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Herding Code 167: Glenn Block on scriptcs

This week on Herding Code, the guys talk to Glenn Block about scriptcs.

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 167: Glenn Block on scriptcs [audio://herdingcode.com/wp-content/uploads/HerdingCode-0167-ScriptCS.mp3]

Show Notes:

  • Intro
    • (00:10) K Scott asks Glenn if he’s still working with Node at Microsoft. Glenn says he’s moved from command-line tools for node and is focused on Azure Mobile Services, but he still owns the Node SDK and the Node story for Azure.
    • (01:56) K Scott scriptcs is another way to write C# code outside of the IDE as script files. It’s inspired by Glenn’s work with Node.js. It leverages Roslyn, NuGet, and some conventions to simplify scripting, such as automatically pulling in NuGet packages.
    • (03:58) K Scott comments on the ability to reference assemblies using the #r directive. Glenn says it’s even easier than that – you can use #r to reference GAC’d assemblies, but assemblies in the local bin folder are automatically referenced. K Scott asks about the hooks to support that, and Glenn explains how Roslyn supports a lot of scenarios; since it ships it as NuGet packages it can be used outside of Visual Studios. Roslyn allows for code to exist outside of a class.
    • (06:33) Jon talks about his initial experiences, and how the REPL made it really easy to get started. Glenn explains how that works and explains how, using Chocolatey you can quickly install scriptcs and a NuGet package like MongoDb and then just start writing code in the REPL.
  • Dependence on Roslyn
    • (09:35) Kevin points out that Roslyn is still in CTP and asks how that impacts scriptcs. Glenn says that since it’s a CTP Roslyn you can’t ship the binaries, but that’s not a problem for scriptcs since it pulls in the public NuGet packages. Roslyn is still evolving, it doesn’t yet support async / await or dynamic, for instance.
    • (11:13) scriptcs no longer takes a dependency on Roslyn. It uses a pluggable script executor which can use Roslyn but can potentially also use other script engines.
  • Example uses of scriptcs
    • (12:33) K Scott asks for some common use cases. Glenn says that it’s possible to build apps because you can have one script that includes other scripts, then talks about the WPF calculator sample in the scriptcs-samples repo.
    • (14:18) Glenn says another use he’s seeing is automation – basically as a replacement for PowerShell. He talks about the Fluent Automation sample which uses script-cs to automate Selenium tests.
    • (15:18) Glenn talks about a real world example at a large trucking company who is using scriptcs to automate data processing jobs.
    • (16:05) Octopus Deploy has added support for scriptcs. He used a loader script that passes configuration to user-written scripts.
    • (17:42) Glenn says it’s useful to tinker and play with libraries or services and give an example of interacting with Azure Mobile Services in the REPL.
    • (18:38) One other example is extensibility – creating hooks and allowing end users to just drop in a scriptcs script to extend behavior.
    • (19:03) Kevin says that in the past people have used JavaScript engines to support extensibility. Glenn says that touches on a common question – why scriptcs as opposed to a lot of other options such as F#, Ruby, node, etc.? He gives two reasons: you get to stay in a language you’re familiar with, and there’s a "grow up" story to migrate from scriptcs to a Visual Studio project using the same libraries, same code, etc.
    • (20:03) Jon says that the PowerShell syntax is different enough that he can’t remember it. He talks about the idea of using scriptcs for installation and initialization scripts in NuGet rather than PowerShell. Glenn says there are kind of ways to use C# with PowerShell, but it’s not the same. He mentions a sample from @beefarino which lets you talk to scriptcs from PowerShell.
    • (23:01) Kevin asks what the migration process is to move from scriptcs to a C# project. Glenn says it depends on how much you take advantage of scriptcs features like Script Packs. Script Packs bring a node-like require module syntax into scriptcs. Glenn talks about the Web API script pack which adds in proper usings and gives you an API that’s very easy to use in script, without IntelliSense. They’ve talked about creating a project exporter which could set up a project and bring in your Script Packs, etc.
    • (26:25) Kevin asks if the Script Pack / Require experience could be brought into standard C#. Glenn says the general concept could work because it’s just a DLL, although there are some incompatible things like import statements. They’ve looked at writing Script Packs as script, which could make this more useful.
