Herding Code

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Herding Code 156: Catching up with Andreas Håkansson and Steven Robbins on NancyFx Jan 18, 2013

Show notes

Episode 156

The guys catch up with Andreas and Steve on what's new in NancyFx (a web framework for .NET that was originally inspired by Sinatra).

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 156 - Catching up with Andreas Håkansson and Steven Robbins on NancyFx

Show Notes:

Jon asks for a quick overview of NancyFx. Steve and Andreas both say you can write the same app on any number of web frameworks, so what really distinguishes them is the syntax and feel. Andreas says that the web only has a small set of things you really can do - there are only a few HTTP methods - but an infinite number of ways you can build applications; Nancy is one of them.
Diagnostics

Andreas says Diagnostics is a website built into Nancy itself. It covers things like request tracing and interactive diagnostics.
Steve explains how the interactive diagnostics lets you find out what routes were hit and why, poke at live code, etc.
Andreas says this works using companion classes for metadata which is then rendered via JavaScript templates, so you can customize it as much as you want.
Jon says the code for Diagnostics seems like pretty good sample code for getting an idea of how Nancy code works.
Jon asks about how authentication is handled to restrict access.
Steve says they're using Handlebars for JavaScript templates with Backbone and Nancy on the back end.

Content Negotiation

Andreas explains how routes just return models, and the formatting is handled by response processors. There's a syntax to allow for more control at the route level if needed.
Steve says the response processors are allowed to participate in the selection by specifying how applicable they are for both content types and model types. The content negotiation can also allow you to select different models based on the request, avoiding unnecessary code from executing and weighing the model down unnecessarily.

Serializers and dependencies

Jon asks about the JSON serializers they're using, and why they're not using something like ServiceStack or JSON.NET. Andreas explains that because the Nancy core ships without dependencies, they used Mono code.
Jon asks about where Nancy can be be embedded, outside of standard web hosting scenarios.
Steve says that because Nancy doesn't have other dependencies and is strictly focused on returning a response for a request, it's extremely easy to test.
Andreas points out that you can use other serializers very easily via a NuGet package.
Jon asks about how packages work in Nancy. Andreas explains how Nancy scans for classes that implement ISerializer.
Kevin asks about implementing a processor for generating hyperlinks between models.
Jon asks if people are sharing processors. Steve says that they're so trivial to write that there's no real point in sharing them.

Localization

Andreas says this was a community contribution. There are several conventions (including querystring values, URL segments) which can be used to set the culture for the context. There's a helper on the Razor base class that returns a dynamic object which can return localized values from a resource. Assembly resources are used by default, but you can add others.
Steve says that you can also use localized views based on filename.
Jon asks for more information on how you'd set up a custom resource location.

Architecture, pipelines, and IoC

Jon says that he spoke with Jeremy Miller at Codemash, and Jeremy said that it took a while to get the processor architecture set up, but now it's very easy to add in features. It seems like that's also paid off for Nancy. Andreas agrees, the pipeline system and dependency injection really simplify adding in new features.
Jon asks about how Nancy uses TinyIoC and how you could use TinyIoC in other applications.
Kevin and Jon ask about how Steve wrote TinyIoC to run on multiple platforms. Steve describes some issues they've worked around and how assembly scanning can get tricky due to test frameworks injecting things into the app domain.

Non-standard uses of Nancy

Jon asks for some examples. Steve says they seen people embed it into WPF applications for an interface, to provide mobile support, and even on Raspberry Pi. They'd love to hear more about what people are doing with it.

Questions from Twitter / Misc. Questions

Jim Liddell (@liddellj) asks about the roadmap. Steve talks about work they're doing for OWIN and Async support.
Filip W (@filip_woj) asks "Why tuples instead of classes and structs?"
Kristof Claes (@kristofclaes) asks "How do they determine when something is "too much ceremony"? Gut feeling? Set of defined rules? Talk? Compare to other FX?"
Ian Battersby (@Cranialstrain) asks "Why dynamic? And don't say fluency ;)"
Tobi Tobsen (@t0bit0bsen) asks "Is there a NancyFx tutorial for devs w/o a background in web development or should they look elsewhere?"
Jim Liddell (@liddellj) asks "How do you view Nancy in relation to similar frameworks, such as OpenRasta?"
Kevin asks about asset management for Nancy. Steve says that's probably better handled by external
Kevin asks about web socket support. Steve says just use SignalR.
There's a Nancy store now.
Daniel Lee (@danlimerick) asks "How many hours a week do you spend on Nancy? What's ratio of reviewing PR's vs writing new features?"
Jon asks what Steve and Andreas are finding fun and interesting lately. Steve and Andreas both like Mongo.
Scott K. asks if they'll add time zone localization support. They tell him to submit a pull request.

