.NET Rocks!

There are software design patterns and anti-patterns, but does the same hold true for business? Carl and Richard talk to Steve Smith about business anti-patterns, that is, practices and approaches to business that while they may appear to be useful on the surface, are actually quite harmful. While the problem tends to be around development, since it's often not understood by business, many of these anti-patterns affect all aspects of a business.

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What the heck is a Progressive Web App? Carl and Richard talk to Kirupa Chinnathambi about his experiences building at the edge of the modern web with Progressive Web Apps (PWAs). PWAs are trying to bridge the gap between traditional applications and web applications, starting with keeping a web app functional when there is an interruption in Internet connection. But it's more than that - how do you appear as an icon on a desktop or app surface, provide notifications and otherwise look and act like every other kind of application? Check it out!

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How hard is it to build a search engine? Carl and Richard talk to Anthony Brown about his efforts to build his own search engine using Azure and F#. The conversation starts out with the question "Why?" which quickly turns into an indictment of the modern search engine, which, while useful, is bothered by the necessities of business with advertising and gaming of the system. Anthony talks about getting effective at exploring web pages for meaningful content using the ability of F# to write intelligent, tolerant parsing. Azure Search plays a huge role in taking that data and indexing in a way that makes it fast. Lots of great thinking about how these complex problems get solved!

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The choices for SQL Server continue to expand! With last week's announcements at Connect, SQL Server is coming to Linux in a big way. What does that mean for the average consumer of SQL Server? Tony talks about the on-going evolution of the product to store data in lots of different ways, not just relational. And on top of that, the latest SQL Server is great at taking relational data and making it available in super-fast and efficient ways. There are more SQL choices than every before!

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What does it take to make a really great UI? Carl and Richard talk to Mark Miller about his latest work on helping people build the best possible UI. Mark has developed an amazing course teaching all of the details of making a great UI, directly connecting it to how humans see, perceive and interact with technology. Color, contrast, hue and intensity all affect perception of information on the screen, and Mark has organized every bit of it with awesome examples to help you make a really great UI. Check it out!

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.NET used to be all about Windows - but it's not anymore! How do you market something so diverse? Carl and Richard talk to Beth Massi about her new role as the Marketing Manager for .NET. Today .NET runs on all sorts of platforms, and you can develop .NET code on multiple platforms as well. Beth talks about reaching out to the new audiences that may have never considered .NET before because of it's former focus on Windows. Now .NET runs everywhere, on all sorts of devices, and into even more operating systems. Where would you like your code to run?

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So many amazing things announced at Connect! Carl and Richard talk to Scott Hunter about his favorite bits of Connect, including a ton of important announcements including new support in Visual Studio for containers, cool new integration with SQL Server 2016, the on-going evolution of .NET Core and it's tooling and so much more! You've seen the keynotes, now listen to a deeper dive with one of the key people behind .NET today!

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Functional programming for mobile development? Carl and Richard talk to Scott Nimrod about his experiences building mobile apps with Xamarin using F# as the primary programming language. Does functional make sense for mobile development? Sure, but F# can handle OOP problems too. Scott calls it "functional first". The conversation digs into the power of staying within Visual Studio - tools that you know and understand! But there are also features in Visual Studio that don't necessarily work well (or the same) with F#, so it does take time to learn your way around your new language. But worth it!

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How do you get to coding quickly with the new web development frameworks? Carl and Richard talk to Steve Sanderson about JavaScriptServices, which is actually a set of templates for helping you set up your development environment for Angular, Knockout, React and/or React-Redux. Steve talks about all the bits and pieces necessary to actually get to your code-run-debug cycle of development. Along the way he mentions a number of tools involved to make life easier, including Yeoman and WebPack. The conversation also turns to this diversity of client development stacks and the philosophy behind them - more great thinking by a web leader!

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DC Lighting real, and Richard has installed it! Time for a Geek Out! You've heard bits and pieces about the flood in Richard's basement and the year long effort to get it restored and renovated - including DC LED lighting! Richard discusses his experience getting the LumenCache lighting system working in his basement, along with the various kinds of lights possible: new dedicated LED light fixtures, refitting existing light fixtures with LED and custom making LED lighting with aluminum extrusions and LED light tape. Power efficient, cool running and cool looking - this is what modern lighting should be!

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