Jimer and Gando

[Dood]

So, can we build Facebook's next purchase? Maybe something with photos and coupons or something? I could use a few billion dollars.

[Jimer Lins]

You and me both, my friend. I haven't coded in more than year except for hobby things, though.

[Dood]

You and me both, my friend. I haven't coded in more than year except for hobby things, though.

So your fingers are rested!

Speaking of coding, I don't know if you've played with SignalR from your former employer, but holy shitballs, I'm pretty sure it's made out of unicorn semen and fairy beer.

[Jimer Lins]

Now I'm curious, because I've never even *heard* of it. New framework?

[Dood]

It's a wrapper around websockets that allows you to create "hubs" in IIS that push data to clients that are consumable via client-side javascript.

Amazing things:

1. Will automatically degrade to iFrame-based data push if the client browser doesn't support websockets.
2. With OWIN (embeddable .NET ASP.NET runtime), you can create WPF/Console/WinForm/Service clients to a SignalR hub
3. Supports backplanes via Redis, ServiceBus, or SQL Server right now - allowing you to put this in a webfarm/NLB environment

I'm building a POC right now, migrating our mapping product away from Winforms/Mappoint/TCPClient to Javascript/BingMaps/SignalR, and eventually utilizing the same pipeline to host some of the sockets for some of our other client apps just to essentially move as much TCP traffic as possible to a single management point.

[Jimer Lins]

Very cool. I was just reading about it. I'm surprised that MS is making something so open-sourcy. They're even using github, lol.

[Dood]

Very cool. I was just reading about it. I'm surprised that MS is making something so open-sourcy. They're even using github, lol.

Actually, almost all of the new ASP.NET-related products are open source now. It's pretty crazy. OWIN, SignalR, WebAPI, the Azure Libraries - everything is on GitHub and CodePlex now.

[Jimer Lins]

That's wild. I'm actually really shocked. I've been really out of the loop with dev stuff for a while now, and what's funny is that I don't really miss it at all, but then I hear about something like this and I'm like "buh"?

[Dood]

That's wild. I'm actually really shocked. I've been really out of the loop with dev stuff for a while now, and what's funny is that I don't really miss it at all, but then I hear about something like this and I'm like "buh"?

Yeah, it's really interesting. There's been a pretty massive shift in attitude at MS in terms of their relationships with devs. From what I'm hearing at conferences and my few remaining friends there, all the dev and web tools areas - including Azure - have been pretty much mandated to do more stuff more openly and are all running on agile timelines.

Strategically it makes sense. MS's strongpoint has always been developer mindshare, and since they're now playing catchup in devices and services, their best bet until they can catch up in one or both (whether it should be both and not one is a whole different debate) is to keep developers around by giving them open and awesome tools.

It's working for me. I was sort of drifting from being super interested in coding to it just being a job, and the last 18 months of change at MS has really pulled me back into it.

[Jimer Lins]

That's very cool. My peek inside the machine at MS wasn't very pleasant overall- it's actually a mixed bag in terms of jobs. Great pay, benefits and amazing facilities, support and so on. But the culture can be toxic and it's extremely cutthroat. The review system in place puts everyone on a curve, and if you don't place high in the review system, you're going to have a bad time. I found it to be very ugly; especially when I was thrown under the bus more than once to fill that quota.

Anyway, I don't really miss the tech world much, but I sometimes think I should do something besides a Minecraft plugin to keep my hand in.

I still get people calling me all the time to do ETL, HIPAA and BizTalk work.

[Dood]

Sadly, as I hear it, the Stack Ranking hasn't gone away yet.

I find it's a useful thing to keep my hand in. There are times when I just can't seem to find a tool that does something I need done, and it's helpful to be able to just slap something together on my own.

To get used to doing stuff with Azure, I built our wedding RSVP system in an Azure-based web service and connected to it via javascript to automatically update the backend database that an online spreadsheet pulled from so that as people RSVPed, my counts and costs automatically updated. Silly throw-away thing, but still pretty fun to build and it ended up being incredibly useful.

[Dood]

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/Microsoft ... Pappy.aspx

Sent from my XT1060 using Tapatalk

[Jimer Lins]

I was going to post this on that blog, but nobody would be convinced. So I will tell you my thoughts:

Microsoft's problems have nothing to do with its past. They have everything to do with its culture, which is extremely toxic to innovation, original thought or criticism.

[Dood]

I was going to post this on that blog, but nobody would be convinced. So I will tell you my thoughts:

Microsoft's problems have nothing to do with its past. They have everything to do with its culture, which is extremely toxic to innovation, original thought or criticism.

I think you should have posted that, personally. I've seen Scott say that he sees some of that, but that the org he's in has left him largely untouched by that part of the culture. He also works remotely from Portland and only rarely travels up to Redmond.

I think his points are more to the devs that weren't even aware of what a keyboard was when MS got into it's antitrust problems and still hold this burning hatred for what MS did, which, as he points out, is now SOP for most large software companies.

Based on what I read across the blogosphere, people universally agree that MS's internal culture is toxic and needs to be changed. As a 3rd party though, I'm just happy to see their web platform becoming more open and accessible.

[Jimer Lins]

Small steps, to be sure. And now that I realize the guy doesn't spend much time in the crucible, his perspective makes much more sense. I was much happier when I worked there but was telecommuting more than not. It's a fair point about people who hate MS for reasons that are long past.