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Software How-To
**Coder Radio**

A weekly talk show taking a pragmatic look at the art and business of Software Development and the world of technology.

Latest Episodes:

350: Rusty Stadia Mar 27, 2019

Show notes

We debate Rust’s role as a replacement for C, and share our take on the future of gaming with Google's Stadia.

Plus Objective-C's return to grace, Mike’s big bet on .NET, and more!

Links:

The RedMonk Programming Language Rankings: January 2019 — The idea is not to offer a statistically valid representation of current usage, but rather to correlate language discussion and usage in an effort to extract insights into potential future adoption trends.
Hello .Net Foundation - dominickm.com — I am pleased to share that I have joined the .Net Foundation.
Avalonia: A multi-platform .NET UI framework — Avalonia is a WPF-inspired cross-platform XAML-based UI framework providing a flexible styling system and supporting a wide range of OSs: Windows (.NET Framework, .NET Core), Linux (GTK), MacOS, Android and iOS.
Google’s Stadia looks like an early beta of the future of gaming — “The future of gaming is not a box,” according to Google. “It’s a place.” Just like how humans have built stadiums for sports over hundreds of years, Google believes it’s building a virtual stadium, aptly dubbed Stadia, for the future of games to be played anywhere.
Stadia — Push the envelope of game development with Stadia.
Rust is not a good C replacement | Drew DeVault’s Blog — The kitchen sink approach doesn’t work. Rust will eventually fail to the “jack of all trades, master of none” problem that C++ has. Wise languages designers start small and stay small. Wise systems programmers extend this philosophy to designing entire systems, and Rust is probably not going to be invited. I understand that many people, particularly those already enamored with Rust, won’t agree with much of this article. But now you know why we are still writing C, and hopefully you’ll stop bloody bothering us about it.
Introduction to Python Development at Linux Academy — This course is designed to teach you how to program using Python. We'll cover the building blocks of the language, programming design fundamentals, how to use the standard library, third-party packages, and how to create Python projects. In the end, you should have a grasp of how to program.
Marc-Etienne M.Léveillé on Twitter — Here's something interesting: the backdoor in ASUS Update Setup.exe is again located in the CRT, just like the CCleaner case and recent games with a backdoor. This time in _crtExitProcess.

349: Their Rules, Your Choice Mar 19, 2019

Show notes

We join the fight between Apple and Spotify, and debate the meaning of 'fair play' in the App Store and the browser wars.

Plus some thoughts on the lessons learned from the 737 MAX, an Elastic Beanstalk PSA, and more!

Links:

Microsoft proves the critics right: We’re heading toward a Chrome-only Web | Ars Technica — Last week, Microsoft made a major update to the Web version of its Skype client, bringing HD video calling, call recording, and other features already found on the other clients. And as if to prove a point, the update works only in Edge and Chrome. Firefox, Safari, and even Opera are locked out.
The 737Max and Why Software Engineers Might Want to Pay Attention — What is different here is: the MCAS commands the trim in this condition without notifying the pilots AND to override the input, the pilots must deactivate the system via a switch on a console, NOT by retrimming the aircraft via the yoke, which is a more common way to manage the airplane’s trim.
How a 50-year-old design came back to haunt Boeing with its troubled 737 Max jet - Los Angeles Times — The crisis comes after 50 years of remarkable success in making the 737 a profitable workhorse. Today, the aerospace giant has a massive backlog of more than 4,700 orders for the jetliner and its sales account for nearly a third of Boeing’s profit. But the decision to continue modernizing the jet, rather than starting at some point with a clean design, resulted in engineering challenges that created unforeseen risks.
Trevor Sumner on Twitter: — Some people are calling the 737MAX tragedies a #software failure. Here's my response: It's not a software problem.
Timeline - Time to Play Fair — Apple’s behavior isn’t new. In fact, there are countless times over the years that demonstrate that they don’t play fair.
Addressing Spotify’s Claims - Apple — At its core, the App Store is a safe, secure platform where users can have faith in the apps they discover and the transactions they make. And developers, from first-time engineers to larger companies, can rest assured that everyone is playing by the same set of rules.
Introduction to Python Development at Linux Academy — This course is designed to teach you how to program using Python. We'll cover the building blocks of the language, programming design fundamentals, how to use the standard library, third-party packages, and how to create Python projects. In the end, you should have a grasp of how to program.
AWS Elastic Beanstalk Platform Support Policy — Elastic Beanstalk is retiring these platform versions containing Nginx 1.12 or earlier, which are marked end of life by its supplier. We recommend that you migrate your environments to the latest supported platform version as soon as possible. Here is a complete list of your environments in the us-west-2 Region running on platform versions with a retirement date of March 01, 2020.
TechSNAP Episode 399: Ethics in AI — Machine learning promises to change many industries, but with these changes come dangerous new risks. Join Jim and Wes as they explore some of the surprising ways bias can creep in and the serious consequences of ignoring these problems.
User Error Episode 61: Faith in Microsoft — Maybe it's finally time to cut Microsoft some slack, the pace of technological change, and what a couple of common terms actually mean.

348: Dependency Dangers Mar 12, 2019

Show notes

Mike has salvaged a success story from the dumpster fire of the Google+ shutdown, and Wes shares his grief about brittle and repetitive unit tests.

Plus Mike reviews the System76 Darter Pro, our tool of the week, and some fantastic audience feedback.

Links:

TechSNAP Episode 388: The One About eBPF — eBPF is a technology that you’re going to be hearing more and more about. It powers low-overhead custom analysis tools, handles network security in a containerized world, and powers tools you use every day.
Feedback from Tom — I don't think people need to worry about Google's/Chrome's dominance the way we did about IE6. It's not just that Chrome is cross-platform and open-source, and (with Chrome Web Apps well behind us) sticks to the standards in a way that IE did not. Practically speaking, we must keep in mind that the browser is locked down on iOS in a way that didn't exist (and wouldn't have been tolerated) back then. This means that no matter how popular Chrome becomes, an importnat portion of mobile users must use Apple's browser (engine). But also, now matter how much effort, money Google puts into their web initiatives and in spite of their browser share dominance, they can lose big as they did with web components and webasm. That's the beauty of a standards based platform.
How to publish iOS apps to the App Store with GitLab and fastlane — See how GitLab, together with fastlane, can build, sign, and publish apps for iOS to the App Store.
Inside Clojure: Journal 2019.10 — Some tests I wrote were posted on Reddit this week, which was unexpected. The one thing in there that I think is worth thinking about is how to write tests that validate returns while also being open to accretion.
QuickCheck: Automatic testing of Haskell programs — QuickCheck is a library for random testing of program properties. The programmer provides a specification of the program, in the form of properties which functions should satisfy, and QuickCheck then tests that the properties hold in a large number of randomly generated cases.
Darter Pro Review - dominickm.com — My continuing adventures in Linux hardware and working on Linux as a software developer has lead me to check out the System 76 Darter Pro.
Google+ API Shutdown — Legacy Google+ APIs have been shut down as of March 7, 2019.
omniauth-google-oauth2: Oauth2 strategy for Google — A ruby gem for Oauth2 with Google.
Mention removal of Google+ API usage in CHANGELOG by stanhu · Pull Request #350 · zquestz/omniauth-google-oauth2
code-server: Run VS Code on a remote server. — Code on your Chromebook, tablet, and laptop with a consistent dev environment, take advantage of large cloud servers to speed up tests, compilations, downloads, and preserve battery life when you're on the go.

347: Rusty Rubies Mar 05, 2019

Show notes

Mike breaks down what it takes to build a proper iOS build server, and leaves the familiar shallows of Debian for the open waters of openSUSE.

Plus Wes’ reluctant ruby adventures and our pick to ease your javascript packaging woes.