    • (28:40) Kevin talks about how the Node module system handles conflicting dependencies and asks if scriptcs handles that. Glenn says not yet, but .NET is now able to handle that so it could be added in. The general idea of script modules depending on other script modules makes sense, but conflicting dependencies might not be very useful. They’re thinking of NuGet packages with no assemblies, just does as content, and talks about some implications.
    • (31:32) Jon talks about how Glenn had told him that a lot of his bizarre feature requests wouldn’t fit in the core but could be useful as extensions, then asks about the extensibility points. Glenn runs through what you can do: change the engine, use Script Packs, bring in NuGet packages, possible later REPL extensions via global NuGet packages. He says they’re following the Node team’s principles of keeping a small tight core and pushing features towards extensions.
  • Questions from Twitter
    • (34:14) Jeff Schumacher (@codereflection) asks Glenn to compare scriptcs performance vs. compiled code. Glenn says that there can be a short startup impact and potentiall
    • (35:58) Akim Boyko (@AkimBoyko) asks if it’s possible to run scriptcs without Roslyn, async/await support and in sandbox mode. Glenn talks about the Mono impact of running without requiring Roslyn support. Roslyn will be getting async/await support at some point, but it could also be added via CodeDom if people implement that. However, CodeDom doesn’t support the classless system that Roslyn does.
    • (38:04) Simon Cropp (@SimonCropp)  asks if scriptcs support plugging into the build pipeline? Eg if I wanted to plug in Fody (https://github.com/Fody/Fody/).
    • (39:41) Several questions on how scriptcs compares to Snippet Compiler, LinqPad and csscript.
    • (41:12) Dan Vanderboom (@danvanderboom) asks if scriptcs let us run a .cs code file by itself anywhere in the file system? Glenn says no and explains why he’s not sure that would be useful.
    • (42:55) Tomasz Janczuk (@tjanczuk) asks When will integration of scriptcs and edgejs be done? 😉 Glenn talks about how the projects have both grown up together and how the two would be useful together.
  • Debugging and IntelliSense
    • (45:29) Jon talks about how he messed something up in the samples and debugged it and asks about debugging support. Glenn points out that you can directly debug an EXE in Visual Studio and explains how to debug scriptcs code in Visual Studio. He also talks about MDbg which Glenn (and apparently everyone else) didn’t know existed. He also mentions a Script Pack for debugging.
    • (48:15) Jon says the REPL is great, and yet he’d sometimes like IntelliSense. Glenn talks about a lightweight WPF editor that’s in progress, but says if you get to a point where things are getting complex it’s probably time to move to move from scriptcs to a project. Jon says that for the most part Script Packs seem to really simplify the code to the point where you don’t really need IntelliSense, and Glenn agrees.
  • Shoutouts
    • (50:45) Glenn calls out the two other coordinators on the project, Filip Wojcieszyn (@filip_woj) and Justin Rusbatch (@jrusbatch) as well as some other top contributors.
  • Shell capabilities, TSR scenarios
    • (52:03) Kevin asks if there are possible changes to make it more shell-like with things like piping. Glenn says they currently have a poor story for arguments, but it’s coming. You can currently pipe text, but he’s not sure about piping objects.
    • (54:30) Jon says he’s got some AutoHotKey scripts and asks if scriptcs could handle that kind of thing.
  • Future plans
    • (56:10) K Scott asks where things are going in the future. Glenn mentions scriptcs modules, aliases, a better Visual Studio experience, export project, and saving DLLs.
    • (1:04:25) Glenn talks about some interesting ideas on GitHub, like a command to break execution into the REPL. They’ve got 20 active contributors, so things are moving fast.
    • (59:54) Glenn says he’s got a personal interest in seeing some adoption in Microsoft – such as adding scriptcs scripting to other projects.
    • (1:00:25) Glenn talks about one question that comes up: should the Roslyn team have tackled the scriptcs scenario?
  • Wrap up
    • (1:01:10) K Scott asks about Glenn’s upcoming plans, speaking engagements, etc.
    • (1:02:27) Jon makes a last minute sales pitch to try it out – you can install in seconds from Chocolatey and just start playing at the REPL. Glenn points one gotcha – scripts which run servers need to be run as admin.

