Herding Code

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Herding Code 46: Mistakes and News Recap May 08, 2009

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Episode 46

Everybody makes mistakes. The trick is to learn from your own or, better yet, the mistakes of others! This week, the guys amuse and educate by graciously sharing some of their past developer mistakes.

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!

Show Links:

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Herding Code 46: Mistakes and News Recap

Show notes compiled by Ben Griswold. Thanks!

Herding Code 45: Larry O’Brien on Domain Specific Languages Apr 29, 2009

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Episode 45

There's a lot of community chatter around Domain Specific Languages (DSLs.) If you're interested in hearing more, you won't want to miss this episode as this week on Herding Code the guys interview Larry O'Brien, professional writer and software developer, on Domain Specific Languages, DSL DevCon, Lang.NET Symposium and a number of related talks.

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.

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

Show notes compiled by Ben Griswold. Thanks!

Herding Code 44: Microbusiness Apr 24, 2009

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Episode 44

Whether you just want to write cool software for yourself or you are looking to kick off a side business, you can get started with little upfront investment. This week on Herding Code, the guys talk about the ease of becoming a one-man independent software vendor (ISV.)

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.

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Herding Code 44: Microbusiness

Show notes compiled by Ben Griswold. Thanks!

Herding Code 43: Javier Lozano on the "M" in MVC Apr 17, 2009

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Episode 43

This week on Herding Code, Kevin leads a conversation with Javier Lozano on ASP.NET MVC and the Model View Controller (MVC), Model View Presenter (MVP), Model View ViewModel (MVVM) and Model Model View Controller (MMVC) patterns.

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!

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Herding Code 43: Javier Lozano on the M in MVC

Show notes compiled by Ben Griswold. Thanks!

Episode 42: Scott Bellware on BDD and Lean Development Apr 08, 2009

Show notes

Episode 42

This week on Herding Code, Scott Bellware educates and entertain as only he can. Scott talks about Behavior Driven Development (BDD), Test Driven Development (TDD) and Lean Software Development, gets "all preachy" and donates to the show a nearly endless batch of outtakes.

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

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Episode 42: Scott Bellware on BDD and Lean Development

Episode 41: Next Generation Twitter Client Discussion At MIX09 Apr 03, 2009

Show notes

Episode 41

While at MIX09, Jon sat in on a brainstorming discussion about next generation Twitter clients running on WPF and Silverlight 3 with Tim Heuer, Chris Bennage, and Alan Le. This was originally just recorded for a few people who couldn't be there for our meeting, but we had enough positive feedback that we're publishing it as a podcast.

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

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Episode 41: Next Generation Twitter Client Discusion At MIX09

Episode 40: Shawn Wildermuth on Silverlight 3 and RIA Services Apr 01, 2009

Show notes

Episode 40

This week on Herding Code, the full cast talks to Shawn Wildermuth about Silverlight 3 and RIA Services:

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

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Episode 40: Shawn Wildermuth on Silverlight 3 and RIA Services

Episode 39: Scott C. Reynolds on Mac and iPhone Development Mar 25, 2009

Show notes

Episode 39

This week on Herding Code, Jon, K Scott, Scott K and Kevin talk about Mac/iPhone development with .NET and Ruby developer Scott C. Reynolds.

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/

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

Episode 38: NHibernate performance with Ayende, David Penton, and Ben Scheirman Mar 13, 2009

Show notes

Episode 38

While K Scott and Jon were at the Microsoft MVP Global Summit, we listened in on a late night debate on NHibernate performance between Oren Eini (a.k.a. Ayende Rahein), David Penton, and Ben Scheirman.

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

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

Episode 37: Jon Udell Mar 07, 2009

Show notes

Episode 37

This week on Herding Code, Jon leads a talk with Microsoft Technical Evangelist Jon Udell, about strategies for Internet citizens. That is, making public information available for retrieval and manipulation through structured data feeds and Internet standards. The group discusses related topics like digital identity and OpenID and shares their thoughts on Oslo, DSLs, dynamic languages like IronPython.

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

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Episode 37: Jon Udell

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