Jon (00:04.366) Hello there everyone. Welcome back to another gone mobile. Actually this this one I think this one you'll be hearing on month No, yeah, you will be hearing on Monday, but even the one before so we're switching our episode release day cadence because Who wants to work on a Friday? that hard Allan (00:23.592) I had suggested that plus like if you're going on like in Toronto, sometimes I take the train. Monday morning is where I want to hear the funny stuff because it's Monday morning on the train. Jon (00:32.49) Aren't you supposed to say Toronto I forget what there's there's they always say that there's like a Torontonians pronounced Toronto a specific way and I always forget if it's the Toronto or Toronto Allan (00:37.192) What did I say? Allan (00:50.313) I don't even hear the difference. I know. I think I say Toronto, Toronto. Like it. Yeah. The American. that's. Yeah. Well, he totally makes fun of Canadians all the time in our lack of humor. He did in the dotnet stand up recently and. Jon (00:52.366) That's the T, the second, the hard versus soft T. Trana. Trana. That'd be the American pronunciation. That's how David would pronounce it, I think. We should get, see how he does it. Jon (01:12.814) I mean, he's, he's a St. Louis area, right? So he's almost Canadian. Allan (01:15.817) Right. Yeah, well, frankly, he wears more plaid than I have. I in fact, I've never had plaid. He looks more like a lumberjack than we ever will. I don't know about you. Jon (01:25.87) I was just with David in person, is that a week ago already now? Last week, I think. And I can confirm all he wore his plaid the whole time. Allan (01:35.656) He secretly wants to be Canadian. That's why all of his jokes are there. Right? All right. Jon (01:38.798) Mm -hmm. That's right. That's what I'm saying. He's st. Louis. It's almost there Allan (01:43.624) fair. So we are going to win the Stanley Cup. Hopefully come on Edmonton do it. Is that bad Canadian humor? Is that you know, good Canadian hope? Yeah, I'll take it. I'll take it. Yeah, 30 years. Jon (01:47.758) yes. Jon (01:53.966) That's good Canadian hope. They have to. It's been a while. I don't think that the is that was that Edmonton or just a leaf team or not a leaf team? A leaf team would be a lot longer. Allan (02:02.792) Canadian team a lot longer. It's like, I don't know, what was the last time they won? 67. Before we were born, man. Jon (02:09.998) it's something yeah something like that Yeah, yeah long long before I mean maybe not that far, you know before David was born but us for sure Sorry Sorry, sorry Yeah So what? What are we talking about today other than Canadian jokes that probably nobody gets that we're talking about? Allan (02:22.28) He is a grandpa. He's a grandpa. Allan (02:32.743) That's fair. Well, other than you seem to have your good coffee, which we'll get into later. John's been trying to get me to get good coffee. Jon (02:36.622) Mmm. Yeah, sure. Well, it is kind of like on theme. I don't did you have a section of for that kind of stuff? Allan (02:42.695) Well, today we're talking about the tools we use for development. Coffee could technically be part of that. Jon (02:50.094) I'm adding a section now to the notes called soft tools or not soft tools. I don't know. Yeah. Unfocused tools. Allan (02:55.303) indirect tools, unfocused tools. We're using focus for everything because I've tried to get them to rename slim bindings to focus bindings. How's that going? Is it going? Jon (03:06.574) I think we're going to call them something slightly different. We were, we were coming up with a few different names. It doesn't sound as good when you start using it and thinking about it. so I think we landed on something like, Hmm, I have to, I have to, I have to remember it was like platform or native something, something, something. yeah, you'll see coming soon. Allan (03:25.094) Marketing people. Allan (03:32.006) All right. Would it be nasty when I want to come you're holding me on the dark here. Jon (03:35.982) Well, I can't, I don't remember it and I can't find it that quickly, so. Allan (03:38.855) All right, fine, fine, fine. So what's the tools we use in development? This was like a good opinionated show, right? To say the stuff that we, you know, like Frank's Red Hot, what do I put this stuff on everything? So starting with tools, we're gonna get into a little bit of libraries maybe, even though we've kind of covered that, I can feel like we've been through a lot of libraries, but you know, it's... Jon (03:46.798) Yeah. Jon (03:52.718) Yeah, yeah. Jon (04:00.206) Yeah, there's maybe some that are worth mentioning if they're, you know. Allan (04:04.135) The stuff that you, you know, you start a net new project, you're going to put this stuff in, you know, we'll talk about some of that. Jon (04:09.422) Do you, does, does the shiny template have a select all option on, cause you know, you've got your thing with like all the check boxes. I'm just imagining you go file new select all. Allan (04:13.925) No. Well, I tend to do a lot of POCs for like customers and stuff, right? So I have to do these and like companies I work for from doing architecture, you need to mask go through them. But yeah, there's like, I don't know, 60 some odd checkboxes now. I don't know if I've got the biggest template in dotnet. I wonder if they're tracking that. Love to know. Jon (04:22.606) Mm -hmm. Jon (04:40.142) You might, I mean, if all the options are picked, I think that's a likely case. Allan (04:44.711) Well, in terms of just the dot net new template and the ID, I want to know if I really pushed it to to like the biggest standard. I don't know, somebody's got to collect that you guys collect everything. Visual Studio just goes insane for shipping half of my computer over in terms of telemetry. So. Speaking of which, that's that's a that's a good one to start with. What's the most obvious tools we use is Visual Studio. Jon (04:54.35) Yeah, I don't know. There's probably something on that. Jon (05:05.838) Yeah, well, hey, make some smart decisions. Yeah, okay. Ooh. Is it? Allan (05:13.159) the telemetry collector for you guys. Jon (05:13.486) Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So visual studio now you are more Mac first these days, right? When in, in terms of where you dev. Allan (05:23.656) I. Yes, I am. That is your fault actually. To be honest, I mean, I've always been on Mac back and forth because you need the iOS stuff. But was it a couple years ago? John John and I tend to pester each other for getting stuff. John's just a lot more hard headed than I am about it. But he said you need to get one of these Ms and I was like. And I got one and. Well, I mean, this thing boots. Jon (05:31.95) Yeah. Jon (05:41.262) Mm -hmm. Jon (05:48.846) And you're like, mm, okay. Allan (05:53.031) boots windows faster than my big what I call the reactor beside me, which got 128 gigs of RAM and an i9 and a Nvidia. it's ridiculous. Jon (06:00.) Yeah, no apple silicon stuff has been silly good It just and like the the battery life on a lot like that was the big thing for me when I bought I bought the The macbook air with the first apple silicon in it I bought that back in the day and like the battery life It's just like I can sit on the couch and work for hours and not like worry about being plugged in what? Allan (06:09.894) Yep. Allan (06:19.943) Yeah, it's crazy. And it won't melt your hair off your legs. If you're sitting there in shorts, it's fantastic. I go to the beach with it because I tend to get out so I can do some work and not be crazy. It's awesome. It's absolutely awesome. Jon (06:25.298) Right. Or, yeah, yeah, exactly. Jon (06:35.822) Mm -hmm. And I have a, what did you, what are you sporting now? What kind? Like I have to, I forget which version I even have anymore. Cause I got rid of the air and I bought something newer. Okay. Allan (06:46.089) I got the I have the M2 Pro. So I didn't go max because that's that's like next level insane. And I remember Apple saying, yeah, they're going to be cheaper than the Intel ones. OK, yeah, right, guys. All right. Sure. Well, neither is Microsoft. Did you see those new co -pilot things? They're ridiculous. What do you do? Dude, it's it's software. What do you what do you charge in? Jon (06:55.118) Yeah. Jon (06:59.406) Yeah, no. Apple stuff is never in the same sentence as cheap. Like the... Yeah. Jon (07:13.966) I mean, they're all ARM, right? So like those might, I haven't used one. Like I have a Windows ARM, like the little Windows Mac mini, you know, that they had the dead boxes. It's pretty good. It's not like, I wouldn't say it's like M2 Pro good, but it's like M1 good. Allan (07:16.456) Yeah, they're the super snapdragon ones. Allan (07:24.745) Yeah. Allan (07:34.889) Is that your that's not your daily driver though. It's your it's your wood paneling box, right? Okay. Jon (07:36.878) No, no, no, no. Yeah, yeah, no, my, my, my beast of a machine with the fancy retro would case is, is my daily driver, but it's like, you know, the newer AMD, although I think there are another generation now too, or coming. I don't know. Yeah, it's yeah. And, and I, you know, I had an AMD before this as well and I upgraded last year, year two, last year, I think. Yeah. Allan (07:46.952) Okay. Allan (07:52.456) Well, they could. They had the yearly pretty much everybody's like buy new shit every year, right? Allan (08:05.128) I think it was last year. Yeah, because there was a big debate about hardware and you were going through it because because Jon (08:10.158) Now I got, I got the processor on a really good deal when I got it. I think I even paid less because you were looking at the same one and you're you, I think the price you had listed is slightly higher than I actually paid for it when I did like by a hundred bucks. The 70 it's what the rise in nine 79 50 X three D and the thing is fast. Allan (08:21.864) Yeah, that's why I'm sitting on it waiting. Allan (08:30.568) You know, if I really wanted to to dose money though, it's just a thread ripper. I've heard people say that they're insane. Jon (08:35.822) Yeah, yes, those are insane, but the cost is also insane. I only have 64 gigs of RAM in it right now. I mean, that's plenty. I only have half of it in use, so. Allan (08:48.455) Well, when and all for Windows right now and maybe T. Well, if you've got teams running, then there's the rest of it. So what about what about that? That's good hardware. And yeah, I'm on a Mac, so I tend to be well, I was obviously Visual Studio for Mac. It got it got a lot better in twenty twenty two, not perfect, far from perfect. So I ended up having to go to Ryder. Jon (08:51.918) Yeah. Yeah, probably. Jon (09:00.91) Mm -hmm. Jon (09:07.374) Right. Jon (09:17.294) Mm -hmm. Allan (09:17.478) and I like Rider. I actually love Rider now. It's got some fantastic little experience tooling things. Yeah, it's it's it's my daily driver right now. I am working with VS code because the new debugging is quite that you guys have released is quite nice. Jon (09:37.198) Yeah, VS code is, is has come a long way since the first preview, right? Cause it's, it's GA now. so there's the new, it, that was one thing that I really wanted to push for. And I'm glad that to see it happen was to go like unify debuggers and stop using, we always use this like mono soft debugger, which. You know, the, the runtime still kind of has that protocol. but the, the sort of ID side of it was like this C sharp implementation to talk to it over the wire and everything. And it was. great for what it did. I mean, amazing that it worked as it did for all the years, but there was a lot to be gained for trying to like, you know, bring some consistency and consolidate into the debugger that's already there. And so they ended up writing like the whole, client protocol side of it, I think existed already in like C and that's all like bundled into the high core debug stuff. Now it knows how to talk to the, the mono, the .net mono runtime apps. And so it's, I think there's like new features and stuff that that lights up to. Like there was a whole, I remember seeing a matrix of like, here's stuff that it doesn't do today. And then like if we integrate it, it's all going to work together. So really nice upgrade there. And that has kind of also allowed them to build on, you know, how are we going to do all the hot reloads and stuff, which are kind of there in a preview form anyway, in the extension now. So that was the thing that was missing for me, right? It was the XAML hot reload, especially from VS code. Allan (10:55.237) It's... Allan (11:00.325) It works really well. The hot reload, the debugging is super fast. I think my hang up still it has nothing to do with that experience anymore. It has to do with just the fact that the VS code C sharp dev kit is a bit behind. That's not you guys, right? That's just like. Jon (11:04.974) Mm -hmm. Jon (11:17.262) No, it's under underneath. I mean, and that keeps getting worked on too. So hopefully we keep seeing improvements there. Allan (11:23.46) Like there's there's some toys you can get out there like new get and I think the reason I like writers, it's got the multi debug. Have you ever tried that you can actually launch like boom boom. And so I can start my my you know, in VS we have to pick the projects you want to start in writer. You can just go start this one now start this one now start this one. So you can actually have Android and iOS running and working. Jon (11:31.278) Hmm. Yeah. Jon (11:40.782) Yeah. Jon (11:44.27) Mm -hmm. Allan (11:52.805) side by side, right, which is pretty damn cool. You can bring your ID up or sorry, your your API up. See that running in the CLI. It's fantastic. It, you know, it's funny because we've been asking for that in VS for years, just from a C sharp perspective, and it just doesn't seem to be happening. I get it's a big dinosaur to move but Jon (12:11.406) Yeah. Yeah. I know there's been like, I don't know where the status of it is at this point, but I know that was a topic that was discussed a fair bit, you know, when, when I was at least in the same room as conversations around the debugger stuff with mono and how like dev kits going to do like that kind of experience. Cause what they really tried to do is not like dive in too deep with all of the extension stuff, right. And not like. make decisions that are hard to undo later if we find out like, we shouldn't really have done it this way. Cause it doesn't align to how like VS code really is doing things and like the, the inner user interface kind of guidelines and everything. Right. So there was a lot of, effort to make sure that we didn't like rush into a bad decision. And so, but I know that those things are being talked about and hopefully like that continues to incrementally improve and it gets better. Allan (13:07.94) It will. It's already made leaps and bounds so it just they've neglected .NET for so long in VS code like Microsoft in general. So. Jon (13:11.118) Mm. Jon (13:17.902) Yeah, no, I, I, I agree. I love to see it happening. Cause like that, and that's where like a lot of new developers are and maybe non .net developers too, right? Like if you see, I know like one of the other angles of it always was in education and stuff where like I worked in, you know, the school board for a bunch of years. And one of the things that was kind of obvious to me is, if you want somebody to like use .net, you're not going to like if one, if a teacher wants visual studio installed, they got to go talk to the IT department and say like, I want this on my image. The IT department is going to be like, excuse me. You want me to stick like another 15 gigs or whatever on your image on this image? No. For one class. No. But if, if they were to say like, Hey, we want this VS code extension. well we already have VS code on the image. Sure. Like it's, it's one more little thing to add on. It's kind of shared among other classes and that kind of stuff. So that's, that's how a lot of those decisions get made. And so if you want to be there, you have to, you know, you have to, Allan (13:55.172) Hehehe. Allan (14:13.829) But we also don't worry about 15 gigs anymore. That's just, you just aged yourself there. Jon (14:14.254) kind of play in the right spot. Jon (14:19.31) No, well, no, but, but even on, on some of these things, they still kind of do great. Cause it speed. They do. They do speed, speed is time. And it's not about the cost of storage as much as like, well, when we have to reimage a hundred machines, like another 15 gigs takes more time. Allan (14:29.764) fine. Allan (14:37.221) super fast networks, they usually, they don't care as much. Jon (14:40.398) But not fast storage of getting the image on the thing. Allan (14:43.14) Fair enough, fair enough. So you are primarily a Windows driver then, correct? Why? Is it just because your computer is such a mammoth beast of a gaming machine now? Okay. Jon (14:46.286) Anyway. Yes. Yeah. Uhhh... Jon (14:56.174) That's, that's where it started. but I, I do also have sitting on my desk, a Mac mini with an two pro in it. So that thing is great. And I actually have it now so I can toggle between the two. and talking about tooling. So this was a fun one. You know, we, I, I, we, I think you and I talked about a whole bunch of different KVMs, right? So like that's, if I want to go between two worlds, like I want to use the same monitor. I want to switch around. A lot of monitors have them built in now, including the one that I. Allan (15:12.966) Get. Jon (15:25.294) have today, but it always bothered me that I had to like press buttons on the monitor to switch it. And you know, yeah, the USB stuff goes back and forth, but then you have to have like a really nice USB hub so that all like, I want my microphone, I want my camera, I want everything plugged in to switch when I switch, right? And that that's like one upstream port on the, on the monitor that you can use if you're using that KVM. So actually, what's the utility called? Allan (15:30.725) Hehehe. Jon (15:53.198) I'll have to find the name of it, but it's like a little, there's like a monitor protocol over HDMI that, that you can send commands to from software. And so I actually used some of these utilities to write like a stream deck, you know, script action that when I wanted to switch inputs, now it just runs this thing. And then I press the button on stream deck and it switches over to my other computer and it just works great. So that's a, that's a good one. Allan (16:02.694) Okay. Allan (16:12.71) Don't screw up your mic, John. Allan (16:22.054) Will you have a you don't run them side by side? Jon (16:25.006) No, I like to go more back and forth and side by side. Allan (16:28.583) So you want to tell them what monitor you have? Jon (16:31.886) yeah, it's the, I just did fill the thing out for some expense thing too. a G what is it? The G nine, the Neo G nine 57 inch massive. Okay. Allan (16:39.431) G9. yours is considered fourth gen. I was stupid enough to buy the first gen of that sucker and it was 49 widescreen. Heavy as dirt. I had to keep the box because well you do too right? Jon (16:49.262) Yeah. Jon (16:55.534) The box is like a coffin. It's so big. Yes. Allan (16:58.598) what has to be men, how do you move that thing? And what like it's not like when we move TVs, right? If you don't have the box, you like just put it in a blanket and you put it down, right? This one you don't put down unless you unless you hate the monitor. And I've heard they've got bendy monitors now that you can like, you can flex the tilt on it. But I don't know, that'd be weird. Jon (17:04.814) Yeah. Yeah, yeah, this this no right. Jon (17:17.454) Ugh. No, this, this thing is absolutely massive. It spans almost the width of my entire desktop, which is like a five, yeah, it's like 60 inch, I think a five foot desk. It's glorious. And it, and my, my stipulation was like, I didn't want, so my last monitor set up, I had multiple, but one of them was a Dell 40 inch wide ultra wide, and then I had a four case monitor beside it. So my, the, the Dell 40 inch was high DPI as well. Cause I, Allan (17:31.365) Mm -hmm. Jon (17:50.638) I've been accustomed enough after using Mac books and stuff that I need high DPI, like my eyes. Yeah. So that's what I was waiting for in this thing. So when this came out and it's like 57 inches and it's high DPI, it's basically the same as slapping two 4k monitors together. Allan (17:55.94) Yeah, you want a clear screen. You want a clear screen. I get it. I get it. Allan (18:06.982) 4k. Yep, it's just not OLED, right? That's the only thing. That's the last thing I'm looking for. I'm gonna wait for the fifth gen and then I might go back because I just want it to be OLED because it's a beautiful screen. Jon (18:12.078) That's not OLED, but I mean, for - Jon (18:17.774) Yeah. Jon (18:21.774) Yeah, I mean, yes, OLED would make it that much more beautiful, but I'm mostly I'm working on it. So it's not like doesn't doesn't matter. Allan (18:28.325) Again, there was another purchase that I convinced John to about a year ago, two years ago now was the LG C1 or C2. You ended up getting the generation after me. Yeah. Yeah. So the clarity on those, all it is this stuff. But I digress, we went off topic with that one. So what other tools are your tricks of your trade? Jon (18:35.274) the LG, so beautiful. Yeah, I've got the C2 because there's a C3 or maybe even C4 out now, right? Jon (18:47.657) it's beautiful. Beautiful. Yeah, well, that's... Allan (18:56.261) Used to be an Android lover, so I know Android Studio is in there. You've since recovered from that insanity. Jon (18:59.31) Yeah, that that one's there still. I don't use it a lot, but one like sometimes even to mess with emulators and stuff like yeah, there's the one there's the thing inside of Visual Studio. But like on Mac, OK, like well, that's not there, right? So yeah, so sometimes I use that for those kind of things. Yeah, some virtualization actually been using dev box a lot more. I mean we we have access to dev boxes, so it's kind of. Allan (19:15.205) We don't have one now. Yeah. Jon (19:27.534) I'll just fire one up and you know, create my isolated environment of how I want to try this preview of Don at nine or something and I don't want to screw up my machine by chance. So it's like kind of like a VM, but I don't have to spin it up on my own hardware. so that's kind of cool. other than that, like I, there's a couple that I find for my personal stuff. I've been using insomnia for years. It's like, Allan (19:41.22) Okay. Jon (19:52.91) It's a it's just like a GUI around like cron basically it just is a nice little tool for like building web requests and like setting different headers and everything and seeing what they return. So for for like my pool app. I've used that a bunch to kind of like diagnose little weird things here and there that I just yeah exactly. Allan (20:10.277) like Postman? Okay. If you want one there's a cool Visual Studio plugin for HTTP requests. It's a little bit, it's a little bit more scripted but the thing that most people hate about Postman and myself included is that you got to go through like go to this tab now go to this tab. if you want scripting it's over here and you're like my god where did this thing go? So this VS code which is which Microsoft is borrow Jon (20:18.222) Okay. Jon (20:32.366) Yeah. Allan (20:38.597) as a Visual Studio plugin now. It started to emerge over there, but this plugin in VS Code still is the top notch. The stuff you can do in it just is beautiful. Jon (20:50.03) Okay. I'll have to check that out too. But I mean, like the, the thing I kind of liked about insomnia is it can like sync to a GitHub repo, your, your kind of requests and stuff. So I often am trying to use the same kind of types of ones for diagnosing things in my app. And it's just like, I'll open it up and there it is. Allan (20:57.764) Okay. Allan (21:07.204) Well, so this extension I'm talking about, you can create just like Visual Studio. Have you seen how Visual Studio does a web API now? They dump in an HTTP file. So you can commit that, right? And the nice thing about Visual Studio is it generates it based on a bunch of things, which is kind of cool, but it's still weak in the scripting department in terms of like store parts of the request, right? So if you've got like, get me a list. Jon (21:16.046) Hmm. yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep. Mm -hmm. Allan (21:34.435) and then get me the first list item and get the ID off of that, store it as a parameter and then send it in the next request. That's pretty, that's pretty jiggy. Jon (21:40.526) Okay. So that's, that sounds more kind of like for developing like code, like, yeah, which is, which is a cool use case too, that I had never thought of. So I'll have to check that out. Yeah. This is, this is, I've just been using more for like, why is, you know, the app failing on this thing? Like, can I isolate the end point being the problem or not, for example, in cases. So there's that. And then, when I haven't, Allan (21:46.627) Yes. Allan (22:02.211) Okay. Jon (22:06.99) really been using, but it's really cool and I have to remember to try and use it. Have you ever used dev toys? Allan (22:13.221) Yeah, I've started to, I noticed they released a new update 2 .0. It is very broken. I think it's built partially on Maui, partially on Jon (22:17.646) Yeah. Jon (22:22.638) It's it's it's Maui Blazer basically. Allan (22:25.764) Yeah, it's very it's telling me that it's a bad update when I when I brew it so No, who's the virus? Come on, man. I want a Mac. yeah, you're on Windows and you've got corporate policies Jon (22:30.094) is it antivirus giving you a problem or something like that? Well, I mean, yeah. Well, I was going to say even the Mac, if I want to access anything, has got Defender on it because, yeah. Allan (22:46.308) Well, so Brew doesn't like it. I tried downloading it too and it's also angry about it. So I think they've just had like a bad build or something. I don't know. But I do use it on Windows. I have used DevToys on Windows, but I'm on version one. Jon (22:48.686) Okay. Jon (22:58.542) Yeah, so yeah, they have it all working on Maui. One of the cool things is the author of it basically forked. I don't know where he forked from, but he has Maui working like a blazer hybrid web view in Maui working on Linux too. So you can actually install it there. Allan (23:16.323) Okay. It sounds it sounds pretty cool. I've read about it and there was a big I think they were on one of the community stands at the standups weren't they talking about it. Jon (23:20.398) Yeah. Jon (23:27.086) Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Allan (23:29.347) So it looks cool. I definitely love to use it on Mac. Jon (23:35.886) Yeah, and so it does like a bunch of like random things right? Like if you want to like base 64 encoder decode strings or I don't know. There's all sorts of this little or like test an X path, you know query or something like just stuff that I usually end up Googling and finding some janky online you know form for, but it's like this is just all in one place. So kind of nice to have. Allan (23:42.659) Yeah. Allan (23:56.479) I just I do have one on the Mac so I buy a subscription. This is something I tried to get you to be. You don't use Mac enough so it doesn't matter for you, right? But there remember I was talking about that set app. Is it called set app? Set set app. You know, I've got the damn thing up and it doesn't have a title bar set app, yes. And what it is, it's like a subscription here, a yearly subscription you buy. Jon (24:03.214) Mm -hmm. Jon (24:14.766) Hmm. Okay. Jon (24:23.598) Mm -hmm. Allan (24:24.131) and it has like a bajillion tools in it from dev stuff. Yeah, so they've got some, you know, I basically got it because I use a file browser called forklift, which is just total commander for Mac. It has some of the it has like a dev toys version. It's called offline development toolkit. The icon is strangely a lot like dev kit. So the feature set is. Jon (24:26.414) yeah, it's like a pack of abs, yeah. Jon (24:37.102) Yeah. Mm -hmm. Allan (24:52.93) strangely like dev kit. So that's what I use on the Mac side. Is it as good? I actually don't know. I've never actually compared the two, but it's there. So if you have the set app, it's something worth looking at because set app has like a bunch of stuff, like just a whack of a whack of tools to get on Mac. I think it's, I think I paid what a hundred bucks a year. That's not bad. It's worth it for forklift and some of the other apps that I use off. Jon (25:05.166) Okay. Yeah. Jon (25:14.414) Okay. Yeah, I mean. Jon (25:19.726) Yeah, no, forklift's one that I have used in the past too. Yeah. Allan (25:24.45) Well, let's face it, if you're on Windows, what are you using for Windows file management? Jon (25:28.878) like remote file, like, like. Allan (25:30.178) No, just General File Manager. Jon (25:34.478) Windows Explorer. Allan (25:35.714) really? Really? Well, okay, so I'm I'm a bit of a hardcore. This might age me a bit, but I still to date, I've been using it for years. A friend of mine at an old company got me into Total Commander, which is built on some what's the ancient language? Fox Pro. No Delphi, Delphi. There we go. Jon (25:38.51) I mean, like what do I all do in there? Not that much. Jon (25:53.518) Mm -hmm. Jon (25:59.406) is it really visual font? Okay. That's that's better. Not great, but better. Allan (26:04.801) and well people like fox pro man i just let's see what's anyhow this this thing the author keeps adding on to it i still use it die hard today Jon (26:09.55) Yeah, yeah. Jon (26:16.462) It's to February 21st of this year. There is an update and the website looks like it's from the 90s still Allan (26:20.129) Yes, updates at yeah, but it's still in my opinion, it is still the best to date file manager you could have. Jon (26:30.062) Does it look horrible? Because I can't use it if it looks horrible. No, yeah, it does then. Allan (26:33.313) Not no, it's not bad. You had no, no, no, no, no, no, you have to you have to you have to the default one like it'll give you the Delphi look. But if you if you configure it, I think they might be doing it out of the box now, to be honest. But I have like a set of settings that makes it look modern, not like Windows Explorer modern. Maybe if Windows Explorer focused more on the features than making it look good. Jon (26:55.598) When's the last time you've seen it? Like what features? What's it missing? Well, I mean, I've never been a dual pain person. Allan (26:59.616) The dual pain, dual pain, dual pain with the dual trees and then the dual. man, see I'm moving stuff around constantly, right? And back in my server days, I was moving stuff around constantly too, so. Jon (27:10.542) Yeah. I don't know. I'm just, I'm just an, an animal and use two windows and put them beside each other when I need to. Allan (27:17.504) you, jeez. Well, why use forklift then? Forklift is exactly what I'm talking about. Jon (27:23.278) I mean I used it for like SFTP and like remote systems more so. Allan (27:29.789) You're a caveman sometimes. I'll take my caveman of coffee. You can get dakin' on some of the tooling. Some of it. I... Okay. Jon (27:32.302) Yeah, yeah, yeah, well, yeah. All right. This this one's not going anywhere. Agreeable that. Allan (27:45.44) That's fine. That's John and I agree to disagree on things. So this this is it. Honestly, though, Total Commander is the stuff, but it's not for everybody. I get it. It's got to look pretty. Otherwise, I'll have to show you mine. It's not bad. Jon (27:49.358) Yeah. Jon (27:56.106) Yeah, I was just complaining about that to my wife the other day too. cause our grocery store got new self checkout things and I'm like the, they have this beautiful new, like, vertical screen on it, you know, nice big tablet interface and the software is just the worst looking thing I've ever used. And I'm like, I, they just need to make it nice. And she's like, well, what does it matter? Like because. Allan (28:17.824) Yeah. Jon (28:24.814) I don't want him to use things that don't look nice. Like why not make it look nice? Like if it's going to be there, make it good as well. Anyway. Allan (28:27.072) Hehehehe Allan (28:34.08) The robots are taking over. Just get in line. Get in line. Jon (28:36.782) Yeah, that's just the worst buttons and then the whole like Flow of it is just horrible. You have to answer 30 questions before you can check out Did you did you use any bags? Do you want to donate to our charity that we probably don't really actually run like a charity? No, just let me pay Allan (28:44.446) Yeah, that. Yeah. Allan (28:52.606) Okay, fine. I do the same thing. I do. I just wish it would shut up and let me let me scan the shit. Let me check it out and shut up. Just shut up. And also if you could make the credit card processing a little bit faster. Do you find that like you press? Okay, pay now. It takes forever to get the debit thing going and you're like, come on, man. This is like we've we're past this right? Okay, so there we are. Alright, okay. So what? Jon (29:00.91) Yeah. And then thank you for using self check out. Right. Then it's like... Jon (29:14.382) Yes. Yes. Allan (29:22.431) You don't do a lot of, well, you do, I know you use Docker a lot for, well, you use it for hosting certain tools, right? But from a dev perspective, do you use it? Jon (29:26.318) Not a lot, but...ish. I, I, yeah. Not really. I used it the other day finally to figure out how to publish my own Docker file thing so I could run it on my Synology nicely, like a .net setup. Allan (29:44.926) Okay. are you talking about like a Docker compose thing? Jon (29:49.294) yeah, I don't, it wasn't even composed. It was just like, here's a, I had a console app I wanted to run and that was like doing something with my pool Meadow stuff, but. Allan (29:55.486) Okay. Allan (29:59.134) Okay, all right. Well, see, I use Docker for a lot of things now. You know, I there's there's a couple of big apps I work on. So it's nice to be able to just, you know, Docker compose string edit environment. Boom, you're going. Jon (30:13.934) You gotta aspire those. Allan (30:17.823) I'm not there yet. I'm not there yet. I know that's what they keep saying, you know, but it doesn't really solve that issue completely for me. And it doesn't really solve a deployment issue for me yet. I don't know. I am on board the dot net Orleans train, but we'll get to that. I mean, am I jumping ahead? I'm jumping ahead. We're still in tools, still in tools. You come to the libraries. So I am hardcore Docker. Jon (30:19.726) Yeah, you will be. Jon (30:36.846) Hmm. Yeah, maybe a bit. Yeah. Allan (30:46.271) Kubernetes if I have to go hardcore, but I don't personally know a ton of Kubernetes or Kates if we want to be cool. I've done the basic stuff with it, but I usually hand that over to your IT dev sec ops dudes and here guys, this is how you need to distribute stuff. Your problem. Now here you go. Here's all the environment variables that are needed for each one of these containers. Now leave me alone and you scale it. If you have to deal with anything that's bad in my code, let me know. Jon (30:53.23) Yeah. Jon (31:04.91) Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Allan (31:15.422) and we'll deal with it. Now I will say though, maybe because you are on the full Cosmos DB train, which I know customers that are, I don't know about the costs or anything, but I do know the one thing that's a pain in the arse is that there's no offline dev experience. So I have to pay. Jon (31:33.87) There used to be an emulator. Allan (31:37.278) Well, it's a pain to set up and it's windows only right? If it's still in existence, but like guys, let's roll this as a container already. I think it just came for the blob storage stuff. I think it's coming for service bus. Which is nice. Like they have, you have to have a local dev experience, especially for like people that want to learn it. They don't want to pay. No. Jon (31:38.894) I've never used it yet. Okay, maybe, I don't know. Jon (31:48.046) Yeah. Jon (31:54.798) Okay. Jon (32:02.062) I think there is one now. No look, there's a, as of yesterday, the article, yeah, Cosmos DB emulator. And then it says something about Docker somewhere. Anyway. Allan (32:06.654) as you write? No way. What? No, seriously. Allan (32:19.262) Okay, yeah, but what's the setup steps involved? Is it like 14 pages long? Jon (32:23.95) no. I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm doing this on the fly here, so I'm not, you know, it says something about, I think it works on, it doesn't, so it doesn't work on, arm, Apple yet. Allan (32:29.054) Okay, well the pressure's on, man. Allan (32:38.174) All right, I can that I can understand though I can live with that. But does it run in pure Docker or do I have to enable the world to get that stupid thing to run? Okay, but what about what? Jon (32:41.454) Yeah. Jon (32:49.038) Yeah, I don't know. I can't tell you that yet. I Googled like Docker and you know the Cosmos emulator and it like looked like on the list and it was like, yeah, run this in Docker. So I don't know. Allan (33:01.758) Okay, all right. I know Azure Functions is kind of there too. So it's just that offline dev experience really needs to be there. It has to. It has to. So I use that stuff. I use RabbitMQ like it's going out of style. But then again, doesn't everybody? You know, you're actually I'm hardcore Postgres SQL these days, personally, but and that's a Docker thing. No, no, you don't. You're. Jon (33:09.422) Yeah, yeah, that's fair. Jon (33:19.022) Yeah. Jon (33:23.406) Hmm sounds