Herding Code

Episode 111

This episode of Herding Code the guys talk to John Papa about the Open Source Fest he put together at MIX11.

• Jon asks how the whole thing got started, and if John encountered any friction within Microsoft in getting this set up.
• John describes the event and calls out some of the winners from the event.
• There's a discussion of the Glimpse project. Scott asks what it is, and Jon tries to give the sales pitch for it.
• John talks about how many of these really cool project are hampered by marketing mistakes like poor project pages and unmemorable project names.
• John mentions some of the areas for improvement - less background noise, bigger space. Some of that was due to overwhelming response - stopped counting at 500 attendees, ran out of food 3 times, etc.
• Scott asks if a next step should be an open source conference for .NET. Jon mentions that there are some benefits to piggybacking with a "real" conference so the bosses will pay for us to go.
• Scott asks if there's any point to having sessions at a conference, since the real value at the conferences is in the networking and conversation. There's a discussion about how an open space is cool, but something of this scale isn't likely to self-organize.
• Scott talks about how the ALT.NET Seattle event in Seattle is including open source hacking, proposing that larger conferences do this as well.
• John mentions the Twitter list he's created for all Open Source Fest participants.
• We take a question from Tony Champion, asking what John would do differently in future events.
• John and Jon discuss the difference between consuming and participating in a conference.
• John pimps the Silverlight MIXer event he runs at MIX.
• Jon asks if there should be venture capital folks at future open source fests. John said said that it was important to keep clear of any ulterior motives at this first event, but it's possible that may happen in the future.
• John and Jon talk about the difference between "official" events and sponsorship driven events.

Show Links:

• John Papa @john_papa
• Recap of Open Source Fest at MIX11
• OSF Project List
• InfoStrat.MotionFx  - Joshua Blake
• Silverlight Media Framework - Tim Greenfield
• Glimpse - Nik Molnar and Anthony Van Der Hoorn
• DirectCanvas - Jeremiah Morrill
• Farseer Physics Engine - Jeff Weber
• WiiMote Library - Brian Peek
• StackExchange Data Explorer - Sam Saffron
• RestSharp - John Sheehan
• Some MSDN Magazine articles on NHibernate (for Scott K)
• John Papa's OSFMix11 Twitter List
• Tony Champion
• Silverlight MIXer

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Herding Code 11: John Papa on the Open Source Fest at MIX11

Episode 110

This episode of Herding Code Kevin and Jon sit down with Geoff and Jarrod at MIX to talk about their experiences from helping to build the first StackOverflow site up through today's fast paced world of StackExchanges and gold plated Lamborghinis.

Note: We recorded in quietest spot we could find - there's some background noise, but it's worth it.

• Geoff and Jarrod talk about their past job experiences, including building (gasp) 911 software with Visual Basic 6.
• Jon asks how things worked at the beginning - did people work on separate areas? Was there a plan?
• How do you share data when developing with a remote team? Geoff talks about how they started with the Database Project type, but moved to SQL scripts, ending with a migration tool. Jon gets to say "idempotent".
• Geoff and Jarrod talk about how they've moved form Subversion to Mercurial.
• Jon asks how code moves from local development to a production server. Geoff talks about the build and deployment process.
• Kevin asks how much the process has changed over the years.
• Geoff talks about how features first hit Meta, then the "others" tier (everything but StackOverflow), then to StackOverflow.
• We talk about how they're using Redis, including the newly open sourced redis-sharp library, and some of the tricks that are used to keep the cache performant, including gzipping cached data.
• We talk about how they do performance tuning, how costly queries are tracked, etc.
• Geoff talks about how search was moved from SQL Server Full Text indexing to Lucene.NET in order to move the load off the database server.
• Jon asks about how they've integrated the ASP.NET stack with open source front-end and utility software.
• Jon asks how the the IT and collaboration works with the growing distributed team.
• Jon asks how bugs are tracked, and the talk about how they use the Meta sites for tracking issues. Jon is sold on the concept and asks if he can install a local instance of Meta for his own bug tracking concepts, but the guys just laugh at him.
• Jon asks for more specific on the performance monitoring systems the team uses, and Geoff gives him the rundown.
• Jon asks how things have changed as the team has grown and buckets of funding money keep rolling in.
• Geoff explains how they handle multi-tenancy, now that they're hosting lots of sites. Jon is amazed to hear that it's just one big application which switches data structures and display based on the url.
• Geoff mentions that they're using Less to keep the CSS sane.
• Kevin asks how much work is involved in spinning up a new site. Geoff explains the tool they've got set up to generate the scripts to add a new StackExchange site.
• Jon asks about MVC 3 is working for them. They like the Razor.
• Jon asks what annoys them most about ASP.NET MVC. After some thought, they lament that the routes are defined separately from the actions, but mostly it's just a lot of love for MVC.