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Herding Code 166: Tomasz Janczuk on Edge.js

This week on Herding Code, the guys talk to Tomasz Janczuk about running .NET code in Node.js using Edge.js.

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 166: Tomasz Janczuk on Edge.js [audio://herdingcode.com/wp-content/uploads/HerdingCode-0166-EdgeJS.mp3]

Show Notes:

  • Intro and background on Edge.js
    • (00:40) Tomasz has been focusing on Node.js at Microsoft for the past 3 years. He’s been working on making Node.js run well on Windows. He’s also worked on hosting Node.js on Windows Azure with IISNode.
    • (02:08) Jon asks about Edge.js’s original name, Owin. Tomasz explains how that made sense with the original scope – connect middleware and express handlers – but it’s grown since then so it needed a more generic name.
    • (02:45) Edge.js lets you run Node.js and .NET code in one process and provides interop mechanisms between the two.
    • (03:05) Jon asks why that’s useful. Tomasz says you can do pretty much anything in either Node.js or .NET, but some things work a lot better on one platform. He gives examples like using ADO.NET to connect to SQL Server and running CPU bound computations as multi-threaded .NET code from the single-threaded Node.js event loop. There are two classes of scenarios: things that work better on one platform, or writing native extensions to Node.js without having to drop all the way down to raw C and native OS mechanisms.
    • (06:11) Jon brings up two questions from Twitter about Mono support (Jason Denizac @_jden "when’s mono support coming?" and Kevin Swiber "Mono support? Can we do legit Node modules in C#? Are grilled hotdogs really better than boiled?" Tomasz says not yet, but it’s high on the list. There are some complications to implement that support since Edge.js uses C++ CLI, which isn’t available on Mono.
  • Getting started and samples
    • (07:57) Jon asks what’s involved in setting it up. He says he ran npm install edge, then npm install edge-cs. Tomasz explains why he didn’t need to install edge-cs – C# support is built in, other language support plugs in.
    • (08:43) Jon asks about the samples. Tomasz explains the different ways of integrating CLR code into Node.js and talks about how the samples show these approaches.
    • (10:36) Jon says he liked how the samples progressed from very basic to pretty complex. Tomasz says you can do just about anything in Edge.js, but there’s a specific interface you need to follow in order to work smoothly between the Node.js async model and many synchronous operations in .NET. Every function in Edge.js uses an async function delegate, so you end up using small wrapper functions in some cases.
  • Marshalling and interop
    • (13:08) Kevin says this reminds him of COM / .NET interop and issues with object lifetime, garbage collection, etc. Tomasz says that that the async function delegate solves the threading models. Object lifetimes are controlled because everything is marshalled by value.
    • (16:22) Kevin asks if the marshal by value prevents working directly with the CLR object. Tomasz says that you can handle this using function proxies to create closures over CLR states.
    • (17:45) Scott K. asks if structs eliminate the serialiazation issues. Tomasz clarifies that the marshalling process is reflecting over the objects in .NET and recreating a synonymous JavaScript. Scott says this sounds like thunking from days of old.
    • (19:27) Jon says that he saw one sample that allows for debugging inline .NET code in a JavaScript file. Tomasz explains that this is done using the codedom compiler to create an in-memory assembly with debugging information, which can be attached to from Visual Studio.
    • (21:25) Jon says he thinks this sounds useful for using a NuGet package in a Node.js application and asks if there’s support for pulling in a NuGet package. Tomasz says that at this point it’s up to you how you’d get the assembly downloaded and set up, but that there’s an open issue to get script-cs integration going and that would handle this.
  • Overhead and performance
    • (23:06) Jon asks about the overhead of running two virtual machines and marshalling. Tomasz says there is some overhead, but it’s better than running two different processes. Edge.js is built for solving some specific scenarios, and it’s fast in those
    • (24:55) Kevin asks if there’s a delay when Edge.js spins up. Tomasz says that happens when you require Edge, but it’s not really noticeable.
  • Misc questions
    • (25:55) Jon asks what was the hardest part of implementing Edge.js. Tomasz says the function proxies to handle lifetimes and reconciling threading models.
    • (27:45) Scott says this sounds useful for authentication or using a legacy .NET library. Tomasz lists several more.
    • (29:20) Kevin asks how exceptions are handled. Tomasz explains how the exceptions are marshalled and thrown across VM boundaries.
    • (30:15) Kevin asks if it’s tied to specific Node.js versions. Tomasz says it works on all current stable versions.
    • (31:30) Question from Twitter: @jeremydmiller "I’ve seen a lot of samples of hosting . Net in node, but how about running node in a .net process?" Tomasz talks about an open issue, Mission Double Edge which would handle that. He explains that the challenge is that Node.js doesn’t have a hosting model.
    • (33:20) Jon says he saw several of the samples had the C# script named with .CSX extension and asks about that. Tomasz says that this is partly done to follow Roslyn conventions, including specifying assemblies as references in code using #r.
  • Future plans and next steps for listeners
    • (34:25) Jon asks what’s planned going forward. Tomasz talks about Mono support and adding support for additional languages, including F# (note: this has been added http://tjanczuk.github.io/edge/#/3) . Jon asks what’s involved in adding language support.
    • (36:30) Jon asks about the relationship with OWIN. Tomasz says there’s a separate module which allows you to plug any OWIN compatible .NET application and plug it into an Express.js pipeline. Jon says this reminds him of the Edge name and Tomasz explains that the idea is that mathematically an edge connects two nodes, so Edge.js connects differe.
    • (38:25) Jon asks about next steps for people to get started.
    • (38:55) Jon asks if this is a Microsoft project. Tomasz says it’s his own separate open source project that’s inspired by his day job, and this allows him some more flexibility to work with the community. He lists some of the community contributions they’ve seen so far.

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Herding Code 165: Mark Seemann on AutoFixture and Unit Testing

While at the Danish Developer Conference in Copenhagen, Jon sat down with Mark Seemann to talk about AutoFixture and Unit Testing.

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 165: Mark Seemann on AutoFixture and Unit Testing [audio://herdingcode.com/wp-content/uploads/HerdingCode-0165-Mark-Seemann-on-AutoFixture-and-Unit-Testing.mp3]

Show Notes:

  • AutoFixture
    • (00:44) AutoFixture is an open source library that simplifies the "Arrange" part of the standard Arrange / Act / Assert steps in unit tests.
    • (01:20) Jon asks about anonymous variables. Mark says he got that terminology from Gerard Meszaros’ book, xUnit Test Patterns. Anonymous methods and variables are necessary for a test, but their implementation doesn’t matter.
    • (02:23) Mark describes the test data builder pattern, from the book Growing Object-Oriented Software. The pattern works well, but it gets to be repetitive and mechanical to write and maintain, so he wanted to automate it. AutoFixture uses reflection to create the needed instances.
    • (04:00) Jon asks about the usage pattern for AutoFixture.(04:16) Jon asks about the different values returned for strings, ints, etc. Mark explains how that’s changed over time – numbers no longer just return sequential values, they now return random small numbers.
    • (05:20) Mark explains equivalence classes. Jon says "Okay" a lot. You can use AutoFixture in cases where you don’t care about the value; in cases where you do, you can configure what you want to. Mark explains some of the different ways you can use the AutoFixture API to set specific values when needed.
    • (09:15) Jon asks how AutoFixture works with mocking. Mark says there are NuGet packages which will interface with Moq, Rhino Mocks, FakeItEasy and NSubstitute.
    • (10:25) Jon asks Mark what his talk said about equivalence. Mark explains identity and value objects with an example with overriding the equals operator on a money value object. The more you can model your domain as value objects, the easier your tests become. Jon asks if this is an example of TDD driving a good design. Mark says that he tried letting tests completely drive his design a few years ago, but he found that it alone didn’t drive a very good overall design.
  • Testing philosophy, Testing Trivial Methods
    • (15:56) Jon asks Mark about his recent post advocating testing trivial methods. Mark says that his post was in response to Robert C. Martin’s post, The Pragmatics of TDD. Mark makes a case for testing getters and setters – if you decide to use a property rather than a field, that decision probably warrants a test to verify the property is maintaining the behavior that drove the original decision.
    • (20:38) Jon asks how this applies to the example of testing ASP.NET MVC controller code. Mark says he’s in the habit of testing everything, and has written a lot of tools to make writing the tests easy enough that it’s not a concern. The question is, how much does it cost you if a unit of code doesn’t function as designed? Mark explains how a controller action models the data flow in an MVC application, and decomposing the flow allows you to write smaller, simpler, more targeted tests.
    • (25:03) Jon asks how this relates to outside-in testing using tools like Selenium. Mark says that testing at the external boundary is fine if you can, but most applications become complex enough that boundary testing would require an impractical number of test cases.
  • Wrap up
    • (26:04) Mark says that many of these concepts are covered in more detail in Mark’s Pluralsight course.

