Carl and Richard Geek Out on Nuclear Power

Carl and Richard talk to Itamar Syn-Hershko about adding search technologies to your application. The conversation starts out focused on what SQL Server can do for search... the LIKE operator. What about NoSQL? Itamar talks about the role that data stores like RavenDB can play as far as finding data. But then you get to dedicated indexing and search tools like Lucerne.NET, ElasticSearch and Solr. Itamar talks about the advantages of using these tools in terms of speed of indexing and search, as well as the ability to bring multiple data sources together under a common indexing strategy. How do you do search in your app?Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

27 Nov 201453min

Carl and Richard talk to Jonathan Stark about the wearable landscape today. But first, a crazy story about a Starbucks card. Jon is the guy behind Jonathan's Card, where he put a Starbucks card online for folks to add money to and buy coffee with. Crazy! Next up is a deep dig into the spectrum of watch like devices available today - Samsung Gear, Pebble, the Apple Watch and more! The variety of programming opportunities is just getting bigger.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

26 Nov 20141h 1min

While at the MVP Summit, Carl and Richard sat down with Pratap Lakshman, Peli de Halleux and Nikolai Tillman to talk about automating unit testing in .NET. Originally a Microsoft Research Project, PEX is now part of Visual Studio 2015, and digs deep into the IL of your application to generate a huge variety of unit tests. The team also talks about some of the other cool projects they've built using the PEX engine, including CodeHunt, a tool using testing to teach you to program. Check out PEX on Microsoft Research, and get ready for Studio 2015!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

25 Nov 201459min

Carl and Richard talk about two space accidents that happened in the same week - the explosion of Orbital Science's Antares Rocket on October 28 and the breakup of Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo on October 31. Richard begins with the Orbital Science's mission to supply the International Space Station. Part of NASA's Commercial Resupply Services, the ORB-3 mission included the Cygnus spacecraft carrying supplies to the ISS as well as a number of smaller payloads, including the Arkyd-3. The Antares rocket exploded a few seconds after launch. The discussion digs into the origins of the rocket design and Orbital's subsequent actions to deal with the loss of the rocket - they're still responsible to get those supplies to the station! The second part of the show is even more serious, since it involves a fatality - the breakup of SpaceShipTwo during a test flight, resulting in the death of co-pilot Michael Alsbury. Is making space commercially viable worthwhile even at the expense of someone's life?Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

20 Nov 201453min

Carl and Richard talk to Rob Irving and Simon Jackson about advertising on mobile apps. The conversation starts out with Ad Duplex, which is an ad exchange and a way to advertise your mobile app on other mobile apps like yours - all in an effort to get more users. Rob talks about alternative ways to get users, such as pursuing reviews, using crowdsouring and in general taking marketing seriously. Simon digs into more traditional advertising using the open source Adrotator library, which takes the discussion into the complexity of advertising - multiple providers, different systems for different locations, and how often you don't actually *get* an ad!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

19 Nov 201453min

Carl and Richard talk to Scott Ford about taking over existing software projects. There's lots of negativity around existing code, calling them "brownfield" and "legacy projects." Scott looks at existing projects more like an older home that has been well used, but needs updating. The conversation digs into how to understand not only the code of the existing application, but also the intent of the app - more focus on why things are the way they are, rather than just the how parts. But once you understand the why, there's no reason to stick with old tools and techniques, and Scott talks about using modern tools to quickly take control of an existing codebase and make it more reliable, understandable and sustainable.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

18 Nov 201452min

Carl and Richard talk to David Dennison about his complete change of development career: From C# and .NET to Scala and the JVM! David talks about getting work at iTrellis, and their move to a services stack of Scala, Akka and Spray. The discussion focuses on the many things that are the same between the platforms, as well as the differences - it's all managed code in the end! David also talks about getting into the mindspace of the new platform he is working in, as well as dealing with entirely new development tools and infrastructure. Could you change platforms if the opportunity arose?Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

13 Nov 201450min

Carl and Richard talk to Greg Shackles about making continuous deployment work in the mobile apps space. The conversation starts out with the projects that Greg is currently working on, and the need to get them deployed routinely to iOS and Android devices - this means, of course, deployment to the AppStore, which only goes so fast. Greg talks about avoiding the AppStores by finding ways to make changes internally, rather than a full deploy. The discussion goes down his preferred toolchain and inserting as much automation as possible - not so much for speed as for repeatability! Check out Greg's talks and slides in the show notes on this subject.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

12 Nov 201454min