Software Engineering Radio - the podcast for professional software developers

Episode 185: Dwight Merriman on Replication

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 15:42:28 PDT

Recording Venue: MongoSF, San Francisco Guest: Dwight Merriman As application data size and throughput have outgrown the processing and storage needs of commodity servers, replication has become an increasingly important strategy. In this episode, Robert talks with Dwight Merriman about database replication. Topics covered include replication basics, master-slave versus master-master, failure and recovery, replication versus [...]

Episode 184: The Mainframe with Jeff Frey

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 16:07:45 PDT

Recording Venue: Phone Guest: Jeff Frey System z, or the Mainframe, holds most of us in awe — the ultimate computing platform, referenced in Hollywood as well as by those who thought they were dealing with “legacy” systems — but what does Mainframe really mean? What does its stack look like? This leading virtualized infrastructure [...]

Episode 183: SE Radio becomes part of IEEE Software

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 09:38:49 PST

SE Radio will continue producing podcasts under the wings of IEEE Software, a respected magazine published by the IEEE Computer Society.

Episode 182: Domain-Specific Languages with Martin Fowler and Rebecca Parsons

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 19:43:44 PST

In this episode, Markus talk with Martin Fowler and Rebecca Parsons about domain-specific languages.

Episode 181: Distributed Scrum with Rini van Solingen

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 19:59:45 PST

In this episode we talk with Rini van Solingen about scrum and agile software development in distributed settings.

Episode 180: Leading Agile Developers with Jurgen Appelo

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 21:12:16 PDT

In this episode Michael interviews Jurgen Appelo on the topic of leading agile developers.

Episode 179: Cassandra with Jonathan Ellis

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 21:54:33 PDT

Cassandra is a distributed, scalable non-relational data store influenced by the Google BigTable project and many of the distributed systems techniques pioneered by the Amazon Dynamo paper.

Episode 178: Akka With Jonas Boner

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 09:25:26 PDT

This episode is a conversation with Jonas Boner about Akka.

Episode 177: IBM i (OS/400) Operating System with Steve Will

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 23:02:03 PDT

Recording Venue: Phone Guest: Steve Will IBM i (formerly known as OS/400) is an advanced object-based operating system by IBM that runs thousands of businesses around the world. Steve Will, the Chief Architect of IBM i speaks with us about the history, technical features, and underlying architecture discussing the concepts of Single Level Store, integrated [...]

Episode 176: Quantum Computing with Martin Laforest

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 22:43:42 PDT

We talk with Martin Laforest about topics ranging from how quantum computing works, which different models of quantum computing are explored, current and future uses of the approach as well as the current state of the art.

Episode 175: Game Development with Andrew Brownsword

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Thu, 05 May 2011 21:23:33 PDT

We discuss characteristics and performance properties of modern games and outline the challenges for software development.

Episode 174: Chip Manufacturing and Waferscanners

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 22:30:21 PDT

Guest: Wilbert Albers Host: Markus In this episode we take a look at microchip production, with a special focus on waferscanners. To do this, we talked with Wilbert Albers of ASML, the leading waferscanner manufacturer in the world. In the episode, we talk about the overall chip production process (from silicon sand over wafer cutting [...]

Episode 173: Feature-Oriented Software Development with Sven Apel – Pt 2

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 09:17:48 PDT

Recording Venue: University of Passau Guest: Sven Apel Host: Stefan In this second episode on Feature-Oriented Software Development (FOSD), Sven Apel gives us an overview of programming language and tool support for FOSD. He introduces the Eclipse-based FeatureIDE which covers important phases of the FOSD process, namely domain implementation as well as configuration and generation. [...]

Episode 172: Feature-Oriented Software Development with Sven Apel – Pt 1

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 10:43:56 PST

Sven Apel explains why developing software in a feature-oriented manner is so vital for us as software engineers and why objects are simply not enough.

Episode 171: Scala Update with Martin Odersky

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 19:48:22 PST

This episode is an update on the developments around the Scala language.

Episode 170: Large Agile Software Development with Bas Vodde

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 19:58:06 PST

In this episode Michael talks with Bas Vodde about how to apply agile principles to large and distributed development organizations.

Episode 169: Memory Grid Architecture with Nati Shalom

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 21:00:21 PST

In this episode, Robert talks with Nati Shalom about the emergence of large-system architectures consisting of a grid of high-memory nodes.

Episode 168: Being a Consultant

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 00:37:49 PDT

This episode is about being a consultant in the software business.

Episode 167: The History of JUnit and the Future of Testing with Kent Beck

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 13:41:04 PDT

In this episode we talk with Kent Beck about automated unit testing and JUnit.

Episode 166: Living Architectures with John Wiegand

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 12:37:29 PDT

This time we have John Wiegand on the mic for an episode on architectures and agile software development. We talk about the role of architectures in an agile world and why architectures change and need to change over time. We discuss the characteristics of those living architectures, using the Eclipse and the Jazz projects as examples, and the surrounding development methods for such environments.

Episode 165: NoSQL and MongoDB with Dwight Merriman

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 10:54:35 PDT

Dwight Merriman talks with Robert about the emerging NoSQL movement, the three types of non-relational data stores, Brewer's CAP theorem, the weaker consistency guarantees that can be made in a distributed database, document-oriented data stores, the data storage needs of modern web applications, and the open source MongoDB.

Episode 164: Agile Testing with Lisa Crispin

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 09:53:06 PDT

This episode covers the topic of agile testing. Michael interviews Lisa Crispin as an practionier and book author on agile testing. We cover several topics ranging from the role of the tester in agile teams, over test automation strategy and regression testing, to continuous integration.

Episode 163: State of the Union

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 11:37:17 PDT

Announcement regarding the release cycle.

Episode 162: Project Voldemort with Jay Kreps

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Sun, 16 May 2010 13:29:42 PDT

Jay Kreps talks about the open source data store Project Voldemort. Voldemort is a distributed key-value store used by LinkedIn and other high-traffic web sites to overcome the inherent scalability limitations of a relational database. The conversation delves into the workings of a Voldemort cluster, the type of consistency guarantees that can be made in a distributed database, and the tradeoff between client and the server.

Episode 161: Agile Product Management with Roman Pichler

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Mon, 03 May 2010 01:47:33 PDT

In this episode, we discuss with Roman Pichler how Scrum impacts product management and how agile product management differs from traditional approaches. The topics covered include product owners on large projects and product owner teams, facilitating customer feedback through early and frequent releases, envisioning the product, and creating products with the minimum functionality. Enjoy!

Episode 160: AspectJ and Spring AOP with Ramnivas Laddad

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 00:06:55 PDT

This episode is a conversation with Ramnivas Laddad about aspect-oriented programming (AOP), Aspect J, and Spring AOP. We review the fundamental concepts of AOP, discuss AspectJ (an open source compiler that extends java with support for AOP), and cover the Spring Framework's proxy-based AOP system. Laddad also gives his thoughts on the use cases for AOP and where we are in the technology adoption curve, and updates on the state of the AspectJ project itself.

Episode 159: C++0X with Scott Meyers

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 13:20:03 PDT

This episode is a conversation with Scott Meyers about the upcoming C++0x standard. We talk a bit about the reasons for creating this new standard and then cover the most important new features, including upport for concurrency, implicitly-typed variables, move semantics, variadic templates, lambda functions, and uniform initialization syntax. We also looked at some new features in the standard library.

Episode 158: Rich Hickey on Clojure

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 12:56:03 PDT

This episode is a coversation with Rich Hickey about his programming language Clojure. Clojure is a Lisp dialect that runs on top of the JVM that comes with - among other things - persistent data structures and transactional memory, both very useful for writing concurrent applications.

Episode 157: Hadoop with Philip Zeyliger

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 10:51:19 PST

Philip Zeyliger of Cloudera discusses the Hadoop project with Robert Blumen. The conversation covers the emergence of large data problems, the Hadoop file system, map-reduce, and a look under the hood at how it all works. The listener will also learn where and how Hadoop is being used to process large data sets.

Episode 156: Kanban with David Anderson

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 21:33:50 PST

This episode is part of our series on agile software development. We talk with David Anderson about Kanban, an agile software development method that is quite different from most of the other agile methods out there. We discuss the basic ideas behind Kanban, the differences between Kanban and Scrum and when and why projects can benefit from using Kanban. This episode is done in cooperation with the German magazine ObjektSpektrum (thanks for sharing this interview with us).

Episode 155: Johannes Link & Lasse Koskela on TDD

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 11:37:48 PST

In this episode Johannes Link interviews Lasse Koskela - the author of "Test-Driven" - about test-driven development (TDD). We cover the basics, the rationale behind it and the challenges you face when doing it in more difficult environments.

Episode 154: Ola Bini on Ioke

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 22:16:20 PST

This is a conversation with Ola Bini on his experimental language Ioke. We cover the idea behind the Ioke experiment as well as important language concepts and the thinking behind them.

Episode 153: Jan Bosch on Product Lines and Software Ecosystems

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 22:31:23 PST

This episode is a conversation with Jan Bosch about product line engineering (PLE). Jan has worked in various roles and industries and academia in the context of product lines. In this episode we look at Jan's view of what is next for product lines: software ecosystems. What is their relationship to PLE and how should PLE change to remain relevant?

Episode 152: MISRA with Johan Bezem

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 23:39:42 PST

Our guest Johan Bezem explains the idea behind and the benefits of MISRA. MISRA defines guidelines for C and C++ programming in order to ensure quality. While it got started for embedded automotive development, it is more generally applicable.

Episode 151: Intentional Software with Shane Clifford

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 09:02:23 PST

This episode is a discussion with Shane Clifford, who is a development manager at Intentional Software. We discuss the idea behind intentional programming, key concepts of the technology as well as example uses and a little bit of history.

Episode 150: Software Craftsmanship with Bob Martin

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 22:52:58 PST

This episode is a conversation with "Uncle Bob" Bob Martin about agile software development and software craftsmanship specifically. We talk about the history of the term, the reasons for coming up with it some of the practices and the relationship to other agile approaches. We conclude our discussion with an outlook on some of todays new and hyped programming languages.

Episode 149: Difference between Software Engineering and Computer Science with Chuck Connell

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 07:36:46 PST

Michael discusses with his guest Chuck Connell the differences between software engineering and computer science. What makes software engineering so unpredictable, with so few formal results? And how can we advance the field of software engineering without these results?

Episode 148: Software Archaeology with Dave Thomas

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 22:33:57 PST

Dave explains why reading source code is at least as important a skill as writing source code. He shares approaches for how to get to grips with unknown and undocumented source code even if it is non-trivial in size. He finishes with advice for how to get started reading code.

Episode 147: Software Development Manager

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 12:48:26 PDT

Michael and Markus discuss what makes a good R&D manager and how to potentially become an R&D manager. You will learn what some of the essential skills are, what the challenges are, and what the 'mission/vision/strategy thing' is actually good for.

Episode 146: Interesting Patterns at EuroPLoP 2009

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 00:51:15 PDT

This episode is a discussion with various authors of patterns reviewed at EuroPLoP 2009. Topics include Product Line Engineering, Distributed Development, Open Source and Embedded Systems

Episode 145: Spring in 2009 with Eberhard Wolff

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 11:26:14 PDT

In this episode we discuss the current state of the spring framework. We talk about core features (dependency injection, AOP) but also about the spring universe, i.e. some of the more specific frameworks such as Spring Batch.

Episode 144: The Maxine Research Virtual Machine with Doug Simon

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 11:49:33 PDT

In this episode we talk with Doug Simon from Sun Microsystems Laboratories about the Maxine Research VM, a so-called meta-circular virtual machine. Maxine is a JVM that is written itself in Java, but aims at taking JVM development to the next level while using highly integrated Java IDEs as development environments and running and debugging the VM itself directly from the Inspector, an IDE-like tool specialized for the Maxine VM. During the episode we talk about the basic ideas behind Maxine, what exactly "meta-circular" means and what makes it interesting and promising to build a Java VM in Java. We talk about the relationship to Sun's current production JVM (HotSpot) and about ideas and directions for the future of Maxine.

Episode 143: API Design with Jim des Rivieres

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 10:43:21 PDT

This episode is a discussion with Jim Des Rivieres about APIs: How to design good APIs, the role of the documentation/specification in APIs, API evolution and other relevant topics.

Episode 142: Sustainable Architecture with Kevlin Henney and Klaus Marquardt

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 10:39:57 PDT

This is another episode recorded at OOP 2009, thanks to SIGS Datacom and programme chair Frances Paulisch for making this possible. Here is the abstract from the conference program: Many software systems have fragile architectures that are based on brittle assumptions or rigid architectures that reduce options and make change difficult. On the one hand, an architecture needs to be fit for the present day, suitable for immediate use, and on the other it needs to accommodate the future, absorbing reasonable uncertainty. However, an approach that is overly focused on today's needs and nothing more can create an inflexible architecture. An approach that becomes obsessed with possible future changes creates an overly complex architecture that is unfit for both today's and tomorrow's needs. Both approaches encourage an early descent into legacy for a system. The considerations presented in this talk reflect an approach that is more about thinking in the continuous present tense than just the present or the future tense. This includes principles from lean thinking, practices common in agile processes and techniques for loosely coupled design.

Episode 141: Second Life and Mono with Jim Purbrick

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 00:14:41 PDT

In the first part of this episode we discuss a couple of basics about SecondLife (scaling, partitioning, etc). The second part specifically looks at how the dev team tackled a number of interesting problems in the context of executing their own LSL scripting language on top of Mono.

Episode 140: Newspeak and Pluggable Types with Gilad Bracha

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 14:03:15 PDT

This episode is a conversation with Gilad Bracha about Newspeak, type systems in general and optional/pluggable types in particular. It was recorded during DSL Devcon in the gardens of the Microsoft campus, and thanks to Gilad's "speaking like a book" way of talking it is published completely unedited :-)

Episode 139: Fearless Change with Linda Rising

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 16:04:19 PDT

This episode is once again with Linda Rising, this time on the book she coauthored with Mary Lynn Manns on introducing ideas into organizations. The talk is another one of the SE Radio Live sessions recorded at OOP 2009 - thanks to SIGS Datacom and programme chair Frances Paulisch for making this possible.

Episode 138: Learning as a Part of Development with Allan Kelly

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 01:06:02 PDT

In this episode, Allan shares his insights about how learning is a necessary part of software development. He covers the personal as well as the team and the organizational level and offers practical advice.

Episode 137: SQL with Jim Melton

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 23:55:09 PDT

In this episode, Arno talks to Jim Melton about the SQL programming language. In addition to covering the concepts and ideas behind SQL, Jim shares stories and insights based on his many years' experience as SQL specification lead.

Episode 136: Past Present and Future of MDA with David Frankel

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Tue, 26 May 2009 14:23:25 PDT

In this episode, Dirk talks with David Frankel, resident Metamodeller and MDA expert at SAP Labs LLC, SAP's subsidiary in the Silicon Valley. Dave's extensive experience provides a big picture, from the early days of CORBA all the way to current issues that are bugging most enterprise architects' work with MDA.

Episode 135: Introduction to Software Configuration Management with Petri Ahonen

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Sat, 16 May 2009 02:20:09 PDT

In this episode Michael interviews one of our regular listeners: Petri Ahonen. Petri introduces Software Configuration Management by defining key terms and describing relevant concepts.

Episode 134: Release It with Michael Nygard

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Wed, 06 May 2009 00:25:03 PDT

This episode is a discussion with Michael Nygard about his book "Release It" which covers aspects of software architecture you often don't think of initially when starting to build a system. Some of the points we discussed were capacity planning, recovery as well as making the system suitable for operation in a data center.

Episode 133: Continuous Integration with Chris Read

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 01:13:45 PDT

In this episode Markus discusses with Chris Read basics and some advanced topics in the space of continuous integration. We cover concepts, some tools, as well as a number of best practices.

Episode 132: Top 10 Architecture Mistakes with Eoin Woods

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 08:53:47 PDT

This is a discussion with Eoin Woods about his collection of top 10 software architecture mistakes. Looking at things that don't work is always a good way to learn what you should actually do.

Episode 131: Adrenaline Junkies with DeMarco and Hruschka

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 02:43:54 PDT

This episode is an interview with Tom DeMarco and Peter Hruschka about the new book of the Altantic Systems Guild: Adrenaline Junkies and Template Zombies: Understanding Patterns of Project Behavior. This is a session recorded live at OOP 2009. SE Radio thanks Tom and Peter, SIGS Datacom and the programme chair, Frances Paulisch, for their great support!

Episode 130: Code Visualization with Michele Lanza

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 13:17:08 PDT

This episode is a discussion about code and metrics visualization with Michele Lanza. Michele invented the Code Cities idea about which he talks in this episode.

Episode 129: F# with Luke Hoban

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 09:24:54 PDT

This episode is a discussion about F# with Microsoft's F# program manager Luke Hoban.

Episode 128: Web App Security with Bruce Sams

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 08:44:45 PST

The majority of hacker attacks (70 %) are directed at weaknesses that are the result of problems in the implementation and/or architecture of the application. This session shows how you can protect your web applications (J2EE or .NET) against these attacks. The session covers lots of practical examples and techniques for attack. Furthermore, it shows strategies for defense, including a "Secure Software Development Lifecycle". A "Live Hacking" demo rounds it out. This is a session recorded live at OOP 2009. SE Radio thanks Bruce, SIGS Datacom and the programme chair, Frances Paulisch, for their great support!

Episode 127: Usability with Joachim Machate

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 08:33:32 PST

This episode is an introduction to user interface design with Joachim Machate of UID. We talk about the importance of user interface design, about its relationship to the overall software engineering process, as well as about UID's process for systematic user interface design.

Episode 126: Jetbrains MPS with Konstantin Solomatov

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 01:35:22 PST

In this episode we take a brief look at Jetbrains' Meta Programming System, a language workbench for creating external DSLs or for extending existing languages (such as Java). In a brief telephone discussion, Konstantin Solomatov explains what the system does and how it works. The system has recently been released into public beta and will be made available under then Apache 2.0 Open Source license.

Episode 125: Performance Engineering with Chris Grindstaff

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 10:06:00 PST

In this episode Martin talks with Chris Grindstaff about the fundamentals of performance engineering. The episode discusses when and how to work on performance of client- and server-side systems, what you should take into account during development to avoid performance issues, typical situations that cause performance problems, and some common pitfalls when analysing performance.

Episode 124: OpenJDK with Dalibor Topic

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 08:25:48 PST

In this episode we look at SUN's open source strategy for the OpenJDK. We discuss challenges in creating such a big open source project, and ways to keep it focused and organized. We discuss what it means for the Java runtime to be adopted as the technological foundation for other programming languages.

Episode 123: Microsoft OSLO with Don Box and Doug Purdy

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 23:58:06 PST

In this episode we discuss Microsoft's OSLO platform with Doug Purdy and Don Box. We briefly discuss what OSLO is in general and then look at the various components of OSLO. We also look at how OSLO fits in with the general Microsoft strategy and how it compares to other DSL/Model-driven approaches. We then look at language modularization and composition and discuss the similarities with XML and Smalltalk. Finally, we discuss possible integrations of OSLO with other MD* approaches and technologies.

Episode 122: Interview Janos Sztipanovits

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 11:04:06 PST

This is a discussion with Janos Sztipanovits about Cyber Physical Systems and how DSLs are used to approach some of the challenges in that domain. Specifically, in the second part we talk about formalizing DSL semantics.

Episode 121: OR Mappers with Michael Plöd

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 09:20:02 PST

In this episode, Michael Plöd is interviewed about Object-Relational Mapping technology. He talks about the common concepts, compares the range of different tools that go by this name, and goes into the design and architectural consequences of using an OR mapper.

Episode 120: OCL with Anneke Kleppe

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 12:39:29 PST

In this episode we're talking to Anneke Kleppe about model-driven software development and language engineering. We start with her involvement in the creation of the Object Constraint Language (OCL) and discuss the intial expactations, actual experiences, and the place of OCL in the current day. From here, Anneke talks us through her take on the formative years of UML and MDA. From here, we expand to the realm of Domain-Specific Languages and Anneke discusses their place in software engineering in general and why we should expect DSLs in significant numbers to become a common sight.

Episode 119: DSLs in Practice with JP Tolvanen

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 09:35:25 PST

In this episode, Markus talks with Juha-Pekka Tolvanen about using DSLs and code generation in practice. The main part of the episode is the discussion about a number of case studies that show how DSLs and code generation are used in practice.

Omega Tau, Markus' new podcast mentioned in the beginning of the show

Episode 118: Eelco Visser on Parsers

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 22:27:21 PST

In this episode we're talking to Eelco Visser about parsing text. We start at the basics - what is parsing? - covering classic tools such as Yacc and classic parsing approaches such as LALR before examining how more recent approaches such as scannerless parsing can make parsing easier and enable previously impractical use cases.

Episode 117: Bran Selic on UML

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 21:48:32 PST

In this episode we're talking to Bran Selic of Malina Software about modelling in general and UML2 in particular. Bran covers the basics of modelling, the history of UML, and what's new in UML2.

Episode 116: The Semantic Web with Jim Hendler

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 23:47:58 PST

In this episode we're talking to James A. Hendler about the semantic web. We start with a definition of the semantic web and by discussing the main ingredients. We then look at (more or less) related topics such as prolog, artificial intelligence, wisdom of the crowds, and tagging. In the next section we discuss the core semantic web technologies: RDF, OWL, inference engines, SPARQL, and GRDDL. We conclude our discussion by looking at the status of the semantic web today and a couple of example applications.

Episode 115: Architecture Analysis

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 00:41:25 PDT

During Evolution of a software system, it becomes more and more difficult to understand the originally planned software architecture. Often an architectural degeneration happens because of various reasons during the development phases. In this session we will be looking how to avoid such architectural decay and degeneration and how continuous monitoring can improve the situation (and avoid architectural violations). In addition we will look at "refactoring in the large" and how refactoring can be simulated. A new family of "lint like tools for software architectures" is currently emerging in the marketplace I will show some examples and how they scale and support you in real world projects.

Episode 114: Christof Ebert on Requirements Engineering

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 00:28:32 PDT

In this episode we talk to Christof Ebert about requirements engineering. As the name "engineering" suggests, we need to be systematic when working and managing requirements. Christof will structure RE into several activities, namely elicitation (identifying the relevant requirements), specification (clearly describing requirements), analysis (synthesizing a solution), verification and validation (achieving good requirements quality), comittment (allocating requirements to a project, product release or iteration), and management (keeping track of the implementation status of requirements). In this episode we discuss these activities and highlight lots of practical guidance.

Episode 113: Building Platforms with Jeff McAffer

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 22:53:29 PDT

In this episode we talk with Jeff McAffer about building platforms. We start with a brief discussion about what a platform is in contrast to a framework or an application. Drawing from his experiences working on the Eclipse platform for years, Jeff talks with us about how to develop platforms, why developing a platform is different from developing an application, what makes a good platform great, and why API design becomes so extremely important for platforms. He provides us with some insights on how the development process and the client collaboration for platform development could look like and what has and has not worked in the past.

Episode 112: Roles in Software Engineering II

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 23:05:25 PDT

This is the second part of the two part topic on roles in software engineering. Michael and Markus discuss role definitions in a corporate environment. For several typical roles we give hints on the expected skills, knowledge, and mindset. In this episode we discuss the roles technical lead, technologist, requirements engineer, product manager, and project manager.

Episode 111: About Us 2008

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 23:16:39 PDT

In this episode we discuss the status of SE Radio today and introduce the team members. Among other things, Markus discusses stats, sound quality, partners, transcripts, and the cooperation with Hillside Europe. Also, the team members introduce themselves with a one to two minute clip.

Episode 110: Roles in Software Engineering I

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 12:51:58 PDT

This is the first part of a two part topic on roles in software engineering. Michael and Markus discuss role definitions in an corporate environment. For several typical roles we give hints on the expected skills, knowledge, and mindset. In this episode we discuss the roles junior developer, senior developer, and software architect.

Episode 109: eBay’s Architecture Principles with Randy Shoup

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 23:57:11 PDT

In this episode we discuss with Randy Shoup, Distinguished Architect at eBay, about architectural pinciples and patterns used for building the highly scalable eBay infrastructure. The discussion is structured into four main ideas: partition everything, use asynchrony everywhere, automate everything, and design the system keeping in mind that everything fails at some point in a large distributed system.

Episode 108: Simon Peyton Jones on Functional Programming and Haskell

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 00:47:22 PDT

We start our discussion with a brief look at what Haskell is and how a pure functional language is different from non-pure languages. We then look at the basic building blocks and the philosophy of the language, discussing concepts such as the lambda calculus, closures, currying, immutability, lazy evaluation, memoization, and the role of data types in functional languages. A significant part of the discussion is then spent on the management of side effects in a pure language - in other words, the importance of monads. We conclude the episode with a look at Haskell's importance and community today.

Episode 107: Andrew Watson on the OMG

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 22:46:25 PDT

This episode is a discussion with Andrew Watson, Technical Director of the Object Management Group. The episode is structured into five parts. We start with the history of the OMG and its early work. Then we look at the set of standards it has been (or is currently) working on. Next is a discussion of the standardization process used by the OMG, including the much-debated topic of compliance testing. We then look at OMG's relationship to other standards bodies (W3C, OASIS). Finally Andrew and I briefly discuss our common passion, gliding :-)

Episode 106: Introduction to AOP

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 10:07:58 PDT

This episode is a systematic introduction to Aspect Oriented Programming (in contrast to the interview with Gregor Kiczales). We discuss the fundamentals of AOP, define many of the relevant terms and also look at how and where AOP is used in practice, as well as at some current research trends.

Episode 105: Retrospectives with Linda Rising

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 01:57:29 PDT

In this episode we're talking to Linda Rising about retrospectives. We start by defining what a retrospective is and discuss some of the logistics of making it work for software projects. We then look at the different phases of a retrospective. The main part then is a discussion about some of the practices or games that are used to facilitate the retrospective. We conclude the retrospective discussion with destroying some of the prejudices against it and the relationship to process improvement and CMM. At the end of the interview we talk a little about Linda's current interest: how does the brain work?

Episode 104: Plugin Architectures

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 00:30:56 PDT

In this episode we talk with Klaus Marquardt about building systems out of plugins. After briefly introducing the concept of a plugin in contrast to modules and related software engineering concepts, we discuss different views on plugins and different ways of working with plugins for developing software. We are looking at plugins for embedded systems as well as large business systems, at how plugins change the working mode and team organization, and discuss the possibilities of why and when to use plugins for implementing software systems.

Episode 103: 10 years of Agile Experiences

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 00:04:47 PDT

In this episode we're talking to Jens Coldewey about his experiences in 10 years of introducing agile techniques to project teams. We discuss real-world examples and the lessons learned and strategies derived from them.

Episode 102: Relational Databases

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 02:15:07 PDT

In this espisode we take a closer look at relational database systems and the concepts behind them. We start by discussing the relational paradigm, its concepts and ramifications, and go on to architectural aspects.

Episode 101: Andreas Zeller on Debugging

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 02:18:24 PDT

In this episode we're talking to Andreas Zeller. about debugging. We started the discussion with an explanation of what debugging and how it works in principle. We then briefly discussed the relationship between debugging and testing. Next was the importance of the scientific method for debugging. We then looked as debugging as a search problem, leading to a discussion about delta debugging, the main topic of this discussion. We concluded the discussion by looking at the practical usability of delta debugging and the relationship to other means of automatically finding problems in software.

Episode 100: Software in Space

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 05:24:42 PDT

In this episode we're talking to Hans-Joachim Popp, CIO at DLR about software in space. We start out by reviewing some well-known accidents of unmanned space flight that were caused by software faults and use this as a motivation to discuss how to avoid these in the future. We discuss culture, process, techniques and tools that DLR uses to create high-quality software for use in unmanned space systems.

Episode 99: Transactions

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Sat, 31 May 2008 05:09:36 PDT

This episode takes a close look at transactions from different angles, starting with their fundamental properties of Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability but also investigating advanced topics like distributed or business transactions.

Episode 98: Stefan Tilkov on REST

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Thu, 22 May 2008 23:55:49 PDT

In this episode we discuss REST (Representational State Transfer) with Stefan Tilkov. We started out by discussing the 5 steps to REST: IDs, links, Standard Methods, multiple representations and stateless communication. We then looked at how to use HTTP for REST, and discussed about how to use it for Web Services. We then we discussed whether and how to use REST for enterprise applications, and not just for apps on the internet. We concluded the discussion with a couple of recommendations.

Episode 97: Interview Anders Hejlsberg

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Fri, 16 May 2008 12:41:56 PDT

In this episode we have the pleasure of talking to Anders Hejlsberg, Chief Language Strategist at Microsoft. We started by discussing his more distant past, namely, his involvement with Turbo Pascal and Borland's Delphi. We then looked at the influences Delphi had on C# and how C# evolved from Delphi. In the next section we discussed a couple of general language design issues, among them components and checked vs. unchecked exceptions. Next, we discussed interesting issues about languages of the future, static vs. dynamic typing, functional programming, meta programming as well as the importance of good support for concurrency. We concluded the discussion by looking at the interplay between languages and IDEs.

Episode 96: Interview Krzysztof Czarnecki

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Thu, 08 May 2008 12:14:02 PDT

This episode is the long-awaited (and much requested) interview with Krzysztof Czarnecki, the author, together with Ulrich Eisenecker, of the book Generative Programming. In the interview we discussed the state of generative programming today and related it to model-driven development and DSLs. We then talked a little bit about product lines in general. We then discussed his current field of research, which currently focusses on framework-specific modeling languages and non-trivial roundtrip engineering.

Episode 95: The New Guardian.co.uk website with Matt Wall and Erik DoernenBurg

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Thu, 01 May 2008 06:49:52 PDT

In this episode we talk to Matthew Wall (Guardian News and Media) and Erik Doernenburg (Thoughtworks) about their work on the new guardian.co.uk website. We discuss the challenge of scalability and interactivity, their use of Domain Driven Design, some of the technical building blocks as well as the approaches they use for performance measuring and scalability tuning.

Episode 94: Open Source Business Models with Dirk Riehle

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 13:56:12 PDT

In this episode we're talking to Dirk Riehle about open source business models. We started looking at the way OS projects work and defined different kinds of open source projects. In the main part of the discussion we looked at various ways of how to make money with open source: consulting, support contracts, commercial variant of an open source project, etc. We then looked at the chances and risks of each of these approaches. The next part focused on different open source licenses and how they are suitable for open source business. We concluded the episode by discussing a couple of specific questions and loose ends. After the show, Dirk informed me about the following three corrections: Black Duck Software's main product is called protexIP not IP Central, there are presently 70 licenses approved by the Open Source Initiative, and EnterpriseDB has so far acquired $37M in venture capital

Episode 93: Lessons Learned From Architecture Reviews with Rebecca Wirfs-Brock

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 05:38:12 PDT

In this episode, Markus talks to Rebecca Wirfs-Brock on what she has learned from architecture reviews. This is a very complement to the earlier episode on architecture evaluation.

Episode 92: Introduction to Game Development

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 06:19:51 PDT

In this Episode, Arno talks with Oliver Jucknath about the art of writing computer games. A lot of myth is attached to this area of computing, and while a game technically is just another program, it is written in a different context than typical business applications. This is true at the code level, where aggressive optimization is a focus throughout development. It also applies at the team level, where collaboration between specialists is pronounced. And the business context is different as well, which in turn influences the development effort as a whole.

Episode 91: Kevlin Henney on C++

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 22:15:55 PDT

In this episode, we talk with Kevlin Henney about the C++ programming language. We look at the history and the culture of the language, and how it went through several phases in its evolution. We also take a look at some of the special language features of C++ and their overall influence.

Episode 90: Product Line Engineering, Pt. 3, with Charles Krueger

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 04:31:17 PDT

In this episode Charles Krueger, a well-known member of the product line engineering community, talks about his long term experiences in the field. Charles is also the founder and CEO of a company that provides tooling for variability management and product derivation. Besides some clarifications on terms like product line architecture and reference architecture, you also learn what kind of preconditions need to exist before product line engineering can be applied successfully.

Episode 89: Joe Armstrong on Erlang

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 03:53:21 PDT

In this Episode we're talking about Erlang with its creator Joe Armstrong. We started by looking at the history of the Erlang language and why it is so relevant today. We then looked at Joe's approach to Concurrency Oriented Programming and its main ingredients: share nothing, lightweight concurrency and pure message passing. We also compared this to the classic shared memory approach to concurrency. We then looked at other interesting aspects of Erlang, such as its functional nature (and why this is important to concurrency) and pattern matching. Next we discussed how to implement distribution and fault tolerance, and we took a look at OTP, the "application server" for Erlang. We concluded the conversation with a littel discussion about how Erlang was designed, it's current community as well as its future.

Episode 88: The Singularity Research OS with Galen Hunt

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 12:58:38 PST

In this episode we talk to Galen Hunt about the Singularity research OS. Galen is the head of Microsoft's OS Research Group and, together with a team of about 30 other researches, has built Singularity. We started our discussion by covering the basics of Singularity: why it was designed, what the goals of the project are as well as some of the architectural foundations of Singularity: software isolated processes, contract-based channels and manifest-based programs. In this context we also looked at the role of the Spec# and Sing# programming languages and the role of static analysis tools to statically verify important properties of a singularity application. We then looked a little bit more closely at the role of the kernel and how it is different from kernels in traditional OSes. In a second part of the discussion we looked at some of the experiments the group did based on the OS. These include compile-time reflection, using hardware protection domains, heterogenerous multiprocessing as well as the typed assembly language We closed the conversation with a look at some of the performance characteristics of Singularity, compatibility with traditional operating systems and a brief look at how the findings from Singularity influence product development at Microsoft.

Episode 87: Software Components

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 12:06:22 PST

In this episode, Michael and Markus talk about software components. We first looked at a couple of attempts at defining what a component is. We then provided our own definition that will be used in the rest of the episode. We then looked at the promises of component-based development: why are components useful? We then discussed some of the typical metadata components should specify to make them useful. We discussed to some extent typical variations in component models. The next topic was the separation of concerns between the component functionality and functionality provided by the component's execution environment (aka. container). We then compared components with other (more or less) related technologies such as OO and SOA. We concluded the episode with the notion of architecture as language, where you use a formal DSL to describe a system's architecture. Components are the basic building block for this approach.

Episode 86: Interview Dave Thomas

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 04:04:34 PST

This episode is an interview with Dave Thomas (OTI Dave or Smalltalk Dave, not PragDave). We started our discussion with a look at the (non-)success of objects and components. We then discussed some history behine Eclipse and Dave's role in OTI. We then compared Smalltalk and Ruby and looked at the promises of small and powerful languages such as Lisp. We also discussed the role of (static) type systems and the role of tool support for languages. We then switched gears and looked at what is necessary to scale agile development to the level of large organizations and how techniques from lean production and manufacturing as well as product management can play an important role. In the last part of the interview we looked at the state of research today, and especially the relationship between industry and academia in this area. We concluded the interview with Dave's opinion on what it takes to be a good developer.

Episode 85: Web Services with Olaf Zimmermann

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 12:45:36 PST

In this Episode we're talking about Web Services with IBM's Olaf Zimmermann. We mainly focus on the WS-* stack. We also discuss a couple of SOA foundations and architectural decisions that need to be taken when building an SOA using Web Serivces. We also briefly mention the REST vs. WS-* debate.

Episode 84: Dick Gabriel on Lisp

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 09:50:43 PST

In this Episode we're talking with Dick Gabriel on Lisp. We started by looking at artificial intelligence as the historic context of Lisp, the goals AI tried to reach, and how Lisp was supposed to help reach those. We then discussed the language itself, starting with the Data As Program / Program As Data concept that is a foundation for Lisp. Then we discussed adding a meta-circular interpreter, programming as language development, and the blurred boundary between language and frameworks (because everything uses the same syntax). We then talked about Lisp's type system and the importance of macros to extend the language. The next section concerned CLOS, the Common Lisp Object System and its important concepts: generic functions, multimethods, mixins, and method combination. We also briefly looked at the meta-object protocol but agreed this is a topic for a separate episode. After a discussion about the various dialects of Lisp and Scheme, we concluded the Lisp discussion by explaining why Lisp did not really catch on ("AI Winter") and Lisp's role in today's industry. We ended the episode with a couple of details about Dick's other life as a poet and his Poem a Day effort. Make sure you listen till the end, where we have added a song about Lisp (courtesy of Prometheus Music.)

Episode 83: Jeff DeLuca on Feature Driven Development

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 12:58:04 PST

In this episode we talk with Jeff DeLuca about Feature Driven Development (FDD). As one member of the agile methods family FDD is not so famous as Scrum or Extreme Programming but is becoming more and more popular, especially for situations where you have fixed price contracts. As the inventor of FDD Jeff gives short introduction to the method itself, talks about the basic ideas behind FDD and discusses with us how FDD relates to other members of the agile family.

Episode 82: Organization of Large Code Bases with Juergen Hoeller

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 09:02:27 PST

In this episode Eberhard Wolff speaks with Jürgen Höller, the co-found of the Spring framework. Spring is a tremendously successful Java framework so they discuss the design of large frameworks and the issues that arise in the evolution. Jürgen explains the management of dependencies in the framework, how to structure such a framework, how to offer compatibility for the existing user base while evolving the framework and the role of metrics during development.

Episode 81: Interview Erich Gamma

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 10:37:22 PST

This episode is a conversation with Erich Gamma. We covered the four things he is known for in chronological order. We started with design patterns and the Gang-of-Four book of which he is the lead author. We then looked at JUnit, the testing framework he coauthored with Kent Beck and how it introduced unit testing to the masses. The next topic is obviously Eclipse, where Erich and his lab in Zürich is responsible for the Java Development Tooling. We also briefly discussed The Eclipse Way, the (obviously) successful process the Eclipse team uses for developing Eclipse itself. Finally, we're looking at Erich's current endeavour, the Jazz project. Jazz is a technology for collaborative software development.

Episode 80: OSGi with Peter Kriens and BJ Hargrave

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 23:03:15 PST

This episode is about OSGi, the dynamic module system for Java. Our guests are Peter Kriens (OSGI's Technical Director) and BJ Hargrave (OSGI's CTO). We'll discuss what OSGi is all about and why and in which contexts it is useful. Additionally we are having a look at the different layers of OSGI and where and how they are used. Other questions discussed are: What means dynamicity in an OSGI environment? Where is OSGI used? What’s the future of OSGI? How does OSGI interact with existing middleware solutions? How can I run several versions of the same JAR at the same time? Where are OSGI’s problems?

Episode 79: Small Memory Software with Weir and Noble

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 01:19:21 PST

In this Episode we're discussing patterns for small memory software with the authors of the like-named book Charles Weir and James Noble. We look at various aspects of the small memory problem: How can you manage memory use across a whole system? What can you do when you have run out of primary storage? How can you fit a quart of data into a pint pot of memory? How can you reduce the memory needed for your data? How do you allocate memory to store your data structures? Answers to all those questions are provided in this Episode, and of course in their book.

Episode 78: Fault Tolerance with Bob Hanmer Pt. 2

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 02:58:39 PST

This is the second part of the discussion on fault tolerance with Bob Hanmer (if you didn't listen to Episode 77, which contains part one, please go back and listen now; this episode builds on that previous one!) We start by discussing a set of error detection patterns. Among are the well-known approaches such as checksums and voting. We then look at error recovery patterns, including restart, rollback or roll forward. The next section looks at error mitigation patterns, which include shedding load and doing fresh work before stale. The last patterns section then looks at fault treatment patterns. We conclude the episode with a small discussion about how to design systems using (these and other) patterns, and with some thoughts on why actually wrote the book.

Episode 77: Fault Tolerance with Bob Hanmer Pt. 1

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 11:08:32 PST

In this Episode we discuss fault tolerance based on the new book by Bob Hanmer. This is the actually the first part of the discussion, the remainder will be published in the next episode of SE Radio. We start by discussing some of the context for fault tolerant systems and the imperfect world assumption. We then discuss a number of terms we will need when discussing the fault tolerance patterns. We then discuss the fault tolerance mindset and connect fault tolerance to a number of related subject areas, such as software quality. We then discuss the shared context for the patterns that follow, among them the important observation that fault tolerance does not come for free! Finally we provide an overview over the different sections covered in the book and start the detailed discussion of the patterns by looking at the Architectural Patterns section. The next episode will discuss the remaining patterns in the book.

Episode 76: Special Episode on the Patterns Journal

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 11:17:13 PST

In this special Episode we briefly discuss the upcoming Patterns Journal with the two editors, Ralph Johnson and James Noble.

Episode 75: The New Website

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 07:18:50 PST

In this special Episode we briefly discuss our new website. We will migrate to our new website during the coming week. If you experience any difficulties, contact the team or temporarily go to the old site at seradio.libsyn.com.

Episode 74: Enterprise Architecture II

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 04:35:09 PDT

Enterprise Architecture is already common practice in most Fortune 100 companies. As the topic is comparably young, knowledge about it is not so widespread in the Software Architects Community, who deals mostly with project architectures. In this episode Alex speaks with Wolfgang Keller who has practical experience as an enterprise architect and has written a book on the topic. He is a Partner with BusinessGlue Consulting. They are specializing in the relationship between EAM and SOA. This episode gives a rough overview what Enterprise Architecture actually is touches the standards in the field and also gives hints on the practical work of Enterprise Architects.

Episode 73: Real Time Systems with Bruce Powel Douglass

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 11:23:17 PDT

This episode is a conversation with Bruce Powel Douglass on real time systems. We started by discussing what real time software is, and explored the difference between hard and soft real time. We then looked at different scheduling strategies, and the meaning of terms like urgency and importance in the context of scheduling. Next was a discussion of typical architectural styles for real time systems and how architectures are described in this context. This led us to a discussion about the importance of modeling, formalisms and languages as well as the role of automatic code generation from those models. We then looked at how to model QoS aspects and the role of SysML for modeling real time systems. We then had a brief look at which programming languages are used these days for real time systems and the role of static analysis to determine various properties of those programs in advance. The last part of the discussion focused on some best practices for building real time systems, the challenges in distributed real time systems and how real time systems can be tested effectively.

Episode 72: Erik Meijer on LINQ

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 11:13:04 PDT

This episode is a discussion with Erik Meijer on LINQ. This is a relatively technical discussion about the following topics: what is LINQ, what are the common abstractions between the different data structures one can access with LINQ, what is the relationship to established languages for querying, how does the integration into the type system of the host language work, how to specify the mapping between the language level classes and the data, and how optimizations are implemented (lazy loading, prefetching, etc.).

Episode 71: Survey Results

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 11:09:47 PDT

In this Episode I talk about the results of the listener survey and reply to some of the suggestions and criticism expressed in survey replies.

Episode 70: Gerard Meszaros on XUnit Test Patterns

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 10:59:45 PDT

In this episode we talk with Gerard Meszaros about problems and challenges doing unit testing in real-world projects. Starting from a short discussion about the importance of automated unit testing we spend most of this episode to talk about every day problems doing unit testing and how those problems can be solved. Based on this book on xunit testing patterns, Gerard talks about his experiences with unit test smells as an analogy to code smells. He describes an impressive set of unit testing patterns to overcome those difficult testing situations and illustrates them with nice examples everybody doing unit testing will feel familiar with.

Episode 69: Nico Josuttis on SOA (SOA Pt. 3)

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 15:00:00 PDT

This Episode is part five in our (probably ongoing) series on service oriented architecture. In this episode we talk to Nico Josuttis, who has recently published a book on this topic. As its title "SOA in Practice" suggests, it is a very pragmatic book based on Nico's experience as architect and project lead in a number of enterprise-level projects - not all of them had been called SOA, since they at the time the term was not yet coined. The episode discusses some technical aspects of SOA (such as loose coupling, messaging and ESBs), but mainly focusses on non-technical aspects of implementing an SOA.

Episode 68: Dan Grossman on Garbage Collection and Transactional Memory

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 07:22:43 PDT

This episode features a discussion with Dan Grossman about an essay paper he wrote for this year's OOPSLA conference. The paper is about an analogy between garbage collection and transactional memory. In addition to seeing the beauty of the analogy, the discussion also serves as a good introduction to transactional memory (which was mentioned in the Goetz/Holmes episode) and - to some extent - to garbage collection.

Episode 67: Roundtable on MDSD and PLE

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 07:30:15 PDT

This is a roundtable discussion on model-driven software develoment and product line engineering. It was recorded at the Model-Driven Development and Product Lines: Synergies and Experience conference in October 2006 in Leipzig. The panelists are:

Axel Uhl, SAP
Danilo Beuche, Pure Systems
Juha Pekka Tolvanen, MetaCase
Tom Stahl, b+m
Ruediger Schilling, Delta Software Technology

Episode 66: Gary McGraw on Security

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 15:00:00 PDT

This episode features an interview with the software security expert Gary McGraw. Gary explains why this topic is so important and gives several security deficiencies examples that he found in the past. The second half of the interview is about his latest book 'Exploiting Online Games' where he explains how online games are hacked and why this is relevant to everybody, not only gamers in their 'First Life'.

Episode 65: Introduction to Embedded Systems

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 15:00:00 PDT

This episode is an introduction to embedded system. It is an introduction in the sense that we cover many topics very briefly: upcoming episodes will provides details for many of these topics. We start by discussing what an embedded system is an what the important characteristics are. Among them is limited resources, concurrency, real time and hardware integration. We also discuss the range of embedded systems from small mirocontrollers to mobile phones to distributed real time embedded systems. We also cover the different business case for embedded systems (per unit cost) and some non-trivial developmental aspects (cross compilation debugging, heisenbugs). We close the episode by discussing some important architectural styles (time triggered, event-based, microkernels, state machines) as well as tools of the trade: languages, operating systems and middleware.

Episode 64: Luke Hohmann on Architecture and Business

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 15:00:00 PDT

In this episode we talk about the relationship between software architecture and the business. Based on his book, Beyond Software Architecture we discuss how things such as branding, licensing, updating or different deployment scenarios influence the technical architecture of a system. We also discuss issues such as portability that add a huge amount of complexity, although from a business perspective it often does not make much sense. In the second part of the interview we discuss how the technical team and the business team can improve the way they work together. We look at some of the games (such as Buy a Feature or Give them a Hot Tub) from his new book Innovation Games, which discusses how to use collaborative play to be more creative and innovative in product creation.

Episode 63: A Pattern Language for Distributed Systems with Henney and Buschmann

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 15:00:00 PDT

In this Episode we talked about the new POSA 4 book which has recently been published. We talk to two of the authors, Kevlin Henney and Frank Buschmann (the third author, Doug Schmidt was not available - and he had also been on the podcast a couple of times :-)). The book contains a pattern language for distributed systems. It contains 114 patterns that had been published before by many different other authors. The patterns have been rewritten to form a consistent language. We basically talked through the different sections of the book, which gives a really good overview over the challenges and the solutions of building distributed systems. These sections include From Mud to Structure, Distribution Infrastructure, Event Demultiplexing and Dispatching, Interface Partitioning, Component Patitioning, Application Contrl, Concurrency, Synchronization, Object Interaction, Adaptazion and Extension, Modal Behaviour, Resource Management and finally, Database Access. The book references several other previous works (as listed below). Interestingly, many of these referenced works and authors have also been discussed previously on the podcast. Here are the back references:

Domain Driven Design, Eric Evans
Messaging Patterns, Gregor Hohpe
POSA 2 Patterns, Doug Schmidt
Concurrency: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and the interview with Goetz and Holmes
Remoting Patterns Part 1 and Part 2
POSA3, Resource Management

Episode 62: Martin Odersky on Scala

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 15:00:00 PDT

In this Episode we talk about the Scala language with its creator Martin Odersky. Scala is a language that fuses object oriented and functional programming. Martin started out by providing a two-minute overview over the language, and then talked a little bit about its history. We then discussed the basics of functional programming. The main part of the episode features a discussion of some of the important features of the Scala language:

Case Classes and Pattern Matching
Multiple Inheritance and Compound Types, Traits, Mixins
Closures
Functions as types, "Function pointers", Anonymous functions
Higher Order Functions
Currying
(Sequence) Comprehensions
Generics
Type Bounds (Upper, Lower)
Static/Dynamic Typing, Type Inference
Operators
Implicits

We then talked about Scala's actors library, a highly scalable concurrency package. The last part of the episode covered some more general topics, such as where and how Scala is used today, IDE support and the user and developer community. We concluded the episode by looking at current development and next steps in Scala language evolution.

Episode 61: Internals of GCC

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 15:00:00 PDT

This show takes a behind-the-scenes look at compilers and their inner workings, using the Gnu compiler collection (GCC) as an example. Arno interview Morgan Deters, covering all steps from the parsing of different programming languages to machine independenet optimizations and generating processor specific binary code.

Episode 60: Roman Pichler on Scrum

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 15:00:00 PDT

This episode features Scrum, a very popular Agile software development framework. We interview Roman Pichler, a Certified ScrumMaster Trainer and independent consultant. Roman explains the principles behind Scrum, its roles and its key practices. He also answers FAQs. This episode continues our track on software development processes discussing an additional Agile method. Roman is currently writing a book on Scrum in German that provides more in-depth information of the topics discussed in the podcast. The book will be available in autumn 2007 published by d.punkt (Heidelberg, Germany).

Episode 59: Static Code Analysis

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 04:52:04 PDT

This episode is a discussion with Jonathan Aldrich (Assistant Professor at CMU) about static analysis. The discussion covered theory as well as practice and tools. We started with an explanation of what static analysis actually is, which kinds of errors it can find and how it is different from testing and reviews. The core challenge of such an analysis tool is to understand the semantics of the program and reduce its possible state space to make it analysable - in effect reconstructing the programmer's intent from the code. The user can "help" the tool with this challenge by using suitable annotations; also, languages could do a better job of being analysable. The conceptual discussion was concluded by looking at the principles of static analysis (termination, soundness. precision) and how this approach relates to model analysis. The second more practical part started out with a discussion of how Microsoft successfully uses static analysis in their Windows development. We then discussed some of the tools available; these include Findbugs, Coverity, Codesonar, Clockwork, Fortify, Polyspace and Codesurfer. To conclude the discussion of tools, we discussed the commonalities and differences with architecture visualization tools as well as metrics and heuristics. Part three of the discussion briefly looked at how to introduce static analysis tools into an organization's development process and tool chain. We concluded the discussion by looking at situations where static analysis does not work, as well as at the FLUID research project at CMU.

Episode 58: Product Line Engineering Pt. 2

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 05:02:47 PDT

Variability is one of the key concerns in software product line engineering. The episode introduces the concepts of structural and non-structural (or configurative) variability. It also discusses how to find and model variability, and especially how to implement variability in the solution artifacts. Michael and Markus discuss a series of variability mechanisms that can be used with today's programming languages and technologies.

Episode 57: Compile-Time Metaprogramming

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Sun, 27 May 2007 10:07:47 PDT

This episode is about compile-time metaprogramming, and specifically, about implementing DSLs via compile-time metaprogramming. Our guest, Laurence Tratt, illustrates the idea with his (research) programming language called Converge.

We started by talking about the importance of a custom syntax for DSL and took a brief look at the definition of DSLs by a chap called Paul Hudak. We then briefly covered the disctinction between internal and external DSLs.

More to the point of this episode, we discussed the concept of compile-time metaprogramming, and the language features necessary to achieve it: in converge, these concepts are called splice, quasi-quote and insertion. We then looked at how the Converge compiler works, and at the additional features that are required to implement DSLs based on the metaprogramming features mentioned above. Using an example, we then walked through how to implement a simple DSL.

Looking at some of the more technical details, we discussed the difference between the parse tree and the abstract syntax tree and at different kinds of parsers - specifically, the Earley parser used by Converge. In multi-stage languages (i.e. languages that execute programs and meta programs) error reporting is important, but non trivial. We discussed how this is done in Converge. We finally looked at how to integrate Converge's expression language into your DSL and how to package DSL definition for later use.

The last segment look at the process of implementing a DSL in converge and about some of the history and practical experience with Converge. Lessons learned from building Converge wrap up the episode.

Episode 56: Sensor Networks

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Thu, 17 May 2007 10:12:29 PDT

In this episode we discuss sensor networks with our guest Steffen Schaefer, who is the Technical Thought Leader for Sensors & Actuator Solutions at IBM. The discussion resolves around the TREC device, which can be mounted on containers to track them on their journey over seas, railway tracks and roads. The TREC is a small embedded device developed by Steffen's employer, IBM, that has various sensors and communications channels.

In the episode we first talked about container transport in general, and then looked at how the TREC device works - specifically, it's hardware, software and power management. We then looked at the necessary backend infrastructure. The main part of the discussion covered the communication between the device and the backend, using technologies such as Zigby, GSM and satellite communications. We also looked at the middleware infrastructures used, such as the MQtt messaging tool.

We closed the episode with a little discussion of the "Internet of Things" and some discussion about embedded software devleopment in general. Note that SE Radio will feature more embedded topics in the future - an introduction to embedded development will be put online soon.

Episode 55: Refactoring Pt. 2

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Mon, 07 May 2007 10:37:14 PDT

In the first episode on Refactoring we talked about the basic ideas behind refactoring and some base principles why refactoring is a key part of software engineering. Now we move on to more complicated refactorings and discuss three major situations, their problems and possible solutions: advanced refactorings in large projects that can hardly be finished in a few minutes or hours and refactoring in larger teams. Also covered are the refactoring of published APIs and how merciless refactoring could be aligned with backward compatibility of published APIs, and refactorings that affect more than just code like for example database schemas.

Episode 54: Interview Frank Buschmann

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 00:06:31 PDT

This episode is an interview with Frank Buschmann, one of the pioneers of the pattern movement in Europe. Michael and Frank discuss how it all began: the first conferences on patterns and the first publications by the Gang-of-Four and the POSA 1 team. Frank then elaborates on the new volumes in the Pattern-Oriented Software Architecture book series - POSA 4 and POSA 5 - and gives some examples from the books. The episode concludes with a general discussion on software design and architecture, and best practices on software development.

Episode 53: Product Line Engineering Pt. 1

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 00:08:39 PDT

Michael Kircher and Markus Voelter introduce the topic of software product line engineering. They motivate when and why product lines are important to consider and what makes them so special. Further, they introduce some key terminology, such as platform, core asset, feature model, commonality, and variability.

Episode 52: DSL Development in Ruby

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 00:52:12 PDT

In this episode, we're talking to Obie Fernandez about agile DSL development in Ruby. We started our discussion by defining what a DSL is, the difference between internal and external DSLs as well as the importance of the flexibly syntax of the host language in order to make DSLs worthwhile. We then looked at a couple of real world examples for DSLs, specifically, at Business Natural Languages. We then progressed to the main part of the discussions, which centered around the features of Ruby that are important for building DSLs. These include the flexible handling of parentheses, symbols, blocks as well as literal arrays and hashes. We then discussed Ruby's meta programming feautures and how they are important for building DSLs: instantiation, method_missing callback, class macros, top level functions and sandboxing. Features like eval, class_eval, instance_eval and define_method are also important for DSLs in Ruby, as well as using alias_method for simple AOP.

Episode 51: Design By Contract

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 00:57:29 PDT

In this episode, Arno and Michael take a look at Design by Contract, a programming technique formalized by Bertrand Meyer. The idea is that an interface is more than method signatures - it is also about specifying the expected behavior that implementations must provide. While some languages include direct support for this style of programming, it is a useful mindset when desiging interfaces even without such language features.

Episode 50: Announcements and Requests

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 00:10:39 PDT

This is another episode where we mainly announce topics related to the podcast itself.

Episode 49: Dynamic Languages for Static Minds

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 00:15:03 PDT

In this Episode we talk about dynamic languages for statically-typed minds, or in other words: which are the interesting features people should learn when they go from a langauge such as Java or C# to a language like Python or Ruby. We used Ruby as the concrete example language.

We started the discussion about important features with the concept of dynamically changing an object's type and the idea of message passing. We then looked at the concepts of blocks and closures. Next in line is a discussion about functions that create functions as well as currying. This lead into a quick discussion about continuations. Open classes, aliasing and the relationship to AOP was next on our agenda.

We then looked considered a somewhat more engineering-oriented view and looked at the importance of testing and what are the best steps of getting from static programming to dynamic programming. Finally, we discussed a bit about the current (as of October 2006) state of dynamic languages on mainstream platforms.

Episode 48: Interview Dragos Manolescua

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 23:50:49 PST

In this Episode we discuss software architecture evaluation with Dragos Manolescu, an architect at Microsoft's patterns & practices group.

We start off the discussion by trying to define what software architecture evaluation is and when and you want to evaluate an architecture in the system's lifecycle. We then make sure evaluators set the expectations for the evaluation process right - it is important to understand that architecture evaluation is typically not primarily a review of the technology decisions made for the architecture.

We then discuss the kinds of notations that are useful for describing architectures, and which of these are especially helpful for the evaluator. Next we look at the core of the architecture evaluation task, namely, the integration of the various stakeholders and their views. We also discuss real reviews from reviews that are staged "for show" only.

Next in the discussion is a brief look at the tools you can use for architecture evaluation, as well as a closer look at the various methods for achitecture evalualtion proposed by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI). We conclude the discussion by outlining how architecture evaluation fits into an agile development process.

... and finally, we briefly plug the PLOPD5 book, on which Dragos, Markus and James Noble have been working recently :-)

Episode 47: Interview Grady Booch

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 01:16:58 PST

In this Episode we are happy to talk to Grady Booch. We started off by discussing his Architecture Handbook, how it came into being, the progress, and how it will look like once it's finished. In this context we also looked at the issue of how to distinguish architecture from design. We then asked him about how "professional" software architecture is these days, as well as about the ubiquity of software product lines in industry. The next couple of minutes looked at the question of whether software development is an engineering discipline, craftsmanship or an art form, and we discussed the key qualifications of software developers. Grady then elaborated on the problems of developing in large teams as well as the potential limits of complexity we can tackle with software.

We then got back to a more technical discussion, where we looked at model-driven development, DSLs, etc. and the role of the UML in that context. Next was a discussion about scripting languages, and the current trend towards new languages. We then looked at component marketplaces and other forms of reuse, as well as the importance of OO these days and the relevance of AO. We concluded with a (small) outlook to the future.

Episode 46: Refactoring Pt. 1

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 01:25:33 PST

Changeable software has been a goal of several technique in software engineering. Probably the most important is Refactoring, changing the code without changing the behaviour (or at least without breaking the tests). In this episode Eberhard talks with Martin Lippert about this technique. The episode covers a history of refactoring, a definition of code smells and how to actually do refactorings in your everyday work. Also some advanced topics - like the ROI of Refactoring or Refactoring in dynamic languages - are covered.

Episode 45: Round Table on Ultra Large Scale Systems

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 02:00:52 PST

This Episode is a round table discussion about Ultra-Large Scale Systems. In 2006, a number of authors (among them our guests Linda Northrop, Doug Schmidt, Kevin Sullivan, and Gregor Kiczales) have produced a report that addressed the following question: Given the issues with today's software engineering, how can we build the systems of the future that are likely to have billions of lines of code? In this episode, our guests discuss many of the issues that arise from this kind of system and provide an overview of the research areas that should be investigated in order to tackle the challenge. If you want to get more detailed information, you can read the ULS Report (PDF).

Episode 44: Interview Brian Goetz and David Holmes

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 02:06:26 PST

This is another episode on concurrency. We talk to two experts in the field, Brian Goetz and David Holmes about aspects of concurrency we hadn't really covered before. We start out by discussing liveness and safety and then continue to talk about synchronizers (latches, barriers, semaphores) as well as the importance of agreeing on protocols when developing concurrent applications. We then talked about thread confinement as a way of building thread-safe programs, as well as using functional programming and immutable data. The next set of topics covers various ways of how compilers can optimize the performance wrt. to concurrency, talking about techniques such as escape analysis as well as lock elision and coarsening. We then covered how to test concurrent programs and the consequences of the Java memory model on concurrency. We then went on to look at some more advanced topics, namely, lock-free programming and atomic variables. We also briefly discussed the idea of transactional memory. Finally, we looked at how better language support - specifically, a more declarative style of concurrent programming as e.g. in the Fortress language - can aid in improving the quality of concurrent programs.

Episode 43: eXtreme Programming Pt.2

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 02:08:50 PST

This is the second part of our two part discussion of the eXtreme Programming development methodology. While the first part introduced the values, principles and basic practices, this time Arno and Alex speak about the practices that set the context for an XP project and how to get started, and they discuss some FAQs they often get when introducing XP.

Episode 42: Interview Gregor Hohpe

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 02:13:11 PST

In this episode, Gregor Hohpe gives us a great introduction to enterprise messaging based on his EAI Patterns book. Before we started discusssing the patterns in his book, we characterized messaging and talked about the various interaction styles. We also contrasted the messaging architectural style with an RPC based approach. We then took a look at the relationship to SOA, the role of contracts and the orchestration-vs-choreography discussion. We briefly discussed the nature of pattern languages before we then went through the different section in the book. There are six main sections: channel, message, routing, transfomation, endpoint as well as management and monitoring. We discussed the core patterns for each of these sections. This should give listeners a good high-level view of message-based systems. We concluded the discussion by looking at the critical importance of systems management and monitoring.

Episode 41: Architecture Patterns (Architecture Pt. 4)

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Wed, 27 Dec 2006 02:14:51 PST

This is the fourth and final episode on the fundamentals of Software Architecture. We talk mainly about architectural styles and patterns, as introduced in the POSA 1 Book. We also discuss a little bit the process of actually using those patterns for architecting systems.

Episode 40: Interview Werner Vogels

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 03:58:29 PST

This episode is an interview with Werner Vogels, the CTO of amazon.com. We first talked about what scalability is, and which aspects there are to scalability. We then took a brief look at the technologies used at amazon, specifically, the middleware systems and the issue of vendor lock-in. Web services, and the role of SOA was the next topic. Then we covered what a service actually is add Werner explained the term "pizza teams". Testing and Deployment was the next topic followed by a look at architectural characteristics of scalable systems, the value of simplicity and the CAP theorem. We concluded the discussion with a brief look at the future of distributed systems

Episode 39: Interview Steve Vinoski

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 04:01:27 PST

This episode is an interview with Steve Vinoski. Steve works as the Chief Engineer for IONA. He's what you'd call a middleware guru, he was for example deeply involved with CORBA. So, this interview centers mainly around middleware. We begin by talking about his own history wrt. middleare and ORBs and how ORBs evolved over time. We then talked about whether coarse-grained, stateless components might be a better abstraction for distributed systems than "objects". We then covered the future of CORBA, it's use in ethe embedded space as well as the practical relevance of the POSA patterns when building ORBs. Then we switched topics and addressed the role of web services as a "middleware middleware" and the maturity of WS-* specifications. We then looked at what Steve is working on these days, which is e.g. the Advanced Message Queueing Protocol (AMQP) as well as dynamic languages. We concluded the interwiew with his view on SOA.

Episode 38: Interview James Noble

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Sun, 26 Nov 2006 04:03:47 PST

Designers, programmers, engineers, we must all return to programming! Very few programmers tend to see their (sometimes rather general) difficulties as the core of the subject and as a result there is a widely held consensus as to what programming is really about. If these notes prove to be a source of recognition or to give you the appreciation that we have simply written down what you already know about the programmer's trade, some of our goals will have been reached.

Episode 37: eXtreme Programming Pt.1

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Sat, 18 Nov 2006 04:07:54 PST

This is the first of two episodes where Arno and Alex discuss eXtreme Programming in se-radio's development process track. eXtreme Programming (XP) revolutionized the way of thinking about software development methodologies and helped to make the agile movement popular. In this episode they discuss the very basics of XP, its value system, principles and the basic practices used in an XP project. The second episode will continue the introduction adding the missing practices and how to introduce XP into projects.

Episode 36: Interview Guy Steele

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 04:11:50 PST

This episode is an interview with Guy L. Steele Jr.. Guy is a Sun Fellow and heads the Programming Language Research Group within Sun, and a generally well known "programming language guy" (see here for details). We briefly talk about Lisp and the resurgence of dynamic languages before we delve into the main topic, the Fortress programming language he is working on. Fortress is a language intended to replace Fortran as a scientific computing language. We talk about how mathematical notations, syntax extensio and built-in support for parallelism are crucial properties of such a language. We then briefly talk about potentials for compiler optimization before taking a closer look at the type system (static typing, type inference), traits and contract specification as well as first-class support for hierarchical components. We conclude the discussion with a look at automatic partitioning and distribuion of concurrent algorithms and a brief look at the future roadmap for the Fortress language.

Episode 35: Roadmap

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 04:13:28 PST

This episode mainly outlines the upcoming programming and interviews.

Episode 34: Enterprise Architecture

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 04:17:02 PST

In this episode Markus and our Guest Andy Longshaw talk about enterprise architecture. More specifically, we talk about some of the patterns in Andy Longshaw's and Paul Dyson's book Architecting Enterprise Solutions: Patterns for High-Capability Internet-based Systems. These includes things like replication, load balancing, monitoring and application management.

Episode 33: Service Oriented Architecture, Pt.2b

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 06:19:03 PDT

This is the second snippet of the SOA 2 double-episode. Eberhard and Markus continue the discussion with the issue of service reuse and a couple of development process issues. We also look at the duality between infrastructure development and application development in the context of an SOA. We then discuss the great spaghetti misunderstanding :-). We conclude this episode with a look at how to integrate BPM into the conceptual SOA framework we've built up to now, and we'll also briefly skim over a number of technologies related to SOA. Note that this episode, as well as the last one, is based on a set of slides; these can be downloaded from here. This episode covers slides 39 through 74.

Episode 32: Service Oriented Architecture, Pt.2a

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 06:20:46 PDT

In this, as well as in the next episode Eberhard and Markus continue their discussion about SOA (the episode got too long, so we had to split it into two ... SOA 2a and SOA 2b). In this episode, we talk about the various perspectives on SOA (CBD, EAI, BPM), about fundamental requirements towards an SOA, and we discuss the role of models in defining sustainable architectures. We also discuss how a programming model based on the described approach typically looks like. We then discuss a number of issues any large-scale SOA faces (and for which the SOA paradigm does not really provide an out-of-the-box solution: In this episode we discuss data type ownership and (weak) typing of data types.

Episode 31: Agile Documentation

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 06:27:15 PDT

In this episode, our guest Andreas Rueping and Markus talk about documenting software. While this is a topic that many people don't like or consider fun, it is nonetheless very important. Based on his book, Agile Documentation, we talk about various aspects documenting software such as what to document, when to document, which media to use as well as specifically a number of layouting tips for nice documents.

Episode 30: Architecture Pt.3

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 15:00:00 PDT

In this third Episode on software architecture, Michael and Markus talk about the basic tools that an architect uses when architecting systems. These tools include things like separation, abstraction, compression and sharing. We also relate these tools to the quality attributes we introduced in previous archtecture episodes.

Episode 29: Concurrency Pt.3

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 15:00:00 PDT

The third part of our concurrency series by Michael and Alexander discusses how to build highly scalable servers. The discussion focusses especially on event-driven servers. As possible solution patterns a reactor-based design is suggested along-side several patterns for multi-threading issues: Reader/Writers Locks, Thread Pools, and Leader/Followers.

Episode 28: Type Systems

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Sat, 02 Sep 2006 15:00:00 PDT

In recent episodes we have discusses statically and dynamically typed languages and domain specific languages - topics that are much talked about in the community at the moment. In this episode we look at the foundation of programming languages : types. We explain what a type actually is, how type systems work and what polymorphism works.

Episode 27: Service Oriented Architecture Pt.1

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 15:00:00 PDT

SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) appears to be just another hype - after all we have been building distributed systems for quite a while now. But the real value of SOA is non-technical. In this episode Eberhard and Markus discuss the advantages and disadvantages, what SOA actually is and how it compares to other approaches that have been tried out before.

Episode 26: Interview Jutta Eckstein

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 15:00:00 PDT

In this Episode, Arno, Bernd and Markus interview Jutta Eckstein. Jutta is a pioneer and expert on using Agile software development, specifically in larger teams. In the interview we talk about the agile manifesto, the role of personal relationships and trust in software projects, differences between agility in the small and in the large, as well as offshoring.

Episode 25: Architecture Pt. 2

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 15:00:00 PDT

In this Episode, Michael and Markus continue the discussion about the fundamentals of software architecture (we're doing it without Alex, because it is really hard to find a suitable time for all of us on the phone :-)). We talk about the various quality attributes (such as performance, scalability, maintainability and many more) and how they relate to each other.

Episode 24: Development Processes Pt.1

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Mon, 24 Jul 2006 15:00:00 PDT

In this episode Arno and Alex talk about the basics of software development processes. They discuss why and when software development processes are needed and also why some developers don't like them. They discuss the theories behind different processes and talk about defined vs empiric processes in general. This episode is the first in a row that will later on describe specific processes like eXtreme programming or the unified process.

Episode 23: Architecture Pt. 1

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 15:00:00 PDT

This is the first of a series of Episodes on Software Architecture. Alex, Michael and Markus talk about rather fundamental topics in this episode, we'll go into much more detail in subsequent episodes in that series. Topics in this episode include:

What is architecture, how is it different from design
what different kinds of architecture are there in addition to software architecture
the role of the architect, do we have one or more?
architecture in agile software development
tasks of the architect
architect vs. the technical project lead
architecture and project politics
architecture requirements, estimating, team assembling

There aren't too many good references for this general architecture discussion. You might want to take a look at Software Architecture in Practice by Len Bass, or, if you speak German, at the book Software-Architektur by Vogel, Arnold, Chugtai, Ihler, Mehlig, Neumann, Voelter and Zdun.

Episode 22: Feedback

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Sun, 09 Jul 2006 15:00:00 PDT

This is an episode with some more of your feedback. Specifically, the episode also contains a 5 minute section from Geert Bevin where he explains how Continuations are used an implemented in the Rife Framework. This is in response to a discussion about continuations and Rife in Episode 15, Future of Enterprise Java. We also have some feedback from Bill Pugh about flaws in our description about the problems of double-checked locking in Java.

Episode 21: Error Handling Pt. 2

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Tue, 04 Jul 2006 15:00:00 PDT

In this Episode, Arno and Michael take a closer look at Exceptions and Error conditions, how to categorize them and how to deal with them. We look at the different levels of guarantee that a piece of code can provide with regard to exceptional condition and finish with a discussion of a number of best practices and their respective trade-offs.

Episode 20: Interview Michael Stal

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Sat, 24 Jun 2006 15:00:00 PDT

In this Episode, we talk to Michael Stal, a Senior Principal Engineer at Siemens Corporate Technology, POSA 1 and 2 Co-Author and Editor of the german JavaSpetrum magazine. Since Michael's core focus is middlware, much of our discussion centered around that topic. Webservices and SOA, of course, have also been covered. Other topics include Java vs. .NET as well as Patterns.

Episode 19: Concurrency Pt. 2

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 15:00:00 PDT

In this second part of our concurrency series Michael and Alexander talk about basic patterns for concurrent programming, such as Active and Monitor Object, Scoped Locking and Futures. Further, they discuss some architectural considerations regarding the number of threads and resource usage in general. For more information, see the references for part one as well as the following links

Episode 18: Resource Management

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 15:00:00 PDT

In this episode Michael and our guest Prashant Jain talk about patterns for resource management. Efficient management of resources is critical in the execution of any kind of software. Ranging from embedded software in a mobile device to software in a large enterprise server, it is important that the resources, such as memory, threads, file handles, or network connections, are managed efficiently to allow the systems to function properly and effectively. Michael and Prashant discuss various patterns, such as Lazy Acquisition, Caching, Leasing and Evictor and explain when, why, and how to apply them for effective resource management.

Episode 17: Feedback and Roadmap

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Mon, 29 May 2006 15:00:00 PDT

This is a short episode that outlines the upcoming episodes and interviews, as well as reports on some listener feedback.

Episode 16: MDSD Pt. 3, Hands-On

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Thu, 25 May 2006 15:00:00 PDT

This episode provides a hands-on guided tour through a simple model-driven software project. It is based on an actual code sample (see link below) and takes a look at the typical steps of real-life code generation: prototypical implementation, defining the metamodel, reading a model into a metamodel instance, writing templates and validating the model. The example for the episode uses openArchitectureWare as a generator environment, but the overall approach is tool independent. This episode is the first in a new category "code/technology" that discusses technical concepts based on actual code. Please give feedback whether you find this format useful or not.

Episode 15: The Future of Enterprise Java

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Mon, 15 May 2006 15:00:00 PDT

A very important area for Java are Enterprise Systems. With the advent of new technologies like Ruby on Rails, Java EE 5 or EJB 3 the landscape for Enterprise Systems appears to be changing a lot at the moment. In this episode Markus talks with Eberhard about what Enterprise Java actually is, why and where it is used. Based on that they discuss what the future might look like and how to make Enterprise Java shine in the future.

Episode 14: Interview Ted Neward

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Fri, 05 May 2006 15:00:00 PDT

In this Episode we talk to Ted Neward. Since Ted is active in the .NET and Java universes, we started out by discussing some of the differences between the two platforms. The main discussion, however, focussed on new features in the C# 3.0 language. These include LINQ (language-integrated query). A very interesting discussion about extension methods, lamda expression, typing (dynamic, duck, compiler) and other language "tricks" follows. We also visited the topic of language development on the .NET and Java platforms in general, also looking at topics such as concurrency and the Scala language.

Episode 13: Ruby in Practice

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 15:00:00 PDT

Ruby has been getting more and more attention by the developer community over the last couple of years. Nevertheless Ruby as language and as a plattform is not too widespread. Most developers don't know people who have actually done commercial Ruby projects. Therefore it is sometimes hard to judge if Ruby is just a hype topic or if Ruby can be used for serious projects today. In this episode Alexander speaks with Thomas Quas about a commercial Ruby project Thomas finished a while ago. Thomas shares his insights and practical experiences with Ruby doing a project under strong time pressure. As Thomas has many years experience doing Java projects we also do some high level comparisons between both platforms.

Episode 12: Concurrency Pt. 1

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 15:00:00 PDT

This is the first part of a series of Concurrency episodes. In this part Alex and Michael motivate and introduce the topic. We explain fundamental terms, such as thread, process, or mutex and dicuss typical challenges, such as deadlocks and race conditions.

Episode 11: Interview Gregor Kiczales

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Sat, 08 Apr 2006 15:00:00 PDT

In this Episode we have the pleasure of talking with Gregor Kiczales. Gregor is one of the fathers of aspect-oriented programming (AOP). Today he is a professor of computer science at the University of British Columbia. Back in his days at Xerox Parc, he and a number of other people worked on the early forms of AOP as well as on some of its forerunners, such as meta object protocols. In this interview, we talk about a number of interesting topics, such as the history of AOP, the relationship of AO to interceptors, the industry acceptance of AOP, early aspects (i.e. using AO in development phased before implementation) as well as adoption strategies for AOP.

Episode 10: Remoting Pt. 2

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 14:00:00 PST

This is the second part of the remoting infrastructures discussion started in Episode 9. We take a look at how remoting infrastructures such as CORBA, .NET Remoting or Web Services work internally. This includes the low level details of the transport layer, marshalling, client proxies as well as interceptors and asynchronous communication. At the end, Michael will explain how all this relates to CORBA and Markus will map the concepts to .NET remoting. We don't have additional links in these show notes since all the relevant links had been posted for Episode 9 already.

Episode 9: Remoting Pt.1 and Listener Feedback

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Sun, 19 Mar 2006 14:00:00 PST

This Episode as well as the next one take a look at remoting infrastructures such as CORBA, .NET Remoting or Webservices. In this first part we will take a look at why remote communication is necessary in the first place, what remoting middleware can do for you as well as which other middleware technologies exist in addition to OO-RPC systems, such as messaging middleware. Finally, we conclude with a brief overview of what the broker pattern can do for us in the context of remoting middleware.

Episode 8: Interview Eric Evans

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Wed, 08 Mar 2006 14:00:00 PST

Eric Evans is the author of the well known Domain-Driven Design book. In his day job he works as a consultant and coach for his own company, Domain Language. In this interview, Eric talks about the essential building blocks of domain-driven design as well as about a set of best practices on how to address complex projects. In a third part, he elaborates on the relationship of domain-driven design and MDSD/MDA.

Episode 7: Error Handling

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 14:00:00 PST

This week, Arno and Markus take a look at error handling at the architectural level. They discuss the different kinds of errors, the groups of people who need to know about them and proven high-level approaches. Later episodes will investigate more technical aspects of error handling, such as idioms for using exceptions or a discussion of checked vs. unchecked exceptions.

Episode 6: Model-Driven Software Development Pt. 2

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Sat, 18 Feb 2006 14:00:00 PST

After discussing some of the more technical aspects of MDSD in the last episode, we take a look at other important topics in this one. This includes some tips on how to introduce MDSD into projects and how the development process has to be adapted for this to work, as well as a look at the return on investment for MDSD. The relationship of MDSD and Agile software development is also discussed. Finally, we take a look at offshoring in the context of MDSD.

Episode 5: Model-Driven Software Development Pt. 1

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 14:00:00 PST

In this Episode, Eberhard and Markus provide an introduction to Model-Driven Software Development. Since the discussion turned out to be too long, we separated things into two episodes, thus Episode 6 will be the second part of this discussion. In this first part we disucsss core concepts of MDSD, the relationship to MDA, and hint at a couple of tools.

Episode 4: Scripting Languages

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 14:00:00 PST

In this Episode, Alexander and Markus talk about scripting languages. Topics include the definition of what a scripting language is, typical usage scenarios, performance issues, programming styles and IDE support. In later Episodes we will talk about more specific topics, such as dynamic typing, reflection, functional programming as well as specific languages such as Ruby.

Episode 3: Interview Doug Schmidt

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 11:00:00 PST

In this episode we talk with Doug Schmidt. Doug is a professor of computer science at Vanderbilt University and a well-respected authority in the fields of middleware, patterns and model-driven development. In this interview we talk about these topics in the context of distributed, realtime embedded (DRE) systems.

Episode 2: Dependencies

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 15:00:00 PST

Eberhard and Markus discuss the important topic of associations and dependencies in this show. While OO languages provide direct support for subtyping, most don't provide a first-class construct for other relationships between objects. The discussion elaborates on the problem and looks at various remedies, most importantly, dependency injection.

Episode 1: Patterns

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Sat, 21 Jan 2006 16:00:00 PST

In this episode Michael and Markus talk about patterns. Starting with some of their "most used" patterns, they go into some detail about the history of patterns. They then discuss the various pattern forms as well as some misconceptions about patterns. Other topics include the domains that are covered by patterns as well as pattern languages.

Episode 0: About

team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 16:00:00 PST

This is the first episode (actually, episode zero) of software engineering radio. The episode does not contain real content, rather, Markus explains what the podcast is all about.