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Herding Code 164: OWIN and Katana with Louis DeJardin

This week on Herding Code, the guys talk to Louis DeJardin about OWIN – the Open Web Interface for .NET – and Katana, an open source OWIN implementation for ASP.NET and IIS.

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 164: OWIN and Katana with Louis DeJardin [audio://herdingcode.com/wp-content/uploads/HerdingCode-0164-OWIN.mp3]

Show Notes:

  • Intro
    • (00:44) Scott and Louis explain what OWIN is.
    • (01:33) Louis explains the difference between OWIN (the community standard) and Katana (actual bits – an implementation of the OWIN standard for ASP.NET).
    • (03:18) Jon asks if this is similar to the distinction between HTTP / HTML standards and browser implementations. Louis explains what’s required for an implementer to participate in a request. Each request calls a simple func with an IDictionary<string> which returns a task.
  • The killer app: middleware
    • (04:54) Scott talks about how the pipeline might not sound like much, but it can support a lot of really useful middleware scenarios like static caching and domain splitting – especially in a way that’s common across frameworks.
    • (06:05) Louis talks about the challenge they’ve had in describing the benefit of OWIN in non-academic terms, and that it’s not until you want to apply cross-framework concerns like authentication that OWIN really shines.
    • (07:52) Scott says that previously these kinds of concerns – logging, etc. – were wrapped up in System.Web, and they had performance implications regardless of whether you used them. The pipeline model lets you avoid those hits unless you explicitly want the features.
    • (10:03) Scott mentions some of the frameworks which have implemented OWIN, including NancyFx, Fubu, ServiceStack.
    • (10:50) Kevin says that the current implementation examples are full web frameworks rather than middleware. Louis says that probably because ASP.NET and IIS already had pipeline implementations so there’s less of a forcing function than there was with Node and Ruby. Scott says that since the current implementations already have full stacks, there’s less need to plug in modular solutions. Jon says he thinks that the late arrival of NuGet and other open modular systems like this mean it’ll take a while to get traction.
    • (14:40) Louis says we’ll need a killer app, and HttpListener hosting alone isn’t that. Jon asks if you’d host Katana under IIS to manage the process. Louis says yes, and until there are other hosts than IIS he doesn’t see the hosting as a big draw – he thinks auth is probably it.
    • 1640 Scott says he could see auth frameworks and scaling middleware. Louis says that David Fowler updated JabbR to run on OWIN, and was able to move some of the scale pieces into OWIN middleware.
    • (18:25) Jon asks if he can take an existing ASP.NET application to start taking advantage of middleware without rewriting the application. Louis says that if you add the Microsoft.Owin.Host.SystemWeb NuGet package, you can put an OWIN pipeline on the route table. You can also use an IHttpHandler to plug in middleware. They’re looking at third option – an integrated pipeline module which will delegate to the application if an OWIN handler doesn’t pick it up.
    • (22:22) Jon asks Louis has some other ideas for middleware, and Louis lists several (static file handlers, authentication, etc.) and points to Rack and Node as examples. He lists another example – anti-bot  protection that returns an HTTP 200 for a URL pattern.