Show Links:

• Geoff Dalgas @superdalgas
• Jarrod Dixon @jarrod_dixon
• Redis
• BookSleeve (Redis client library)
• Lucene.NET
• HAProxy
• Skype
• Nagios
• Cacti
• Dapper
• Sam Saffron @samsaffron
• Benjamin Dumke @balpha
• less.js

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Herding Code 110: Geoff Dalgas and Jarrod Dixon take us behind the scenes at StackExchange

Episode 109

This episode of Herding Code the guys talk to the organizers of the Harmony Hackathon: twelve developers coding madly for 48 hours, trying to build an application for the non-profit Harmony Hill cancer retreat center.

• Eric talks about the Harmony Hackathon came together and what they were trying to accomplis.
• Jon asks about how things were coordinated. The guys talk about how they managed the "organized chaos" of throwing a lot of developers in a room for 48 hours.
• Scott K asks how a group of alpha geeks got past selecting an IoC container in a weekend, let alone write some code.
• Jon asks for a rundown on the dependencies (Fluent NHibernate, Fluent Migrator, ASP.NET MVC 3, and some testing tools).
• Hooray for build servers!
• Discussion of machine.specifications and NUnit in order to test both high and low level code.
• Scott K asks how much actually got done.
• We talk to Vic to get the real scoop - sure the tech was cool, but did they build anything? How was it like to be the project owner with this kind of project?
• Discussion of extremely short sprints - down to 30 minutes at the end! How do you handle Pomodoro length sprints?
• We talk about Chewie, which adds some Bundler features to NuGet.
• Scott K gets the rundown on psake (build automation in PowerShell) from Eric.
• Scott K asks about what kind of interaction patterns they saw emerging.
• Scott K asks about the future plans for this project.
• Scott K asks why ALT.NET people would want to do something nice, and Jon mentions his mild surprise at the happy, friendly vibe he'd seen at the ALT.NET Seattle events he's attended. There's a discussion of the general spirit of the ALT.NET Seattle group.
• Jon asks for lessons learned and recommendations for other people who want to put on a similar event.
• Scott K asks about friction points with the tools the team selected.
• Razor was one of the new things that none of the developers had used before. Jon remarks that learning Razor was kind of a non-event for him, and the guys agree.
• Kevin asks about how the project lifecycle looks like when compressed to a 48 hour period.
• Eric explains what Harmony Hill does, explaining why everyone was so motivated to help out. The guys talk about how it's nice to go beyond talking about beautiful code and actually doing something.
• Scott K asks if there were technological things the team would do differently in the future.
• The Open Source Track at ALT.NET Seattle (May 5-8) is mentioned.
• Coding alone? You must wear the Coding Solo Cowboy Hat of Shame.
• Pimp your stuff time: Harmony Hill, ALT.NET 2011, Giles, Simple.Data
• The guys ask Scott K when we'll see the MVC generator thing he's been working on.
• Everyone loves Simple.Data.
• Developers, developers, developers!
• Woof, woof, woof!
• Does anyone read these notes? I don't think you do.

Show Links:

• Harmony Hill
• Bobby Johnson (@notmyself)
• Chris Bilson (@cbilson)
• Eric Ridgeway (@ang3lfir3)
• Vic Ridgeway (@ang3lsdream)
• https://github.com/HarmonyHacks/Dahlia
• Harmony Hackathon: the beginning of something big?
• Harmony Hill Hackathon: The Aftermath
• The Inception of Circle Pulling 
• Eric Lee (@saintgimp)
• psake
• machine.specifications
• Chewie
• The Pomodoro technique
• Team City
• Bundler
• Dev Null webscale database
• ALT.NET Seattle 2011
• ALT.NET Seattle 2011 Open Source Track
• Continous Integration in the Real World
• Giles - continuous testing tool
• Solution Factory
• Nancy
• Simple.Data

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Herding Code 109: Harmony Hackathon

Episode 108

This episode of Herding Code continues a discussion / argument that Jon started with Jin Yang and Nathan Bowers on Twitter a few weeks ago after reading a post he liked from a product designer at Quora about how they don't use Photoshop in their design process. What's the role of visual design in the web design process? Can designers and developers ever be friends? Are HTML and CSS the lingua franca of designers and developers, or just an implementation detail? Do designers need to know HTML to be good web designers? Listen as Jin and Nathan set Jon straight.