Show Links:

Herding Code 155 - Ward Bell on Single Page Applications and Breeze Jan 08, 2013

Show notes

Episode 155

On this episode of Herding Code, the guys talk to Ward Bell about single page applications and the Breeze project. Download / Listen: Herding Code 155 - Ward Bell on Single Page Applications and Breeze Show Notes:

General SPA discussion
- Ward talks about how IdeaBlade has been building tools for working with data in rich clients for a while, and after seeing the move towards desktop experiences in the browser they started the Breeze project, which is open source and free.
- Jon asks Ward to define single page applications (SPAs) a bit, and Ward says he sees SPA as a funny term since it just describes one attribute of the experience - it's like calling a car a "horseless carriage." Ward says the goal is to give the user a rich experience and not rely on the server to deliver that rich experience. A lot of the value comes from maintaining data and state on the client.
- There's a discussion about the value and best applications of SPAs.
- Kevin says there are a few aspects of SPAs - there can be a lot of individual, interactive pages which are separately delivered by the server, or you can have a more full application which handles screen transitions on the client. Ward talks about the tradeoffs of the two approaches. The whole SPA application approach is especially important in newer scenarios like mobile or Window Store applications built in HTML/JS.
- Scott K asks about the different approaches to data loading - do you preload some of the data, or does the first page request just deliver an HTML client which requests all the data.
- Scott K asks how often Ward sees offline manifests and local data. Ward says he sees things going that way, but it's still early. Scott K and Ward talk about the difficulty of synchronizing offline changes when you're reconnected.
- Scott K and Ward talk about the use of Web Sockets and / or SignalR to handle locks to allow for multiple users.
Breeze
- Jon asks Ward how Breeze helps
- Ward says that they're not trying to solve solved problems - they're focused on solving the data problem.
Breeze, Upshot, and the ASP.NET SPA template
- Jon asks how this fits in with the former ASP.NET SPA template and Upshot. There's a discussion the history and state of Upshot and RIA Services.
- Scott K asks about whether Upshot will be released as open source... or the unreleased ASP.NET MVC Recipes source. Jon starts crying.
- Jon and Ward talk about how one of the big features of Upshot was that there were both client and server side parts to it.
- Ward said they'd learned from the Upshot, so they made Breeze very extensible while making for an easy path when using ASP.NET Web API and Entity Framework.
- Ward says the current ASP.NET MVC SPA app is too simplistic, because it's just one simple screen.
Working with Breeze - client state, server-side interaction
- Jon asks Ward about how Breeze handles local state. Ward describes how the server can send down metadata (likely from an Entity Framework model) to the Breeze client code so it can understand the models, relationships, validation rules, etc. You can extend things if you need to, but you don't need to bother with the tedium of creating client models that match your server-side models.
- The generated client-side models are ready to be hooked up to Knockout so they're easily bound to the UI.
- Jon asks how things are different on the server. Ward says that standard ASP.NET Web API controllers are very repetitive - each controller has GET, PUT, POST, DELETE methods that are just boilerplate. Pretty soon you end up with thirty API Controllers which just contain a lot of boilerplate code. Breeze can just expose things as Queryables so you really just need one controller unless you want to customize things. Scott K says it sounds like it's basically Repository<T>. Scott K says he'd like to see it go further - at Cascadia there were some talks about big data where queries were created on the client and sent to the server.
- Jon and Ward talk about the difficulties of complex repetitive APIs with too many entry points.
How Breeze fits in with other frameworks like Ember, Angular, Backbone, etc.
- Jon asks how Breeze fits in with Ember, Angular, and other SPA frameworks. Ward talks about different framework philosophies and how Ember and Angular both more of top to bottom stacks. Kevin mentions how Backbone differs - it's more of a library vs. a framework.
- Ward says that Breeze really targets the data scenario. Jon asks how close its vision is to Upshot's. Ward explains how, other than Ember Data, nobody's looking at solving the data scenarios - they don't worry about caching, object graphs, change tracking, etc. Scott K says the other frameworks are really MVC focused, so they don't consider data.
- Scott K asks what happened to Batman.js. Nobody knows.
- Jon asks if the happy path for Ember is Rails focused and Breeze is ASP.NET / Entity Framework focused. Ward says yes, with a clarification that we're really talking about Ember Data.
Getting Started
- Jon asks if it's difficult to get started with Breeze.
- Ward talks about the NuGet package that gets a sample project set up quickly.
- Ward talks about the live tutorial that lets you play with Breeze in a browser.
- Ward talks about the automated tests they've got for Breeze training. Jon compares it to Ruby Koans.
Jon, Ward, Kevin and Scott K talk about automated JavaScript testing options - Chutzpah, QUnit, Jasmine, Mocha.
- Chutzpah is an automated JavaScript test runner that can run inside of Visual Studio.
- QUnit is pretty simple - tests are functions that take true or false.
- Jasmine is more BDD style.
- Mocha is a test framework that supports different front ends, so you can use BDD, standard unit testing, etc. It's also got great async support.
Ward brings up TypeScript and Scott Koon starts cursing.
Wrap up small talk
- Jon says that the talk about mocha reminds him of coffee, and he asks Ward about his new espresso machine. Jon and Ward both get their coffee beans from Sweet Maria's.
- Jon says he's still roasting his coffee on his barbeque.
Scott K asks what dependencies Breeze has. Ward says they write to EcmaScript 5 and have gotten rid of all dependencies other than one called Q.
It's time for Pimp Yo Stuff, and Jon takes the occasion to praise Ward's sartorial skill. Scott K says they'd like to
- Ward pimps the DevForce and and Cocktail combination. Cocktail is DevForce + Caliburn.Micro.
- Jon asks about the license for Breeze. Ward clarifies that it's all free and open source, and they make their money on support and professional services.

Show Links:

Ward Bell (blog, @wardbell)
Breeze - Build rich web apps in JavaScript with techniques you know
Ward's post: The SPA as a Horseless Carriage
Backbone.js
backbone.stickit - yet another model-view binding plugin for Backbone
AngularJS - "what HTML would have been, had it been designed for building web-apps"
John Papa's Code Camper tutorial
Ruby Koans
Chutzpah - A JavaScript Test Runner
QUnit - JavaScript Unit Testing framework
Jasmine - a behavior-driven development
Mocha - a feature-rich JavaScript test framework running on node and the browser, making asynchronous testing simple and fun
Sweet Maria's - Home coffee roasting supplies
q - A tool for making and composing asynchronous promises in JavaScript
Caliburn.Micro
DevForce
Cocktail
Leroy's Menswear
Herding Code 104: Rob Eisenber on Caliburn.Micro
Herding Code 57: Presentation Patterns with Jeremy Miller, Ward Bell, Rob Eisenberg and Glenn Block (Part 1)

Herding Code 154 - Aaron Stannard on MarkedUp, founding a startup, and Windows 8 development Nov 16, 2012

Show notes

Episode 154

While at the //build/ conference, Jon talks to Aaron Stannard about how he left Microsoft to start up a new company focused on analytics for Windows 8 applications. They discuss Windows 8 development and the Window Store ecosystem and the technology stack Aaron and team settled on for their analytics platform. They end up by discussing the process of going from an employed software developer to running a software startup. Note: The audio is a bit crackly in a few parts, but just for a few seconds. Download / Listen: Herding Code 154 - Aaron Stannard on MarkedUp, founding a startup, and Windows 8 development Show Notes:

Jon starts by asking Aaron about what led him to founding a startup. Aaron explains how his first startup failed and his blog post about Why .NET Adoption Lags Among Startups got him a job as a startup evangelist at Microsoft
Opportunities: Windows 8 development and MarkedUp
- Aaron explains how he saw a key opportunity around the Windows app ecosystem and why the teaming seemed right to really dive into this now. Jon agrees that this is a really interesting time in the Windows developer landscape.
- Aaron explains that MarkedUp delivers in-app analytics for WinRT and eventually Windows 8, answering questions like how many people use your app every day, how much time they spend using it, which features they use, and what in-app purchases they make.
- Jon mentions a key difference in the Windows Store which allows you to have one app which can be upgraded from free to paid, whereas other platforms have duplicate applications for free and paid.
- Aaron talks about his recent blog post comparing iOS economics vs. Windows 8 economics titled Win8 Developers: Don't Make the Terrible Mistake of Treating the Windows Store like the iOS App Store. He explains that there's an opportunity for Windows 8 applications to do quite a bit more than simple little hit driven apps, and Windows 8 applications can and should do quite a bit more.
- Aaron talks about the pricing model - free now, there will always be a free model, and it's intended to be pretty reasonable for developers with successful applications.
Tech talk about WinRT development and how MarkedUp integrates therewith
- Aaron begins explaining the technology stack, but Jon interrupts him to ask him to explain what a .winmd file is. Aaron discusses some of the key similarities and differences between WinRT and .NET development.
- Aaron talks about how they've cleaned up a lot of the information that's exposed so it's useful.
- There's NuGet package you add to your Windows 8 application which brings in the .winmd dependency.
- There's a managed singleton approach which handles a lot of things automatically, like application startup and shutdown. You can also log additional events through the managed singleton.
- There's a JavaScript wrapper that sits on top of the .winmd file for WinJS applications which flattens some of the hierarchies and namespaces for logging.
- Aaron says he's seen this as a common pattern for Windows 8 development - write some .NET code, ship it as a .winmd file, and provide a JavaScript wrapper for WinJS.
- Aaron mentions that he likes this pattern for application development, too: write business logic in C# and expose it through .winmd put a JavaScript wrapper on top of it to write the interface in HTML and CSS. He like the flexbox and grid system for layout, and thinks the CSS3 media selector based layout orientation systems is a lot simpler than trying to do that in XAML.
- Aaron explains that as an analytics component, they will never degrade the user experience, so they'll always swallow internal exceptions.
- The communications system is also designed to prevent impacting the user, so they cache locally and only send a single message at a time.
RavenDB and how it compares with other document databases like MongoDB
- Data is stored in RavenDB. They evaluated both RavenDB and MongoDB but decided RavenDB worked better for them at this point. He describes some differences between RavenDB and MongoDB.
  - RavenDB projections make it easier to do server-side transforms.
  - RavenDB has some nice batch loading features.
  - RavenDB lets you express map-reduce as a pre-computed index.
  - Aaron doesn't like the way sharded RavenDB clusters work.
  - They're probably going to go to Cassandra or HBase eventually.
  - Aaron talks about a solution (Hircine) they came up with to precompute RavenDB indexes at build time rather than startup.
  - RavenDB is great for unit testing
- Aaron talks about their build system using Albacore and talks about their build and deployment system.
- Jon asks about why they're planning to move from RavenDB to Cassandra or HBase. Aaron says he doesn't like the scale-out / sharding system in RavenDB and doesn't think it will work for them as they scale. Aaron talks about their plans to handle complex analytics at scale.
Jon shifts gears to ask about starting a company. How do you get started?
- Aaron talks about the history of how they got started - with a mission.
- Next questions: Am I the right person to execute this? Is this a problem worth solving? Is this economically viable?
- Build a minimum viable product and show it to people you trust. Aaron gives examples from the history of starting MarkedUp, with an application that let you annotate and upload screenshots from iOS. Jon and Aaron discuss how Aaron was able to do most of the minimum viable product development without quitting his job.
- First step in actually starting the company: talk to a lawyer to get your structure and ownership figured out.
- How do you make the decision to go fulltime?
- Figuring out how to pay the bills: can you monetize quickly, or do you raise money?
- Aaron talks about the process of getting funded and networking with potentials investors.
- It's an emotional rollercoaster - be ready to change tactics, but don't quit.
- Jon and Aaron talk about the benefits of doing this all incrementally - at least until you go full time.
There's a registration URL for Herding Code listeners (https://markedup.com/account/register/?utm_campaign=herdingcode) - or you can just go through registration and enter the code HERDINGCODE into the registration code field on the form.
Aaron says he'd be happy to talk with other developers who are interested in the startup process.

Show Links:

Herding Code 153 - Matt Wrock on RequestReduce, Chocolatey and BoxStarter Oct 15, 2012

Show notes

Episode 153

The guys talk to Matt Wrock about Matt's RequestReduce web optimization framework and his work to automate building and configuring Windows developer machines with the Chocolatey and BoxStarter projects. Download / Listen: Herding Code 153 - Matt Wrock on RequestReduce, Chocolatey and BoxStarter Show Notes:

RequestReduce
- Matt explains how he got started with RequestReduce - a site optimization system that's been designed as a plug-and-play system that can work well with legacy sites without any code changes.
- Matt explains how RequestReduce fits in with other systems like the ASP.NET Web Optimization system and Casette.
- K. Scott asks Matt how it works and how a user would configure it. Matt explains how it can be installed via NuGet, and how it uses a Response Filter to process the output.
- Matt explains how everything's handled via a queue on a background thread, so there's no performance impact on initial requests.
- RequestReduce pulls in CSS, images and JavaScript so it can work with remote content and CDNs.
- Matt gives a shoutout to AjaxMin and the speed at which he and Ron Logan have been able to turn around fixes and improvements.
- Matt explains the complications involved in creating image sprites, and why he only sprites images with a defined width.
- Matt explains how both quantization and compression can dramatically affect image size.
- Matt explains why he doesn't sprite images when he can't determine the image width.
- Scott K talks about his previous job and how they'd looked at converting all images to Base64. Matt says that he's looked at that, but decided it's not something you'd necessarily want to apply to all images.
- Jon asks Matt to explain CSS spriting in more detail. Jon says they use sprites on the ASP.NET site, and Matt says the ASP.NET site is one of his test case sites.
- K. Scott asks Matt why the code is calculating CSS specificity scores.
- K. Scott asks about what the results have been. Matt says it varies by site, but on one large site they've seen a 33% improvement.
- Jon mentions that RequestReduce also handles Less and CoffeeScript. Matt says he's making use of SassAndCoffee.
BoxStarter and Chocolatey
- Matt talks about how he got started with BoxStarter - he was tired of wasting time building development boxes, and he didn't think VMs were a good solution.
- Matt thought Chocolatey solved some of the program installation issues, but didn't handle common customization scenarios like Windows settings, file associations, taskbar links, path, etc.
- Chocolatey handled some of the things Matt wanted, but not everything. He started by customizing and wrapping Chocolatey, but decided it would be better to contribute directly to Chocolatey.
- BuildStarter can work with either a local BuildPackages folder or a custom MyGet feed.
- Matt says he might like to use ClickOnce in the future.
- Matt talks about how he'd like to have a web based shopping list approach, where you could just click off all the things you wanted and it would set up a package for you - kind of like like Ninite, but a lot more comprehensive.
- Jon says he was happy to see a recent Chocolatey commit that can turn Windows features on and off.
- Matt explains how he's been coordinating with Rob Reynolds to decide what he should contribute directly to Chocolatey and what should be separate Chocolatey packages.
- Jon says he didn't get Chocolatey right away, but what sold him on it was the dependency management. Matt explains how this has come in handy in his work in the TFS dev team.
TFS
- Jon asks Matt about his work on new role on the TFS team. Matt says he's working on the REST API for work item tracking and would love any feedback on work item tracking.

Show Links:

Matt Wrock (blog, @mwrockx)
RequestReduce
Casette
SassAndCoffee
BoxStarter
Chocolatey
Rob Reynolds (@ferventcoder)
Herding Code 128: Rob Reynolds on Chocolatey and the Chuck Norris Frameworks
Herding Code 118: Paul Betts on SassAndCoffee

Herding Code 152 - Josh Twist on Azure Mobile Services Sep 24, 2012

Show notes

Episode 152

The guys talk to Josh Twist about the newly released Azure Mobile Services. Download / Listen: Herding Code 152 - Josh Twist on Azure Mobile Services Show Notes:

How Azure Mobile Services got started
- Jon asks Josh how he got involved with Azure Mobile Services.
- Jon asks Josh about the Zumo code name - ZU from Azure, MO from Mobile.
- Josh explains how things got off the ground with a real startup feel.
- Steve Sanderson was a dev on the team, working on the interactive portal experience.
- Jon asks about platform support. Josh says that Windows 8 was the platform that was initially announced at launch, but other platforms are on the way very soon.
The three personas the Azure Mobile Services
- The hobbiest app developer who have very limited time and wants to spend the time on their mobile clients, not the backend services. Jon talks about the experiences he had on The Full Stack project with Jesse Liberty.
- The client focused developer is working full time on a mobile application, but still wants to focus on the application rather than the backend - and wants to make sure that it's going to scale when needed.
- The veteran backend developer, who is very comfortable with building services. Josh says these folks are already pretty well served with existing Azure services.
- Josh says that Azure is primarily focused at the first two personas - developers who want to focus on the client applications and have the back end just work.
Jon asks about an example - a social game where he can invite friend to play a game, track high scores, etc.
- Josh lists out some of the features Jon would probably want - authentication, structured storage, push notifications, etc.
- Josh describes some of the challenges Jon might run into and how Azure Mobile Services handles extensibility by allowing for server-side scripts, written in JavaScript.
- Jon asks Josh about the identity provider story.
- Jon asks if the server-side JavaScript scripts use Node.js.
Josh talks through a to do list sample application.
Jon asks about how the client libraries will likely look on other platforms like iOS and Android.
Data
- Jon and Josh talk about the data story.
- Josh explains the dynamic schema system.
- Jon asks handling hierarchies in data. Josh says not yet, although you can use scripts to handle that.
Lots of random questions time!
- Jon talks about a blog post on accessing the Azure Mobile Services via the REST services. Josh says that's great, encouraged, and you can use that approach to use Azure Mobile Services from all kinds of frameworks and platforms, mentioning several examples.
- Kevin asks about handling the scripts as production code - can it be under version control? Josh says that's in the works. They're also thinking about the packaging story, to allow for exporting services and moving them between environments.
- Kevin asks if there's a migration path if you hit limits in Azure Mobile Services. Josh says that you'd handle this through composition with other services, but they're looking for feedback for things they can add via service and script support.
- Kevin asks how the billing works. Josh says you pay for what you use, so you pay for the underlying services you use. You can get 10 free instances, but can pay to scale up if you want.
- Kevin asks about their experiences in building with Node.js. Josh explains how the runtime runs on Node, but the service management uses ASP.NET Web API. They mainly picked Node.js to allow for server-side scripting using JavaScript.
- Jon asks if there's a way to run locally for testing. Josh says not yet, but definitely something they're think about.
- Jon asks about concurrency support.
- Kevin asks about monitoring and troubleshooting support. Josh lists out some of the realtime dashboard features.
- Jon asks about other configuration options in the Azure portal. Josh lists a few - authentication, data, etc. - but says the goal is to keep things simple.
Relationship of Azure Mobile Services with Azure Web Sites and Azure in general.
- Jon asks about the relationship to Azure Web Sites. Josh explains how they worked with the Azure Web Sites team to get sandboxing. They're running on a special version of the Azure Web Sites system that's specially tuned for their services.
- Jon asks about scaling with Azure Mobile Services. Josh educates Jon on some Azure basics he really should know.
Jon asks Josh about how listeners can get started.
- Josh list the link: http://aka.ms/mobileservices
- Josh and Jon joke about the todo list quickstart challenge. Josh says new users should be able to have an application running in under 5 minutes, and Jon says he was impressed with Josh's performance on Cloud Cover: 2:03 despite heckling.