    • (23:50) Jon asks if it’s possible to plug things in at runtime. Louis talks about the Startup class – it’s a POCO class so you can easily work with it via IoC, plug things in whenever – it’s just code.
    • (25:05) Scott says he looked at implementing URL rewriting in middleware. Louis explains how this works perfectly with the pipeline and describes how you could also use this to monitor 404s.
    • (26:45) Scott says hosters could implement middleware to set ETAGS, enforce things, etc.
    • (27:40) Louis explains why it’s really powerful to have middleware that’s not coupled to a specific implementation like ASP.NET MVC.
    • (28:35) Jon asks if it’s possible that some of this middleware could run on hardware. Louis says it is, and gives an example with a reverse proxy.
    • (29:57) Scott talks about breaking middleware into application and networking uses and talks of some optimizations that could be done in middleware.
  • Next
    • (31:48) Scott asks where we go from here – are done? What’s the next goal? Louis says the current 1.0 version of Katana has IIS hosting; the 1.1 version will add production grade HttpListener and self host story, and after that it’s about supporting emerging standards and looking for synergies. Louis says documentation would be nice, but Scott says that the model is so simple that there’s not a lot to document.
    • (34:50) Scott and Louis talk about how this will affect the ecosystem in general, with an example of how smoothly the SignalR implementation worked.
    • (35:25) Jon asks about the future for hosters like Azure, AppHarbor, etc. Louis talks about an example for  supporting zip file based deployment, Mono hosting.
  • Getting involved
    • (37:05) Louis talks about what’s available in the Katana Project, including sample code and pre-release packages. The Google Group – net-http-abstractions – is the best place to discus OWIN.
    • (38:15) Jon asks if the Katana project takes pull requests. Louis says it’s run under the MS Open Tech organization and is clear to take pull requests from developers who have signed a contributor license agreement. Jon asks for areas where they’d like help. Scott says he’d like to see lots of middleware; Louis he’d love to see an OWIN Contrib project emerge.
  • Questions from Twitter
    • (41:05) Sean Massa (@endangeredmassa): Is it possible to use the DLR?
    • (41:45) Eric Hexter (@ehexter): what do MVC and Web Forms look like on OWIN. Louis says there are two exciting things there – you can have an Owin pipeline running in front of your application, or you can use self hosting to put an application inside of your own process (not supported but fun!).

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Herding Code 163: Sticker Tales and Building Windows Store apps with Damien Guard and Robert Sweeney

This week on Herding Code, the guys talk to Damien Guard and Robert Sweeney about Sticker Tales (a Windows Store application for kids), some challenges in building touch applications for kids, their CSharpAnalytics open source library, and a companion app they built for Western Digital.

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 163: Sticker Tales and Building Windows Store apps [audio://herdingcode.com/wp-content/uploads/HerdingCode-0163-Sticker-Tales-and-Building-Windows-Store-apps.mp3]

Show Notes:

  • Introductions
    • (00:39) Damien describes what he’s been up to since we last talked to him.
    • (01:25) Robert worked on the Windows user interface, then XBox.com, then several apps for NetFlix.
    • (02:57) Jon asked about the experience of building high scale customer facing applications at XBox and NetFlix. Damian tells about how they ran the XBox store on two servers.
  • Building Sticker Tales
    • (03:38) Jon asks how they decided to build a sticker book app. Robert explains how they got started.
    • (04:45) Robert describes how they decided to spend some money on professional illustration.
    • (05:40) Jon describes how Sticker Tales works and how he loves watching what his five year old daughter comes up with, especially how she plays with scale. Robert says he sees the same as his daughter
    • (6:57) Damien describes some of the surprises they saw in user testing.
    • (8:30) Scott K asks if their experiences in watching how kids interact with touch gestures will influence their design in general.
    • (9:18) Damien talks about some of the changes the kids inspired, especially using direction of motion to flip things. Jon says he wants this flip gesture everywhere, and Scott K says he thinks kids should be interaction testing all touch interfaces.
    • (10:44) Damien gives another example with how pinch / zoom didn’t work well for kids, and they added a handle instead.
    • (11:26) Jon asks about how they were interacting with the illustrators. Robert describes the interaction and how they handled different image sizes, exporting, etc.
  • In-app purchases
    • (13:37) Jon asks about the "free app + in app purchase" model. Robert explains why they chose that model.
    • (14:48) Jon asks if the in-app purchases were difficult to set up. Damien says yes and explains how it was set up. Robert says the purchasing is easy, but the delivery is up to you as the developer.
  • Google Analytics and the CSharpAnalytics library
    • (17:00) K Scott asks about what kind of analytics they were using. Damien explains how they used Google Analytics and explains they published that library as CSharpAnalytics on GitHub. Damien likes tracking usage patterns, Robert says he loves the real-time and geographic views.
    • (18:19) Robert says they track initiated vs. completed purchases, and they see it’s only about 10%. Jon speculates that’s because kids start the purchase and the parents veto it.
    • (19:08) K Scott asks if it’s only available for Windows 8. Damien says that’s all that’s documented, but he’s set it up to work with Windows Phone as well.
    • (19:30) Jon asks about how auto-analytics work.
  • Platform targeting – iPad future, Windows 8 implementation
    • (20:40) Kevin asks if they’re looking at porting this to iPad. Robert says they’re looking at using Xamarin for that.
    • (21:24) Jon asks about what Windows 8 integration points they’re using. Robert discusses live tiles, sharing, search, and background download API support.
    • (22:58) Jon asks if they used C# / XAML or HTML. Damien says they went with C# / XAML partly because the touch API support seemed better early on.
  • SharpDX and performance
    • (23:30) Damien explains that they’re using SharpDX to be able to take screenshots for live tiles, sharing, etc. Jon gets confused and thinks they’re using SharpDX everywhere, but Robert explains it’s only for saving screenshots – everything else is using image controls.
    • (26:54) Jon asks if they ran into any performance issues. Robert explains some of the guidelines they’d learned at NetFlix and says that everything’s worked really well in StickerTales. Damien says they’ve seen great performance on Surface / ARM as well. Jon says he’s seen Audacity recompiled for ARM and it worked great on Surface, too.
  • Data storage and MVVM perspective
    • (28:34) Jon asks what they’re using for data storage; Damien says using XML.
    • (28:46) Robert says they’re not using MVVM because it just doesn’t work with the Microsoft tools and isn’t worth it for the kinds of thin clients they’ve been building, even at NetFlix.
  • Western Digital companion application
    • (30:07) Jon asks how about their next project, a companion application for Western Digital. Damien describes how Western Digital wanted an application that would present an all-up aggregate view of media on external media.
    • (30:42) Damien says they using SQLite for that project and explains the challenges they ran into with hierarchical data storage in a relational database engine.
  • Unit Testing Windows Store application code
    • (32:52) Kevin asks about the testing story. Damien says they used MSTest and it all worked fine, with the exception of determining code coverage. Jon asks some questions about testing frameworks and test focus for Windows Store applications.
    • (35:20) Robert says the WinRT platform wasn’t written in a very testable manner – there are lots of static classes and a generally test resistant API.
  • Business Challenges and Opportunity for Windows Store Developers
    • (36:38) Jon asks about the challenges of building and running a company that’s building Windows 8 applications. Robert describes some of the perception and education issues they face in selling the potential to customers.
    • (38:20) Scott K compares the current Windows Store opportunity to the pre-iOS Mac development market – a nice place to create a niche product and make a good living. Damien says it is nice to be featured in the store, and that’s difficult on other platforms. Robert says that ease of developing Windows Store applications means that you still need to market your applications.

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