.NET Rocks!

Ci with SQL Server? Are you crazy? Carl and Richard talk to Ike Ellis about what it takes to get databases changes happening as smoothly as application changes. Really! Ike talks about the concept of database lifecycle management and how it is orthogonal to application lifecycle management. The tricky bit is managing the data! And to help with that, Ike discusses a great tool chain of source code management, testing and deployment tools that work with databases like SQL Server and integrate into your usual development lifecycle toolchain as well. This is some next level DevOps thinking!

Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

So what about building apps with Unity 3D? Carl and Richard talk to Brice Fernandes about what it takes to build using this cross-platform 3D framework. Brice talks about the important elements of gaming, including the art, user experience and game play itself. You need all three to some degree, great games do all of them well. The conversation digs into the variety of styles of games and the strengths and weaknesses of Unity in those different roles. Could you build things other than games in Unity? Yes, but would you want to?

Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Ready to React? Carl and Richard talk to Cory House about his experiences building applications using Facebook's React library. The conversation digs into the philosophical differences to web page design that React is focused on - and how they upset a lot of folks! Cory describes React as an approach for building UI components, which means combining HTML, Javascript and even CSS together! He also digs into the challenges of assembling the right tool stack - React is not an all-in-one library, you have some choices to make. The conversation also digs into Flux and it's alternatives as approaches to your overall web page architecture. Lots of options!

Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

So what's it like to build web apps with ASP.NET 5? Carl and Richard talk to Rick Strahl about his experiences with the rapidly evolving open source project that is ASP.NET today. As Rick says, it might be called a beta, but it is acting more like an alpha at this point - new features and breaking changes are occurring regularly as the toolset develops. On the plus side is the server-side cross-platform of running on Linux and OSX, plus a design that is far more focused on what modern web development looks like. The original ASP.NET is nearly fifteen years old, this is an awesome update!

Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Are you a social developer? Carl and Richard talk to Jeremy Clark about his experiences trying to draw developers at events out of their shells. In the end, especially at an event, people want to talk - you just have to get the conversation started. The conversation turns to skills that can benefit your career, including public speaking and writing. Being able to communicate effectively in various forms can help your whole team be more productive by getting people on the same page of an idea. It's a skill like any other, and well worth cultivating!

Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Web development is moving fast, and John Papa is in the race! Carl and Richard talk to John about his current views on Angular and other SPA frameworks - coming to Anglebrackets this fall! The conversation dives into the inevitable comparisons between Angular, Aurelia and others - but there is no one right way. Then John talks about the new Visual Studio Code, which really hasn't got much to do with Visual Studio at all - it's an editor, rather than an IDE. This leads to a conversation about development work styles in general - do you like having everything all in one place in the form of Visual Studio, or happier with a more roll-your-own solution with separate editors, debuggers, etc. So many choices for development today!

Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Roslyn is out - and it's awesome! Carl and Richard talk to Dustin Campbell about his work building Roslyn over eight years. Eight years is an awful long time, but when you're rebuilding a codebase from scratch, it's hardly unprecedented. Dustin talks about some the decisions made in the re-engineering of C#, including whether or not to keep in the bugs! Taking Roslyn open source is also a huge aspect of Roslyn and it's impact on the rest of the open source products Microsoft is making including the new ASP.NET. Great insight from someone who's been there!

Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

What will it take to send humans to Mars and back? And what about actually colonizing Mars? Time to Geek Out! Richard talks through the history of manned missions to Mars, starting with Werner Von Braun's own Das MarsProjekt. The story evolves with Robert Zubrin's Case for Mars and the idea (and technology) behind In-Situ Resource Utilization - refuelling ships on Mars by making methane. That's the beginning elements of humans actually living on Mars. Elon Musk talks about creating an independent colony on Mars, requiring one million colonists. What would it take to make that possible?

Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

How do you make a mobile web site go fast? The same way you make any web site go fast! Carl and Richard talk to Chris Love about his strategies for making fast web pages. The conversation starts out discussing how mobile apps are even more performance sensitive than regular web pages, because mobile devices typically have less bandwidth and more limited processing power for rendering. Chris points to one of his favorite tools - WebPageTest, as a great starting point for knowing where to look for performance gains on web pages. This leads to discussion on image compression, CDNs, time-to-live settings and more!

Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Unifying your Git GUI experience! Carl and Richard talk to Amy Palamountain from GitHub about how GitHub Desktop is bringing together the separate GitHub for Mac and GitHub for Windows products. Amy explains that in the past, there were separate GUI clients for Mac and Windows, with separate feature sets and styles. Bringing the codebase together keeps the releases more consistent, but it also represents an interesting unified coding approach using technologies like Reactive Extensions and other cross-platform tooling. Check it out!

Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations