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Episode 32: Windows 7 First Impressions

This week Jon leads a discussion about our first impressions of Windows 7 Beta 1.

Topics
  • Previously bundled features are now distribued via Windows Live – good or bad?
  • Is the Windows Live suite just a standardized crapware?
  • Where’s our Photo Gallery?
  • Windows Marketplace???
  • Missing an ISO Mounter
  • The out of box experience
  • Window docking
  • Windows Explorer – side by side
  • Discoverability – shortcuts, etc.
  • “New features” that were already in Vista
  • New Wordpad and Paint with ribbons
  • Same old Notepad
  • Kevin’s underwhelmed with the updates to Paint
  • Could Windows Live Essentials include some friends, like Paint.NET?
  • Hey, a new calculator!
  • Problem Steps Recorder
  • Send Feedback
  • Nothing new for Remote Desktop?
  • Virtual Hard Drive support, but we want application virtualization
  • Multitouch
  • Distribution – why not via BitTorrent?
  • IE8 is still the same old IE8 that we know and meh
  • Windows Scenic Animation API
  • Looks like the API’s still all C++ and COM
  • The Vista Bridge project
  • The Ribbon control has graduated from an Office control to Windows
  • No WPF?
  • Jumplists
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Episode 31: Chad Myers and Jeremy Miller on FubuMVC

This week we talk to Chad Myers and Jeremy Miller about the FubuMVC project.Topics

  • What is FubuMVC?
  • History of the project
  • Built to take advantage of static typing
  • Composition over inheritance
  • Dependency injection tricks
  • IFlattener<T> for JSONification
  • Application of SOLID prinicples in FubuMVC and AltOxite
  • View engines
  • TextboxFor and no magic strings – advantages for refactoring support
  • Thin controllers, fat models
  • FubuMVC as the Ruby On Rails for ASP.NET
  • Benefits and problems of using generics for static typing
  • Use of meaningful generic type names rather than <T,U,K> ugliness
  • Testing tools for Javascript
  • FubuMVC’s Behaviors
  • Partial rendering strategies
  • Why they’re using NHibernate for AltOxite
  • IOC benefits
  • Strategies for Javascript management
  • qUnit for Javascript unit testing
  • How do I sell this to my boss?
  • Why FubuMVC as opposed to Microsoft’s ASP.NET MVC?
  • Why MVC isn’t just classic ASP revisited
  • Benefit of FubuMVC – removing choices through opinions
  • Ways an open source MVC framework keep up with Microsoft
  • FubuMVC futures and misc. benefits
  • Use of Rake as a build script
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Episode 30: Year-end wrapup

K Scott leads the discussion as we look back at 2008, and speculate wildly on what 2009 has to offer.

Note: Scott K’s taking a podcasting break to change diapers and stuff.

Looking back at 2008

  • Google Chrome
  • Kevin’s new iPhone
  • Kevin’s Firefox extension addiction
  • Hulu
  • IE8 – better than expected, but still a ways to go
  • ASP.NET MVC
  • Silverlight 2
  • Oslo
  • Azure
  • Visual Studio 2008 SP1
  • ADO.NET Data Services
  • REST is finally accepted in the .NET world
  • The Seinfeld / Gates ads
  • OpenID
  • Netbooks (Oragami at last?)
  • Twitter’s recovery
  • Overhyped stuff: Surface, cloud computing, multi-core madness
  • Functional programming
  • DI/IOC hitting the Microsoft mainstream
  • [sidebar – the tradeoff between DI benefits vs. Silverlight XAP size]
  • StackOverflow
  • [sidebar – frustration with Microsoft forums]

Looking forward at 2009

  • Windows 7
  • Office 14
  • Project Pink? (Zune on Windows Mobile)
  • [sidebar – frustrations Zune]
  • WPF in Visual Studio
  • [sidebar – is there a correlation between unmanaged code and lame Microsoft products?]
Links

    Download / Listen

    Herding Code 30: Year-end wrapup

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    Episode 29: Miguel de Icaza (part 2)

    This is the second half of our discussion with Miguel de Icaza about Mono, Moonlight, open source, and other fun stuff.

    Topics

    • When re-implementing .NET, do you match re-implement known bugs?
    • The test / regression system to maintain compatibility
    • How do you support so many platforms
    • What parts of Mono are written in managed code? Which are written in C?
    • Support for iPhone and Xbox
    • Mono’s static compilation options
    • Differing agendas in open source development
    • Microsoft’s emerging open source strategy
    • How the web has driven open source strategies and assumptions
    • Why Mono used licensed codecs instead of using a library like ffmpeg
    • Font distribution in Linux
    • Frustrations with the Windows multimedia API’s
    • What Miguel thought was insteresting at PDC
    • When will we be able to run ASP.NET MVC on Mono?
    • When will we get to use the C# 4.0 dynamic features in Mono?
    • How does Novell make money on Mono?
    Links

    Download / Listen

    Herding Code 29: Miguel de Icaza (part 2)[audio://herdingcode.com/wp-content/uploads/HerdingCode-0029-Miguel-de-Icaza–part-2.mp3]

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    Episode 28: Miguel de Icaza (part 1)

    This week we talk with Miguel de Icaza about Mono, Moonlight, and other fun stuff.

    Topics

    • Overview and update on Mono
    • Mono’s roots as a tool for desktop applications on Gnome / Linux
    • The need for a package manager in Windows
    • Managed operating systems (like Microsoft Research Singularity)
    • New areas of focus for Mono – portability and extension
    • Mono’s use in cross-platform gaming
    • SIMD optimizations in Mono
    • Mono’s implementation of the C# compiler as a service
    • How the Mono team determines what to work on next
    • Breaking changes in public API’s
    • Framework design
    • Mono’s relationship with Microsoft
    • The state of Linux desktop application development
    • Silverlight as a platform for desktop applications
    • When will Moonlight ship?
    • The challenges of building the Mono compiler
    • The Linear IL compiler enhancements in Mono 2.0
    Links

    Download / Listen

    Herding Code 28: Miguel de Icaza (part 1)