.NET Rocks!

Time for a Xamarin update - things are moving fast! Carl and Richard talk to James Montemagno, now a Microsoft employee since the Xamarin acquisition, about the on-going evolution of the Xamarin tools for building mobile and UWP applications. The conversation starts out with a comment about folks coming to mobile development for the first time: Less rocket science, more building data-over-forms apps for internal use. James dives into the expanding set of capabilities that Xamarin Forms has to make folks more productive building mobile apps that have to work across iOS, Android and UWP. And testing is getting better too - check it out!

Time for a Xamarin update - things are moving fast! Carl and Richard talk to James Montemagno, now a Microsoft employee since the Xamarin acquisition, about the on-going evolution of the Xamarin tools for building mobile and UWP applications. The conversation starts out with a comment about folks coming to mobile development for the first time: Less rocket science, more building data-over-forms apps for internal use. James dives into the expanding set of capabilities that Xamarin Forms has to make folks more productive building mobile apps that have to work across iOS, Android and UWP. And testing is getting better too - check it out!

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

On September 27, 2016, Elon Musk held a press conference that was more like a rock concert to an excited crowd at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico. At the event, he announced the Interplanetary Transport System (ITS) and a plan to move a million people to Mars by 2050. How viable is this? Time for a Geek Out! Richard reviews the design of the Raptor engine, the ITS booster and spacecraft and the entire plan. This rocket is many times more powerful than anything ever built before. Will it work? What could you do with a rocket with this much power beyond the mission to Mars? Lots of possibilities!

On September 27, 2016, Elon Musk held a press conference that was more like a rock concert to an excited crowd at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico. At the event, he announced the Interplanetary Transport System (ITS) and a plan to move a million people to Mars by 2050. How viable is this? Time for a Geek Out! Richard reviews the design of the Raptor engine, the ITS booster and spacecraft and the entire plan. This rocket is many times more powerful than anything ever built before. Will it work? What could you do with a rocket with this much power beyond the mission to Mars? Lots of possibilities!

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

What does it take to move an existing application to Docker? Carl and Richard talk to Elton Stoneman about his experiences migrating applications to Docker. The power of containers is obvious, with the ability to run common configuration across development, QA and production. But how do you retrofit your existing application into that new model? It's not a simple lift and shift - Elton talks about breaking down your application into the relevant pieces that make sense for individual containers. Part of your app can live in VMs and part in containers. The process inevitably will make your application better by drilling into what is really important!

What does it take to move an existing application to Docker? Carl and Richard talk to Elton Stoneman about his experiences migrating applications to Docker. The power of containers is obvious, with the ability to run common configuration across development, QA and production. But how do you retrofit your existing application into that new model? It's not a simple lift and shift - Elton talks about breaking down your application into the relevant pieces that make sense for individual containers. Part of your app can live in VMs and part in containers. The process inevitably will make your application better by drilling into what is really important!

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

Serverless is the new hot buzzword - but what does it really mean? Carl and Richard talk to Ben Godwin about his work building serverless applications - no servers, but lots of services! Ben talks about Amazon Lambda, which is similar to Azure Functions. Both these environments allow individual bits of code to run within them, written in a variety of languages, but often that language is Javascript in the Node style. The advantage of this approach is eliminating a lot of the ceremony around your services set, but at the price of some new working patterns and organization. Ben also mentions the Serverless Framework as a great free tool for getting started!

Serverless is the new hot buzzword - but what does it really mean? Carl and Richard talk to Ben Godwin about his work building serverless applications - no servers, but lots of services! Ben talks about Amazon Lambda, which is similar to Azure Functions. Both these environments allow individual bits of code to run within them, written in a variety of languages, but often that language is Javascript in the Node style. The advantage of this approach is eliminating a lot of the ceremony around your services set, but at the price of some new working patterns and organization. Ben also mentions the Serverless Framework as a great free tool for getting started!

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

Are user groups obsolete? Carl and Richard talk to Blake Helms and Robb Schiefer about their experiences starting and growing a .NET Meetup Group in Birmingham, Alabama. Modernizing on the user group with Meetup doesn't change the fundamentals - it takes dedicated volunteers, a good location, great speakers and consistency to make a group grow. Are meetups still worth your time? Definitely! The conversation turns to the power of networking: Not TCP/IP, but actually meeting and talking with people that share a common interest. If there's a Meetup group in your area, go to it! If not, start one - Blake and Robb have great suggestions on getting started!

Are user groups obsolete? Carl and Richard talk to Blake Helms and Robb Schiefer about their experiences starting and growing a .NET Meetup Group in Birmingham, Alabama. Modernizing on the user group with Meetup doesn't change the fundamentals - it takes dedicated volunteers, a good location, great speakers and consistency to make a group grow. Are meetups still worth your time? Definitely! The conversation turns to the power of networking: Not TCP/IP, but actually meeting and talking with people that share a common interest. If there's a Meetup group in your area, go to it! If not, start one - Blake and Robb have great suggestions on getting started!

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