• Jon tries to get Jin and Nathan upset, but they both start by agreeing
• Nathan mentions that Photoshop is a production tool, not a design tool
• Jin and Jon talk about the value of wireframes, and how the transition from wireframe
• Nathan talks about how different clients have different demands - Quora can prototype rapidly for their own product, but some clients will require high quality graphic deliverables
• Kevin asks developers and designers work together in HTML based design - who does the HTML?
• Jon talks about how moving the discussion from images to a client accessible stage / demo server early in the project helps everyone communicate
• Jon asks both which sorts of sites work better for HTML based design because they're mostly textual
• Jon asks Jin how he works on StackExchange proposals
• Nathan talks about how the site focus dictates the design process, and how he's mostly done with Photoshop
• Kevin asks if there's a place for a tool that's somewhere between the purely visual Photoshop world and HTML: Nathan says it'd be nice, Jon says the generated HTML is always horrible, and Jin says that's why he thinks designers need some HTML smarts
• Nathan brings up Jon's post on the Designer / Developer Workflow Crisis, and Jin talks about his post on Web Designers and Coding
• The talk moves to a visual-first design focus can end up with a website that doesn't provide the information the users actually want, and some favorite XKCD and The Oatmeal links are shared
• Jin and Jon talk about how your clients aren't really the end customers of your design, the users are
• Nathan asks Jon about how he thinks the design / developer workflow should be
• Nathan, Scott K, Jon, and Jin Jin talk about how developers can involved in the development process after the "design handoff"
• Jin talks about how developers should be part of the design process, and Jon and Scott K talk about how important it is for the whole team to know the context of what they're doing
• Kevin mentions that his wife is a web designer who doesn't do HTML, and every hastily backpedals
• Jon and Jin talk about how the background reasons for wanting designers to know HTML can still be met by the designer knowing the constraints of the web medium really well
• Kevin talks about how today's Ajax heavy sites aren't really just HTML anymore
• Jon talks about how he hates the new trend towards single page applications
• Kevin says that he thinks that saying designers should know HTML is like saying developers should know how to design, but Jin says that HTML isn't programming, it's the medium that both designers and developers are producing for
• Jon says that he thinks developers should try to learn more design
• Scott K asks how developers can learn design, and Jin and Nathan share tips
• Jon mentions some great talks by Robby Ingebretsen on design fundamentals for developers
• Kevin asks how much of design is just natural talent
• Jon talks about how he likes design discussions among the whole dev team, and Nathan says that it's important for the team to be able to communicate about the business and strategy for their project as well
• Nathan talks about the book Mindfulness which shows how working through a lot of ideas helps you come up with great ideas
• Jon talks about how a process that allows for continuous change throughout the project allows you to continue to shape the design as you go, and Scott K accuses him of being agile
• Jon asks Jin how he interacts with a team who develops on Windows when he's on a Mac, and they discuss how Firebug (and similar tools) allow for cross platform development
• Jon asks what sites should be designed using Photoshop / visual design first
• Jin asks Nathan about his thoughts on 960.gs, and Jon rants about how grid systems fight semantic design
• Scott K talks about the Flex Box Model will make it easier to design with grids without giving up on semantic markup
• Jin mentions HTML5 shims, but Scott K says that doesn't work as well for mobile
• Jin talks about how the real challenge in StackExchange design is in creating an emotional reaction, and Kevin says that's the result he cares about a lot more than HTML

Show Links:

• Jin Yang (@jzy)
• Nathan Bowers (@nathanbowers)
• Life without Photoshop
• AVC (designed by Nathan)
• StackExchange sites list - e.g. TEX, Gaming, Cooking, Mathematics, GIS
• Jon: The Designer/Developer Workflow Crisis (That Everyone's Ignoring)
• Jin: Web Designers & Coding
• Jon: Designing websites in Photoshop is like creating your dinner menu in Play Doh
• XKCD: University Website
• The Oatmeal: What I Want From A Restaurant Website
• The Oatmeal: How A Web Design Goes Straight To Hell
• Jin Yang on Hanselminutes
• Robby Ingebretsen's presentations on design for developers: Design Fundamentals for Developers and Ten Ways To Attack A Design Problem And Win
• Jin: talent vs. hard work
• Book: Mindfulness
• Firebug and Web Developer Toolbar
• http://960.gs/
• MIX 2011

Jin's link list for developers who want to learn more about design

• http://www.456bereastreet.com/ (accessibility)
• http://www.alistapart.com/ (web design, standards)
• http://www.drawar.com/ (design community, articles, showcases and forum).
• http://www.lukew.com/ff/ (interaction design)
• http://37signals.com/svn/posts (web app design, inspirations)
• http://www.smashingmagazine.com/ (showcases, freebies, articles)
• http://typography.com/email/2010_03/index_tw.htm (typography)
• http://retinart.net/ (graphics design)
• http://cssglobe.com/ (frontend dev)
• http://ilovetypography.com/ (typography)
• http://www.uxbooth.com/ (User Experience)
• http://scriptandstyle.com/ (frontend dev)
• http://www.thegridsystem.org/ (layout)
• http://52weeksofux.com/ (User experience, design)
• http://tutsplus.com/ (tutorials)
• http://www.zeldman.com/ (web standards)

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 108: Jin Yang and Nathan Bowers on Web Design

Episode 107

In this episode of Herding Code, the guys talk nonsense for over an hour.

• Topic: The Apple Store 30% fee for App Subscriptions - who's surprised, what apps will it affect, etc.
• The conversation shifts to Kindle, and whether content focused apps can move to HTML only.
• Topic: Windows Mobile deal with Nokia - will it help?
• K Scott thinks it's very late for both parties.
• Jon doesn't think there's much loyalty in the smartphone market since people get a new phone every few years.
• There's some discussion about where this leaves the enterprise phone market. Kevin thinks that Microsoft should just have focused on the enterprise.
• Topic: Reflector - was free, was going to be free forever, but now it's not.
• Kevin and K Scott talk about how bad it is from a community perspective.
• Kevin wonders how many developers or updates are required to keep Reflector going?
• Jon, K Scott, and Kevin talk about what they use Reflector for.
• The guys talk about open source alternative - IL Spy, Cecil based disassemblers, JetBrains's new decompiler.
• Kevin and Jon talk about why a $35 cost is a bigger problem than it sounds like.
• Topic: Mono 2.10 and Moonlight 4 Preview 1 released - what does it mean?!
• Topic: Watson plays Jeopardy. Jon asks if it just called into Wolfram Alpha, and K Scott wonders if has a Sean Conery mode.
• Topic: CardSpace 2.0 won't be shipped. Nobody but Jon cares.
• Scott K talks about the LastPass. Jon asks how that work on different computers, mobile, etc.
• Topic: Internet Explorer 9 RC is out
• Jon talks about how IE9RC works better with Visual Studio now.
• Jon likes the simplified UI, but talks about a few of the annoyances he's run into.
• Jon and Kevin talk about the tab UI handling.
• Jon talks about how some sites break on JavaScript
• Scott K brings up the blog post from Mozilla asking if IE9 is a modern browser.
• The guys talk about IE9 supported features, general HTML5 support across browsers, etc.
• Kevin says that the biggest problem with IE is the slow ship cycle. Kevin and Scott K discuss the possibility of splitting out an enterprise browser.
• Kevin talks about the GPU acceleration in IE9 and how he thinks it's overblown.
• Jon talks about the lack of XP support for IE9.
• The guys talk about how they wish there was an IE6 standalone.

Show Links:

• TechCrunch article on the Apple store 30% App Subscription fee
• Announcement about Windows / Nokia deal
• Red Gate's announcement that Reflector will no longer be free
• Original announcement from Lutz about Red Gate buying Reflector
• Open source alternatives to Reflector on StackOverflow
• Moonlight 4 Preview 1 release announcement
• Mono 2.10 release announcement
• IBM Watson
• Beyond Windows CardSpace
• LastPass
• Is IE9 a modern browser?
• Tim Sneath: A Modern Browser
• Interoperability Bridges
• Comparison of layout engines (HTML5)
• Can I Use
• Kelly Sommers (@kellabyte)
• Expression Web SuperPreview

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Herding Code 107: Apple Subscription fees, Nokia, Reflector, Mono, Watson, CardSpace, and IE9 RC

Episode 106

In this episode of Herding Code, the guys speak with Mark Rendle about his Simple.Data and Fix projects.

• The show begins with Mark's Simple.Data elevator pitch in which he explains that Simple.Data is an ORM without the O, the R or the M.
• Jon asks about Mark's heavy use of dynamic types in the Simple.Data source. Mark talks about the Method Missing pattern in Ruby and how that translates to dynamic .NET programming in Simple.Data.
• Jon and Mark dig deeper into the code and then they walkthrough project advancement from supporting basic CRUD functions to the recent addition of database transactions.
• Mark shares Simple.Data's current and future support for numerous relational and non-relational databases.
• Jon and Mark talk about the use of MEF, rather than a full-blown IoC container, in Simple.Data.
• Scott K and Mark discuss Simple.Data tests, their implementation and the TDD and FDD (Fear-driven development) which Mark took while developing his project.
• Kevin asks if the heavy use of dynamics instigated the need to write more tests. Mark answers by sharing his views on why coders might prefer either static or dynamic typed languages.
• Jon asks about Simple.Data adoption and code optimizations which might be required to support increased production use.
• Mark digs into Reactive Extensions and how it's used in Simple.Data.
• Mark talks about the growing movement of simple web development projects and the tools/frameworks which support these efforts and, coincidently, answers @AaronOnTheWeb's Twitter-submitted question.
• @CodeReflection asks about Simple.Data support for aggregates which prompts a discussion about where/how these operations should be handled.
• @jacksonh asks about support for asynchronous operations.
• The conversation switches to Mark's involvement with OWIN and his Crack Fix project offers an ultra-lightweight web glue for .NET, written in C#..
• K Scott notes Mark's awesome gravitar choice Jerry Statler
• Mark closes by mentioning his participation in DDD (DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper!), Skills Matter Cloud Evening, and then Cambridge NxtGenUG (Next Generation User Group).

