Episode 22: Brad Abrams and Tim Heuer on the Silverlight 2 Release

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 frameworks for Silverlight?
  • Will Silverlight support offline scenarios
  • Silverlight as a “line of business” platform
  • The WPF / Silverlight connection
  • The Silverlight open source community
  • The Flash question
  • The casual gaming market
  • Silverlight performance vs. Javascript
  • Speculation on Silverlight 3 features…
  • The non-Windows development experience
  • The Silverlight story for iPhone and other mobile platforms

Questions from listeners

  • What’s the story on Prism for Silverlight 2? What’s the story for enterprise Apps? (Chris Bilson)
  • What’s being done to encourage enterprise adoption, in a climate where many enterprise shops are still on IE6? (Eric Kemp)
  • What’s IE’s relationship with Silverlight? (Matt Hamilton)
Links

Download / Listen

Herding Code 22: Brad Abrams and Tim Heuer on the Silverlight 2 Release
[audio://herdingcode.com/wp-content/uploads/HerdingCode-0022-Brad-Abrams-and-Tim-Heuer-on-the-Silverlight-2-Release.mp3]

Episode 21: Real World Development

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 a bad person?
  • Where do code reuse and maintainability stack up when it comes to other real world priorities, like hard deadlines and short technology lifespans?
  • Is there a place for “forms over data” development? How about System.DraggyDroppy?
Links

Download / Listen

Herding Code 21: Real World Development
[audio://herdingcode.com/wp-content/uploads/HerdingCode-0021-Real-World-Development.mp3]

Episode 20: Ted Leung on open source in the corporate world

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 community
  • How open source has worked for Apple, Sun, and IBM
  • Microsoft and open source
  • JavaFX
  • Chandler: what is it, what it does well, and where it disappoints
Links

Download / Listen

Herding Code 20: Ted Leung on Open Source in the corporate world
[audio://herdingcode.com/wp-content/uploads/HerdingCode-0020-Ted-Leung-On-Open-Source-in-the-corporate-world.mp3]

Episode 19: Pajama Driven Development (working remote)

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

Download / Listen

Herding Code 19: Pajama Driven Development (working remote)
[audio://herdingcode.com/wp-content/uploads/HerdingCode-0019-Pajama-Driven-Development–Working-Remote.mp3]

Episode 18: Matt Podwysocki on F# and Functional Programming

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 wouldn’t benefit from F#
  • How F# differs from C# 3.x and Javascript
  • How F# is being used (games, scripting, data analysis and scrubbing, etc.)
  • F# pattern matching
  • Using F# in your C# or VB based applications today
  • Getting started: F# Interactive, reading the F# source, books and resources
  • Interaction with DLR
  • Functional features we’d like to see in C# and VB
  • Spec# and Sing#

Links:

Download / Listen

Herding Code 18: Matthew Podwysocki on F# and Functional Programming
[audio: //herdingcode.com/wp-content/uploads/HerdingCode-0018-Matthew-Podwysocki-on-F-Sharp-and-Functional-Programming.mp3]

Additional F# References:

Books:

Blogs:

Podcasts/Videos

F# Examples