org – http://www.spokenword.org/
• Lucas Gonze – http://gonze.com/about/
• Webjay – http://webjay.org/
• Katya Oddio – http://www.oddiooverplay.com/here/about.html

Download / Listen:

Episode 37: Jon Udell

• Scott W, Scott K and Jon discuss Azure, Amazon Web Services and Google App Engine.
• Jon asks Scott W to share his thoughts on blogging platforms and the difficulties around their development due to their many edge cases and full feature set.
• Scott W answers a listener question about his thoughts on Silverlight.
• Scott K, Jon and Scott W rant about corporations continuing to run IE6, why IE8 killed Scott W’s inner child and why, oh why, won’t Microsoft just rewrite Internet Explorer already.
• Scott W shares his strategy for evaluating and learning new technologies and how to successfully manage remote development teams.
• Scott W and the guys talk about the demise of SQL and the higher dependency on ORMs and traditional database alternatives like CouchDB.
• Scott W comments on Silverlight and ASP.NET MVC and whether these technologies help solve his customers’ problems today.

Show Links:

• Scott Watermasysk’s blog – http://simpable.com
• Telligent – http://telligent.com/
• Community Server – http://communityserver.com/
• Community Server Evolution – http://telligent.com/products/community-server-evolution/
• Azure – http://www.microsoft.com/azure/default.mspx
• Amazon Web Services – http://aws.amazon.com/
• Google App Engine – http://code.google.com/appengine/
• Mix 2009 – http://2009.visitmix.com/
• CouchDB – http://couchdb.apache.org/
• BigTable – http://labs.google.com/papers/bigtable.html
• SubText – http://www.subtextproject.com/
• BlogEngine.NET – http://www.dotnetblogengine.net/
• .Text – http://forums.asp.net/149.aspx
• .Text on GotDotNet (web archive)
• Oxite – http://www.codeplex.com/oxite
• Zawinski’s Law – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zawinski’s_Law_of_Software_Envelopment#Quotes
• IE8 – http://www.microsoft.com/windows/Internet-explorer/beta/default.aspx
• Gecko – https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Gecko
• WebKit – http://webkit.org/
• Browser Speeds Test – http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10030888-92.html
• Silverlight – http://silverlight.net/
• MEF – http://www.codeplex.com/MEF
• The Greatest Scott of Them All – http://weblogs.asp.net/Scottgu/
• dotnetopenid Project – http://code.google.com/p/dotnetopenid/
• CardSpace – http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa480189.aspx
• NHibernate – http://www.hibernate.org/343.html
• Subsonic – http://subsonicproject.com/
• Entity Framework – http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa697427(vs.80).aspx
• Apology-Based Computing – http://simpable.com/software/apology-based-computing/
• Eric Evan’s Book – http://domaindrivendesign.org/books/index.html#DDD
• Tokbox – http://www.tokbox.com/
• Velocity – http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=B24C3708-EEFF-4055-A867-19B5851E7CD2&displaylang=en
• ASP.NET MVC – http://www.asp.net/mvc/
• Phil Haack – http://www.haacked.com/

Download / Listen:

Episode 36: Scott Watermasysk

• Jon explains why you might send goat pictures to your coworkers.
• Kevin comments about the hazards of new carpet installation.
• K. Scott talks about making an HP Printer come to life.
• And learn why you must always, always keep one eye on Jon when he’s working…

Show Links:

• Fun With C# and HP Laserjets – http://www.odetocode.com/humor/68.aspx
• Goating – http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000997.html
• Favorite Harmless Computer Practical Joke – http://stackoverflow.com/questions/65116/whats-your-favorite-harmless-computer-practical-joke
• Google April Fools – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google’s_hoaxes, http://www.pcworld.com/article/142620/googles_top_17_easter_eggs_gags_and_hoaxes.html
• Kindle 2 – http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Amazons-Wireless-Reading-Generation/dp/B00154JDAI/ref=sr_tr_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1234330860&sr=1-1
• Apple Asks Google to Not Use Multi-Touch – http://www.pcworld.com/article/159260/google_backs_off_multitouch_to_please_apple_report_claims.html
• Microsoft Announcement of Windows 7 Versions – http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1890
• Android Multi-touch Capable, Just Disabled - http://www.trustedreviews.com/mobile-devices/news/2008/11/18/Android-Multi-touch-Capable–Just-Disabled/p1
• Cooked Windows Mobile ROMS http://xda-developers.com

Download / Listen:

Episode 35: Fun at work

• The guys review *Chirp, a new WPF Twitter client from thirteen23.  Scott compares *Chirp to Paris Hilton, Jon reminisces about old Simpsons episodes and Kevin shares that *Chirp is very pretty, nicely designed, and what WPF is all about.
• Kevin, Jon and Scott discuss their involvement with the Witty project. The guys talk about their favorite features, most wanted enhancements, and how they hope the project will evolve going forward. Jon subtly promises a Witty Easter Egg.
• The guys briefly talk about Twitter, how they manage their “rivers of information” and how varying strategies makes Twitter client design/development difficult.  Not to mention what is/isn’t available via the Twitter API…
• Jon and Scott comment on drive-by contributors and general challenges of open source development.
• The guys candidly talk about learning/knowing WPF and the difficulties of debugging WPF applications without tools.  Kevin shares how WPF violates the principle of least surprise and Jon shares why making a textbox’s background is difficult.

Note: *Chirp has since been renamed to blu. We tried to get the folks from thirteen23 on the podcast, but we didn’t hear back grom them until after this show was published. We still love them, though!

Show Links:

• Witty - http://code.google.com/p/wittytwitter/
• blu - http://www.thirteen23.com/experiences/desktop/blu/
• Snoop – http://blois.us/Snoop/
• Silverlight Spy – http://silverlightspy.com/silverlightspy/introduction/
• Spy++ – http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa242713(VS.60).aspx
• ClickOnce – http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/netframework/aa497348.aspx
• Alan Le – http://blogs.vertigo.com/personal/alanl/Blog
• WPF Twitter – http://www.codeplex.com/WPFTwitter
• Model/View/ViewModel (MVVM) – http://blogs.msdn.com/johngossman/archive/2005/10/08/478683.aspx
• TweetDeck – http://www.tweetdeck.com/beta/
• Adam Kinney – http://www.adamkinney.com/
• photoSuru – http://www.photosuru.com/
• Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) – http://www.codeplex.com/MEF
• WPF Commands – http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms752308.aspx
• Laurent Bugnionhttp://www.galasoft.ch/
• RSS Bandit – http://rssbandit.org/

Download / Listen:

Episode 34: *Chirp and Witty – WPF Twitter Clients

• Live inauguration video on Silverlight sites
• Photosynth picture of the inauguration
• whitehouse.gov on webforms – will Viewstate bring down the presidency?
• Armchair quarterbacking the whitehouse.gov site
• whitehouse.gov updates robots.txt
• And Twitter didn’t die!
• Question – What is the one thing I should learn this year
• - K. Scott – SOLID, dynamic languages, WPF
• - Jon – Pick something, declarative UI, get involved in something
• - Kevin – SOLID Principles, WPF
• Question – Comparing working in Web, RIA, and WPF
• Side discussion: What’s the deal with ClickOnce?
• Whoa! Scott Koon joins us mid-call!
• Quick discussion of jQuery 1.3
• Question – What is the one thing Scott K wants to learn this year?
• - Scott K. – Expressions
• - K. Scott – I agree that Scott K should learn expressions
• Side discussion: Why are companies so slow to upgrade .NET versions?
• - Jon – Go, go, go!
• - K. Scott – Not enough must-have features
• - Kevin – Requires customers to upgrade

• Previously bundled features are now distribued via Windows Live – good or bad?
• Is the Windows Live suite just a standardized crapware?
• Where’s our Photo Gallery?
• Windows Marketplace???
• Missing an ISO Mounter
• The out of box experience
• Window docking
• Windows Explorer – side by side
• Discoverability – shortcuts, etc.
• “New features” that were already in Vista
• New Wordpad and Paint with ribbons
• Same old Notepad
• Kevin’s underwhelmed with the updates to Paint
• Could Windows Live Essentials include some friends, like Paint.NET?
• Hey, a new calculator!
• Problem Steps Recorder
• Send Feedback
• Nothing new for Remote Desktop?
• Virtual Hard Drive support, but we want application virtualization
• Multitouch
• Distribution – why not via BitTorrent?
• IE8 is still the same old IE8 that we know and meh
• Windows Scenic Animation API
• Looks like the API’s still all C++ and COM
• The Vista Bridge project
• The Ribbon control has graduated from an Office control to Windows
• No WPF?
• Jumplists

• What is FubuMVC?
• History of the project
• Built to take advantage of static typing
• Composition over inheritance
• Dependency injection tricks
• IFlattener<T> for JSONification
• Application of SOLID prinicples in FubuMVC and AltOxite
• View engines
• TextboxFor and no magic strings – advantages for refactoring support
• Thin controllers, fat models
• FubuMVC as the Ruby On Rails for ASP.NET
• Benefits and problems of using generics for static typing
• Use of meaningful generic type names rather than <T,U,K> ugliness
• Testing tools for Javascript
• FubuMVC’s Behaviors
• Partial rendering strategies
• Why they’re using NHibernate for AltOxite
• IOC benefits
• Strategies for Javascript management
• qUnit for Javascript unit testing
• How do I sell this to my boss?
• Why FubuMVC as opposed to Microsoft’s ASP.NET MVC?
• Why MVC isn’t just classic ASP revisited
• Benefit of FubuMVC – removing choices through opinions
• Ways an open source MVC framework keep up with Microsoft
• FubuMVC futures and misc. benefits
• Use of Rake as a build script

Note: Scott K’s taking a podcasting break to change diapers and stuff.

