Jon talks to Laurent Bugnion about WPF and Silverlight. Laurent’s an expert on WPF and Silverlight, and is the author of Silverlight 2 Unleashed. Topics Differences between WPF and Silverlight Thoughts on Silverlight offline Model-View-ViewModel pattern and applications in Blend WPF Disciples mailing list Why use WPF instead of Winforms Non-visual benefits of WPF and Silverlight Benefits of the XAML format Silverlight’s VisualStateManager compared [...]

Listen Now:

While we were at the Microsoft PDC 2008 conference, we met up with the guys from the Deep Fried Bytes podcast as well as Jeff Atwood (StackOverflow, CodingHorror) for a podcaster roundtable. The first part of this discussion is over at Deep Fried Bytes (Episode 18). Download / Listen Herding Code 25: PDC 2008 Podcaster Roundtable with [...]

Listen Now:

This is the second half of our interview with Phil Haack on the ASP.NET MVC Beta Release. Topics ModelBinders in ASP.NET MVC Lessons learned in building MVC (question from Brian Henderson) To what extent did the MVC team look at other frameworks like Monorail, Rails, Django, etc. Any new features for the 1.0 release? How about 2.0? What’s next for you [...]

Listen Now:

This is the first half of our interview with Phil Haack on the ASP.NET MVC Beta Release. Topics The MVC Elevator Speech MVC and Codebehind files How MVC differs from Webforms How MVC changes your development process The difficulty in unit testing UI What’s the threshold for testing your programs? The File / New / MVC experience How MVC is built for extensibility How MVC [...]

Listen Now:

This week we talk to Brad Abrams and Tim Heuer about the Silverlight 2 release. Topics What’s new? The releationship between the DLR and Silverlight 2 The Eclipse for Silverlight development The Open Specification Promise for XAML Progress on Mono / Moonlight The elevator speech on Silverlight How Silverlight fits in with AJAX Can Silverlight support separation of concerns and testability? Will Microsoft be shipping [...]

Listen Now:

This week Jon leads a discussion of real world development. We talk about how our development practices in our jobs and personal projects match up with the way we’re “supposed to be” developing. Topics: What are the non-negotiable practices that we always use on any code we write? Jon isn’t always Test Driven. Does that make him [...]

Listen Now:

This week we talk to Ted Leung. Ted works on dynamic languages and tools at Sun Microsystems and is a member of the Apache Software Foundation. We discussed a variety of issues, including: Ted’s wild ride through Apple, Apache, the Open Source Application Foundation, and Sun How open source development can benefit software companies as well as the development [...]

Listen Now:

This week Scott K leads a discussion on remote work, remote access technologies, and synchronization software: What software and services help with remote development The joy of being your own network admin Source control implications (TFS, Subversion, GIT) The social tradeoff - fewer incidental conversations, more intentional conversations Remote access software Synchronization software Links GE moving from Google Docs to Zoho Wired: Home Sweet [...]

Listen Now:

This week Matt Podwysocki puts the fun in functional programming with a deep dive into F#. We’ve heard plenty of high level discussions of F# and functional programming lately, so we tried to dig into the gory details as much as possible: What is functional programming, and why should we care? Types of applications that would and [...]

Listen Now:

This week Jon leads a discussion on the new crop of browsers: What’s new in Google Chrome Comparison of Javascript engines What does crazy-fast Javascript mean? Is Webkit taking over? Why’s Firefox sticking with Gecko? IE8 Compatibility Mode - Will it save us from IE6? Is it time for the IE team to try “File/New/Browser”? Do web standards mean anything when IE [...]

Listen Now:

This week Kevin leads a discussion on interviewing software developers: What interview styles we find effective What sort of questions actually help us evaluate a candidate Why API trivia and puzzle questions don’t work Hiring mistakes we’ve made based on errors in our interview style Why we don’t do very well when the tables are turned and it’s our turn to [...]

Listen Now:

This week we talk with Chris Tavares, a developer on the Microsoft patterns & practices team, where he was the lead developer on Unity. He is also a virtual member of the ASP.NET MVC team, helping to design the new framework. Back in the day, he helped test out the effect of reference counting on .NET [...]

Listen Now:

This week, we talk with Jeff Atwood (of codinghorror.com fame) about his soon to be released developer Q&A site, StackOverflow.com. Links: CodingHorror.com (Jeff’s blog) The StackOverflow blog Robert Scoble’s post on StackOverflow (no, it didn’t make him cry) Jeff’s post about using OpenID on StackOverflow Download / Listen HerdingCode 14: Jeff Atwood (codinghorror.com) talks about StackOverflow

Listen Now:

This week, we talk about the “back to basics” movement, which begs the question:  what are the basics? Download / Listen HerdingCode 13: Back To Basics (but which ones?)

Listen Now:

This is the second half of our interview with Glenn Block. He talks about the interesting stuff he’s been up to at Microsoft with Prism, Unity, and MEF (the Managed Extensibility Framework). Be sure to listen to part 1 first or Glenn’s crazytalk about MEF will spin your head around. Links: Glenn’s Prism posts - http://blogs.msdn.com/gblock/archive/tags/prism/default.aspx Prism - [...]

Listen Now:

This is the first half of our interview with Glenn Block. He talks about the interesting stuff he’s been up to at Microsoft with Prism, Unity, and MEF (the Managed Extensibility Framework). Links: Glenn’s Prism posts - http://blogs.msdn.com/gblock/archive/tags/prism/default.aspx Prism - www.microsoft.com/compositewpf Unity - http://msdn.microsoft.com/unity MEF - http://blogs.msdn.com/kcwalina/archive/2008/04/25/MEF.aspx MEF CTP - http://code.msdn.com/MEF Look for an article on Prism in the upcoming September issue [...]

Listen Now:

K Scott leads us in a discussion of LINQ, including: What is it How introducing LINQ to .NET changed the framework LINQ Providers LINQ to XML LINQ to SQL - how it’s different from EF, tips and tricks, when to use it Links: LINQpad 3rd Party LINQ providers list on OakLeaf Systems blog LINQ to Everything providers list on Charlie Calvert’s blog CLINQ (continuous LINQ) HTML [...]

Listen Now:

This week, we catch up with Rob Conery. Topics: SubSonic 2.1 Where SubSonic fits in the Microsoft data access tools explosion Why LINQ to SubSonic is so durn tricky MVC Storefront - has it made Rob a TDD believer What else is Rob up to at Microsoft Links: Rob’s Blog SubSonic Download / Listen: Episode 9: Rob Conery on SubSonic, MVC Storefront, and the Silverlight [...]

Listen Now:

This week, we discuss the use of virtual machines in software development. Topics: Industry trends VMware vs. Virtual PC (and other virtualization technologies) Should you develop in a VM? VM Tips and tricks Links: Jeff (codinghorror) Atwood’s post on creating smaller virtual machines. Keeping clean and small virtual machines Invirtus vOptimizer Virtual Appliance Marketplace Internet Explorer Application Compatibility VPC Image Virtual PC Guy’s Weblog Virtualization.Info IETester Download / Listen: Herding [...]

Listen Now:

In this episode of Herding Code, we discuss the pro’s and con’s of building a startup on the Microsoft stack. We talk about a lot of issues: Licensing cost Availability and cost of developers Development environments and tools Relative costs of software vs. development time Thoughts on whether Microsoft should ship Visual Studio Express with Windows Those few companies who start [...]

Listen Now:

This week we argue discuss whether Silverlight is just another flavor of ActiveX, or if it’s here to stay. Listen / Download Herding Code 6: Silverlight - Fad Or Fab?

Listen Now:

Show #5 - Topics Firefox 3… that’s it Listen / Downlad Herding Code 5: Firefox 3 Release Announcements The Name, The Feed, etc. This is our last podcast hosting the audio on SkyDrive, I promise. I?d planned to take care of it last weekend and a family emergency? um? emerged. You can help! Please take our super quick survey to vote [...]

Listen Now:

Show #4 - Topics iPhone v2 announcments from WWDC TechEd 2008 recap by our roving reporter, K. Scott Allen Listen Herding Code 4: iPhoneV2, K Scott recaps TechEd 2008 Announcements The Name We’re closing in on a name (and thus a domain and a website and a real podcast feed, etc.). Here’s our current list, please give us your feedback or alternate [...]

Listen Now:

Show #3 - Topics Should developers learn C? TechEd 2008 Keynote Announcements Microsoft “Velocity” distributed caching solution Listen Herding Code 3: Should Developers Learn C? + TechEd 2008 Keynote Thanks for your patience (and great feedback) as we get our act together here. We’ve decided to make the content the top priority, and get the non-content details (feed, website, branding, etc.) [...]

Listen Now:

Last week I posted the first in a new podcast series with K. Scott Allen (a.k.a. OdeToCode), Scott Koon (a.k.a. LazyCoder), and Kevin Dente. We got some great feedback, but we decided to ignore it and continue the podcast. So here’s another one! But seriously, this one’s a lot shorter (too short?) and you’ll hopefully find [...]

Listen Now:

We’re starting up a technology round table podcast. By we, I mean: K. Scott Allen (a.k.a. OdeToCode) Scott Koon (a.k.a. Lazycoder) Kevin Dente Jon Galloway Our goal here is to provide you with some interesting discussions loosely centered around the world of development on the Microsoft platform. We’ve just finished our first show, and - while we’re aware that it’s [...]

Listen Now: