CodeChat (MP4) - Channel 9

Christopher Bennage (@bennage) has been working on the Patterns and Practices team at Microsoft for a considerable time now, and I always find it interesting to chat with him about strategies and philosophies in the world of software development. It helps that Christopher tends to lean toward the web stack himself as well as toward open source options. Join Christopher and I for this chat about the present and future of the P&P group, the state of the web, IoT, and more. I hope you enjoy the episode. Please do take a chance to drop a comment down below. Let us know what you think, ask the guests a question, or recommend something for a future show. As always, you can find me online at codefoster.com or on Twitter @codefoster.

We talk a lot about the open source web platform on CodeChat, but I, your host, am quite taken with the world of IoT as well. Thus this episode where we interview Zoe from Seeed Studio. Seeed hails from Shenzhen, China and makes all sorts of IoT goodies you might be familiar with, but did you know they have services too? If you're a maker and need help getting your product brought to life whether it's 1, 10, or 10,000, Seeed can help. Chat with Zoe on Twitter at @zoe_hoho. Zoe comes to us from Seeed Studio in Shenzhen, China, and she brings with her one of the smartest plant care systems I've ever seen. Hopefully, you learn something from this project and are inspired to create something of your own. I hope you enjoy the episode. Please do take a chance to drop a comment down below. Let us know what you think, ask the guests a question, or recommend something for a future show. As always, you can find me online at codefoster.com or on Twitter @codefoster.

Andrei (@anvaka) made something awesome. First he pulled all of the data from a few popular package managers online. I'm talking about package managers for .NET, Ruby, Go, Node.js, and more. Then he used WebGL and JavaScript to render a 3D virtual star field depicting the packages and their relationships to each other. The results are fascinating. I'll let Andrei and his amazing visuals speak for themselves. Check it out yourself (on desktop or mobile!) at http://goo.gl/yRdHjE. You can find the source code at https://github.com/anvaka/pm I hope you enjoy the episode. Please do take a chance to drop a comment down below. Let us know what you think, ask the guests a question, or recommend something for a future show. As always, you can find me online at codefoster.com or on Twitter @codefoster.

Colin (@colinmegill) is back. This time, he's going to show us Polis (pol.is) - a whole new paradigm for a web commenting system. If you think you know how traditional commenting works (or doesn't!) on the web, then clear your mind and then take a look at Polis. Most commenting systems are impossible to make any sense of, whereas Polis uses the power of machine learning to make meaning out of opinions and turn that into a slick visual that nearly instantly conveys how others are reacting to the content you're reading online. So, watch this chat and then go to pol.is and give it a shot. I hope you enjoy the episode. Please do take a chance to drop a comment down below. Let us know what you think, ask the guests a question, or recommend something for a future show. As always, you can find me online at codefoster.com or on Twitter @codefoster.

If you are in the web dev community, you already know there's a major buzz around React.js. Is it all hype? Can it navigate the vast sea of change in the JavaScript library and web framework space? If anyone would know, it's Colin Megill - a rock star JavaScript, Node.js, and React developer from the Seattle area. Listen to what Colin shares about React.js and decide for yourself. You can find Colin online @colinmegill and check out one of his latest projects called Polis at pol.is. I hope you enjoy the episode. Please do take a chance to drop a comment down below. Let us know what you think, ask the guests a question, or recommend something for a future show. As always, you can find me online at codefoster.com or on Twitter @codefoster.

Arunesh and team have done something pretty cool. They've built a version of Node.js that works with Chakra - the JavaScript engine that underlies Microsoft Edge. Why would you do this? Well, because of Windows 10. Windows 10 is not exactly discriminant about which devices it supports and we're finding it on robots as well as phones as well as desktops these days. To really work everywhere there are times when the V8 engine isn't going to work. They're doing it right too. They're not creating a proprietary branch - a road you can't come back from. The newfound versatility they're putting into Node.js is on its way to being contributed right to the main project. That's why this Node.js thing is so awesome - because such a rich community is contributing to it. Arunesh can certainly describe the ins and outs better then me, so tune in and see what's going on with Node.js and the Chakra engine. Here are some links if you want to get your hands on this cool stuff... Node+Chakra Blog - http://aka.ms/node-chakra-annoucement-blogInstaller for Node.js Tools for Windows IoT - https://github.com/ms-iot/ntvsiot/releases/tag/v1.1Node+Chakra on Github - https://github.com/Microsoft/nodeIoT Getting Started - http://aka.ms/iot-getstartedIoT Samples - http://aka.ms/iotsamplesI hope you enjoy the episode. Please do take a chance to drop a comment down below. Let us know what you think, ask the guests a question, or recommend something for a future show. As always, you can find me online at codefoster.com or on Twitter @codefoster.