Show Links:

• Mark Rendle, @MarkRendle 
• Dot Net Solutions London
• Simple Data
• Microsoft.Data
• Rob Conery
• NuGet
• NHibernate
• Entity Framework
• SubSonic
• DataMapper
• autofac
• StructureMap
• Jon Skeet, @jonskeet
• Scott Hanselman, @shanselman
• Reactive Extensions
• Open Wrap
• Sinatra
• OpenRasta
• FubuMVC
• Nancy
• WebMatrix
• Aaron Stannard, @AaronOnTheWeb
• Jeff Schumacher, @CodeReflection
• Jackson Harper, @jacksonh
• OWIN
• .NET Abstractions
• Crack is now Fix
• Fix ReadMe
• Raven DB
• Frack
• Glenn Block, @gblock
• Azure
• Ryan Dahl
• Seb Lambla, @serialseb
• Jerry Statler and Conrad Waldorf

Show notes compiled by Ben Griswold. Thanks!

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Herding Code 106: Mark Rendle on Simple.Data

Episode 105

In this episode of Herding Code, the guys talk to ASP.NET team member and repeat guest Brad Wilson about what's new in ASP.NET MVC 3, BDD-style testing with SpecFlow and WaitN, and the latest release of xUnit.net.

• Jon begins the show by sharing Brad's bio and then dives right in asking about ASP.NET MVC 3 Service Location.  Brad talks about DI and IoC, introduces the new feature and the implementation through such things as IDependencyResolver and Controller Activator. For the full story, you should check out Brad's eleven part series on ASP.NET MVC 3 Service Location.
• Scott K asks why the MVC team didn't use MEF for dependency injection. Brad comments and brings up the prospect of using NuGet to install MEF support.
• Scott K asks if MVC could ship as a NuGet package. The conversation shifts to how NuGet could allow MVC to further decouple it's shipping schedule from that of Visual Studio and the .NET Framework.
• Everyone (Well, almost everyone. Kevin's being surprisingly quiet.) talks about jQuery plugins in the NuGet feed and how maintaining obsolete packages could get out of hand.
• Jon asks about how the jQuery based unobtrusive validation system works in MVC 3 and asks if the ASP.NET Web Forms validation system could possibly take advantage of the new unobtrusive validation support.
• Brad talks about the ASP.NET MVC development team and his role in developing ASP.NET MVC 3.
• Jon runs through the big features which were shipped with MVC 3 - Razor, Service Location, NuGet, Unobtrusive Validation. Scott K mentions default templates are now using HTML5 doc types and Brad notes other MVC 3 features like Unobtrusive Ajax, Remote Validator, Json Model and Binding support.
• Brad talks about extensibility for view engines in project templates and the new add view dialogue features.
• Via Twitter, @gsogol asks if we will ever see fluent type configurations of filters, validations for controllers and classes.
• Jon brings up the MVC 3 Futures library and asks Brad if it includes features which he wishes were rolled into the core MVC 3 bits. Brad explains the performance benefits of using the caching version of the model metadata provider system in the Futures library.
• K Scott asks about feature requests for Display and Editor Templates and the guys talk about code based templates.
• Jon talks about his favorable experience with Razor and mentions there's a web form to razor converter available.
• @gsogol asks if the ASP.NET MVC team looks at other MVC frameworks to "borrow" various ideas for a more productive experience.
• The guys talk about Razor Web Helpers like Web.Grid, Web.Crypto and Web.Mail which are baked into System.Web compared to the Microsoft Web Helpers which include social media helpers for Twitter and Facebook and video embedding.
• The guys talk about the bundle of awesomeness which MS released with WebMatrix, SQL Compact and IIS Express.
• The guys discuss what MVC3 offers to make testing easier and how one might unit test their JavaScript.
• Brad talks about his love for BDD-style testing with SpecFlow, he explains the Given-When-Then syntax and how TDD and high-level spec testing complement each other. Brad mentions he would likely make the Web Steps he shared at Agile Conference 2010 available online soon.
• Brad talks about MVC3 support in xUnit 1.7 and explains how xUnit compares to other test frameworks.
• The conversation shifts to Swedish death metal and the guys totally nerding out about diet and fitness.
• Brad pimps his Advanced ASP.NET MVC 3 talk at MvcConf 2 (video now on demand), teases us about his What's New in MVC 3 talk given at the P&P submit and mentions his January talk for the .NET Developers Association about, you guessed it, ASP.NET MVC 3.

