Azure Sphere dev kits are shipping, and we take a look at the practicalities of getting setup to start developing.

Then we clear some recent Java FUD, read some feedback, and share a few stories.

Links:

• Regarding Michael's MacBook Pro mishap
• Text Contrast for Dark Themes
• Developing an Azure Sphere experience with Visual Studio — You will write your application logic in C, using APIs that are provided by the Azure Sphere SDK, this is compiled into your application binary using GCC. As part of the build process, tools that are part of the Azure Sphere SDK are used to generate a signed .imagepackage file that will be deployed to your development board, or through the Azure Sphere security service for Over The Air.
• Michael Dominick on Twitter: "Does anyone have an #AzureSpheres devkit in hand yet?" — I’m thinking of evaluating it for a project but am trying to get a sense of what the actual developer experience is like and how dependent it is on a connection to @Azure #dotnet
• Azure Sphere MT3620 Development Board — Azure Sphere MT3620 Development Kit_US Version
• Michael Dominick on Twitter: "Ok, let me dispel some #Java FUD here." — You CAN use #Java11 for free. Just use the @OpenJDK and you're golden. #Programming #FOSS #CoderRadio @ChrisLAS Spread the word -> there's a lot of confusion on this one thanks to Oracle's strange communications on it.
• Oracle releases open source and commercial licenses for Java 11 and later
• Project Strobe — The consumer version of Google+ currently has low usage and engagement: 90 percent of Google+ user sessions are less than five seconds.
• Microsoft open-sources Infer.NET AI code just in time for the weekend — Infer.NET, which is on GitHub right now, takes a model-based approach to machine learning. The developer gives the framework a model, and the framework then develops a machine-learning algorithm directly from the model provided.