Show Links:

Josh Twist (blog, @joshtwist)
Azure Mobile Services - free trial
Steve Sanderson
Cloud Cover Episode 89 - Windows Azure Mobile Services
Blog post by Filip W. (StrathWeb): Using Azure Mobile Services in your web apps through ASP.NET Web API
Web Camps TV interview: What Mobile Services Mean To The Web Developer

Herding Code 151 - Rob Eisenberg on RPGWithMe, Durandal, and XAML vs. HTML5 development Sep 17, 2012

Show notes

Episode 151

The guys talk to Rob Eisenberg about RPGWithMe (his new web-based platform centered around tabletop RPGs), Durandal (the essence of Caliburn.Micro re-imagined for HTML and Javascript) and his thoughts on the current state of XAML development.

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 151 - Rob Eisenberg on RPGWithMe, Durandal, and XAML vs. HTML5 development

Show Notes:

RPGWithMe and Durandal
- K Scott asks Rob to discribe RPGWithMe. RPGWithMe is a subscription based web product for playing tabletop RPGs.
- K Scott asks how he found HTML5 compared to XAML development, and whether he used any frameworks to develop it. Rob explains how he built a new framework, Duandel, to bring Caliburn.Micro style development to HTML5 development.
- Rob explains how Durandal uses RequireJS to modularize things - viewmodels are mapped to modules, and modules are mapped to HTML files. Knockout is used to compose things at runtime, and RequireJS packages things up into a single file.
- Jon asks it it's possible to use this with WinRT. Rob says he hasn't tried it, but thinks it should work since it's just a JavaScript file.
- K Scott asks if the same conventions in Caliburn.Micro apply. Rob says he's just using Knockout at this point, but would eventually like to phase out Knockout for a custom databinding system. Knockout's fine, but he doesn't like the syntax for databinding and the intrusiveness into viewmodels.
- K Scott, Rob and Kevin talk about the intrusiveness of Javascript frameworks which convert properties to functions to allow for observability, and how newer browsers can wrap getters and setters to imporove the code readability and debugging experience.
- K Scott asks whats on the server side. Rob's using ASP.NET MVC 3 running on AppHarbor with cloud hosted RavenDB with IronMQ and some Amazon services.
- K Scott asks how all the realtime stuff is working in the browser. Rob's using PubNub for communications and Canvas and CSS 3 for rendering. He explains that it's really tricky to get high performance, high quality graphics rendering working on different devices with an interesting example form an issue he hit with larger images on iPads.
- Jon asks if there's work he'd do in the future to support Retina / high dpi displays. He says he's moving away from images to CSS 3 where possible.
- Jon asks about the creation / editing environment. Rob explains how the system is built around user generated content. Jon asks if there are ways
- K Scott asks what games Rob's played in the past. Rob says he's played Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition and Savage Worlds and explains some of the background of tabletop role playing games. He supports three gaming systems, but doesn't enforce rules - this allows for a lot more flexibility and matches the way people play in the real world.
- K Scott asks about how players would communicate while playing (e.g. to yell Leroy Jenkins!).
- Jon asks more about rules and enforcement, and Rob lists a lot of reasons why he doesn't think it's a good idea to get into rule enforcement.
- K Scott asks about how the metadata is handled. Rob describes how he's got an abstract model that allows for supporting - and importing from - three gaming systems, and how he wants to make it more extensible in the future.
- Kevin asks if there's a mobile version. Rob talks about platform support - works on iPad, Windows 8, and Android although Android performance is the worst.
- K Scott asks about the Durandal project out on GitHub.
Caliburn and Caliburn.Micro
- K Scott asks Rob what's going on with Caliburn and Caliburn.Micro. Caliburn.Micro is adding full support for WinRT and considering how to add support for additional WinRT features. He said he was worried about porting to WinRT but it wasn't too bad - most of the work was around changes to the reflection API and lack of behaviors. He's hopeful that this means it'll port to Windows Phone 8.
XAML and HTML5 development
- Kevin asks about Rob's frustration on building tools for XAML development due to the differences between the platforms. Rob says he's been moving to HTML5 more due to all the headaches.
- Jon wonders if some of this may be transitional with things moving to WinRT as a standard XAML platform. Rob agrees, but he's got from fatigue from all the times he's had to port his code in the past.
- Jon says that it's nice that in the HTML5 world you can use tools like jQuery to abstract differences between browsers, whereas you can't really do that when working about different XAML platforms. Rob talks about how people are trying to abstract things in the XAML world, but it's not really possible to abstract platform differences.
- Jon, Kevin and Rob discuss the differences between styling in XAML and HTML5 development.
- Jon asks Rob about the developer decision between HTML5 and XAML for WinRT development. Rob's happy with the choice, and thinks it's funny that Microsoft did this rather than Google.
K Scott asks Rob if there's any new big things going on he wants people to know about, and Rob mentions the Kickstarter effort to add interactive character sheets.