Show Links:

• Brad Wilson, @BradWilson 
• Scott Densmore, @scottdensmore
• HERDING CODE 66: BRAD WILSON AND SCOTT DENSMORE ON IPHONE DEVELOPMENT
• Patterns & Practices
• xUnit.net
• ObjectBuilder DI Framework
• Brad's Service Location Blog Posts
• MEF (Managed Extensibility Framework)
• Ninject
• Unity
• NuGet
• Visual Studio Gallery
• Brad's Unobtrusive Client Validation Post
• Brad's Unobtrusive Ajax Post
• Html5
• YUI
• WebMatrix
• Web Camps
• Razor
• Jeff Sogolov, @Gsogol
• Razor-Converter Tool, Tsvetomir Tsonev, Telerik
• Phil Haack
• jqGrid,  MvcContrib Grid
• Wait, What's Node.js Good for Again?, ReadWriteWeb
• Mary-Jo Foley
• Orchard
• PortableApps
• Html Agility Pack
• QUnit
• Jurassic - a JavaScript Compiler for .NET - was mentioned by Jon and then Scott K mentioned Node.js (shocker) and referenced two other JS frameworks. Though the framework names slipped Scott's mind, he did mention Thomas Fuchs of script.aculo.us so we'll offer up those two links now and there may be more to come. 
• SpecFlow
• WatiN
• Agile Alliance
• Nunit, Jim Newkirk
• Cucumber
• Arrange-Act-Assert (or "3A") pattern, William Wake
• StoryQ
• mbUnit
• MachineSpecifications (MSpec), Aaron Jenson, @aaronjenson 
• SubSpec
• The Primal Blueprint
• Good Calories, Bad Calories
• Scott Hanselman, @shanselman 
• Brian Henderson, @Brian_Henderson
• Brad's Advanced ASP.NET MVC 3 Talk at MvcConf 2
• .NET Developers Assocation

Show notes compiled by Ben Griswold. Thanks!

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Herding Code 105: Brad Wilson on MVC 3

Episode 104

You remember Rob Eisenberg from Herding Code Show #57 when he talked presentation patterns along with Jeremy Miller, Ward Bell and Glenn Block. Well, in this episode of Herding Code, the conversation continues as Rob talks with the guys about Caliburn.Micro, an opinionated MVVM framework for WPF, Silverlight and WP7.

• Kevin kicks off this week's show asking Rob to tell us about Caliburn.Micro - his opinionated MVVM framework for WPF, Silverlight and WP7. Rob talks about how actions, support for conventions, and presentation roles are implemented in his opinionated MVVM framework.
• Rob explains how about Caliburn - his earlier framework built for WPF - has contributed its most important features to the easier-to-use, lighter Caliburn Micro.
• Jon brings up extensibility and inquires about how one overrides functionality in Cabiburn Micro.
• Kevin and Rob talk about view resolution and the difference between ViewModel-First and View-First development which are both offered in Caliburn Micro.
• Kevin asks designer integration and the "blendability" of Caliburn Micro.
• Rob explains the convention-based approach Caliburn Micro takes toward bindings and actions and the guys speak to the importance of diagnostic mechanisms when your coding is based on magic of convention.
• Kevin asks if that were places where the WPF/Silverlight/WP7 frameworks limited what Caliburn Micro could implement due to lack of extensibility points.
• Rob dives into IResult and Coroutines and how one can write asynchronous calls in a synchronous a manner with Caliburn Micro. Rob then answers how coroutines compare to the implementation coming in C# 5?
• Kevin asks about window management screen conductor and roles.
• The guys discuss their experience working with Silverlight and WPF.
• Jon asks about community contributions to Caliburn Micro and brings up the social aspect of open source and Mercurial projects in particular.
• The show gets its first question from the hotline from Rick who asks, "What does Caliburn do that MVVM Light Toolkit does not do?"
• Rob touches upon the Pub/Sub and window management features offered in Caliburn Micro and also talks about IoC friendliness.
• The guys talk about Rob's elegant yet unorthodox approach to the service location in Caliburn Micro.
• Rob offers a quick preview of what's to come next in Caliburn Micro.
• Rob notes that he's submitted a talk for Mix11: "Build Your Own MVVM Framework with Html and JavaScript"
• The guys discuss Knockout JS and its influence on Caliburn Micro.
• The show wraps with Kevin (in Scott K's absence) asking THE question: "Is Silverlight dead?" Tune in and find out the answer to that one...

