I sat down with Jason Bock, C# MVP and Magenic consultant, to talk about programming languages.  We looked at things from a slightly .NET perspective, but talked a lot about why developers should care about different and new languages, and some of the exciting things Jason has been checking out the past few months.  You can download the podcast here, and subscribe to an Interview Only Podcast feed here.

From the Apache POI web site...

We are currently working to support the new Office Open XML file formats, such as XLSX and PPTX, which were introduced in Office 2007.

Good news if you need to work with OOXML from the Java world.

Something that has not gotten a lot of visibility but I was recently asked about is "What is going on with Enterprise Library?".  EntLib is alive and kicking and is rapidly closing in on the release of EntLib 4.0. Some quick highlights for EntLib 4.0 include:

- Support for and integration into Visual Studio 2008

- Fixes to various quirks in the Validation and Policy Injection Application Block

- More extensibility in the Caching Application Block

- Performance improvements for the Logging Application Block

- Implement support for Partial Trust

All good stuff. You can get more details on what is being worked on at the EntLib v4 Product Backlog page.  As part of the EntLib 4 work, Microsoft will also be releasing Unity 1.0.  What is Unity you ask?  I think this snippet from the Unit CodePlex site does a nice job giving a high level summary of Unity:

The Unity Application Block (Unity) is a lightweight extensible dependency injection container with support for constructor, property, and method call injection.

Unity addresses the issues faced by developers engaged in component-based software engineering. Modern business applications consist of custom business objects and components that that perform specific or generic tasks within the application, in addition to components that individually address cross cutting concerns such as logging, authentication, authorization, caching, and exception handling.

The key to successfully building such applications is to achieve a decoupled or very loosely coupled design. Loosely coupled applications are more flexible and easier to maintain. They are also easier to test during development. You can mock up shims (lightweight mock implementations) of objects that have strong concrete dependencies; such as database connections, network connections, ERP connections, and rich user interface components.

Dependency injection is a prime technique for building loosely coupled applications. It provides ways to handle the dependencies between objects. For example, an object that processes customer information may depend on other objects that access the data store, validate the information, and check that the user is authorized to perform updates. Dependency injection techniques can ensure that the customer class correctly instantiates and populates all of these objects, especially where the dependencies may be abstract.

There has been a lot of desire for something like Unity and I hadn't really caught wind that this work was underway, so I am sure others where as much a mushroom as I was/am.  Feel free to check out the Unity CodePlex site for more info.

Shannon Braun has a post about some of the benefits of using WPF for real world business applications.  Shannon has gained a ton of experience working on one of the largest WPF projects that I am aware of.  This post shares a little bit of the value of WPF vs. more traditional approaches.  Good stuff.

Yep, I've taken a step into the big time.  You can now subscribe to Spaghetti Code Podasts via iTunes.  For a direct link (and since the podcast still isn't showing up via iTunes Search - grrrr) just click here - http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=276543733.  You can also subscribe to the podcast RSS feed directly using this link - http://feeds.feedburner.com/SpaghettiCodePodcasts.  I'm hoping to get into the Zune Marketplace shortly - but am waiting on approval????

Moving forward, I will try and get a new podcast out every three weeks or so.  If you have suggestions for things to talk about or people to interview, just shoot me an email.

I've been fortunate enough to have been involved with the Heartland Developers Conference since its inception many years ago.  What started off as a small event in Des Moines had grown to one of the nation's premier regional .NET Developers Conferences.  Each year, 500+ developers from the nation's heartland (where else given the name right?) descended on the HDC and each year they have come away impressed and very satisfied.  But even with great content and speakers, people from further away still had trouble getting to HDC.  So what has HDC done - they have decided to go to an additional city in 2008.  So not only will Omaha get an HDC, but HDC will be venturing north and stopping in Minneapolis.  Check out the website and get it on your calendar.

I had the chance to sit down and interview Scott Colestock, noted .NET developer and national BizTalk guru, and talk about BizTalk Server from a developer's perspective (download audio here).  We cover everything from getting started with BTS, to resources, to even the more basic "why should developers care and when should they use BTS" discussion. Very good stuff and Scott provides good insights as always.

Spaghetti Code Productions is proud to present another Minneapolis Developer Roundtable podcast.  Recorded in February, this podcast features Rocky Lhotka, Matt Milner, Scott Colestock, Jason Bock and myself talking about REST.  Its an interesting conversation.  Shoot me an email or leave a comment if you have any feedback, suggestions for future topics, or possibly even interest in participating since we could use a little non-Microsoft focused blood from time to time. ;-)