Herding Code

This week Jon leads a discussion of real world development. We talk about how our development practices in our jobs and personal projects match up with the way we're "supposed to be" developing. Topics:

What are the non-negotiable practices that we always use on any code we write?

Jon isn't always Test Driven. Does that make him a bad person?

Where do code reuse and maintainability stack up when it comes to other real world priorities, like hard deadlines and short technology lifespans?

Is there a place for "forms over data" development? How about System.DraggyDroppy?

Roy Osherove's recent posts on TDD adoption

Ben's post on the project where TDD pretended to save the day

How to fail with agile

ALT.NET Podcast / Episode 1 on Continuous Improvement

Herding Code 21: Real World Development

This week we talk to Ted Leung. Ted works on dynamic languages and tools at Sun Microsystems and is a member of the Apache Software Foundation. We discussed a variety of issues, including:

Ted's wild ride through Apple, Apache, the Open Source Application Foundation, and Sun

How open source development can benefit software companies as well as the development community

How open source has worked for Apple, Sun, and IBM

Microsoft and open source

JavaFX

Chandler: what is it, what it does well, and where it disappoints

Ted's blog

Ted's post: Adobe Wants To Be The Microsoft Of The Web

Slides from Ted's OSCON talk on Open Source Community Anti-Patterns (pdf)

The Starfish and The Spider (wikipedia)

The Chandler Project

Info on Taligent (wikipedia)

Ted's old blog

Herding Code 20: Ted Leung on Open Source in the corporate world

This week Scott K leads a discussion on remote work, remote access technologies, and synchronization software:

What software and services help with remote development

The joy of being your own network admin

Source control implications (TFS, Subversion, GIT)

The social tradeoff - fewer incidental conversations, more intentional conversations

Remote access software

Synchronization software

GE moving from Google Docs to Zoho

Wired: Home Sweet Office: Telecommute Good for Business, Employees, and Planet

VisualSVN

Terminals (multi tab terminal services/remote desktop client)

Foldershare

Windows Live Mesh

Microsoft SharedView

Dropbox

Herding Code 19: Pajama Driven Development (working remote)

This week Matt Podwysocki puts the fun in functional programming with a deep dive into F#. We've heard plenty of high level discussions of F# and functional programming lately, so we tried to dig into the gory details as much as possible:

What is functional programming, and why should we care?

Types of applications that would and wouldn't benefit from F#

How F# differs from C# 3.x and Javascript

How F# is being used (games, scripting, data analysis and scrubbing, etc.)

F# pattern matching

Using F# in your C# or VB based applications today

Getting started: F# Interactive, reading the F# source, books and resources

Interaction with DLR

Functional features we'd like to see in C# and VB

Spec# and Sing#

Matt Podwysocki's blog

hubFS

Download the Microsoft F#, September 2008 Community Technology Preview

F# Developer Center

Dryad

Spec#

Singularity (Sing#)

Herding Code 18: Matthew Podwysocki on F# and Functional Programming

Books:

Expert F# - Don Syme - http://www.amazon.com/Expert-F-Experts-Voice-Net/dp/1590598504/

Foundations of F# - Robert Pickering - http://www.amazon.com/Foundations-F-Experts-Voice-Net/dp/1590597575/

F# for Scientists - Dr. Jon Harrop - http://www.amazon.com/F-Scientists-Jon-Harrop/dp/0470242116/

Blogs:

Don Syme - http://blogs.msdn.com/dsyme/default.aspx

Chris Smith (F# Tester) - http://blogs.msdn.com/chrsmith/default.aspx

Brian McNamara (F# Dev) - http://lorgonblog.spaces.live.com/

Jomo Fisher (F# Dev) - http://blogs.msdn.com/jomo_fisher/default.aspx

Andrew Kennedy (MSR) - http://blogs.msdn.com/andrewkennedy/default.aspx

Luca Bolognese (Managed Languages Principal PM) - http://blogs.msdn.com/lucabol/default.aspx

Podcasts/Videos

Dryad on .NET Rocks - http://www.dotnetrocks.com/default.aspx?showNum=378

Simon Peyton-Jones on Functional Programming and Haskell - http://se-radio.net/podcast/2008-08/episode-108-simon-peyton-jones-functional-programming-and-haskell

F# Examples

Any Colony Simulation - http://www.strangelights.com/blog/archive/2008/05/04/1613.aspx

FsTest - http://www.codeplex.com/FsTest

This week Jon leads a discussion on the new crop of browsers:

What's new in Google Chrome

Comparison of Javascript engines

What does crazy-fast Javascript mean?

Is Webkit taking over? Why's Firefox sticking with Gecko?

IE8 Compatibility Mode - Will it save us from IE6?

Is it time for the IE team to try "File/New/Browser"?

Do web standards mean anything when IE doesn't support them?

Where does Silverlight fit in?

Objective-J

Links:

The Google Chrome Comic

John Resig's Javascript Performance Rundown

Why Mozilla's sticking with Gecko

The Acid 2 Test

E4X (ECMAScript for XML)

Jon's post (circa 2005) asking when IE would support E4X

New Javascript features in versions 1.6, 1.7, and 1.8

IE8 Beta 2 Developer Toolbar

Objective-J (Objective-C for Javascript)

Dare's comparison of new browser features

IE8 Beta 2 Compatibility View

Download / Listen

Herding Code 17: Browser Roundup

This week Kevin leads a discussion on interviewing software developers:

What interview styles we find effective

What sort of questions actually help us evaluate a candidate

Why API trivia and puzzle questions don't work

Hiring mistakes we've made based on errors in our interview style

Why we don't do very well when the tables are turned and it's our turn to be interviewed

Download / Listen

Herding Code 16: Interviewing Software Developers

This week we talk with Chris Tavares, a developer on the Microsoft patterns & practices team, where he was the lead developer on Unity. He is also a virtual member of the ASP.NET MVC team, helping to design the new framework. Back in the day, he helped test out the effect of reference counting on .NET by building an experimental version of Rotor.

Links:

Chris' blog

Unity

Rotor - Reference Counting (word doc)

patterns & practices

Download / Listen

Herding Code 15: Chris Tavares

This week, we talk with Jeff Atwood (of codinghorror.com fame) about his soon to be released developer Q&A site, StackOverflow.com.

Links:

CodingHorror.com (Jeff's blog)

The StackOverflow blog

Robert Scoble's post on StackOverflow (no, it didn't make him cry)

Jeff's post about using OpenID on StackOverflow

Download / Listen

HerdingCode 14: Jeff Atwood (codinghorror.com) talks about StackOverflow

This week, we talk about the "back to basics" movement, which begs the question:  what are the basics?

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HerdingCode 13: Back To Basics (but which ones?)

This is the second half of our interview with Glenn Block. He talks about the interesting stuff he's been up to at Microsoft with Prism, Unity, and MEF (the Managed Extensibility Framework). Be sure to listen to part 1 first or Glenn's crazytalk about MEF will spin your head around.

Links:

Glenn's Prism posts - http://blogs.msdn.com/gblock/archive/tags/prism/default.aspx

Prism - www.microsoft.com/compositewpf

Unity - http://msdn.microsoft.com/unity

MEF - http://blogs.msdn.com/kcwalina/archive/2008/04/25/MEF.aspx

MEF CTP - http://code.msdn.com/MEF

Look for an article on Prism in the upcoming September issue of MSDN magazine.

Download / Listen

Episode 12: Glenn Block on Prism, Unity, and MEF (Part 2)