Links:

rbenv: Groom your app’s Ruby environment — Use rbenv to pick a Ruby version for your application and guarantee that your development environment matches production. Put rbenv to work with Bundler for painless Ruby upgrades and bulletproof deployments.
Serverless Feedback from TomEnom — One thing you left out of your definition of serverless (IMO) that I find important is that it scales to zero. So if your lambda/function is not being used it incurs zero cost. I guess you could say that that is where serverless becomes literal.
Install openSUSE on Digital Ocean — Unfortunately, Digital does not at present have an option for an openSUSE image. That doesn’t mean that you can’t use openSUSE on Digital Ocean, but it is going to be a little more work than most common Linux distributions.
What is Pika? — Pika's mission is to make modern JavaScript more accessible by making it easier to find, publish, install, and use modern packages on npm.
Introducing: pika/pack — If you’ve recently published a package to npm, you know how much work goes into a modern build process. Transpile JavaScript, compile TypeScript, convert ES Module syntax (ESM) to Common.js, configure your package.json manifest… and that’s just the basics.
Implications of Rewriting a Browser Component in Rust - Mozilla Hacks
Rust use case study in npm [pdf] — The npm Registry uses Rust for its CPU-bound bottlenecks.

346: Serverless Squabbles Feb 26, 2019

Show notes

The three of us debate when to go full serverless, and if ditching servers is worth the cost.

Plus the battle against the Cult of Swift gains new allies.

Links:

Marco Arment on Twitter — Add up all of the time you’ve spent learning Swift from scratch, accommodating its strictness, fighting its buggy tools, migrating your code through language changes, and re-learning APIs and conventions as they’ve changed over the last 5 years. I’ve spent zero time doing that.
A Swift Takes Flight on Windows — I have finally managed to get the compiler, the support libraries, the runtime, standard library, libdispatch, and now, Foundation to build and run on Windows!
Apple Plans to Close Stores in Eastern District of Texas in Fight Against Patent Trolls — To continue to serve the region, Apple plans to open a new store at the Galleria Dallas shopping mall in Dallas, just outside the Eastern District of Texas border.
Linux Academy - Full Stack Ruby on Rails Developer (Remote) — Your primary focus will be development of all server-side logic, definition and maintenance of the central database, and ensuring high performance and responsiveness to requests from the front-end.
What is Serverless? — Serverless computing (or serverless for short), is an execution model where the cloud provider (AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud) is responsible for executing a piece of code by dynamically allocating the resources.
Serverless Architectures - Martin Fowler — Serverless architectures are application designs that incorporate third-party “Backend as a Service” (BaaS) services, and/or that include custom code run in managed, ephemeral containers on a “Functions as a Service” (FaaS) platform.
Serverless Architectures at AWS — A serverless architecture is a way to build and run applications and services without having to manage infrastructure.

345: F# Envy Feb 19, 2019

Show notes

The guys discuss the real last bastion of scratch your own itch, and debate the merits of recent C# functional programing fads that are transforming the language.

Plus Mike’s swimming in hardware, and a new movement sweeping the web that starts right here.

Links:

Yo, Thelio! - dominickm.com — Overall, I am very happy with Thelio and if you’re interesting in running Linux on a desktop full-time, I recommend you consider it.
Michael Dominick on Twitter — 10 minutes in and the #DarterPro has the best non-Mac trackpad I’ve ever used.
Michael Dominick on Twitter — Yeah, so @ChrisLAS I have fallen hard off the old man sleep wagon and it's deeply sub-optimal.
SCaLE 17x — SCaLE is the largest community-run open-source and free software conference in North America. It is held annually in the greater Los Angeles area.
C# 8: The switch expression — C# 8 delivers a few new C# features to developers, and it is nice to see the language improving, but today I would like to talk about only one and it is "switch expressions".
Don’t Get Clever with Login Forms | Brad Frost — Let’s walk through some login patterns and why I think they’re not ideal. And then let’s look at some better ways of tackling login.
Canonical Announces Latest Ubuntu Core for IoT » Linux Magazine — Canonical has announced Ubuntu Core 18, their open source platform for IoT devices. Ubuntu Core 18 is based on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS code-base and will be supported for 10 years.
Andrew Madsen on Twitter — It’s weird how the iOS community has shifted so much from “iOS development” to “Swift”. 5 years on, and a huge part of what everyone’s doing revolves around the language, not how to create great apps. Why is that?
Michael Dominick on Twitter — Thinking more about this conversation about how the #iOSDev #macOs scene has changed online, it occurs to me that there’s a platform where that past ethos of “just build cool things” lives — desktop #Linux and @elementary in particular #CoderRadio @ChrisLAS
16-Inch MacBook Pro With All-New Design Expected in 2019 — Kuo also says Apple may add a 32GB RAM option to the 13-inch MacBook Pro, without providing further details.

344: Cupertino's King Makers Feb 12, 2019

Show notes

The gangs all together and cover your poignant feedback right out of the gate. Then we jump into the psychological trap of freelancing, and imagine a world where app stores are a true level playing field.

Plus some really fun picks, a bit of hoopla, and more.

Links:

Feedback from Steve: Employment vs self-employment — Just a comment regarding an episode a few weeks back regarding being an employee or working for oneself.
Emma on Twitter — Keep @dominucco away and make sure all beverages are in a separate room!
Why Freelancing Creates Anxiety About Money — But once I started freelancing, things changed. I became hyperconscious of how much money I could (or should) charge for my time, and this made me unhappy and mean when my nonworking hours didn’t measure up to the same value. It was akin to the rage of watching cab fare tick up while you’re sitting in traffic, minutes and dollars dribbling away before your eyes.
What Hooks Mean for Vue — You may read through this and wonder what Hooks have to offer in Vue. It seems like a problem that doesn’t need solving. After all, Vue doesn’t predominantly use classes. Vue offers stateless functional components (should you need them), but why would we need to carry state in a functional component?
Hooks at a Glance – React — Hooks are functions that let you “hook into” React state and lifecycle features from function components. Hooks don’t work inside classes — they let you use React without classes.
Making Sense of React Hooks – Dan Abramov — Unlike patterns like render props or higher-order components, Hooks don’t introduce unnecessary nesting into your component tree. They also don’t suffer from the drawbacks of mixins.
Create Your Own AI Family Portraits — This week NVIDIA's research engineers open-sourced StyleGAN, the project they've been working in for months as a Style-based generator architecture for Generative Adversarial Networks.
A Style-Based Generator Architecture for Generative Adversarial Networks
StyleGAN GitHub — This repository contains the official TensorFlow implementation
Python Developers Survey 2018 Results — In the fall of 2018, the Python Software Foundation together with JetBrains conducted the official annual Python Developers Survey for the second time.
miniC — What is it? A simple stack-based virtual machine that runs C (missing features below) in the browser and the beginning of an interactive tutorial that covers C, how the VM works, and how the language is compiled.
MiniC Online Demo
Make all videos fun to watch — Our project Laff track is a plugin to Chrome, which adds this craziness to all Youtube videos. It simply detects when people are not talking, and adds in a bit of laughter.

343: Say My Functional Name Feb 05, 2019

Show notes

Mike breaks down the drama around nullable reference types in C# 8.0, and we debate what it means for the future of the language.

Plus a fresh reminder of Apple's absolute App Store authority, and the state of Mike's relationship with the rust compiler.

Links:

RustPython: A Python Interpreter written in Rust
Apple bans Facebook’s Research app that paid users for data
Apple restores Google’s own internal iPhone apps after privacy brouhaha — For less than a day, Apple had briefly revoked Google’s iOS certificate that enabled those private apps to conduct various internal business such as company shuttles, food menus, as well as pre-release beta testing, and more.
Apple Developer Enterprise Program — Get tools and resources to transform your mobile workforce with enterprise-class apps, distributed seamlessly and securely within your organization.
Apple Is Fighting a Good Fight Against Facebook and Google — The implication that Apple is exhibiting some monopolistic urge to gutshot Facebook and Google makes close to zero sense. The events of this week will not affect their bottom lines, and Apple could have taken much more drastic action to lock down iOS — as it has before.
Nilay Patel on Twitter — Hi, I'm the nagging voice in the back of your head pointing out that it's pretty intense that Apple can simply decide to prevent people from running code on their phones.
Essential .NET - C# 8.0 and Nullable Reference Types — Nonetheless, as it currently stands, and even after 7 versions of C#, we still don’t have a perfect language.
Make your next C# project non-nullable — The naming is a bit confusing, because reference types have always been nullable, and that’s the whole problem. The novelty is that they can now also be non-nullable.
Switch to errors instead of warnings for nullable reference types in C# 8 — Nullable reference types coming in C# 8 are a great addition to anyone’s toolbox. But if you tried it you probably know “just” warnings are produced. And sometimes you’d like to have errors instead of warnings, so the build fails hard or something like that. It’s surprisingly easy to do so.

342: Webs Assemble! Jan 29, 2019

Show notes

Apple wades into controversy after filing some Swift-related patents and we explore WebAssembly and its implications for the open web.

Plus the latest on Mike's road to Rust, some great feedback, and more!

Links:

Choose Linux — The show that captures the excitement of discovering Linux.
Reddit Feedback for Episode 341
Vapor (Server-side Swift)
Apple: Trust us, we've patented parts of Swift, and thus chunks of other programming languages, for your own good — In the past day or so, developers working with the language have highlighted on Swift discussion forum Cupertino's intellectual property land-grab, expressing concern that the patents – which are assigned to Apple rather than the Swift project – may expose those writing Swift applications to future legal jeopardy.
Swift Forums: Apple is indeed patenting Swift features
Programming system and language for application development
DHH on Twitter (1) — Treating the web as a “compile target” washes away much of what‘s so special about it. Reducing the web to just another closed platform, like Windows or iOS, is to be blind to its truly unique shape and promise. Let’s cherish what made the web special, not pave it over.
DHH on Twitter (2) — Web Assembly is exciting in a lot of ways. This isn’t one of them. Hopefully we’ll keep HTML/CSS/JS readable, tinkerable, teachable for all the work that doesn’t need Web Assembly.
WebAssembly FAQ
WebAssembly Use Cases
WebAssembly support in Unity

341: Too Late for Jenkins? Jan 23, 2019

Show notes

Mike and Wes are back to debate the state of developer tools and ask where Jenkins fits in 2019.

Plus some some anger at Apple, and Mike reveals the latest language that's caught his eye.

Links:

Dokku — A docker-powered PaaS that helps you build and manage the lifecycle of applications.
Jenkins — The leading open source automation server, Jenkins provides hundreds of plugins to support building, deploying and automating any project.
Jenkins Evergreen — Evergreen is an automatically updating rolling distribution system for Jenkins. It consists of server-side, and client-side components to support a Chrome-like upgrade experience for Jenkins users.
Jenkins Blue Ocean — Blue Ocean is a project that rethinks the user experience of Jenkins, modelling and presenting the process of software delivery by surfacing information that’s important to development teams with as few clicks as possible.
Introducing Jenkins X — Jenkins X automates CI/CD and DevOps best practices for you.
Jenkins Helm Chart — Jenkins master and slave cluster utilizing the Jenkins Kubernetes plugin.
Jenkins Chef Cookbook — Installs and configures Jenkins CI master & node slaves. Resource providers to support automation via jenkins-cli, including job create/update.
Why on earth did we choose Jenkins for 2019? — This article tries to explain why the hell Rookout, a relatively new SaaS company, chose to use Jenkins, and what the big advantages are that make Jenkins so great even now, eight years in.
Linux Academy Certified Jenkins Engineer — Learn CI/CD concepts as well as Jenkins installation and functionality. Plus best practices for CD pipelines as well as Jenkin's security.
'Mad Botter' takes 'MacGyver' approach to tech sales — The Plant City-based company turns run-of-the-mill consumer electronics into devices capable of being deployed for use in advanced military applications, such as fighter jets.

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