discussions on software development
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Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs
The Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs Podcast (aka ADSP: The Podcast) is an informal podcast inspired by Magic Read Along. We plan to talk about whatever we feel like - algorithms, data structures, programming languages, latest news in tech and more. Feel free to follow us on Twitter at @adspthepodcast.
#87 Veronika Kolesnikova, Xamarin and Cognitive Services
Summary Veronika Kolesnikova talks to me about Xamarin and Microsoft Cognitive Services. Details Who she is, what she does. What is Xamarin. What are cognitive services, why so many services; artificial intelligence vs machine learning vs deep learning, training models. He she got started in Xamarin; it's part of Visual Studio, SDKs and testing tools, Xamarin live player debugging on device. Why use cognitive services, examples of use. Types of cognitive services - labs, vision, face, speech, translator, language understanding intelligence service. Should I train my own model. Recommendations API. It started with Bing, how is it to use, examples. People to follow - Paige Bailey, Seth Juarez. Veronika is presenting at Visual Studio Live, Las Vegas.
#86 Tomas Petricek, Software Correctness
Summary Tomas Petricek talks about software correctness, its history and future. Details Who he is and what he does, his book on F#. Alan Turing Institute. Software as an engineering discipline, software as art. History of errors in software, errors in hardware. Software was never in crisis. Using types to help with correctness, how different languages do it, some complications, a new language would be needed. Upcoming improvements in correctness. Other projects Tomas is involved in.
#85 Mark Seemann, Dependency Rejection, Part 2
Summary Part two of a two part recording with Mark Seemann on dependency rejection. Details No mocking needed for unit testing, command query separation. Do you still use some DI in impure functions; partial applications, Mark is not a fan of DI containers and doesn't know of any for F#. Are partial functions functional, Haskell keeps its impure functions at the edge, "impure-pure-impure sandwich" sandwich - the origin of the word "sandwich", an example of a translator application, don't lose sight of the other tenets of programming, upcoming conferences.
#84 Mark Seemann, Dependency Rejection, Part 1
Summary Part one of a two part recording with Mark Seemann on dependency injection and rejection in F#. Details Who he is, what he does. The new video site. Used to earn from C#, now earns from F# but would like to earn from Haskell; how much dev is going on in F#. Dependency rejection; side effects, purity and determinism. Impure functions. Pure and impure calling each other. Dijkstra, abstractions and monoids.
#83 Steve Elliot, When to Rearchitect
Summary Steve Elliot, CEO of Agile Craft talks to me about re-architecting software, why it should be done, when to do it, and how to do it well. Details Who he is, what he does. When to re-architect, monitor usage patterns, out of date ui, spaghetti code, ratio of bug fixes to new code, not mobile enabled, difficulty recruiting, market opportunity. Making a decision, who gets a say. How to measure success on a long-term project. Practical steps for moving to new architecture. What to start with, easy or hard pieces; what to do next; how to keep the old system going. What about people who don't want to learn new things. Dealing with remote offices. How to keep the project on track and the momentum going.
#82 Jay Gambetta, IBM Quantum Experience
Summary Jay Gambetta manager for quantum theory and computing at IBM talks to me about the IBM Quantum Experience. Details Who he is, what he does. Why is quantum computing different, entanglement and interference. How do quantum computers look, cryogenic refrigerators, close to absolute zero. IBM's history in quantum computing. What is the quantum experience, how a program goes from the cloud app to the supercooled quantum computer; free and open access to 5 and 16 qbit computers; how to write a program (called a circuit); examples of circuits; is 16 qbits enough for real problems. When can we break encryption with quantum computing, why error correction is so important. Popularity of quantum experience, how soon will a submitted circuit run; using python to submit circuits; what is the "Hello World" of quantum computing; how to write a python program for the quantum experience. Community involvement. Future of quantum, becoming a technology, what about the temperature requirements. Chaotic and exciting times coming.
#81 Doc Norton, Better Agile Metrics
Summary Doc Norton tells me why measuring agile velocity is a bad idea and what to do instead. Details Who he is, what he does. "Escape Velocity", why he wrote a book on agile metrics. What velocity is, rate of delivering value to customer, "it is useless", estimates are "bunk". "The business" pushes velocity based estimates. Lack of trust throughout organization. Can we really reduce a complex problem down to a simple number. Anti patterns: more velocity, cross team velocity comparisons, estimating with time, measuring individual velocity. Side effects of metrics. Variable velocity. What should we measure, cycle time and lead time, fixing bottle necks, code quality, team joy. Where does dev ops come in. How to find Doc's book. Upcoming conferences.
#80 Angela Dugan, Impostor Syndrome
Summary Angela Dugan tells me about impostor syndrome, why it matters and what you can do about it. Details Who she is, what she does. What impostor syndrome is, Hanselman's post. Who is affected by it. The more you know, the more you realize you don't know; being an "expert"; why is "I don't know" not acceptable, do agile sprints and commitments force unreasonable expectations. Angela's impostor syndrome survey. The opposite of impostor syndrome - Dunning–Kruger. Should one do anything about it; teaching what you learn. Angela might retake the test. Angela suggests helping others with impostor syndrome.
#79 Josh Doody, Salary Negotiation
Summary Josh Doody talks about salaries, how they are set and how to negotiate a higher one. Details Who he is and what he does. What is a salary negotiation coach, negotiation by proxy. Who can benefit from Josh's help, how to get his book. Salary structures, what they are and how they work. Estimating your market value; judging your value compared to others, Bryan disagrees with Josh, John Sonmez says "ask for the moon". The interview, preparation, never share your current salary or desired salary. How to negotiate the salary; how to counter offer; the final discussion; "there is nothing fair about salary". How to leave a job. How to ask for more money in a job. Wrap up.
#78 Dustin Campbell, C# 7.1 and Beyond
Summary Dustin Campbell talks about the future of C# 7.1, 7.2 and beyond. Details Who he is and what he does, Mads and the other guy, cross platform experience, playing guitar. Why move to incremental c# releases, bug fixes, move language forward more quickly, csharplang on GitHub, changes needed to compiler, C# releases are tied to Visual Studio releases. Could C# become a NuGet package. Preventing accidental use of 7.1. Possible dates. Release cadence, halting problem. Speed of change of c# vs ASP.Net, slow evolution is the plan. Balancing features and performance against ease of use. More pattern types coming. Shapes and extensions, extension everything - properties, constructors. Optional interfaces. The future of c#. A question from Jon Skeet for Dustin.
#77 Laurent Bossavit, Software Myths
Summary Laurent Bossavit talks about the myths like the 10x developer that have grown in the software industry. Details Who he is, what he does. His book - "The Leprechauns of Software Engineering", why he wrote it. The 10x developer, literary archeology. The telephone game, examples in the software world, cost of when defects are discovered. Industry does not have interest exposing faults, why is the word "belief" used in software, is software an engineering discipline, opinions over measurements, how did we end up with manifestos. What should we measure when judging software quality, why measuring bugs are like eating from the garbage can. How to make things better. How to get Laurent's book. Laurent's book recommendations.
#76 Eyewire, Amy Sterling & Chris Jordan
Summary Amy Sterling and Chris Jordan of EyeWire talk about mapping the neurons and synapses of the brain. Details Who they are, what is EyeWire, how it started. About the brain, 80 billion neurons in a human brain, 100 trillion synapses. It used to take 1000 hours to map a neuron now it takes 80 hours. 250,000 users from around the world. Combined effort of players and AI. EyeWire is focusing on 1 cubic mm of a brain which has a 100,000 neurons and billion synapses. Where EyeWire's data goes after mapping. Why are they building EyeWire, to learn why we are the way we are, we don't know how many types of cell are in the brain. The EyeWire tech stack. Building a community, media engagement, internships, competitions. Moving towards open source for parts of EyeWire. How they make money, or not! Future work, IARPA. Joining EyeWire or other citizen science projects, World VR forum, Games for Change.
#75 David Mead, Start With Why & Better Communication
Summary David Mead of Start With Why talks about improving communication skills, leadership and handling conflict. Details Simon Sinek and start with why, David's own background. Start with why, golden circle. What we do, how we do it, why we do it; without why it is much harder to differentiate ourselves. Most companies start with what, examples of companies that start with why. People like to be around people like them and believe what they believe. Imperfect companies can have a nobel higher goal. How can engineers improve their communication; it's a skill that can be learned; give people tasks and roles that inspire. Better communication across the whole organization, sharing the big picture. Simple tips to improve communication skills, set goals that are attainable with low risk. How to handle conflict, don't take a position against something, stand for something. Conflict as a useful tool to resolve issues. What to do if conflict has become the norm, get back to the why; what to do when the why is not enough, "we can't fix people, we can provide the environment where they can be inspired to change themselves". Don't promote because of skill; when leading a team you are responsible for the team not the job, "management is about getting stuff done, leadership is about people". Always keep an eye on the bigger picture.
#74 Patrick Smacchia, NDepend
Summary Patrick Smacchia creator of NDepend explains how this tool can improve the quality of your code. Details Who he is, what he does. Why he is interested in code quality. NDepend is 10 years old. Transitioning from free to commercial. What is static analysis. Comparing NDepend to other tools, Roslyn analyzer. Finding spaghetti code, all rules are linq queries. Measuring technical debt, estimating the cost of fixing the code vs leaving it alone. Call graphs, dependency matrix, tree map, code coverage. Visual Studio Team Services plugin, quality gates, comparing code coverage per release, testability and maintainability. NDepend can analyze dlls, it looks at the intermediate language. Patrick loves the book "CLR via C#", Bryan talks about the time Jeffrey Richter stared him down. Future work. Getting a free trial. How to really pronounce Smacchia.
#73 Bill Wagner, Microsoft Documentation Service
Summary Bill Wagner discusses the new Microsoft documentation service, a new way of learning about Microsoft's development offerings. Details Who he is, what he does, upcoming talks in Portland, Vermont, Boston and Sydney. The new .NET documentation project, why they are doing it, reorganizing the docs to help solve problems. New docs give more context, e.g. thread safety, advice on usage. Picking what to write about. Open to user contributions. Who keeps the docs up to date, internal pull requests; third party tools and platforms. Documentation for developers with non .NET backgrounds. Monitoring traffic to docs. Docs as a compliment to stack overflow. Bryan complains about lack of full samples - Bill talks about very a large example eShopOnContainers. Walkthroughs. How to request new docs. Why some of C# and .NET is not open source, process of open sourcing. Updates to Bill's books, invite to help with docs.