In this Episode we talk to Ted Neward. Since Ted is active in the .NET and Java universes, we started out by discussing some of the differences between the two platforms. The main discussion, however, focussed on new features in the C# 3.0 language. These include LINQ (language-integrated query). A very interesting discussion about extension methods, lamda expression, typing (dynamic, duck, compiler) and other language "tricks" follows. We also visited the topic of language development on the .NET and Java platforms in general, also looking at topics such as concurrency and the Scala language.

Ruby has been getting more and more attention by the developer community over the last couple of years. Nevertheless Ruby as language and as a plattform is not too widespread. Most developers don't know people who have actually done commercial Ruby projects. Therefore it is sometimes hard to judge if Ruby is just a hype topic or if Ruby can be used for serious projects today. In this episode Alexander speaks with Thomas Quas about a commercial Ruby project Thomas finished a while ago. Thomas shares his insights and practical experiences with Ruby doing a project under strong time pressure. As Thomas has many years experience doing Java projects we also do some high level comparisons between both platforms.

This is the first part of a series of Concurrency episodes. In this part Alex and Michael motivate and introduce the topic. We explain fundamental terms, such as thread, process, or mutex and dicuss typical challenges, such as deadlocks and race conditions.

In this Episode we have the pleasure of talking with Gregor Kiczales. Gregor is one of the fathers of aspect-oriented programming (AOP). Today he is a professor of computer science at the University of British Columbia. Back in his days at Xerox Parc, he and a number of other people worked on the early forms of AOP as well as on some of its forerunners, such as meta object protocols. In this interview, we talk about a number of interesting topics, such as the history of AOP, the relationship of AO to interceptors, the industry acceptance of AOP, early aspects (i.e. using AO in development phased before implementation) as well as adoption strategies for AOP.

This is the second part of the remoting infrastructures discussion started in Episode 9. We take a look at how remoting infrastructures such as CORBA, .NET Remoting or Web Services work internally. This includes the low level details of the transport layer, marshalling, client proxies as well as interceptors and asynchronous communication. At the end, Michael will explain how all this relates to CORBA and Markus will map the concepts to .NET remoting. We don't have additional links in these show notes since all the relevant links had been posted for Episode 9 already.

This Episode as well as the next one take a look at remoting infrastructures such as CORBA, .NET Remoting or Webservices. In this first part we will take a look at why remote communication is necessary in the first place, what remoting middleware can do for you as well as which other middleware technologies exist in addition to OO-RPC systems, such as messaging middleware. Finally, we conclude with a brief overview of what the broker pattern can do for us in the context of remoting middleware.

Eric Evans is the author of the well known Domain-Driven Design book. In his day job he works as a consultant and coach for his own company, Domain Language. In this interview, Eric talks about the essential building blocks of domain-driven design as well as about a set of best practices on how to address complex projects. In a third part, he elaborates on the relationship of domain-driven design and MDSD/MDA.

This week, Arno and Markus take a look at error handling at the architectural level. They discuss the different kinds of errors, the groups of people who need to know about them and proven high-level approaches. Later episodes will investigate more technical aspects of error handling, such as idioms for using exceptions or a discussion of checked vs. unchecked exceptions.

Tips on introducing MDSD into projects and adapting the development process, the return on investment for MDSD, the relationship between MDSD and Agile software development, and offshoring in the context of MDSD.

This podcast episode explores model-driven software development (MDSD) and its benefits, including formal models, modeling languages, and meta models. It also discusses the potential for infrastructure improvements to reduce the need for MDSD, as well as the distinction between MDSD and Model-Driven Architecture (MDA). The episode concludes with an overview of various tools and approaches in MDSD, including the use of UML tools and Eclipse-based tools for model transformations and building graphical editors.