.NET Rocks!

Is there more to logging? Yes! While at NDC in Oslo, Carl and Richard talked to Nicholas Blumhardt about his long running logging project called Serilog. Calling back to the earlier .NET Rocks episode on Serilog (2014!), Nicholas talks about how logging is one of those 'bicycle shed' problems - it looks simple on the surface, but the deeper you go, the more you find complexity that needs to be managed well. Don't do it yourself, use a great library like Serilog! The core implementation is simple, but a great abstraction allows you to push those logs wherever you need them, whether that be text files, databases or the huge diversity of existing log tracking.

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MS Build is cooler than you think! While at NDC Oslo, Carl and Richard sat down with Daniel Plaisted to talk about the latest version of MS Build. But first, a quick conversation about the situation around the reversion back from project files using JSON rather than the traditional XML-driven MS Build files. The good news is that more of what made the JSON project files great is showing up in the MS Build files! The conversation also digs into building complex pipelines for MS Build and more importantly - how to debug them! Structured logging to the rescue!

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Are you ready to go into the cosmos? With apologies to the late Carl Sagan, let's talk about Cosmos DB! While at NDC in Oslo, Carl and Richard talked to Josh Lane about Cosmos DB which was first announced at the Build conference. Cosmos DB is a globally distributed multi-modal database. As of the recording it supported several flavors of document storage (including MongoDB) as well as key-value, graph and columnar stores. Josh digs into the various scenarios for an ultra-fast distributed storage solution like this - a great example of platform-as-a-service!

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It's summer in the northern hemisphere, are you ready to get hacking? Carl and Richard chat with the new executive director of the .NET Foundation, Jon Galloway. The conversation starts out talking about the Foundation itself, why it exists and what it does for the .NET open source community as a whole. The Foundation is where .NET Core, C# and more all live, as well as many awesome third party projects. Then to the Summer Hackfest, where the Foundation is providing support to get developers working on open source projects - if you've got one in mind, check out the links below and make a submission!

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How do you make your APIs accessible to everyone? While at NDC is Oslo, Carl and Richard talk to Steven Faulkner about GraphQL, a Facebook open source project for exposing your APIs in a type-safe JSON-like approach. Steven talks about the advantages of having an abstraction over your APIs, allowing you to manage new versions of your API painlessly as well as packaging up multiple calls - saving some round trips! While the reference implementation is React and Javascript focused, the community has built support for many languages including C# - check it out!

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Core 2 is coming - are you ready? While at NDC Oslo, Carl and Richard talked to the amazing duo of Damian Edwards and David Fowler about the rapidly approaching release of Core 2. Expectations are huge, but Damian and David are confident that Core 2 will deliver. The conversation dives into the meta side of software development - what didn't make it into Core 2, what had to be pushed to the next version, and what will have to be added at the last minute. Lots of laughs and enthusiasm as the open source reality of .NET is coming true!

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The father of C# and TypeScript drops by for a visit! While at Build in Seattle, Carl and Richard talked to the one-and-only Anders Hejlsberg about his work on C# and more recently, TypeScript. Anders in his inevitable style talks through why languages work the way they do, the evolution of both C# and JavaScript, and the role that TypeScript has to play in making web development a better place. Great words from the legend!

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How are containers coming along in the Windows world? Carl and Richard talk to Steve Lasker about his work making containers easy to use from within Visual Studio. Most work on containers has been around Linux, but when Windows Server 2016 shipped, Windows containers became real. Should you be using containers in your all-Windows world? Steve talks about the advantages and challenges, it's not all simple, but it is very powerful and worth a look!

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After years of waning, .NET is on the rise - is it time for a renaissance? Ian Cooper says yes! The first of the NDC Oslo shows for 2017 starts out focused on a blog post that Ian published in February 2017 calling for a .NET Renaissance, and what it takes for it to come true. The move to open source has helped a lot, as it opens the door to what people really look for in a thriving community - rather than being a product created by Microsoft, it is a set of tools supporting by Microsoft but with direct community involvement. There's a lot going right, it's time for a renaissance!

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Ready to get fluent? While at the Build conference in Seattle, Carl and Richard talked to James Clarke about the Fluent Design System. Fluent represents the next generation of Windows UI elements, as part of the continuous updating process that Windows 10 is under going these days. James talks about how you can start to experiment with the latest Fluent bits and provide feedback directly to the team as the features evolve. Microsoft is implementing Fluent against Windows and the Microsoft Store, and you can be part of those experiments too - check it out!

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