Looking back at 2008

• Google Chrome
• Kevin’s new iPhone
• Kevin’s Firefox extension addiction
• Hulu
• IE8 – better than expected, but still a ways to go
• ASP.NET MVC
• Silverlight 2
• Oslo
• Azure
• Visual Studio 2008 SP1
• ADO.NET Data Services
• REST is finally accepted in the .NET world
• The Seinfeld / Gates ads
• OpenID
• Netbooks (Oragami at last?)
• Twitter’s recovery
• Overhyped stuff: Surface, cloud computing, multi-core madness
• Functional programming
• DI/IOC hitting the Microsoft mainstream
• [sidebar - the tradeoff between DI benefits vs. Silverlight XAP size]
• StackOverflow
• [sidebar - frustration with Microsoft forums]

Looking forward at 2009

• Windows 7
• Office 14
• Project Pink? (Zune on Windows Mobile)
• [sidebar - frustrations Zune]
• WPF in Visual Studio
• [sidebar - is there a correlation between unmanaged code and lame Microsoft products?]

Download / Listen

Herding Code 30: Year-end wrapup

Topics

• When re-implementing .NET, do you match re-implement known bugs?
• The test / regression system to maintain compatibility
• How do you support so many platforms
• What parts of Mono are written in managed code? Which are written in C?
• Support for iPhone and Xbox
• Mono’s static compilation options
• Differing agendas in open source development
• Microsoft’s emerging open source strategy
• How the web has driven open source strategies and assumptions
• Why Mono used licensed codecs instead of using a library like ffmpeg
• Font distribution in Linux
• Frustrations with the Windows multimedia API’s
• What Miguel thought was insteresting at PDC
• When will we be able to run ASP.NET MVC on Mono?
• When will we get to use the C# 4.0 dynamic features in Mono?
• How does Novell make money on Mono?

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Herding Code 29: Miguel de Icaza (part 2)

Topics

• Overview and update on Mono
• Mono’s roots as a tool for desktop applications on Gnome / Linux
• The need for a package manager in Windows
• Managed operating systems (like Microsoft Research Singularity)
• New areas of focus for Mono – portability and extension
• Mono’s use in cross-platform gaming
• SIMD optimizations in Mono
• Mono’s implementation of the C# compiler as a service
• How the Mono team determines what to work on next
• Breaking changes in public API’s
• Framework design
• Mono’s relationship with Microsoft
• The state of Linux desktop application development
• Silverlight as a platform for desktop applications
• When will Moonlight ship?
• The challenges of building the Mono compiler
• The Linear IL compiler enhancements in Mono 2.0

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Herding Code 28: Miguel de Icaza (part 1)

Topics

• Javascript – language or toolkits?
• Does clean HTML matter? What are the tangible benefits?
• Working with designers who only speak Photoshop
• Basic usability
• Tools every web developer needs
• Progressive enhancement
• K. Scott introduces the Lightning Round

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Herding Code 27: What every web developer should know

Topics

• Differences between WPF and Silverlight
• Thoughts on Silverlight offline
• Model-View-ViewModel pattern and applications in Blend
• WPF Disciples mailing list
• Why use WPF instead of Winforms
• Non-visual benefits of WPF and Silverlight
• Benefits of the XAML format
• Silverlight’s VisualStateManager compared to WPF triggers
• Laurent’s experiences writing Silverlight 2 Unleashed

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Herding Code 26: Laurent Bugnion on WPF and Silverlight

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Herding Code 25: PDC 2008 Podcaster Roundtable with Deep Fried Bytes and StackOverflow (part 2)

Topics

• ModelBinders in ASP.NET MVC
• Lessons learned in building MVC (question from Brian Henderson)
• To what extent did the MVC team look at other frameworks like Monorail, Rails, Django, etc.
• Any new features for the 1.0 release? How about 2.0?
• What’s next for you after MVC ships?
• How is the MVC team’s community-centered release style affecting other Microsoft teams?
• Will MVC’s TDD focus affect other Microsoft frameworks?
• Would MVC be a good fit for a RESTful service system
• RESTful routing
• What Visual Studio features can we expect
• How has one year at Microsoft been for you?
• Strongly typed ActionLink having been moved to MVC futures

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Herding Code 24: Phil Haack on the ASP.NET MVC Beta Release (part 2)

Topics

• The MVC Elevator Speech
• MVC and Codebehind files
• How MVC differs from Webforms
• How MVC changes your development process
• The difficulty in unit testing UI
• What’s the threshold for testing your programs?
• The File / New / MVC experience
• How MVC is built for extensibility
• How MVC is stress tested
• Is there a controls story for MVC?

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Herding Code 23: Phil Haack on the ASP.NET MVC Beta Release (part 1)

Topics

• What’s new?
• The releationship between the DLR and Silverlight 2
• The Eclipse for Silverlight development
• The Open Specification Promise for XAML
• Progress on Mono / Moonlight
• The elevator speech on Silverlight
• How Silverlight fits in with AJAX
• Can Silverlight support separation of concerns and testability?
• Will Microsoft be shipping frameworks for Silverlight?
• Will Silverlight support offline scenarios
• Silverlight as a “line of business” platform
• The WPF / Silverlight connection
• The Silverlight open source community
• The Flash question
• The casual gaming market
• Silverlight performance vs. Javascript
• Speculation on Silverlight 3 features…
• The non-Windows development experience
• The Silverlight story for iPhone and other mobile platforms

Questions from li