The Static Void Podcast

The Static Void Podcast

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The Static Void Podcast episodes

  • Specialist vs. Generalist: Which are you?
    In this episode, Jess, Chris, and Todd try to figure out what it means to be a specialist vs. a generalist in software development. Does being a generalist help you be a better specialist... or vice-versa? Can you even be one without the other? Join us as we try (and fail?) to answer these questions and manage to get an episode under one hour long.
    52 min
  • TypeScript: JavaScript Evolved or Devolved?
    It's TypeScript battle royale style as Jess, Chris and Todd discuss the emergence of TypeScript, ECMAScript 6 and the growth of JavaScript transpilers. Hear Jess promote the benefits of TypeScript for improving the quality of JavaScript and developer productivity. Meanwhile, Chris and Todd take on the competing argument that TypeScript is just syntactic sugar and that add classes and types on top of pure JavaScript can end up being a leaky abstraction that does more harm than good.

    Mentioned in the show:

    • Introduction to TypeScript: Jess’s free TypeScript training video
    • Overview of TypeScript
    • ECMA Script 6 (or
      • SCMA Script 2015)
    • ECMA Script 6 Browser Compatibility Table
    • Angular2 (is built with TypeScript)
    • ES6 Arrow Functions
    • npm – The nodejs package manager, which has also become a go to for more than just nodejs development

      • Not mentioned in the show, but worth checking out:

      • Essential TypeScript by Jess Chadwick - free TypeScript eBook
        • 1 hr 17 min
      • Connect(); Response Show

        In this episode Jess, Chris and Todd discuss the big announcements from the Microsoft Connect(); conference on November 18 and 19. Hear their thoughts and reactions to the changes in Visual Studio 2015, the beta release of Visual Studio Code, the announcement of Visual Studio Dev Essentials, the RC release of ASP.NET 5 and all the new exciting things coming down the pike for Azure and the rest of the Microsoft Server Stack.

        Mentioned in the show:

        • Microsoft Connect() Videos
        • News and Announcements from Connect() 2015
        • Visual Studio Code becomes beta and open source
        • ASP.NET 5 Release Candidate 1
        • Scott Hanselman's Connect() 2015 recap
        • Visual Studio Dev Essentials
        • Microsoft Graph
        • Hockey App

          • 1 hr 6 min
        • The .NET Developer's Guide to Package Managers
          NuGet burst onto the .NET developer scene in 2010 and took Visual Studio development by storm.  We .NET developers were able to easily add key Microsoft dependencies like Entity Framework, ASP.NET Web API, or client-side libraries like jQuery and bootstrap.
          But now new package management is front and center in Visual Studio 2015.  And there's nothing stopping you from using them in your development toolbelt today.  Where does this leave NuGet?  And what will you need to get up to speed on now?
          Chris, Todd, and Jess talk about what NuGet meant to developers until now, and introduce NPM and Bower and their integration into the ASP.NET 5 beta templates.  By no means is it the whole list of package managers you can use, but they will be front and center for web developers who live in Visual Studio.
          Mentioned in the show:
          • Introduction to TypeScript: Jess's free TypeScript training video
          • Bower - Home page for this web development package manager
          • npm - The nodejs package manager, which has also become a go to for more than just nodejs development.
          • Visual Studio - Bower: Modern Tools for Web Development: Adam Tuliper dives into Bower usage in Visual Studio web projects.
          • Manage client-side packages with Bower - Direct from the ASP.NET 5 documentation.
          • Introducing Gulp, Grunt, Bower, and npm support for Visual Studio: Scott Hanselman makes the case for using more than just NuGet and introduces the Visual Studio integration for these tools (we didn't discuss task runners in this episode).
          • Why use Bower when there is NPM? - Mattias Petter Johansson makes the case that Browserify and NPM are the way to go (we didn't discuss browserify but we did discuss whether Bower is really necessary).
            • Mattias also has a fun YouTube channel discussing how to become a better programmer.
            • Migrating to Automatic Package Restore - Stop using "Enable Package Restore" in your Visual Studio solutions.  The naming is subtle, but NuGet has a simpler package restore methodology, and you have to edit your project files to get rid of the "old" way.
              • 53 min
            • Null: The Billion Dollar Mistake
              If you've done any .NET development at all, you've undoubtedly experience the dreaded NullReferenceException. In Java, it's the NullPointException. No matter what you call it, interacting with a null reference in any language can spell disaster for your application. Join Jess, Chris, and Todd as they chat about null values, some of the ways that they deal with them in their own applications, and how they've come to live relatively peacefully in a world full of nulls.
              If you enjoyed the episode you may also enjoy these related links:
              • C# Null Propagation Operator
              • Making null checks easy with the custom ".With()" extension method
              • Greg Young talks about .NET's Code Contracts library
              • What the users of functional languages think about all this
                • 55 min
              • Developers Guide to Consulting
                So you want to be a software development consultant? Or, are you just trying to figure out what it means when people say "1099" and "Corp-to-Corp"?
                Join Jess, Todd, and Chris as they talk about the various aspects of technology consulting and some of the things that you need to think about when considering a switch from employee to consultant.
                1 hr 13 min
              • SPA Development Tools
                In this episode, Todd, Chris, and Jess discuss the various tools that they use for building Single-Page Applications, and client-side web applications in general.
                Here are the links to the various tools mentioned in the show:
                • System Utilities
                  • Microsoft Monitoring Agent - server-side production profiling tool
                  • Chocolatey - Automated installation manager
                  • Console2 - A better Windows console
                  • Project templates & Package Managers
                    • Hot Towel - Powerful SPA project template
                    • Yeoman - Command line project automation tool
                    • NuGet - Integrated Visual Studio package manager
                    • Node / NPM (Node Package Manager)
                    • Bower - client-side package manager
                    • JavaScript Test Runners
                      • Chutzpah - Integrated Visual Studio JavaScript unit test runner
                      • Karma - command line JavaScript unit test runner
                      • Mocha - command line JavaScript unit test runner
                      • Lightweight Code Editors
                        • Atom - Powerful text editor for coding
                        • Sublime Text - Powerful text editor for coding
                        • Visual Studio Code - Powerful text editor for coding
                        • Notepad++ - Powerful text editor for coding
                          • 1 hr 17 min

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