Show Links:

Rob Eisenberg (blog, @eisenbergeffect)
Blog post: Today..All Your Wildest Dreams Come True
https://github.com/EisenbergEffect/Durandal
PubNub
AppHarbor
Knockout
Caliburn.Micro changeset adding WinRT support
Kickstarter: RPGWithMe: Create Characters for Your Tabletop RPG

Herding Code 150 - David Starr on the People, Practices, and Tools of Development Sep 07, 2012

Show notes

Episode 150

The guys talk to David Starr about how people, practices and tools factor into software development. Can developer tooling be part of the solution rather than part of the problem? What's the state of Scrum? How does Nascar fit in? Download / Listen: Herding Code 150 - David Starr on the People, Practices, and Tools of Development Show Notes:

From Nascar to Scrum.org to Microsoft
- K Scott outs David as a developer of the original NASCAR site.
- David's been working with Scrum.org but just took a job at Microsoft in the Visual Studio team as a senior PM based on his interest in executable specifications.
- K Scott asks David about his thoughts based on working with Scrum.org. David sees Scrum as nearly ubiquitous, but most just use it as a way to manage daily checklists rather than effect broader change.
SubSpec and executable specifications
- K Scott asks David about his recent post on SubSpec and how it compares to SpecFlow.
Software code of ethics
- K Scott asks David about his post thinking about a professional code of ethics for software development.
- David thinks it would be nice if we had a profession.
- Jon asks if this kind of approach is even relevant to a lot of most software developers.
- Scott K mentions a discussion on the show a few years ago about board certification but wonders who would run it.
- David says that any certification offered by a tool vendor or methodology proponent is worthless.
- Scott K asks if there's any overarching certifiable skills that bridge Ruby, Scala, Java, .NET, architecture, development, etc. David says that in other trades it's unions that push things, but doesn't want that in the software world.
- Jon says that he sees so much disagreement on values between languages and methodologies that he wonders if our profession could agree on anything at all.
- Scott K asks if software really is a craft, as he doesn't see beauty in code. David says he doesn't see code as words but as shapes. Scott K, David and Jon discuss where the beauty really is - perhaps not the code, but the result.
Jon asks how these discussions and values tie into Visual Studio tooling.
- David says that tooling is a great way to take the kinds of things bleeding edge developers are excited about and turn them into things that are accepted and used by the broader community - as long as the hierarchy of people over process and process over tools is respected, it's a great idea to make better tools.
- Scott K asks what he sees are the most important things to fix in the tooling. David says he'd like to see development teams modeled as teams rather than differing roles. He'd like to improve the experience for the "specializing generalist."
- David says that he sees the tools making the rules in the real world, and if the tools are counter to our value systems we should change that.
- Scott K says people might just be fooling lights to green and David says that's a fireable offence. Jon asks if it's possible to automate that by integrating TFS with Microsoft CRM.
Jeff Schumacher asks if he still has the awesome fire shoes.
The Code Junkie asks why someone should pick TFS over the other options when doing agile / scrum.
Brian Lagunas asks what are the downsides of TDD.
There is a frightening discussion of a theoretical XamlSpec testing framework.
Scrum effectiveness
- Paul Stack whether scrum has become a make believe methodology companies use to pretend they're agile.
- David says methodologies are always abused. He likes to tell people to try scrum by the book for a few months before making changes or compromises. Jon says every company wants to believe they're different, and that's rarely something to cling to.
- Scott K says he sees people focusing on tooling and this leads to "scrumbut" - the practice of doing scrum, but... David says he really tries to avoid that term - scrum is a tool.
- Kevin says he sees Scrum as a project management methodology as opposed to XP which also focuses on the engineering side. David says that you can't be successful separating Scrum from good technical practices.
David talks about his last user group presentation before moving, says he's not going to be travelling as much in the near future, and conversation drifts back to XamlSpec as the most useful result of this discussion.

Show Links:

David Starr (blog, @elegantcoder)
Nascar.com in the internet archive
Scrum.org
SubSpec
SpecFlow
Redwood City, CA
David's blog post: SubSpec
David's blog post: Software Professional Code of Ethics

Herding Code 149 - What I Did With My Summer Vacation Aug 30, 2012

Show notes

Episode 149

The guys check in after a summer hiatus with a discussion covering travel, books, e-book readers, two factor authentication, Windows 8, OSX Mountain Lion, and hover cranes.

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 149 - What I Did With My Summer Vacation

Show Notes:

Travel

Jon asks starts by asking where everyone's been travelling to over the summer.
K. Scott's basically a European at this point.
Jon went to Oslo, Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo, Redmond, and rural New Jersey, and Kevin survived a road trip with kids thanks to iPads. Jon really liked Buenos Aires. He talks about his Web Camps presentations in South America, including a Windows Azure Web Sites talk where he builds and deploys a classic ASP app via FTP, ASP.NET / SignalR app via Visual Studio Web Deploy, a Node.js app via git publish, and a WordPress site via WebMatrix deploy in one hour. He's amazed by how translators can listen to obscure technical jargon and speak in another language at the same time, including prompts about when the audience should politely laugh at a failed joke.
Kevin survived a road trip with kids thanks to iPads.

e-book reading devices

Scott K has been running the CyanogenMod Android ROM on his Nook Color.
There's some discussion on the benefit of a 7" form factor device and rumors about a 7-ish iDevice on the way.
Jon and Kevin love their Kindles, and Scott K talks about what he likes about the Nook Color.
Scott K mentions O'Reilly's Bookworm site, which was sadly closed down as of March 31.
Jon has stayed with the Kindle eInk devices for the read aloud support, which is sadly missing on all the other top ebook devices. Kevin like the long battery life.

Book Reports

Jon kicks off book report time mentioning The Door into Summer and The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography
Scott K has been reading The Hobbit: 75th Anniversary Edition and The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth: Popularity, Quirk Theory, and Why Outsiders Thrive After High School.
Kevin read Snow Crash and Ender's Game
Jon kind of liked Reamde: A Novel but doesn't like it as much as Cryptonomicon.

Geek Travel Tips

Jon and K. Scott use a checklist to make sure they don't forget important things like chargers and adapters.
K. Scott doesn't assume anything and keeps a small bit of foreign cash handy.
Jon and K. Scott both really like TripIt.
Jon talks about how he handled a cancelled flight to Buenos Aires by calling in (rather than waiting in line) and being nice.
Jon and K. Scott both avoid checking bags when possible.

Two factor authentication.

Jon tells the story about how Mat Honan's account was hacked.
The guys talk about how Google Two Factor Auth works for them.
Jon saw an interesting tip: use a separate e-mail account for password recovery.
Everyone complains about two factor auth's usability and hopes it gets easier.

K. Scott talks about how Internet Explorer 10 will have Do Not Track on by default. The guys talk about their thoughts on targeted ads and tracking: a little is good, too much gets creepy.
Jon's using Windows 8 RTM.

The guys discuss the user interface and discoverability. Scott K worries that nobody will be able to shut their computers off.
Jon likes the fast install and lock screen. Scott K talks about problems with face recognition login, but it looks like that was removed before RTM.

OSX Mountain Lion

Jon asks what the guys think about the change OSX so that Save As also saves over the original file. Kevin talks about some of the things he like in Mountain Lion.
Jon and Kevin discuss the different ways the Windows and Mac communities react to changes.
Jon asks about AirPlay and complains that it's difficult to stream audio from one device to another.
Kevin talks about the notification system.
Jon asks about updates to connectors.

Gold Medal or Martian Hover Crane?

Unanimous love for the hover crane
This reminds the guys of a few more books: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100

Show Links:

Herding Code 148 - Chris Hardy on Xamarin, MonoTouch and Mono For Android Aug 24, 2012

Show notes

Episode 148

Here's the last of K. Scott and Jon's interviews from NDC Oslo 2012: a conversation with Chris Hardy about Xamarin, MonoTouch, Mono For Android, and mobile development.

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 148 - Chris Hardy on Xamarin, MonoTouch and Mono For Android

Show Notes:

Jon asks Chris what he does at Xamarin.
Jon asks about how the development experience works when building an application using Xamarin products and targeting multiple platforms (e.g. iOS and Android)
Chris talks about how developers create the user interface layers - either using XCode, or just building the UI in code. He mentions PaintCode as a generator for user interface code.
K. Scott asks about the process of sharing logic and service code between platforms.
K. Scott asks how iOS and Android can call back into Mono code.
Jon asks about the installation experience for setting up all of the Android development dependencies.
Chris mentions that MonoDevelop supports Android UI design.
K. Scott asks about interesting things people have built with Xamarin. Chris mentions rdio and iCircuit.
Jon asks how developers handle platform specific issues while developing. Chris mentions several options for sharing code between platforms.
Jon asks how things are working under the hood - is IL being deployed? Is anything being JITted?
Jon asks about his opinion as a developer who works on all the main mobile platforms. Chris says he loves his iOS devices, but is interested in Windows 8.
Jon asks about Chris' thoughts on the publishing process between platforms.
Jon asks about the debugging experience - are you using emulators? How do they work? Do you get realtime debugging?

Show Links:

Herding Code 147 - Jakob Bradford on Organizing NDC Oslo Aug 21, 2012

Show notes

Episode 147

While at NDC 2012 in Oslo, Jon and K. Scott talked to Jakob Bradford about how the event was organized.

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 147 - Jakob Bradford on Organizing NDC Oslo

Show Notes:

Jon asks how NDC got started and how it's grown.
K. Scott says that other conferences feel like they're organized to solve organizers' problems, while NDC is organized around the attendee experience. Jakob says that's very intentional.
Jon asks how they balance a big conference feel (as NDC continues to grow) while maintaining a personal feel.
K. Scott asks for an inside scoop - what were the biggest disasters, or almost disasters? Answer: volcanoes!
Jon talks about how much he likes the Overflow (a.k.a. ADD room) and asks how that got started. Jakob said that's how conferences are done in Norway.
K. Scott asks about Aral's keynote, which began with a musical number.
Jon asks about how they select speakers and content.
Jon asks about the pre-conference workshops (in the tallest building in Norway!)
The entire conference is recorded, available on Vimeo. Jakob says that's how they get most of their attendees - "Watch the videos a couple years... you will come!"

Show Links:

The NDC Overflow room:

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