like a lot of self -inflicted pain, but yeah cool. I It's been I mean, it's been years. So but Allan (33:32.989) I mean they have come if you take a look at this so MS SQL's got a lot of the spatial awareness queries and stuff so I used MS SQL still everywhere but if you look at the NPG SQL drivers I think that's what the .NET drivers are called for Postgres they are they do everything and more they've got like a nota or no daytime driver so that you can use not a time with time zones. Jon (33:35.438) Okay. Jon (33:47.758) Okay. Allan (34:00.637) which SQL server still doesn't do well. Jon (34:01.358) What's, what's the management like of, of Postgres these days? Like I remember that being annoying back in the day. Allan (34:07.422) It's gotten a lot better. There's so many open source utilities for it now that it's really, I mean, if you're back from the days of MySQL, you had PHP My Admin, so they have PG Admin, which is the same damn thing. It's, yeah, it's night and day. Jon (34:11.438) Yeah. Jon (34:19.118) Mm -hmm. Jon (34:23.15) I mean, nothing can be as bad as Oracle was to administer, so. Allan (34:26.477) Yeah, we both have our scars there. To be fair though, as complicated as Oracle was, it did not die. You could hammer the hell out of that database and it would not croak. I don't know if it's changed. Jon (34:29.486) Oof. Yeah. Jon (34:36.014) Yeah, yeah It just didn't know it just didn't like to stay alive on it's not like yeah I remember not knowing quite enough about it and it would didn't make it super obvious when you needed to do certain things to keep it from dying and so I Don't know I mean they were so when I started working at the school board many many years ago Allan (34:46.077) Yeah. Allan (34:54.013) Well, is anybody still using Oracle? Allan (34:58.941) souls that are out there. Jon (35:03.15) actually, when I started working there, they had Oracle on open VMS still. That was fun. Well, and just like, you know, I'm fresh out of university. I've used, you know, SQL server, MySQL, I've used them all. But then they're like, this is our setup. And I'm like, what's VMS? And that was a learning experience. So anyway. Allan (35:08.733) Hello, nice. Custom a fortune. Fortune. Allan (35:23.549) Zoracle. Allan (35:27.741) Hehehehe Yeah. I don't know if it got better. I haven't touched Oracle, thankfully, in years. Jon (35:36.91) We moved it over to like Windows and it was worse there than it was on VMS. And then I finally got them to move off of that and save a bunch of money and use Microsoft instead. And everything was happy. Allan (35:41.341) Well, as it would be. Allan (35:47.773) There you go. Good see you didn't get any commission for it though. Send. Jon (35:51.342) No, but I mean, in a way I kind of did. We all got commissioned for it because it was saving some taxpayer money. Right? Yeah. It was like 50 grand a year or something. It was silly. Allan (35:59.036) there you go. Good for you. Yeah, all right. Allan (36:05.948) Yeah, it's too much money for those. So what other two? Okay, so I have two other tools that I use on Mac. And that is obviously Xcode and parallels. Like I said, parallels on my M2 boots Windows faster than my i9. Now my i9 is getting a little older now, but it still has a ton of memory and everything. And the M2 boots Windows in like, it's from start to desktop. Jon (36:16.846) Yes. Jon (36:27.246) Mm -hmm. Jon (36:32.398) Yeah, and I don't get the difference either because it seems like x86 based things for Windows, just there's something more that I don't know what it is. It just, they don't boot fast. Like even my AMD almost boots slower than my last AMD did. And there's some whole hardware check stuff, not even the stuff you can disable in the BIOS. There's fast boot you can do, right? Allan (36:33.564) in two seconds. And that's not an exaggeration. Jon (36:58.894) but with all that on, it's still like, there's, I don't know if it's like memory, you know, validation, there's something weird it does. And it just takes longer than it feels like it should to boot, especially like you're saying compared to parallels where the thing's just like done. Allan (37:13.053) Of course, now as I talk, it's taking forever to boot. I just was going to be like, hey, I just clicked the button and started. And now it's like, hey, logging in is taking forever today. Don't know why, whatever. Maybe it's the fact that I don't have teams on. Yeah, see, you never do tech demos live, right? OK, well, lesson learned. Jon (37:15.794) Hey, I just clicked it and it's done. Jon (37:25.294) Well, you're putting it on the spot. Jon (37:31.694) That's right. Xcode, you got to have it there. You just do. You don't have to open it that often. Allan (37:37.821) Yes, well, you do. But if you own it, just boot it in the background, I heard it on my mic. Obviously login was taking something choking on my internet or something, who knows? Okay, so we often do talk about libraries. I was gonna save that one to last, because I feel like we can zip through that. We've focused a lot on that. So let's talk about the soft tools as a brief intermission here. This is a good segue. Yeah, well, because so John is what I refer to as a coffee snob. Jon (38:00.334) Yeah. Jon (38:05.134) As I take a sip. Yeah. Allan (38:12.16) a huge one. Now I drink swill. I get it. I drink a Keurig, blah, blah. And John's been trying to convince me. Yeah. John's been trying to convince me to get this Chemex thing. The other day I made it. Well, I frequently make jokes about it, right? How long the spouted is on his teapot. You know, you know, the water has to come from unicorn pee and the leather on the jar. What's that jar? What do you call it? Your poor, your Jon (38:19.31) dropped a little bit in my mouth. Jon (38:40.206) No, that's the Chemex. The vessel is the Chemex. Like the pot, the thing that has the wooden cover around it that you're talking about with the leather tie strap. Allan (38:41.919) Okay, well whatever. Sorry, the what? The vessel? All right. Yeah, the wooden cover on the glass with made of unicorn leather and it measures the atomic weight of a pubic hair, you know, that's, but sorry, that's not that device. Jon (38:55.79) That's right. Jon (39:03.614) What's not that device? No, no, Kevin. Allan (39:05.951) Sorry, the one that the prep that pours the rain, it looks like a rain rain spout. I don't know what you call it. Jon (39:10.638) sorry. That is so that's one. Yeah. So there's a, there's Chemex, which is just like the, the, the pot and like, arguably, if you're going to use the Chemex, like actual pot to brew your coffee and you're going to use their filters. Cause that's, that's really where the magic is. And their patents are around like creating their filters that filter better than normal paper filters and all that. So that's. Allan (39:14.079) There's like four different devices in your. Allan (39:37.055) Alright, alright. Jon (39:39.566) That's the thing. And then with that, you have a, you know, a kettle or some way to make water the right temperature, which is equally or if not more important, you want the, yeah, so that's, that's a, a goose neck kettle. And the idea is that helps you achieve the correct pouring rate of water over the beans. Yeah. And you know, that's, that's an easy way to brew your coffee and have Allan (39:45.471) And okay, all right, all right. And John's got a spout with about, it's about like 12 inches long. Allan (40:00.862) boy. Okay. Jon (40:09.71) good coffee, not horrible flavored water that you drink. Allan (40:16.957) All right, all right. It's cost a fortune. Cause I remember John was like, you don't, you don't grind beans like for the week, do you? And I was like, well, sometimes it's like you do it at the point you're going to make it. and you did put it in a black and Decker thing, did you? And I was like, yeah, it's a bean grinder. Jon (40:28.238) Well, and no, and worse, that's not even your worst offense. Yeah, cause you're like, I have a grinder. It has like little blades that spin around on it. That's, that's actually a spice grinder. They, they sell them as, they sell them as coffee grind. No, it's not. It's not. Yeah. It says it, but like, it's not, there's a lot of things that say things on them that are not true. Allan (40:40.061) No, it says coffee grinder. Okay, well, but it's a coffee grinder. It says coffee grinder on it, man. What are you telling me? Okay. Okay, so it didn't fluff my coffee just the right way. Is that what you're telling me? Jon (40:55.694) No, so the problem is when you're going to grind your coffee beans, if you're using these little blades, it's, it's doing it by like friction and it's going to add heat and it's going to impart a different flavor on the coffee beans that tastes bad, which is going to be more burnt and stuff. Cause you're adding this, this friction method of like pulverizing the beans. Allan (41:16.317) So what am I supposed to just bash them with, like put them on flat out on the table and like start headbutting them or what do I do? All right, all right. Jon (41:21.742) That's one way to do it. I prefer the way that everybody else prefers who likes any reasonably good coffee, which is to get a style of grinder called a burr grinder. And a burr grinder is, is more about crushing the beans. It's not whipping blades around to try and slice them up. It's, it's crushing them. So it doesn't add any heat to the process or obviously there's going to be some that's just physics, but it's not the same by any means. And you get more. If you have a good burr grinder, you get a more consistent size of grind to your beans that goes through, which helps have a better extraction of the coffee when you're brewing and all that stuff. So. Allan (42:03.484) So this is what John refers to as a soft tool for development, which I agree, a lot of us need coffee. Yeah, I'm old, I want my coffee in the morning. How long does it take you to make it? Don't bullshit me, because I already know you've been over this several times. How long does it take you? Okay. Jon (42:15.854) No, I I timed it the other day for you and it was not not long. I I don't remember offhand so I have I have a problem right now, which is I bought a really nice kettle. It's a fellow stag Is what that's a weird name for I don't know why but it's it's really you can dial the temperature into within like, you know One degree of what you want it to be and it heats the water up nicely. It's got the goose neck and everything I bought it just under a year ago and the thing Allan (42:21.756) It's not mine. OK. OK. Jon (42:45.326) died the other day. It just won't heat the water anymore. So, so I'm, I'm kind of, I, I thought it was past a year, so I'm already like, okay, I think this thing's out of warranty and I'm going to get screwed by this. I think it's still under warranty. I'm still waiting to hear back from them, but you know, then I started going, okay, like what do I want my replacement to be? I don't want to buy another one of these kettles that's died on me in less than a year. And it's like, it wasn't cheap. It was 200, a couple hundred bucks plus I think. And, Allan (42:48.508) Okay, okay. Jon (43:15.182) So I started looking at some of the options that I had told you. So when you talked about the Chemex thing, the thing that drips down, Chemex has a, yeah, they call it the automatic and it basically simulates the pour over part for you. So you put the water in the thing, it heats that for you and it brews it. And you know, it's not, it's not that dissimilar to like a drip coffee maker. Obviously it's the same principle is doing the same thing. It's just trying to do it with like a little bit more, Allan (43:21.371) Shower, the shower is what I call it. Jon (43:43.246) style of how you would do it manually. Yeah. Yeah. So. Allan (43:45.755) Style is one way of putting it. Yep. Okay. All right. So how long does it take end to end from the point you start crushing your B? Well, at one point you gave me a good answer and you said 15 minutes. Hey man, it was from the horse's mouth. I'm telling you. All right. Well, you do a time. Mine takes about 30 seconds. I press the button. The water heats up. Jon (43:51.886) What did I say? Jon (43:58.926) No, it wasn't that long. Jon (44:04.27) I gotta find it. Yeah. Jon (44:11.758) Yeah. Allan (44:13.147) It's not bad, but I also drink I put some cream and I put a little bit of sugar which apparently is also filth in the car the mind of the coffee snob so. Jon (44:21.774) Yeah. Well, the thing is, if so, I converted my wife to drink black coffee because when you drink bad coffee, you want those things to, you know, counteract the bad taste. But if you have a goo, a really good cup of coffee, most people can, you know, get to a point pretty quickly if they have that, that they don't really want or need the sugar and certainly not the sugar, but you know, maybe some people still like a touch of cream or milk in it, but. Allan (44:49.948) Well, you did say you were gonna try and convert me, but then you offered to make my coffee a different way the other night when I started making fun of how you make your coffee. But, you know, if you want me to convert, let's see, maybe I can go. Jon (44:56.27) Yeah, yeah. So I mean, yeah, yeah, you just gotta, you gotta have a good cup of coffee. I can't find the timing, but I think if I have to think about it, it's probably by the time from very start to very end, maybe six, seven minutes tops. And that's like doing part, that's, that's including waiting on parts like for the water kettle to heat up and boil where I'm not like just standing there waiting for it. Allan (45:04.379) All right. Allan (45:23.483) That counts as part of the timing experience. That counts. Jon (45:25.23) Yeah, yeah, I'm just saying like I press the button and then I go do something else. And then when you know, it's ready, I come back to it. The actual like time I spend there doing something is maybe like three minutes. Allan (45:36.091) Okay, fine. All right, so I have to try your coffee, I will admit, but in terms of time, it still sucks. I wanna press a button, have it grind the beans in, or sorry, not, whatever you call it, the fluttering of the coffee beans or whatever, the burring, the grinding, the crushing. Jon (45:40.494) Yeah, yeah, yeah. Jon (45:44.91) shh shh shh shh shh shh shh shh shh Yeah. Jon (45:54.606) No, the grinding, it's just that your grinder is pulverizing, not grinding. Or maybe that's the other way, maybe pulverizing is the better way to describe. It's not doing anything nice to those beans. It's kind of like at that point, just buy pre -ground coffee, because, yeah. Allan (46:08.155) Fair enough. Allan (46:13.371) Okay, so what's some other soft tools? I mean, somebody asked me the other day what I was using for podcasting, so John made me get a Shure microphone, something M7 thing, and now I have the Rodecaster, but that's my own damn fault. Jon (46:21.326) Okay. Mm -hmm. Jon (46:30.51) you should have just known that you were going there in the first place and then you could have gone right to the the the king of microphones the the sure I don't remember the model number but there's one that like everybody uses that's the one I bought recently and I'm very happy with it it it's nice it's like a step down but it's it's good it's great Allan (46:44.251) I thought this one, the one that I have, so I have a level down. Now I ended up, so they put a micro USB in this thing, really, because my condition when I talked to John, John was like, you got to get one of those boxes and you got to get, my condition was it had to be USB. That was a mistake. I pushed that thing down with one finger, two or three weeks ago, before we did a podcast. Jon (46:56.654) Yeah. Jon (47:06.606) I told you so. Allan (47:12.987) And I was like, you know what, I'm going to have to get back to you. So I had bent the cord somehow into the USB mic with one finger. I hardly pushed on that sucker and that was it. So I couldn't get any other USB micro USB, not that those are a thing in my house much anymore to work. So I'm like, you know, in my rage and this is John, John knows that he was like, you need to go get one of those boxes now. And then I got this road caster duo. Jon (47:30.958) Yeah. Allan (47:42.587) has sound effects is pretty cool. Jon (47:42.638) Yeah, you go from like the box that will suffice and do well to like the one with every bell and whistle. Allan (47:49.755) And well, that's how I go nuclear when I'm mad. It's full nuclear. And yeah, John was laughing at me. And then it took us probably half an hour to figure out how to get it to work because we wanted to do the podcast. So about the cables. And sure enough, I couldn't hear things. And it's because there's two analog buttons. Well, two buttons that aren't like they're not software. It's not on the touch screen. And one of them wasn't pressed. So fantastic. Jon (47:52.686) I do that before I'm mad even. Allan (48:19.995) So it took us a half an hour doing this to figure it out. Anyhow, now it's fantastic. Now you know we get, we figured it out. See, we got sound effects. Jon (48:28.654) Yeah, as long as I don't have a, there was the one, but you still have to not have the user error with it, right? Like the other episode where I didn't realize windows had maxed out the microphone volume and I sounded super loud and no, I didn't either, but it messed something messed with it on me. So now every time before I go check. Allan (48:43.77) Well, I don't see I don't touch anything now. Allan (48:52.41) And then the other day, well, I bought two things the other day because my microphone stand was driving me nuts. It kept if you've seen any of our YouTube videos, it's like there's this thing coming out to punch me in the face at the side and it would move it like it was for my old bike. So I ended up getting like one of these low rise Elgato things that just stretches across. And yes, I can reach my mouse underneath it. John, you were asking the other day. It's there now. I can play with the the road caster. So that's great. Jon (49:03.15) Mm -hmm. Jon (49:16.27) Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. Allan (49:22.362) And then I got that, you know, I was told that I was pretty dark and I needed to get a key light, but I found one cooler because I love the RGB stuff. I'm total. I'm such a kid, right? I was like, this one has RGB and it's a key light. So it's a Logitech Litra, LITRA, LX. Anyhow, apparently it's got good ratings, so you should look at it. You said you wanted a key light. Jon (49:48.91) Yeah, but just when, when are you going to use the, when are you, no, I, I. Allan (49:52.634) games don't you dare ask me when the heck am I going to use that? No experience. You're a flight sim guy. Imagine the sun is off in behind your monitor lighting up your room. Jon (49:56.558) BYE! Jon (50:04.846) No, because you just are in the plane in VR or so. There's no monitor. Allan (50:10.201) what do you put you on? Yeah, forget it. It's like talking to a wall. Trust me. This thing is cool. It's heating me up right now, though. I'm pretty sure I'm gonna have a sunburn after but there it is. It's showing my pasty whiteness. Maybe it'll come out on the camera as I look like a ghost or something. We'll find out. Jon (50:22.062) Nice, nice. Jon (50:30.254) I have one more soft tool, which I've been using a lot lately, which we've kind of talked about already. I have my standing desk. Allan (50:33.529) Okay. Allan (50:37.913) yes, well that's most devs right? You're not standing right now though. I usually don't either. It's so bad. How often does it go up a day? Jon (50:40.654) Yeah, I think so, but you know, I'm not. I'm not right now. Why? Yeah. in, in, in the before, not, not a lot. Like when I first got it years ago, I was like, yeah, this is the best. I use this all the time. And then like you slowly use it less and less and less. And then I broke my tailbone and now I use it a lot. So it might, it might be enough that I kind of get back into it and like, okay, I use it now. Allan (50:56.825) And you never use it now. Allan (51:03.897) Yeah. Allan (51:09.689) Well, you know, I need to get off my fat ass and do like some treadmill or something. Apparently you can get those under your desk, but I don't know. That's a hard sell for me. Jon (51:17.198) Yep. I don't. Yeah. I know of several people who have them. and I think they seem to like them. I have a hard time believing that I would be successful at doing two things at once, like walking and maybe on a call. Like that's what I should get it, get it for. Right. Yes. Allan (51:30.996) Yeah. I can, my brain can multitask in terms if I'm still after that, it's like, shit, and I'm going to bail and bash my head off the desk. And you know, it's just, it's not a good thing. It's not a good thing. Jon (51:41.166) Yeah. Jon (51:46.542) Exactly. So, all right. Well, I think, yeah. Allan (51:48.601) Alright, so that's it for the soft tools. I think, you know, we've talked about libraries quite a bit, so you don't need to spend a lot of time on it. But it was more a case of what's the stuff you're going to start a net new project and I'm going to use project because we can go outside of the box a little bit like because a mobile app. What is it without an API? And we won't talk web leave web out. John does John does not do the web. Well. Jon (51:57.582) No. Jon (52:09.838) Mm -hmm. Jon (52:16.558) Do some, I do the blazer. Allan (52:18.392) Yeah, okay. But you don't like the web. You should try React. It's pretty, pretty well, the problem is you don't even know what React is anymore. I mean, let's not even go into that. Jon (52:21.838) I have a thing on the web. I have years to go. I don't know. No, yeah. I mean, I've played with it over the years a little bit here and there, but. Allan (52:34.935) It's, I don't know where the hell it's at. Now you gotta be through Next .js and what the hell happened. Anyhow, in its heyday, it was pretty damn jiggy. Anyhow, let's go back. Let's start, obviously with the core stuff that we're known for. How do you start a mobile app? What's the, I know you're pretty plain Jane in terms of dependencies, but there's gotta be something. Jon (52:59.342) Yeah. Jon (53:03.79) No, I mean, yeah, actually, you know what, to be fair, and I, you might not use this one, but I, I've grown fond of it. The MVVM, toolkit stuff, whatever that one's called. I like the style of it. Allan (53:04.535) Community toolkit. Allan (53:16.567) Okay, no, I don't use it because I use the reactive UI version of it. But I know that that one's getting a little bit old because as soon as I say that John cringes because it's got now Foddy is good. Foddy Foddy. It's great. It is but it's a little bit old now. And it doesn't interact quite nicely with Roslyn and some of the code gen. Jon (53:30.07) Sure. I mean... Jon (53:38.574) Yeah, I was going to say like I have no problem with FODE and I have used it years ago, but the fact that yeah, it needs to be updated to work with source generators, all of it. Otherwise it's just not going to be a good thing. Allan (53:50.295) Well, it does do a couple of things still that source generators don't do, like a public, like I just wanted to take this, take that public property. Now I get why source gens don't do this, but take that public property, change it into the fact that here's all the boilerplate underneath it, right? Jon (54:08.206) Yeah, I mean, that's, yeah, that's all fine and good. I just, I think everyone needs to kind of know it as a large caveat. No, not too, but just to like, Hey, if you use this, there's a great chance that you can't use C sharp pot reload now. That's that, maybe in some cases, like depending on what it's actually weaving at the end of it, I just, there's probably a lot of cases that it doesn't is, is kind of the thing. Allan (54:16.471) What it's doing. Yes. Allan (54:25.752) It still works by the way. Still works. Allan (54:33.399) I use it for MVVM properties myself, still works great. Just, well, maybe not C sharp hot reload, but okay. Well, we'll wait and see. I am trying to evolve that experience in my tool chain right now because there is advantages to source generators. The problem is they're still bloody, they can be really bloody hard to run, to code and test. But once they're working, Jon (54:38.35) with C -Sharp Hot Reload. Jon (54:43.374) I doubt it. Jon (54:59.758) yeah. Yep. Allan (55:03.223) They're pretty good. And once you can figure out some of the magic we had talked about in a previous episode, the source generator kit that's out there that kind of deals with some of the stuff and I'm getting there. I've got source generators in places where it's good, but yeah, they're still tough. So you're using the MVVM toolkit for auto -generated commands, auto -generated commands. Jon (55:10.478) Mm -hmm. Jon (55:27.934) Yes. yeah. Commands, the property stuff. Yeah. The, what is it? Observable object or you can add like observable. What's the thing? No, I know, but there's like attributes and you don't necessarily have to like derive from an observable object. Like that's the recommended thing, but you don't have to that kind of stuff. Allan (55:38.103) Yeah, it's an observable object. Yes. Allan (55:49.655) Well, there's a couple other things too that reactive UI does that kind of collides with how I want to use that library too, because I use the when any's, right? So I can iterate properties, watch for changes. So some of the observable object kind of hides a lot of that. Now that's fine for general screens. It's not really a big deal. But when you start getting into big complex mammoths, you really should try reactive UI. You should. Yes, John, I know. I know. Jon (56:02.958) Mm -hmm. Allan (56:19.573) It's good though. I built some big monsters. It works. But I will agree with you about FOD. It's just, I need to upgrade that portion. I need to, this is fine. Okay, so. Jon (56:23.79) Yeah, yeah. Jon (56:29.55) Yeah. Yeah. And then, and then there's so yeah, so there's, there's those couple, I, I find in some apps, it's not as common for me. And maybe just cause I don't know, I don't build a lot of new apps either. the .net community toolkit, like the Maui stuff is, it can be nice. There's some stuff in there. Allan (56:51.444) Do you use anything specific? Because I mean, you did an article on how to not use the pop -up from a plug -in. Jon (56:57.358) Well, yeah, so the the the the pop up there works differently than the intended use case that I wanted. And so it might be that you actually want that version of it. But what I wanted was not that. And that's OK. There's there's different things, right? They have a lot of type converters like some of those are can be, you know, it's nothing. Special, but it's like, well, if I don't have to put that in my own project and it's already in the thing I'm referencing, then great, I'll just use theirs. Allan (57:05.588) Yes. Allan (57:12.596) That's fair. Yeah. Allan (57:26.676) I use two type converters, two, not or inverse boolean. Yeah, that's bad. You know, it is inverse boolean and doubles, double conversion. That's it. And actually, you know what? I like there's a time only in a date only. But that's because I'm lazy and I don't want to cast those. And I've started using those in a lot more places. So all right, I've got four, but in actual type conversion scenarios, that's it. Jon (57:29.102) yeah, I use lots. Jon (57:34.029) Meh. Yeah. Yeah. Jon (57:42.83) Okay. Jon (57:53.422) Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's fine. They have a, they have a bunch. Yeah, there's, there's probably not a lot more that I would use in a new app anymore. Like, like we've talked about, I've got some that are like weirdly specific of how I want to use them in their handy. So I like them like to do formatted text and stuff, but. Allan (58:02.228) All right. Allan (58:09.268) fair. So one of the other things is I obviously have a big template, which I still want to know is it the biggest thing? Is it the biggest .NET new template in the .NET ecosystem? Because there's a lot in it. I want to know. Get the telemetry for me. Come on. Anyhow, I've been in the Maui community or the Xamarin community for a long time, so I've been accumulating these things. They're like toys. And I built a big template. Jon (58:27.79) That's a lot of work. Jon (58:39.438) Mm -hmm. Allan (58:41.652) Now I have used or will be using all of the things that are in it at some point. So it's almost like, I don't want to make it sound bad. It's just, it's received my blessing. I like it for whatever reason, or I've used it. So there's like 60 plus of them in there. I think, you know, we've talked about them and some of them in one way or another, obviously it's self promoting some of my stuff. Even ACR user dialogues. I think that's like one of the first plugins. that we had and it's still in there. People are still using it. I don't even use it anymore, but it's there. So that's something if you want to check out like a lot of these plugins or libraries that may or may not be used. That's like my official recommended, recommended list, recommend recommendations list, something to check out anyways. Jon (59:32.142) Yeah, no, that's a good side of them. Allan (59:34.388) Like, cause I'm not going to go through it. Like obviously I've written a lot of open source and I use that everywhere, but the template is probably the best cause it's got, it's got the ecosystem worth of stuff that, and it's still more stuff that I like. I've got a few things from Javier who's on the boundary team that I still want to add in. It just, there's so much, there's so much, but check it out. Jon (59:39.278) Mm -hmm. Jon (59:54.638) Now you mentioned New Orleans or Nar -lans. Allan (59:59.54) No, .net Orleans. Yeah. And it's not what? Did I say it wrong? Did I not say it the American way? Orleans. Jon (01:00:01.294) It's not new, it's just Orleans. It's just Orleans. I don't know. If you ever go down to New Orleans, as us foreigners might say it, it's pronounced differently. That's what I learned. I'm sure I still didn't do it right, but Toronto. Allan (01:00:15.475) Okay, well just like Toronto, Toronto. So yes, obviously on the .net side if you're doing APIs, ESPNet Core, I do some mass transit for service bus. If I'm doing data access, I don't do straight SQL. I'll do Dapr if I'm going to. EF Core is obviously there for ORM stuff. You know, that's just a given. But yes, .net Orleans. Jon (01:00:42.83) Mm -hmm. And that's like the whole actor model, right? So is that similar to what's the Apache? There's like a Java one. Allan (01:00:42.898) is kind of my new passion. I love that project. It's not really new. Yeah, it's. Allan (01:00:53.97) I'm not sure what you're thinking of. It doesn't matter. We only care about .NET, right? So .NET Orleans, beautiful little tool. It's actually not super new, but I'm finally putting it into practice in a couple of places. Fantastic, fantastic, fantastic, worth checking out. And if you're kind of into a new project, I didn't put it on here. I have my own mediator too. Is the Mediator R. Jon (01:00:58.862) Yeah, it'll... yeah. Yeah. Allan (01:01:25.586) without the O. David was making bad American jokes about it recently, so I'll save that for David. It's great for the modular monoliths. Start small, have the functionality built out, and then when you need to break it up into microservices, this will facilitate it quite easily. That's something to check out as well. That's where I start with server stuff. After that, you know. libraries or diamond dust. You mainly get into services like Twilio and... Jon (01:01:58.222) Yeah. Allan (01:01:59.73) other things but that is external to probably what our topic base is today. Jon (01:02:05.294) Also, ACA, that's what I was trying to think of. Yeah. Yeah, like a .NET client and everything. Yeah. Yeah. Allan (01:02:07.282) Yes, yeah. and there's a .NET version of that. Akka .net and the person that runs that, he's a massive .NET OSS leader, I'd say. Fantastic dude to listen to. I don't have it, can't get his name off the top of my head. I'm bad, but that's all right. Jon (01:02:25.422) I. Jon (01:02:29.998) I haven't really had a great scenario to try any of those out in depth. So maybe that's something that I need to think about. But. Allan (01:02:41.201) I can't think of one for, well not for your pool, it'd be hard, right? Because this is meant to be like, if you're using Orleans or ACCA, you want the object to live for some time and there might be some like timers that you're running, right? So if you've got something that needs to happen with that object, you know, in a couple of minutes, you can put it right on the object and it'll run, it'll keep the object alive. So anybody else that's coming into it, you know, it's all thread safety. Jon (01:02:44.59) Yeah. Allan (01:03:10.513) Right? It's a great little tool, right? And it's meant for running those actors. You know, I don't even know how to describe it. So it's probably something we could do it in a later episode. Not that I'm not sure we'd ever do an actor in. Jon (01:03:21.102) Yeah. No, that would be an interesting one to do. Like I said, I struggle to kind of apply that to any real world situations that I encounter personally, but. Allan (01:03:33.681) I've got two right now, so it's pretty exciting to actually put it into practice. I don't think we'd ever use an actor -style thing in a Maui app. Jon (01:03:43.726) Not in a Maui app, I wouldn't think. Allan (01:03:47.377) I'm going to have to think about it. I mean, my shameless promotion is that now I have a mediator for Maui apps and for Blazer apps. And it's specifically written for apps. So it's something you should go check out ShinyMediator. That's my selfless plug. Jon (01:03:49.518) Yeah, yeah, yeah. Jon (01:04:02.51) Yeah, no, I and I'd imagine like with with any of these other things, right? Like the the whole use it on mobile or not is is always well, how do you? How do you have to get there? Like do you have to authenticate? Well that too, but like even just OK, aka. So if I want to like start or Orleans, if I want to put like you know some implementation of something in there, like how do I connect back to the whole infrastructure? Do I need like, you know? Allan (01:04:13.393) Yeah, is it over engineering too? Jon (01:04:29.262) client secrets and stuff in my app. And then it's like, well, you can't do that. So you got a proxy. It just, there's always a kind of a question of how, how that kind of stuff would even work. I'm bridging over to the mobile, right? Allan (01:04:34.225) Yeah. Allan (01:04:38.353) It sits behind APIs and signal learn stuff. It's completely different. Like Orleans is not out in front, it's your infrastructure in behind. But in terms of how like it's model, like I spin up a new object and everything that news up or calls for that grain as they use, you're gonna get that a reference point to that grain and you're gonna call stuff on that grain or it's gonna notify you there's like weird notification or stream providers that they have. It's craziness. Jon (01:04:46.766) Yeah. Jon (01:04:59.63) Mm -hmm. Allan (01:05:07.921) It's definitely something if you're in the .NET ecosystem, it's definitely something to check out if you've got kind of a funky use case in your backend of your apps. Jon (01:05:22.926) Well, have we, we don't, I think need to pick a plugin package or product this week. Cause I think we've rattled off a ton of them. So they're all those part of the podcast. Yeah. There's going to be a lot of links. Are you up for adding that many links to the show? Are we going to remember to sweet crane? Allan (01:05:28.817) No. Yes. Allan (01:05:34.545) Check out all the things. Allan (01:05:40.945) I can do it. Yeah, well, no, it's fine. Because like I said, check out the templates, shiny templates that's got like 60 of them in there. You know, dot net. There's I don't know. There's got to be like 16 million templates out there with this stuff now. So check it out. I'll add the links anyways to a lot of the stuff. Jon (01:05:56.59) Yeah. Jon (01:06:02.574) sounds good well yeah i guess that'll do it if you love all of these things leave us a review on apple podcasts and a five star review please if you will if if for nothing else then the practical coffee advice that you gained from this episode Allan (01:06:10.961) Canadian humor is awesome. Allan (01:06:22.993) Ha ha ha. Jon (01:06:24.878) That would be great. But yeah, you can get all that information on gone mobile dot IO our website. I think that still works. We should check that sometime. Should work. Allan (01:06:34.32) Well, our tweets aren't working. We gotta fix that, John. That's a John problem. Yeah. Okay. Jon (01:06:37.006) Well, that's a, that's a user problem. That's an automation fail or lack thereof. But yeah, we'll, we'll get, we'll get some of that better and we'll, we'll get that out there and let you know that there's episodes. But the best way to find out that there are is just to go subscribe on your podcast. They know of choice, right? So go do that. Go leave a review, send us your feedback. If you have any, any, feedback questions, topic ideas. Allan (01:06:54.32) There you go. Jon (01:07:03.118) I wouldn't say we're running out of topics by any means, but you know, we don't have the same huge list of like, we could do this as we once did. So that's something that's always welcomed. If you have an idea. Allan (01:07:14.64) And there are a few topics that are in their queue anyways too. So John just doesn't read the notes I leave. That's all right. Jon (01:07:17.55) Yeah. All right. Yeah, true. Fair. Thanks all. We'll see you next time on Gone Mobile.