Show Links:

• Rob Eisenberg, @EisenbergEffect
• Caliburn Micro
• Caliburn
• Blue Spire
• MonoRail
• Jeremy Miller, @jeremydmiller 
• Herding Code 57: Presentation Patterns With Jeremy Miller, Ward Bell, Rob Eisenberg And Glenn Block
• Build your own MVVM framework - MIX10
• Build Your Own MVVM Framework...with HTML and Javascript - Mix11
• Caliburn.Micro Soup to Nuts Pt. 5 - IResult and Coroutines
• Caliburn.Micro Soup to Nuts Part 6a - Screens, Conductors and Composition
• Matt Hamilton @mabster
• Marco Amendola, @marcoamendola
• Rick Ratayczak @RickRat
• MVVM Light Toolkit
• Ninject
• MEF
• Knockout, Steve Sanderson
• MIX11

Show notes compiled by Ben Griswold. Thanks!

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Herding Code 104: Rob Eisenberg on Caliburn Micro

Episode 103

In this episode of Herding Code, the guys talk with "self-congratulatory, self-proclaimed, egotistical doofus" Sebastien Lambla about OpenRasta, OpenWrap and Open Web Interface for .NET (OWIN.)

• K Scott kicks off the show asking Seb about his most popular OSS project - OpenRasta provides the 30 second elevator pitch and touches on his web framework which embraces HTTP through composition-based programming and facilitates the development of both JSON/XML services and webpage using the same fluent APIs.
• K Scott asks Seb about OpenRasta Resources, Handlers and Codecs (oh my) and Seb outlines the four (yes, 4) main components of MVC, content negotiation and browser fun.
• Scott K and Seb talk about the OpenRasta plug-in model and dig into pipeline contributors, operation interceptors and the full-flexibility of the OpenRasta composition framework.
• Jon speaks of service location which are new to MVC3.
• Jon asks Seb for his opinion on WCF Web APIs and how they compare to OpenRasta. 
• The guys talk about the distinction between the Microsoft Web and WCF frameworks and consider the creation of web services through .ASMX vs WCF.
• Seb explains Easy, Simple and Intuitive in the context of existing frameworks and APIs.
• Kevin asks about resource-oriented thinking in the .NET community. Seb response with talk of the slow adoption of RESTful architecture and poor education offered by vendors.
• K Scott asks Seb when/why he started becoming passionate about REST and Seb shares his and OpenRasta's story.
• Through the magic of Twitter, John Sheehan asks if there are any plans to develop a OpenRasta Client. Don't worry - RestSharp is safe for now.
• Kevin asks a second question! Does OpenRasta do anything with hypermedia? Seb speaks of generating links and advanced links and forms (i.e. Hypermedia Controls) in OpenRasta.
• Before the conversation shifts to OpenWrap, Jon asks about Seb's thoughts on OData and it not really being RESTful. Seb offers his option and notes his NDC presentation which brings light to all that is wrong with OData.
• The conversation shifts to OpenWrap, a package management system for .NET. Seb provides a quick overview of the project and what it offers.
• The guys discuss the release of NuGet and the collaboration (or not) with the Nu and OpenWrap folks during development.
• The guys further talk about the various package management systems and the pros and cons around having more than one solution (with slightly different focuses) in the .NET space. Jon compares the situation to that of Entity Framework and NHibernate both coming to market. Seb talks about productivity.
• Seb talks about dogfooding and building and deploying a package manager with the package manager.
• Seb walks the guys through the typical workflow experience when using OpenWrap.
• Seb explains what a symbol servers (specifically SymbolSource.org) offer and how it is to be integration with OpenWrap.
• Seb provides an overview of OWIN (Open Web Interface for .NET) which defines a standard interface between .NET web servers and web applications.
• The show wraps with Seb pimping his upcoming talks on OpenWrap and OpenRasta at QCon London.

Show Links:

• Seb Lambla, @serialseb
• OpenRasta
• OpenRasta Getting Started
• A Better ActionResult - A blog post by Garry Shutler on OperationInterceptors.
• OpenWrap
• OWIN - Open Web Interface for .NET
• .NET HTTP Abstractions Mailing List
• QCon London
• Jeremy Miller,@jeremydmiller, FubuMVC
• Glenn Block, @gblock, WCF Web APIs
• Don Box
• Clemens Vasters
• OData
• Seb's NDC2010 Talk: Using REST to Design a Better OData
• restfully
• Ian Robinson
• Kayak
• Frack
• Knack
• Fix
• Manos
• NuGet
• Nu
• RestSharp, John Sheehan, @johnsheehan
• SymbolSource.org, Marcin Mikolajczak
• OpenId

Show notes compiled by Ben Griswold. Thanks!

