Posted on

Herding Code 149 – What I Did With My Summer Vacation

The guys check in after a summer hiatus with a discussion covering travel, books, e-book readers, two factor authentication, Windows 8, OSX Mountain Lion, and hover cranes.

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 149 – What I Did With My Summer Vacation [audio://herdingcode.com/wp-content/uploads/HerdingCode-0149-What-I-did-with-my-summer-vacation.mp3]

Show Notes:

  • Travel
    • Jon asks starts by asking where everyone’s been travelling to over the summer.
    • K. Scott’s basically a European at this point.
    • Jon went to Oslo, Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo, Redmond, and rural New Jersey, and Kevin survived a road trip with kids thanks to iPads. Jon really liked Buenos Aires. He talks about his Web Camps presentations in South America, including a Windows Azure Web Sites talk where he builds and deploys a classic ASP app via FTP, ASP.NET / SignalR app via Visual Studio Web Deploy, a Node.js app via git publish, and a WordPress site via WebMatrix deploy in one hour. He’s amazed by how translators can listen to obscure technical jargon and speak in another language at the same time, including prompts about when the audience should politely laugh at a failed joke.
    • Kevin survived a road trip with kids thanks to iPads.
  • e-book reading devices
    • Scott K has been running the CyanogenMod Android ROM on his Nook Color.
    • There’s some discussion on the benefit of a 7" form factor device and rumors about a 7-ish iDevice on the way.
    • Jon and Kevin love their Kindles, and Scott K talks about what he likes about the Nook Color.
    • Scott K mentions O’Reilly’s Bookworm site, which was sadly closed down as of March 31.
    • Jon has stayed with the Kindle eInk devices for the read aloud support, which is sadly missing on all the other top ebook devices. Kevin like the long battery life.
  • Book Reports
  • Geek Travel Tips
    • Jon and K. Scott use a checklist to make sure they don’t forget important things like chargers and adapters.
    • K. Scott doesn’t assume anything and keeps a small bit of foreign cash handy.
    • Jon and K. Scott both really like TripIt.
    • Jon talks about how he handled a cancelled flight to Buenos Aires by calling in (rather than waiting in line) and being nice.
    • Jon and K. Scott both avoid checking bags when possible.
  • Two factor authentication.
    • Jon tells the story about how Mat Honan’s account was hacked.
    • The guys talk about how Google Two Factor Auth works for them.
    • Jon saw an interesting tip: use a separate e-mail account for password recovery.
    • Everyone complains about two factor auth’s usability and hopes it gets easier.
  • K. Scott talks about how Internet Explorer 10 will have Do Not Track on by default. The guys talk about their thoughts on targeted ads and tracking: a little is good, too much gets creepy.
  • Jon’s using Windows 8 RTM.
    • The guys discuss the user interface and discoverability. Scott K worries that nobody will be able to shut their computers off.
    • Jon likes the fast install and lock screen. Scott K talks about problems with face recognition login, but it looks like that was removed before RTM.
  • OSX Mountain Lion
    • Jon asks what the guys think about the change OSX so that Save As also saves over the original file. Kevin talks about some of the things he like in Mountain Lion.
    • Jon and Kevin discuss the different ways the Windows and Mac communities react to changes.
    • Jon asks about AirPlay and complains that it’s difficult to stream audio from one device to another.
    • Kevin talks about the notification system.
    • Jon asks about updates to connectors.
  • Gold Medal or Martian Hover Crane?

Show Links:

Posted on

Herding Code 148 – Chris Hardy on Xamarin, MonoTouch and Mono For Android

Here’s the last of K. Scott and Jon’s interviews from NDC Oslo 2012: a conversation with Chris Hardy about Xamarin, MonoTouch, Mono For Android, and mobile development.

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 148 – Chris Hardy on Xamarin, MonoTouch and Mono For Android [audio://herdingcode.com/wp-content/uploads/HerdingCode-0148-Chris-Hardy.mp3]

Show Notes:

  • Jon asks Chris what he does at Xamarin.
  • Jon asks about how the development experience works when building an application using Xamarin products and targeting multiple platforms (e.g. iOS and Android)
  • Chris talks about how developers create the user interface layers – either using XCode, or just building the UI in code. He mentions PaintCode as a generator for user interface code.
  • K. Scott asks about the process of sharing logic and service code between platforms.
  • K. Scott asks how iOS and Android can call back into Mono code.
  • Jon asks about the installation experience for setting up all of the Android development dependencies.
  • Chris mentions that MonoDevelop supports Android UI design.
  • K. Scott asks about interesting things people have built with Xamarin. Chris mentions rdio and iCircuit.
  • Jon asks how developers handle platform specific issues while developing. Chris mentions several options for sharing code between platforms.
  • Jon asks how things are working under the hood – is IL being deployed? Is anything being JITted?
  • Jon asks about his opinion as a developer who works on all the main mobile platforms. Chris says he loves his iOS devices, but is interested in Windows 8.
  • Jon asks about Chris’ thoughts on the publishing process between platforms.
  • Jon asks about the debugging experience – are you using emulators? How do they work? Do you get realtime debugging?

Show Links:

Posted on

Herding Code 147 – Jakob Bradford on Organizing NDC Oslo

While at NDC 2012 in Oslo, Jon and K. Scott talked to Jakob Bradford about how the event was organized.

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 147 – Jakob Bradford on Organizing NDC Oslo [audio://herdingcode.com/wp-content/uploads/HerdingCode-0147-Jakob-Bradford.mp3]

Show Notes:

  • Jon asks how NDC got started and how it’s grown.
  • K. Scott says that other conferences feel like they’re organized to solve organizers’ problems, while NDC is organized around the attendee experience. Jakob says that’s very intentional.
  • Jon asks how they balance a big conference feel (as NDC continues to grow) while maintaining a personal feel.
  • K. Scott asks for an inside scoop – what were the biggest disasters, or almost disasters? Answer: volcanoes!
  • Jon talks about how much he likes the Overflow (a.k.a. ADD room) and asks how that got started. Jakob said that’s how conferences are done in Norway.
  • K. Scott asks about Aral’s keynote, which began with a musical number.
  • Jon asks about how they select speakers and content.
  • Jon asks about the pre-conference workshops (in the tallest building in Norway!)
  • The entire conference is recorded, available on Vimeo. Jakob says that’s how they get most of their attendees – "Watch the videos a couple years… you will come!"

Show Links:

The NDC Overflow room:

 

Posted on

Herding Code 146 – Shay Friedman on Roslyn, IronRuby and the DLR

While at NDC 2012 in Oslo, Jon and K. Scott talked to Shay Friedman about Roslyn, IronRuby, and the DLR.

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 146 – Shay Friedman on Roslyn, IronRuby, and the DLR [audio://herdingcode.com/wp-content/uploads/HerdingCode-0146-Shay-Friedman.mp3]

Show Notes:

  • K. Scott asks Shay about the what he covered in his "What? C# Could Do That?" talk. Shay mentions dynamic capabilities, the DLR, and Roslyn.
  • K. Scott asks Shay to explain Roslyn. Shay explains how Roslyn works as a very configurable compiler and talks about how his demonstration showed creating a new language keyword.
  • Jon asks if it’s possible to build out significant parts of a language with Roslyn. Shay says you’d really use it to extend C# – but there’s more to it than that. He talks about CSX (scripting with C#), C# REPL, and changes to the IDE experience that are now available due to having a much better compiler.
  • K. Scott asks if it’s shipping in Visual Studio 2012. Shay says that it’s a CTP, but it’s avialable for both Visual Studio 2010 and 2012.
  • Jon asks for Shay to talk more about metaprogramming. Shay explains more about what could be done with this – for instance, an ORM could could add in specialized language support.
  • K. Scott asks about the state of IronRuby. Shay says that it’s still active, it’s ignored by the Ruby community, but it has a lot of great applications – for instance, allowing users to write simple business rules in Ruby, and loading Ruby Gems in .NET applications.
  • Jon asks if Shay uses the DLR separately from IronRuby and IronPython. Shay mentions some examples like IronJS, Scheme, LUA and LOLCODE. The DLR is built into .NET framework, so it’s not going anywhere.
  • Jon asks about how dynamic objects function differently than other C# objects. Shay explains it’s basically an object, but it’s all executed at runtime.

Show Links: