In this thought-provoking episode of Hallway Conversations, we chat with former-practicing-lawyer-turned-technologist Jeff Strauss about some of the thornier legal issues facing the software professional in today’s world.  We explore the murky waters of non-compete agreements, dive into the depths of trade secrets and patents, discuss the dangers in moonlighting policies, and consider what it really means to both negotiate and eventually accept an employment contract in the software development profession.

HINT: you may not want to sign that thing until you read the fine-print!

Jeff Strauss is a developer, analyst, and attorney, but first and foremost, a consultant. Jeff entered the software industry after having practiced law with a private firm in St. Louis for several years. Although he enjoyed the consulting aspect of his original career, his lifelong passion for technology drew him back into the fold, where he has been happy ever since.

As the vice president of St. Louis-based consulting firm ArchitectNow, he provides both entrepreneurial and enterprise product development solutions for clients from the ground up. The most rewarding part of Jeff’s work is having an opportunity each day to utilize advancing technologies and apply them to real-world problems in planning, developing, and realizing products that make a difference for his clients and community.

In addition to his “day job,” Jeff also has been honored to serve on the board of directors of the St. Louis Days of .NET developer conference and the St. Louis .NET User Group for the past five years.

In this episode, Hallway Conversations sits down to chat with our very own Steve Bohlen about the parallels often drawn between the profession of software engineering and that of building architecture/engineering.

As a former practicing Architect, Steve explores some of the ways in which these parallels are entirely valid as well as other ways in which some of these ill-informed comparisons may be at the root of any number of ill-advised software engineering practices, the legacy of which our nascent profession still struggles to escape even today.

Whether you’ve always considered “building software” to be very much like “building a building” or you’ve always thought that comparison fundamentally flawed, this episode will help clarify where such metaphors are (mostly) valid and where such comparisons are fraught with implicit danger!

As a Principal Software Engineer on the TED team within the Developer Experience & Evangelism (DX) division at Microsoft Corporation, Stephen brings his varied 20-plus-years of experience as a former practicing Architect, CAD Manager, IT Technologist, Software Engineer, CTO, and consultant to assist select Microsoft Partner organizations in their adoption of cutting-edge and pre-release Microsoft developer products and technologies.

Stephen is also an active contributor to several Open-Source Software projects including NHibernate, Spring.NET, NDbUnit, and others.

Active in the software development community, Stephen speaks publicly, blogs (semi-)regularly, and is the author of several popular screencast series focused on Agile and ALT.NET concepts and technologies including the widely-praised 15-part Summer of NHibernate video series introducing viewers to the popular open-source O/RM tool. Stephen is also a founding/organizing member of the NYC ALT.NET user group as well as a co-organizer of the New York City Domain Driven Design User Group. For the past several years, he has been the Chairperson of the annual New York City Code Camp event. He is also a Microsoft MVP award recipient in Solution Architecture, ASP.NET, and Visual C#, a member of the ASP Insiders and the Visual C# Insiders, and formerly held the office of the Vice President for INETA, North America.

You can follow Stephen via Twitter http://twitter.com/sbohlen or visit his blog at http://blog.unhandled-exceptions.com

Being an outlier is all about differentiating yourself from the rest of the pack of software developers competing for the same jobs, opportunities, and notoriety.  In this installment of the podcast, the Hallway Conversations team engages with Cory House between sessions at Nebraska Code Camp to explore what it takes to become a statistical outlier in the profession of software development.

Cory explores why one might want to become an outlier and offers techniques for your professional development and focus areas that can help put yourself on the path to achieve this goal.

Cory is founder of BitNative LLC, an agile software development and training consultancy. He is a Pluralsight author, INETA speaker, independent consultant, and blogger with 15 years experience in full-stack software development. As a software architect at VinSolutions, Cory specializes in creating C# .NET and JavaScript based single page applications for the automotive industry. He regularly speaks on clean code, architecture, and software career development at conferences and user groups across the country. Cory is author of Clean Code: Writing Code for Humans, Architecting Applications in .NET, and Becoming an Outlier on Pluralsight. Cory blogs at bitnative.com and outlierdeveloper.com and is active on Twitter as @housecor.

In this episode recorded between sessions at Nebraska Code Camp, the Hallway Conversations team sits down with Mitchel Sellers to discuss recommendations and guidance around the use of the Async/Await keywords in .NET.  In this conversation, Mitchel helps demystify for .NET developers both the HOW and the WHAT surrounding Async/Await, but also helps us understand the all-important WHY as well!

If you’ve always wanted to understand the power (and the danger!) of these two new language keywords, then this is a conversation you don’t want to miss!

Show Notes

My Presentation Materials
Lucian’s Blog​

Mitchel Sellers, Microsoft C# MVP, DNN MVP, is the CEO of IowaComputerGurus a West Des Moines, Iowa based software consulting firm. Mitchel enjoys learning about new technology and sharing his experience with others. Focusing on enterprise development, best practices, and application performance. You will find Mitchel at many technology events each year anything from Code Camps, to User Groups, to regular conferences. In his spare time he enjoys flying when he gets a chance!

To learn more about Mitchel, visit his website.

In this conversation, we speak with Javier Lozano about the ASP.NET SignalR library in between sessions at Nebraska Code Camp.  ASP.NET SignalR makes developing real-time web functionality easy, allowing bi-directional communication between server and client.  SignalR directly supports Web Sockets but also falls back to other compatible techniques for older browsers, giving you the benefit of Web Sockets-style support even if your users aren’t on browsers that directly support it!

Javier takes us into the world of the real-time, bi-directional web and explains how its possible to support user-scenarios and interactivity over the web in ways previously considered impossible.

Show Notes

Javier Lozano on Twitter
SignalR Homepage
ShootR Homepage

Javier is an ASP.NET Insider, Windows Azure Insider, and ASP.NET MVP. His specializations are in ASP.NET, Windows Azure, system design, and developer mentoring. He has helped co-found the Iowa .NET Users Group (IADNUG), Iowa Code Camp (ICC), dotnetConf, and aspConf virtual conferences. He’s is an avid supporter of the community and likes to give back by speaking at user groups, local/regional/national .NET events. In his spare time, Javier loves spending time with his family and enjoys writing about himself in the third person.

In this conversation, the team sits down with TJ VanToll to explore the often-confounding world of so-called “hybrid” mobile apps.  TJ helps us understand the relationship between the open-source Apache Cordova project and Adobe PhoneGap.  We discuss at length some of the technical skills necessary as well as the mindset required to develop successful cross-platform mobile apps using these kinds of technologies as well as explore some of their limitations and strengths.

TJ also introduces us to the Telerik AppBuilder product and explains how it differs from the other solutions available to developers interested in building hybrid mobile apps.

Show Notes
Telerik AppBuilder home page
Telerik AppBuilder Sample Apps
Getting Started With Kendo UI Mobile in AppBuilder
Getting Started With Apache Cordova

TJ VanToll is a web developer, speaker, and writer living in Lansing, MI and working as a developer advocate for Telerik. He is an open source advocate that is on the jQuery UI team, publishes his blog open source. TJ is also the author of an upcoming book from Manning: jQuery UI in Action. When not online, TJ is generally chasing his twin sons in circles. TJ is @tjvantoll on Twitter, tjvantoll on GitHub, and blogs at http://tjvantoll.com/.

If you ever thought “I have a great idea for an open-source software project…NOW WHAT???” then this is an episode you won’t want to miss!  In this episode we sit down with Nik Molnar to discuss many of the often-overlooked aspects to doing open-source software (OSS) projects.  HINT: there’s a lot more to it than just “My code is up on GitHub, I’m all done!”

In this conversation, Nik enlightens us about the complexities of the often-overlooked (but still absolutely critical!) aspects of OSS including:

• choosing a license for your project
• considering a CLA (Contributor License Agreement)
• the value of having an automated strategy for taking a first-pass at reviewing pull-requests to ensure that they follow the project’s coding standards

Nik Molnar is a New Yorker, Microsoft MVP, ASP & Azure Insider and co-founder of Glimpse, an open source diagnostics and debugging tool. Originally from Homestead Florida, Nik specializes in web development, web performance, web API’s and community management. In his spare time, Nik can be found cooking up a storm in the kitchen, hanging with his wife, speaking at conferences, and working on other open source projects.

In this episode, the Hallway Conversations team discusses the cloud in general and Azure specifically with Windows Azure MVP Mike Wood.  We explore the question “What is Windows Azure?” (answer: anything you want it to be!) as well as understanding some of the typical motivators for developers, IT Pros, and business stakeholders to consider moving applications and solutions to The Cloud in today’s technology and business landscape.

If you’ve always wanted to understand Azure but had trouble finding a great overview (“What is Azure and why should I care?”) or recommendations about how to get started with Azure, this is the episode for you!

Mike Wood is a Technical Evangelist for Red Gate Software on the Cerebrata Team. He describes himself as a problem solving, outdoorsy, user group founding, dog-loving, blog writing, solution creating, event planning, married, technology speaking, father of one kind of guy. When he’s not living up to that title he’s an avid reader, (horrible) violinist and gamer. Michael is one of the Founding Directors of the Cincinnati .NET User Group as well as the founder of the Cincinnati Software Architecture Special Interest Group. He is also a Microsoft MVP in Windows Azure. You can catch up with Mike on his blog at http://mvwood.com/blog and on twitter under the handle @mikewo.

In this episode, Hallway Conversations chats at length with Ben Hoelting about the relationship between C# and JavaScript in today’s software development landscape.

If you’re a C# developer, how much JavaScript do you need to learn (and vice-versa)?  Is there any longer such a thing as a “full-stack developer”, equally capable of handling both client and server design and development responsibilities?  Tune in to this episode to find out the answers to (or at least opinions on) these and other challenging aspects of developing software solutions in an increasingly complex world!
Ben Hoelting is currently Director of Technology at AspenWare as well as being a C# MVP and a Telerik Insider.  He graduated from Colorado State University in 1997 with a BS in Computer Information Systems and a Minor in Computer Science.  Ben joined the IT industry in 1996 as an intern and has worked with .NET since its inception back in 2001. Ben is a Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS) for Web and Windows .NET 4.0. His blog is at http://www.benhblog.com and his twitter stream is at http://twitter.com/benhnet. Finally, Ben is very involved in the local .NET community and is the leader of the South Colorado .NET User Group.

In this inaugural episode, the Hallway Conversations hosts introduce themselves, take a look back at the significant trends and events that shaped 2013, and then offer a peek at their predictions and hopes for the practice of software development in 2014.