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Herding Code 103: Seb Lambla on OpenEverything

Episode 102

In this episode of Herding Code, the guys talk with avid open source contributor Tim Caswell about Node.js for which he is a community leader.  Listen in as the guys dig into node.js and what it has to offer.

• Tim gives the node.js elevator pitch and begins to explain what node offers - like event loops, evented IO, callbacks, non-blocking requests, high concurrency, and real-time scalability.
• K Scott shares that Tim's wheat blog engine which sits on to of a Git repository was implemented using node.js.
• Tim notes the greatest use case for node is still web development and touches upon how it differs from other framework like ASP.NET and Rails.
• Scott K explains that he thinks of node as an abstraction over network programming and shares his excitement around the hundreds of interesting frameworks and modules developed with/for node.
• Jon prompts Tim to talk about the node knockout competition and the various contest submissions.
• Kevin asks for further explanation of evented IO and Tim provides further detail using a dentist waiting room analogy.
• Jon asks how one troubleshoots callbacks and loops and how one manages state with node. Tim explains event based programming and why node.js came about.
• K Scott asks if server-side js interest has recently exploded due to HTML5, web sockets and leaving connections open to the server. Tim talks about long polling and thread counts as opposed to the the node approach.
• Jon asks Tim to speak about his extensive community contributions - namely his sharing of 47 repositories including wheat, step library for flow control and hamel.js.  Not to mention the howtonode blog.
• Scott K and Tim talk about sharing javascript code between the server and client.
• Jon asks about kiwi, npm and node package managers.
• Scott K asks how the node.js and server-side javascript got so popular. Tim turns to the need for a real-time web solution, social media and community involvement and Ryan Dahl's appealing personality and unique design strategy.
• K Scott asks about Tim's tutorial on learning javascript through object graphs. Tim explains the importance of understanding that javscript doesn't operate like Java and the guys talk about jQuery's impact in learning (or not learning) javascript.
• K Scott talks about a time before kids when IBM released an OS in javascript.  Or was it Sun's Lively Kernel?  Either way, it was before kids. You know what they do to one's memory.
• Kevin speaks of the early, hyper-experimental days of node and asks if the community is starting to settle down and standardize on a set of libraries.
• K Scott asks for Tim's thoughts on ECMAScript.
• Via Twitter, Jackson Harper asks about no.de, a submission by Joyent into the node knockout competition, and it's current status.
• Jon calls out Couch and Mongo and the NoSQL movement and Tim to share the node data story. 
• Scott K and K Scott talk about running Node on Windows.
• Scott K dreams of IronJS and porting node modules to the DLR.
• Jon asks how you get started with node  and Tim recommends the friendly IRC room, the friendly mailing list and suggests a newb move to San Francisco and attend the frequent meet ups.
• K Scott asks about Tim's everyday development environment and tools.
• Kevin asks about the Node.js sweet spot. Is it for basic web development or is it geared towards more complex, real-time scalability problems?  Tim discusses the perks and challenges of Node.js in any development undertaking.
• Scott K throws out the "E" word and asks about node's penetration of the enterprise.
• The show wraps with general conversation about node, Harmony and Javascript and Tim kind of misses his opportunity to pimp.

Show Links:

• Tim Caswell, @creationix
• Tim @ GitHub
• Node.js
• howtonode blog
• V8 Javascript Engine
• jsconf.eu
• wheat
• Sencha Labs
• Miguel de Icaza, @migueldeicaza
• Node Modules
• Node Knockout
• Ryan Dahl, Node
• Matt Podwysocki's Blog
• Haml-js
• CouchDB
• Step Library
• TJ Holowaychuk (visionmedia), jade, kiwi
• Dav Glass, @davglass, Node.js + YUI 3 Talk One and Talk Two @ Yahoo!
• Isaac Schlueter, npm
• Chris Williams's Blog, @voodootikigod, JSConf 2010, JSConf EU 2010
• Learning Javascript with Object Graphs
• Douglas Crockford
• Brendan Eich
• CoffeeScript, Jeremy Ashkenas
• Rhino
• SpiderMonkey
• HTML5
• ECMAScript5/Harmony
• Jackson Harper, @jacksonh
• no.de, Joyent
• Nodejitsu
• MinGW
• Ajax.org Cloud9
• Node.js Windows Port
• MacRuby
• IRC (irc.freenode.net #node.js.), developers mailing list
• Sun Lively Kernel
• Bruce Eckel
• Express
• Sinatra

Show notes compiled by Ben Griswold. Thanks!

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Herding Code 102: Tim Caswell on Node.js