.NET Rocks!

Falcon Heavy flies! Now what? Time for a Geek Out! Richard talks to Carl about the amazing Falcon Heavy launch - what worked, what didn't and why did it take so darn long to fly? The discussion dives into how the plans for the Heavy evolved, affected by the evolution of the Falcon 9. The impact of the launch is interesting - is it a new phase of spaceflight for humanity? The Heavy just barely sneaks into the super heavy lift class, and it's flight has caused a bit of a kerfuffle - both Russia and China have announced new super heavy lift rockets. And then there's NASA... does the Space Launch System still make sense?Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

How do you do concurrency? Carl and Richard talk to Riccardo Terrell about his new book on concurrency in .NET. More than just ASync and AWait, there are still a ton of concurrency options available in .NET, you just need to know when and where to apply them. The conversation ranges over a bunch of different technologies, including a lot of discussion on functional programming as a whole, since it lends itself to concurrency far better. But you don't have to use F# to write functional code! Riccardo talks through a number of strategies for deciding when concurrency makes sense and how to do it safely.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Can Big Data actually hurt society? Carl and Richard talk to Cathy O'Neil about her book, Weapons of Math Destruction. Cathy has been deeply involved with machine learning and big data for decades and has a broad view of both the potential and dangers of the technology. The conversation dives into understanding how this technology amplifies bias and how that bias ultimately shapes behavior. The trick is to acknowledge that the bias exists - once you see it, it is possible to overcome its effects. Lots of great thinking from an expert in the space!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Michele is back and surviving microservices! Carl and Richard talk to Michele Bustamante about her work with microservices and the challenges that her customers have. Starting with the normal problems innate to any re-architecting exercise - what is the benefit to the customer? You can't make microservices because they're fun, they have to solve a particular problem - and typically it's the problem of over-coupling within a group of services. Update one and you derail the others. Picking what service to separate is a challenge - and how do you do it! Great conversation about containers, DevOps and management strategies!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

How do you have success with Azure? Carl and Richard talk to Microsoft PFE Christos Matskas about some of the projects he's been involved in helping organizations deploy apps and services into Azure. As Christos says, it's not an all-or-nothing thing - some applications and services make more sense in the cloud, and some work great on-premises. But there are a bunch of moving parts to organize and understand to have success with Azure. Christos tells stories of where things go right, things go wrong, and how it has less to do with the technology involved, and more with how you think and work together as a team!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

What is coming up for .NET Core? Carl and Richard talk to Scott Hunter, who leads all of .NET at Microsoft, about the road ahead for .NET Core. But first, a quick look back at where .NET has come from, including a discussion around performance and the impact of the Meltdown and Spectre CPU security flaws impacting performance across the board. Then into a huge raft of features coming up in the next year in .NET Core, including compilation and performance enhancements, as well as some old favorites like lazy loading in EF Core and SignalR!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

How do you know how your software is working? While at NDC in London, Carl and Richard talk to Jessica White about her experience building dashboards to instrument operations, management and development. The conversation dives into what needs to be measured as well as how to represent those measurements in ways that help people understand - do it wrong and you can actually confuse people, or have your dashboard ignored. Jessica talks about how dashboards have to evolve with business needs. With new goals come new metrics and new dashboards to show those metrics. Your dashboard is no more static than your business is!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

SharePoint development continues to evolve in 2018! Carl and Richard talk to Sahil Malik about his view on the latest offerings around SharePoint. At the Ignite event in 2017, Microsoft announced SharePoint 2019, so there's definitely a new on-premises version of SharePoint coming. Obviously, it's taken from the cloud edition, which is why the development model has changed so substantially. Sahil talks about the SharePoint Framework as the model for doing SharePoint customizations, and the coding is primarily in JavaScript - now SharePoint development is web development!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

What does it take to build an application where the UI is strictly voice? While at NDC in London, Carl and Richard sat down with Heather Downing to talk about her experiences building voice-driven applications with a variety of tools, including Alexa and Google Voice. Heather digs into the challenges of thinking through what the voice interface is really good at, versus more traditional screen, keyboard, and mouse driven software. This leads to a broader discussion about getting away from the desk entirely, into highly mobile and standing environments where the keyboard is just not a practical option. Voice-driven apps are a different class of app entirely - does it make sense for your organization?Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

What goes into a Docker stack? Carl and Richard talk to Rob Richardson about how containers are evolving in the .NET world. Rob talks about how the Windows side of Docker is actually getting stronger - most developers using Docker use Linux as the template OS. The conversation focuses on moving existing .NET applications into Docker - aka, without .NET Core. It's certainly possible, and you get some of the container advantages. But with containers comes new thinking around architecture, the ability to organize and scale your services differently. But you can implement those features gradually, and take advantage of what orchestration can do for you. Whether in the cloud or on-premises, containers have a lot to offer!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations