Erik Meijer travels around Microsoft, meeting the people who design, write, and check in code for a living. The focus is on who they are, how they got into software development, what they're working on, and whatever else Erik wants to know, developer to developer.
No, Erik Meijer doesn't interview himself! :) However, it actually is checking in with Erik Meijer (it's been WAY too long since we last caught up on camera...), so we figured it was a great idea to rehydrate this show with the master himself in the hot seat.As you can imagine, we cover a lot of ground in this one hour plus conversation. Erik has been busy hacking, teaching, and writing, but mostly hacking. Tune in to learn about the latest work Erik has been doing. You may be surprised as it's not Rx++ or even code at all. Huge thanks to Erik for taking time from his hectic schedule to hang out in my office for a while and talk about, well, lots of things related to the craft of making software in 2014 and beyond. Always a real pleasure to get a chance to ask Erik random questions and learn from him.Tune in. Enjoy.
Larry Osterman is a legend and one of Channel 9's favorite personalities - it's been too long since you've been on C9, Larry! Now, what would happen if C9 hero Erik Meijer interviewed Larry? Well, you'd get the latest episode of Checking In and one heck of a conversation. Oh yeah. Make yourself comfortable, grab a beer, some egg nog or whatever you like to drink, sit back, relax and enjoy this truly fascinating conversation as though you were in the room with us - classic C9.Larry's been at Microsoft for over 26 years and he's been a software developer (SDE) for almost all of this time (he dabbled in management briefly, but writing software is what he really loves to do). He's well known for his work on the Windows audio subsystem. But what else has Larry worked on over the years? How did he land at Microsoft? What's his story? We cover several topics ranging from STL to Larry's Microsoft job interview with Steve Ballmer. If you know Larry or have seen any of his other Channel 9 interviews over the years, you know that he's full of great stories and delivers them in a way that only he can. It's Larry time on C9. Thank you Larry and Erik for this conversational treat!Happy holidays from Channel 9 wherever you are and whatever, if anything, you're celebrating!
Stephan T. Lavavej is a Channel 9 hero. You've learned a great deal from him over the years, but you've not really learned much about him. How did STL—that's what we call him since, well, look at his name and what he does for a living—get to where he is today? What's his story? Of course, given STL's expertise and passion, this conversation includes STL's perspectives and opinions on C++ programming, compilers, templates, modern C++, STL (the library), and more. But it also includes a more personal perspective, too. How does STL think about computing? And why C++? Did you know that STL can compile code in his head? Really. Erik Meijer leads this friendly interrogation and considering the IQ, passion, and great conversation the hour goes by much too fast. It's a real pleasure to share a more personal piece on STL as an addition to the usual deeply technical and pragmatic lectures and conversations we're accustomed to. But there's certainly no talking to STL without talking about STL and C++. You are definitely going to learn things by listening in. This is for sure.A huge thanks to Erik for taking the time to do this interview. He was super busy cranking code (C++ at that) on the day we shot this and this interview took him away from his keyboard. Thank you, man. Thank you, STL, for taking the time to be checked in on.
Welcome to the latest edition of Checking In with Erik Meijer! This time around Erik interrogates Marcin Dobosz, a software engineer working on MVC and NuGet packaging. Marcin writes tools that makes the lives of web developers even more productive and open. Open? What does that mean, exactly? What will Erik ask the young Jedi?Thank you Marcin for having the courage to withstand a truly impromptu conversation led by one of the world's foremost language designers and cloud programmability theorists (new title for Erik? ). It's always great to meet and learn about the folks at Microsoft who write and check code in for a living. Keep on coding, Marcin!Enjoy!
Welcome to another edition of Checking In with Erik Meijer! This time we subject native (C++) developer Rick Molloy to Erik's friendly interrogation. You've met Rick before (here, here, here, and here).As usual, this Erik-led conversation involves several forays into technical areas and we jump head first into a few rabbit holes (like managed "versus" native (versus in quotes to emphasize that it's not some sort of duel...). Erik is a managed guy, after all). Lots of great geeky goodness here. So, Erik sends Rick to the whiteboard and Rick teaches Erik some modern C++ and provides some insights into his coding behavior/patterns (which is a key part of Checking In, remember?). We also sort of learn about what Rick's up to these days (secrets, secrets...).Tune in. Enjoy. Thanks for spending time with us, Rick!
Gov Maharaj is a developer on the Windows Compatibility team. You know Gov from the popular C9 show, Defrag. He spends most of his time solving problems reported by customers over the phone, in email, or via automated telemetry data. Gov is one of those people who makes work-a-holics feel as though they aren't working hard enough. Gov works ALL the time. He's one of the most prolific posters on a few of our internal Windows-specific email discussion lists, helping folks with coding issues or troubleshooting hard-to-figure-out Windows errors reported by customers. From a code perspective, Gov spends most of his time reading and writing assembly, but he does dabble in the higher level stuff like C and C++. Gov's team is in the business of writing effective compatibility shims for Windows code, ensuring code will run as expected (if possible) across versions of the OS. You'll learn a lot about this art in this conversation.This is a great episode of Checking In with Erik Meijer -> Classic Channel 9! Thank you, Erik and Gov, for an excellent conversation.Tune in.
Jeff Wilcox is a developer on the Silverlight team. He spends a lot of his time (~80%) coding in C++. Strange? Of course not... Silverlight is a portable managed runtime and C++ (C with classes in this case) is what enables Silverlight portability. Of course, Jeff also spends a significant amount of his time writing the managed parts of Silverlight (controls, libraries, etc.). He is an expert in both the managed and native programming models and he's responsible for some of the really powerful and widely used Silverlight controls that you employ when you're programming WP7 devices or Silverlight apps for Windows or OSX. Jeff is a code-cranking machine and a very talented software engineer. Code on, Jeff!What will Erik ask Jeff? What rabbit holes will we jump into?This way, Alice. No, that way.Keep cranking out great code, Jeff...and checking it in!Tune in. Enjoy.
Happy Birthday, Channel 9!!! We are 7 years old today! Hard to believe... What a great 7 years it has been. THANK YOU, NINERS! In celebration, we bring you the latest episode of Checking In with Erik Meijer. Our very special guest is Eric Lippert. To Erik, thank you for some many years of great content. From your lecture series on functional programming, Expert to Expert series and now Checking In. You are a C9 titan and we salute you.Many of you probably know Eric Lippert from his exceptional blog. You've also met him on C9 before (in fact, Eric was the very first interview Channel 9 shot almost 7 years ago—I remember Lenn, Jeff, Bryn, Scoble, and myself huddled around the computer in my office watching the video with Eric. It was clear we were on to something...).But how much do you know about Eric? Where is he from? What attracted him to computers? When did he first start programming? What was the spark that lit the fire inside of him for writing code? How did he land at Microsoft? What projects has he worked on over the years? What's he working on these days?Compilers have evolved to meet the modern needs of developers, and Eric, one of the developers of the C# compiler, knows this firsthand. From Intellisense to refactoring, compilers do much more than take syntax and convert it into an optimized language that a target execution layer can understand. Currently, the C# compiler is written in C++ and it's architecture is becoming outdated (not because of C++ mind you...). Eric et al are rebuilding the C# compiler from the ground up and they are writing the compiler in C#. Why? Why not stick with C++? Will there be performance penalties to pay for going managed? We talk about all of this, of course...Erik has many questions for Eric. What will the answers be? Tune in.Enjoy, and thanks to Eric for spending time with Erik and Channel 9! Great conversation, as usual.Happy Birthday, Channel 9!!!
Jeff Derstadt is a developer on the Entity Framework team, and in this video Erik visits Jeff to learn more about what he does day to day. Jeff and Erik talk about programming data, generally, and the Entity Framework development model, specifically. We learn about how Jeff got into software development, how/why he landed in the data world, things he's working on, his team's interaction with developer customers, providing the things users of EF need/want - like Code First-, and the software engineering processed employed by his broader development team, especially as it relates to the developer-tester relationship. Check out the latest Checking In with Erik Meijer.Enjoy.
We've started a new Show on Channel 9 and it's the result of a conversation I had with Erik Meijer just after the Herb Sutter E2E before Christmas 2010. Erik told me that he wanted to go around the company and meet everyday devs—the folks who first and foremost spend their time at work designing and writing code. The employees who debug, build, and check in the high quality code that produces the products and services so many of us use every day.What an excellent idea, Erik! We will do this—and so here is the first episode of Checking In.For this pilot, we thought, who better to interrogate than our very own Mike Sampson? Mike, also known as Sampy, is the lead developer of Channel 9's back-end infrastructure and has done some really excellent engineering in the cloud (C9 is wholly run on Azure and Sampy made all the pieces fit and work together in addition to designing the system and, of course, checking in the code). Let's see what Erik wants to know (we honestly don't know!) and how this conversation unwinds. Thank you, Sampy, for taking the orange pill! Enjoy this beginning of a great series of content brought to you by Channel 9's favorite genius, Erik Meijer. Thank you Erik! We love you, man!