.NET Rocks!

What can Azure Functions do for you? While at NDC in London, Carl and Richard talked to Simona Cotin about Azure Functions. You can code Azure Functions in C#, Java, Python and JavaScript - but Simona prefers JavaScript. Use the language you're most comfortable with. Programming Azure Functions in JavaScript means using the NodeJS frameworks, building small chunks of code that do exactly what you want them to do without a lot of plumbing!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

How do you measure the success of a feature in your application? While at NDC in London, Carl and Richard talked to Christine Yen about her experiences building instrumentation systems for applications both to diagnose problems and to understand how to make software better. The conversation digs into the scientific method of hypothesizing a potential feature, exploring different ways to build it and deciding on measurements of success - know when something works!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Build your web site in F#! While in London at the NDC, Carl and Richard talked to Anthony Brown about the SAFE Stack - a complete set of tooling for building back-end and front-end parts of your website in F#! Anthony talks about the various pieces needed to work together, how debugging works, and his preferred tooling, including VSCode as the editor and some great plug-ins that make F# coding easy!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Are you adding security to your application at the end of a development cycle? While at NDC in London, Carl and Richard talk to Victoria Almazova about how she encourages developers to include security planning as early as possible - it costs less and is more effective! The new tooling available today for security makes it easier to do the right thing, you just have to include it as part of the process.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Have you heard of CSS Grid? While at NDC in London, Carl and Richard talk to Amy Kapernick about one of the new features in CSS introduced in 2017 on all major browsers. CSS Grid is not tables - and tables aren't inherently evil, they can just be used badly. With Grid, you can define flexible layouts and formatting for a variety of elements. And there's nothing you're doing that can't be tweaked effectively by designers when the time comes - check 'em out!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Have you got a home assistant device? While at NDC in London, Carl and Richard talk to Sarah Withee about her experience with Mycroft, the open source home assistant device. As an open source project you can run Mycroft on your PC, or even a Raspberry Pi. The conversation turns to the concerns about constantly listening speakers and how having an open source project that lets you see what its listening to make that whole experience less concerning. And there's custom hardware too!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

What's up with Blazor? While at NDC in London, Carl and Richard chatted with Steve Sanderson and Daniel Roth about the latest efforts around running C# in the browser with Web Assembly. Since its first demo back in 2017 by Steve, Blazor has grown up a lot - part of ASP.NET Core but still nominally an experimental project, parts of Blazor are now appearing in the preview editions of .NET Core 3 as Razor Components. 2019 looks to be a big year for Blazor!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

How do developers learn? While at NDC, Carl and Richard talk to Clare Sudbery about her experiences helping developers learn. The conversation digs into various learning models, the challenges of coming up with standards for education in software and what we can do to get better. Clare talks about how organizations need to create a culture that allow their people to not know things so that there is room to learn - once that culture is in place, things get much simpler!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

How do you migrate your .NET application to current standards? Carl and Richard talk to Rocky Lhotka about his approach to migrating existing .NET applications to .NET Standard. Rocky explains that many folks ask him about moving to .NET Core, but getting to .NET Standard is an easier move (but likely not easy) and offers more options in the long run, including .NET Core. The process starts with getting your .NET application upgraded to at least .NET 4.6.1, but it goes on from there - many organizations have a huge portfolio of older .NET applications - Rocky offers a plan to modernize!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Should developers care about search engine optimization (SEO)? Chris Love says yes! Carl and Richard talk with Chris about how SEO impacts consumer-facing websites and what developers can do to include SEO in their development process. The good news is, many of the things we do routinely in web development help with SEO, including mobile-first development, using HTTPS and focusing on performance. But there's more to be done, and Chris digs into important bits - check out the tools in the show notes for more ideas on how to make your website more SEO friendly!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations