.NET Rocks!

Carl and Richard chat with Brian Randell about the latest version of Team Foundation Server and it's ability to support a DevOps practice in your organization. The conversation starts off with Brian's thoughts on DevOps in general, focusing on automation of deployment and package management. Brian also talks about the role of the cloud in building software fast, as well as the challenges around instrumentation in production. While the tools are still evolving, Microsoft is making some serious strides - you should check them out!

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Carl and Richard welcome coffee roaster Hugh Griffin to chat about liquid sleep, otherwise known as coffee. Coffee has a *ahem* rich history, and while we know what we like, many of us don't know our blonde from our Sumatra from our Colombian. So pour a cup and listen up!

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While at DevIntersection in Orlando, Florida, Carl and Richard chat with Douglas Crockford about the better parts of JavaScript. Douglas wrote JavaScript the Good Parts back in 2008 and was a key influencer in making JavaScript the important language it has become. The conversation digs into the strengths and weaknesses of JavaScript and how it is evolving. Douglas also talks a bit about JSON and the wonders of not recreating the wheel. Great thinking from one of the important minds of the Web today!

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Carl and Richard chat with Christian Weyer about his experiences working with cloud technologies in Germany. The conversation starts out pretty grim, digging into how the NSA revelations have chilled interest in cloud technology because of security and privacy concerns. Christian talks about how the technology of Azure is more compelling than ever, but customers just aren't willing to use it. This leads to a conversation about Windows Azure Pack for Windows Server, which brings many Azure technologies to your own internal networks. There's a number of different ways to use Windows Azure Pack, including as a self-service portal to provide testing infrastructure for developers - talk to your ops folks and try it out!

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Carl and Richard chat with Mary Jo Foley about her impressions at Build. The Build conference in San Francisco had six hours worth of keynotes including the first keynote given by new CEO Satya Nadella. MJ talks about what she saw as most important at Build, including Windows 8.1 Update, Phone 8.1, the Internet of Things and more! Ultimately, the conversation focuses in on how Microsoft is changing and what MJ is looking forward to for Microsoft in 2014.

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While at DevIntersection in Orlando, Carl and Richard talk to Billy Hollis about WPF. Having established that WPF is not dead a few weeks back at Build, Billy admits that he's never stopped developing for it. His work is all about client applications, and HTML just won't do. The discussion digs deep into user interaction patterns that WPF is strong at and how user interfaces and interactions continue to evolve. Touch is not the end of the road!

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Carl and Richard talk to Francesco Balena about migrating VB6 applications to .NET. Yes, that's still happening! With Microsoft ending support for Windows XP in April 2014, folks that have been hanging onto old platforms and applications are taking another look at migrating. Francesco makes an amazing tool called VB Migration Partner that analyzes VB6 apps to identify what parts of an application can be converted into VB.NET (or C#) and what parts need to be rewritten. While migration is never simple, Francesco provides great advice on how to make it possible. Still got some VB6 in your life?

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Carl and Richard chat with James Montemagno about his experiences building Xamarin applications. But first, a little history, James first getting involved in mobile development, finding Xamarin, culminating with being hired by Xamarin and going on the road trip with .NET Rocks! James talks about the kinds of apps he's been building using the tools, how he organizes his projects for cross-platform development, what's in his toolbox and what he's adding to the community-at-large to help developers be successful.

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Carl and Richard talk to Udi Dahan about the state of NServiceBus. NServiceBus is Udi's on-going development effort to make the development and maintenance of complex, distributed systems easier. The conversation digs into how developers fall into the N+1 trap of adding more and more interactions between different applications until the system becomes unmanageable - or force the interaction to take place at the very back end of the system, like the database, leading to slow interactions and complexity in the database that shouldn't be there. Whether you use NServiceBus or not, Udi's thinking on bus-based application design will open your eyes!

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Carl and Richard talk to Tim Thomas about his thoughts around holistic design. And Tim means it - thinking about all levels of design, not just the UI, but how the whole application goes together. The conversation digs into the debate around skeuomorphism and how technology users themselves are evolving. Lots of broad thinking about the state of technology and how to best interact with your users to inspire and delight!

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