Herding Code

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Herding Code 66: Brad Wilson and Scott Densmore on iPhone Development Dec 16, 2009

Show notes

Episode 66

What do Brad Wilson and Scott Densmore have in common? They're expert .NET developers, a couple of Mac fanboys, and they're both joining the guys on this week's episode of Herding Code. Listen in while Brad and, yet another, Scott talk about the Mac, Windows, and the ins and outs of iPhone development:

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:

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

Show notes compiled by Ben Griswold. Thanks!

Herding Code 65: Scott Hanselman on His Secret Ninja Squad and Jon's new job (bonus: netbook operating system install clinic!) Dec 12, 2009

Show notes

Episode 65

In this episode, we talk to Scott Hanselman about Jon's new job with Microsoft, how (if at all) that affects this podcast, and running Ubuntu on a Dell Mini 9.

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

Herding Code 64: Phil Haack on MVC 2 Nov 22, 2009

Show notes

Episode 64

The guys grill Phil on ASP.NET MVC2, and introduce a new segment: Abusive Questions From Twitter!

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

Herding Code 63: Victory in Software Development with K Scott Allen Oct 24, 2009

Show notes

Episode 63

On the heels of his recent Concept Camp 2009 fireside keynote, K Scott brings his opinion about victory in software development to the podcast. Listen in as the guys consider how to define and measure success, how to solve business problems despite our customers and ourselves, and how to focus less on risk and more on the potential reward. Download / Listen: Herding Code 63 - Victory in Software Development with K Scott Allen Show Links:

Show notes compiled by Ben Griswold. Thanks!

Herding Code 62: MonoTouch with Miguel de Icaza and Geoff Norton Oct 12, 2009

Show notes

Episode 62

In this episode of Herding Code, Jon and Scott Koon pair up with Miguel de Icaza and Geoff Norton of the Mono Project and discuss MonoTouch:

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!

Herding Code 61: CodePlex Foundation, Bing Visual Search, Microsoft Ajax CDN, Zune HD Release Oct 06, 2009

Show notes

Episode 61

This episode of Herding Code is a roundtable discussion which includes the entire cast. The guys dedicate the majority of the show to the CodePlex Foundation – what the foundation provides, speculation on what the foundation might accomplished, and how success should be measured. The guys also offer a glowing review of Bing Visual Search, they dig into the Microsoft Ajax CDN, and give their opinions of the recent Zune HD Release.

Show Links:

Download / Listen:

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

Show notes compiled by Ben Griswold. Thanks!

Herding Code 60: Spark View Engine with Louis DeJardin Sep 23, 2009

Show notes

Episode 60

In this episode of the Herding Code Podcast, the guys talk to Louis DeJardin about the Spark View Engine.

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:

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 60: Spark View Engine with Louis DeJardin

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