SummaryMartine and Michael Dowden talk about the importance of teaching children to program and how to get started.DetailsWho they are, what they do. The benefits of programming, when to start, Robot Turtles, Scratch and Scratch Junior, moving to a traditional programming language. Helping the child move to the next step, keep their interests in mind; have a project in mind. Minecraft Mods, Boxels, Advent of Code, Hour of Code, Kano, Microbit. Books. Teaching their own children. What if no one in the household is a programmer - Hour of Code, Code Academy, board games, Human Resources Machine (phone game). Learning software on a phone or tablet, CodePen, using a Bluetooth keyboard with a phone or tablet. How to get/keep children interested; inspiring children, especially girls. Explaining what programming makes possible. Start with something they know, not a black screen. How to find Michael and Martine, downloading their book.Full show notes and all links

SummaryDr. Mads Torgersen, lead designer of C# at Microsoft answers listener questions.DetailsHow ideas for C# become features, other languages, user requests, user problems. Taking over from Anders Hejlsberg, a quiet change. Move to open source, championing new features. UI plans for C#. Extensions everything and shapes, keeping up with other languages. Who develops C#. How Mads stays so good looking. How to try C# 9.Full show notes

SummaryDr. Mads Torgersen, lead designer of C# at Microsoft, talks to me about the upcoming release of C# 9.DetailsWho he is, what he does, working on C# full time, who he works with. The design process. Doctor Mads, PhD. Init only properties. Records, immutability and a rabbit hole. Top level programs - simpler main programs; making programs simpler. The legacy changes or not making changes .NET. Breaking changes; an example.Full show notes

SummaryBill Wagner of Microsoft talks about the goal of one .NET.DetailsWho he is, what he does. What .NET 5 is, what is happening .NET Framework. How .NET 5 relates to .NET Core. Migrating to .NET 5. Performance improvements. What happens to Entity Framework. Framework to .NET 5 - reasons to stay, reasons to move; Windows specific features. What happens to .NET Standard. What happens to Xamarin. Long term service schedule. Release at .Net Conf. New features. A little about C# 9; what's new in C# 9, immutable objects. Release cycles. Attracting younger people to .NET. System.Devices, System.Maui. UWP support. Support for F# and Visual BasicFull show notes

Summary Dylan Beattie talks about the present and future of tech conferences, how organizers, presenters and attendees are adapting. Details Who he is, what he does, and what he is doing during the recording! Conferences that are going on now. Participating as an attendee, dedicating time, trying to work; more available to people who can't travel. Participating as a speaker, some of the incentives are gone, revenue share; lack of hallway track. How conferences are engaging with people, talks and breaks, Slack, multiple tracks. What Dylan is doing with NDC. Time zone vs geographical partitioning of conferences. NDC will continue to make recordings available for free. Canceling a conference is a lot of work. Conference sponsorship. Microsoft made a success of Bulid. Will conferences go back to normal at some point, distributed conferences. Climate change and conferences. Working and isolation; corporate offices are not the future but places to work in your neighborhood might be. Full show notes

Summary Aaron Stannard talks about the challenges facing the open source software world and how he thinks they can be addressed. Details Who he is, what he does, a little about Akka and the actor model. Aaron’s blogs on open source projects, burnout; Microsoft vs other software ecosystems; sustainable open source, being a victim of your own success, bug reports, feature requests, the aggression. What is the incentive to work on open source, making a little money from open source, sustainability and incentives. “No way are we paying for free software!”. Aggression and abuse. Optimism about OSS, examples of successful OSS ventures. How to find more from Aaron. Full show notes

Summary Abraham Asfaw of IBM talks about the current state of their quantum computing project, and how it has moved out of the lab and into industry and education. Details Who he is, what he does. Quick overview of quantum computing and Qiskit. Book on quantum computing for undergraduates. State of quantum in industry, optimization problems, quantum advantage. Industrial examples, financial, chemistry. Demand for developers. Current quantum volume – doubling every year. Why a million qubits by themselves would not be enough. The meaning of quantum advantage/supremacy. Combing classical and quantum computing. How many quantum computers IBM has. Where to get the free IBM book. Other useful resources. Full show notes

Summary Maria Naggaga talks about Try .NET and .NET Interactive - new ways of learning and demonstrating .NET code, and running samples. Details Who she is, what she does. Presenting at conferences. What try dot net is, why they built it; language support. What it lookds like, how to use it. Complexity of what it can run. A small $30,000 bill. Compare to repl. More complex usage; Bryan's Try Dot Net example of Polly. Hosting examples on the web. Blazor and Try Dot Net. How to run it locally. Future of Try Dot Net, changing name to Dot Net Interactive; Dot Net Juypter and Notebooks. Try Dot Net js. Coming features. Full show notes

Summary Heather Newman talks about company culture, why it is so important and how you can help improve it. Details Who she is, what she does. What culture means, elements of a good culture, transparency and trust; trust and mistakes. Heather's talk at MS ignite. How to find out about the culture from the outside, a bad reputation spreads. The interview and making the company appealing. Why culture is so important. Culture and strategy. Diversity, inclusion and culture; why it's important in tech. Seeing a bad culture when you're in the middle of it - "are you happy?". How to find Heather. Full show notes

Summary Jeff Haynie of Pinpoint talks about their survey and report on how engineering teams measure their performance. Details Who he is, what he does, a little about Appcelerator Titanium. What is Pinpoint, finding out what is going in engineering. Report on state of engineering performance management, companies surveyed, metrics used. Software is a new profession, much will change in the medium term. Metrics used by companies who did measure; why cost wasn't a metric; is there a "best" metric. How Pinpoint measures their own performance. How is the data gathered. Black boxes in the company and getting visibility into teams, how does agile fit in. How the rest of the business views engineering; CTO/CIO are more most negative about engineering. Challenges teams face; no metrics no problems. Future work. Finding the report. Full show notes