Alex Robson is a Principled Polyglot

How do you build a cloud-oriented application? Carl and Richard talk to Vishwas Lele about his views on making software that takes advantage of features of the cloud, including dynamic resource allocation, resiliency and reliability. Vishwas runs down a list of ideas, starting with error handling - how many failures can be recovered in the cloud with new resource allocation, etc? Next up, instrumentation and logging - the cloud offers a lot of tooling to make real-time instrumentation a possibility. How do you take advantage of the costs of computing? What about scaling your application? Vishwas digs into it all!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

3 Marras 201553min

Can you really built virtual reality apps in .NET? You bet! Carl and Richard talk to Matthew Wilson about his work with Novus-Res, building VR apps for businesses. The conversation ranges over the typical hardware set - primarily focused on the Oculus Rift. Matthew talks about the different skills and tools needed to build a VR space, including 3D modelling. But when it comes to programming, Unity 3D leads the way, and you can write C# with Unity! What makes sense as a VR app? How do you keep folks from getting motion sick, and really make the VR experience real? Lots of cool thinking here, and we're still at the beginning!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

29 Loka 201559min

What does it take to make web pages that work in multiple languages? Carl and Richard talk to Diego Iastrubni about localization and internationalization. The conversation focuses first on the complexity involved - its very easy to forget how different languages and cultures apply to information being display. Does text go left-to-right, or right-to-left, left-aligned or right-aligned? And how does it apply to numbers? Diego goes on to explain core concepts in web localization, focusing on UTF-8 for character set and CSS for direction and alignment. There are frameworks to make this easier! Things get harder when you look at mobile and desktop apps, and every dev environment approaches it differently!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

28 Loka 201550min

Visual Studio 2015 came out in July 2015, and with it, a new version of F# - version 4.0! Carl and Richard talk to Lincoln Atkinson, late of Microsoft, about the cool new features and capabilities in F# 4. The conversation ranges through the thinking around functional programming and new very functional features added - like TryList, as well as the more hybrid capabilities that let F# be a more general purpose language. And most impressively, F# 4.0 was built out in the open, as an open source project, including having third party contributors. Sure, the bulk was built by Microsoft folks (including Don Syme), but check out the contributors list!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

27 Loka 201551min

Have you seen The Martian? Don't listen to this show until you do! WARNING: SPOILERS! But if you've seen it (or don't care), have a listen to this Geek Out about the movie and a deeper dive into the challenges of Mars, picking up where the last Geek Out on Manned Mars Missions left off. How is the movie different from the book? (they're both great, read or watch in either order) And how sciencey is the science? The movie is remarkably technically accurate, but there are some bits that are Hollywoodised, as well as dramatized for effect. But who cares? It's an awesome movie and a fun Geek Out! Have a listen!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

22 Loka 20151h

Test-Driven Development (TDD) is a mature methodology now, right? So how do you get it right? Carl and Richard talk to Justin Searls about his experiences helping teams implement TDD. As Justin says, TDD is just a tool in the toolbox for making long-lived software. In its maturity, different flavors of TDD have emerged, and Justin digs into the Detroit or Classical TDD versus the London TDD. It's all about testing, but with some style variations. How do you keep your tests resilient as software evolves? Justin talks about the right amount of abstraction and organizing a hierarchy of tests so that you can manage change effectively. TDD works!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

21 Loka 201555min

Ever heard of property-based testing? Carl and Richard talk to Mark Seemann about doing property-based testing with F#. As Mark explains, functional programming techniques work especially well for property-based testing, allowing you to define parameters (properties) that will generate ranges of values to test against. The conversation digs into tooling, specifically FsCheck, an open source library for doing property-based testing in F#. If you'd rather work in C#, Mark's project AutoFixture can do similar work in that language. But Mark talks up the advantages of F# from a functional perspective, creating very terse, easy to read tests. Check it out!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

20 Loka 201557min

How do you handle credit card payments in your applications? Carl and Richard talk to Craig McKeachie about his work with different payment solutions, including Stripe. The conversation digs into the challenges of building your own payment system versus using a third-party system - starting with PCI compliance! Craig talks about different tooling for embedding payment, including the stripe.net library on GitHub for plugging into Stripe, and so on. Taking payments is important, so is doing it right - you have to think about security in a deep way. Don't build what you don't have to!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

15 Loka 20151h