.NET Rocks!

Ready for JavaScript on the server? Carl and Richard talk to David Gatti about building the backend with nodeJS. The conversation starts out with why to use node - its not always an obvious answer! The philosophy of node moves away from the "do everything" web server of IIS and into turning on just what you want. With node you specify where you're listening and what you're listening for, and can construct exactly what your code should return as well. Templates make life easier - want to return a web page? There's a template for that. Just a service? You can do that too. David also talks about deploying through Heroku and automating the updating of your site with just a check in from GitHub!

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Have you checked out Microsoft Band? Carl and Richard talk to Charles Stacy Harris about his work building Band apps. The Band is stuffed with sensors, strapped to your wrist, which opens the door to a ton of interesting information. Stacy talks about several programming options for the Band, including the web tiles that will essentially push an RSS feed onto the band. There's also SDK development options for the Microsoft Health app that communicates with the Band and works with iPhone, Android and Windows Phone. You can work natively or with cross-platform tools like Xamarin, so there are lots of choices - The Band is a great wearable device to explore!

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Time for an Aurelia update from the man himself! Carl and Richard talk to Rob Eisenberg about the latest developments in the Aurelia project - and what a year it has been! Rob talks about the architectural decisions in Aurelia that allowed for rapid development and an ability to just grab the bits of the library that you need. Lean-ness is the new mantra in JavaScript libraries, and as few custom tags as possible. Aurelia has focused on efficiency from the outset, and Rob is taking it even further. The conversation also dives into the more component-based approaches to web development including ReactJS - there's more to come!

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When do you choose Cordova over Xamarin and vice versa? Carl and Richard chat with Brian Noyes, who has built apps on both stacks and talks through the details! The conversation starts out on Cordova, which takes a bit of effort to assemble a coherent code-build-debug cycle from. As Brian says, your productivity is directly measureable by how quickly you can get around that cycle, and he's worked hard to optimize it. Things are a bit more integrated on the Xamarin side, and with the recent announcements, a lot more financially feasible also - the hybrid mobile development space is heating up!

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Microsoft as a Service? Carl and Richard chat with Jeremy Thake about all the goodness coming from the Office 365 team and beyond in the Azure space. Jeremy describes the new Microsoft Graph, which literally provides REST calls to Microsoft related products, starting with Office. The story continues with web callbacks to provide event driven ways to capture activity within accounts on services like OneDrive and the whole Skype Developer SDK so that you can embed Skype functionality into your apps. There's a lot of moving parts here, but the potential is to make it much easier to build the modern mashup of various Microsoft products - more to come!

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Microsoft buys Xamarin! While at Build, Carl and Richard chatted with Nat Friedman and Miguel de Icaza about what the acquisition of Xamarin means. The big news is that the Xamarin tools for making iOS and Android apps are now part of Visual Studio - all versions, right down to the Community Edition. And there's more (of course), so have a listen. Miguel digs into what this means for the average .NET developer going forward: .NET now runs everywhere you could possibly want to run code, and maybe a few spots you've never thought of. It's true, .NET really does rock!

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MSDeploy can do it! Carl and Richard talk to Robert Schiefer about his experiences using MSDeploy to automate complex deployment solutions throughout the enterprise. Robert talks about the fact that MSDeploy is part of WebDeploy and includes a ton of features that are not always obvious - doing far more than just installing software, it can also modify security settings, update registry keys, even handle the deployment of databases using DACPAC. The documentation isn't great, but if you dig around, there's lots of capability there. If you're looking to save money, spend a little time understanding MSDeploy better!

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What do you know about genetically modified foods? Time for a Geek Out! Richard starts with some history as usual - humans have been modifying food plants for 12000 years! With selective and cross-breeding, humankind has managed to create and modify domesticated plants and animals in remarkable, and sometimes shocking ways. So genetic modification has been going on a long time now - why is there so much concern today? Technology has brought much more precision and options to genetic modification, and that raises all sorts of questions on what sort of changes make sense, and what should be done. There's lots of hype around GMO - what are the facts?

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Ready for the new Angular? Carl and Richard talk to John Papa about Angular 2 being in beta. And really in beta - John mentions that for the past few betas, updating his samples have only taken a few minutes, not hours. The conversation also dives into the controversy around the significant differences between Angular 1 and 2, although John sees it as simplification. A lot of ceremony that existed in Angular 1 has been eliminated, or implemented as part of standard tags. The role of Reactive Extensions for Javascript is significant as well: Everything is becoming asynchronous!

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How is C# 7 coming along? Carl and Richard talk to Kathleen Dollard about her involvement in the very public process that is the open source development of the next C#. Kathleen talks about how there are issues in the GitHub repository for Roslyn that are actually design notes - summaries of the current thinking on the new features coming. Where things get really exciting is the comments on those notes. If you're interested in being part of what goes into C# 7, that's where decisions are being made. Kathleen digs into some of the new features coming, including local functions, sophisticated pattern matching and more... be part of the discussion!

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