Recording Venue: Skype
Guests: Martin Fowler, Rebecca Parsons
In this episode, Markus talk with Martin Fowler and Rebecca Parsons about domain-specific languages (DSLs). Topics covered include a definition of DSL, Internal vs. External DSLs, reasons to use DSLs and reasons not to, the DSL lifecycle and the role of language workbenches. The conversation is loosely based on their book Domain-Specific Languages.
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Recording Venue: Skype
Guest: Rini van Solingen
In this episode we talk with Rini van Solingen, the author of the book “The Power of Scrum”, about scrum and agile software development in distributed settings where the team is spread across different locations, different buildings or even different countries and continents. We reflect about the basic concepts and assumptions of agile software development and what makes it difficult to do real agile software development when the team members are not co-located. Walking through the different areas we also discuss different cultures, team building for distributed teams, what it means to use video conferencing or other technology to overcome the communication problems of distributed teams and why you should probably not start as a distributed team.
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Recording Venue: Skype
Guest: Jurgen Appelo
In this episode Michael interviews developer, manager, and book author Jurgen Appelo on the topic of management in agile organizations: leading agile developers. They talk about the need for a different style of management compared to previous command and control styles used to lead organizations. In going through the best practices that are also covered by his latest book Management 3.0, they cover topics like: Energize People, Empower Teams, Align Constraints, Develop Competence, Grow Structure, and Improve Everything – which are the six views he uses to explain his experiences.
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Recording Venue: O’Reilly Scala 2011, Santa Clara California
Guest: Jonathan Ellis
Host: Robert
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. Guest Jonathan Ellis, the program chair of the Apache Cassandra project, discusses Cassandra’s data model, storage model, techniques used to achieve high availability and provides some insight into the trend away from relational databases.
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Recording Venue: Skype
Guest: Jonas Boner
This episode is a conversation with Jonas Boner about Akka. Akka is a Scala-based framework for concurent and distributed applications, providing among other things support for actors, remote communication, transactional memory. In the episode we take a look at the most important aspects of Akka, as well as how and where it is used today. We also briefly talk about Jonas’ involvment in the Typesafe company.
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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 databases, machine and logical virtualization, and workload management in an operating system and environment that takes an alternative and often kinder look at the role operations systems should play vs. the common programming infrastructure management models.
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Recording Venue: Skype
Guest: Martin Laforest
In this Episode, we talk about quantum computing. Our guest is Martin Laforest from the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo, Canada. We start with some physics basics, and then cover 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. This is one of the more propellerhead-oriented episodes, so make sure you listen carefully 
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Recording Venue: OOP 2011
Guest: Andrew Brownsword
Host: Markus
In this episode I talk with Andrew Brownsword about software development for (modern) games. At the time, Andrew worked for Electronic Arts, so our discussion is mainly based on the Need for Speed franchise. We discuss characteristics and performance properties of modern games and outline the challenges for software development. We then discuss various patterns Andrew and his team used to address these.
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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 to lithography and etching), and then we talk about the challenges of building high-precision, high-throughput waferscanners.
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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. The Eclipse plugin CIDE comes in handy for refactoring an existing code base towards a feature-oriented design and feature modularisation in a stepwise manner. As for programming language support, Sven gives us some hints on how certain mainstream (e.g., C#, Ruby, Scala) and research-driven languages (FeatureC++) assist at turning features into proper feature modules. Sven makes an interesting point by stating that feature modularisation is limited by the common granularity levels available for modularisation in object-oriented languages, namely the levels of objects and methods. Rather, modularisation at the statement and expression level would be equally required.
We end this episode by outlining some burning issues in FOSD research and practise to be tackled in the years to come (e.g., verification of feature-oriented programs and product lines, optimising feature selection, etc.). Sven finally provides some hints on where to keep yourself informed about FOSD and how to participate in FOSD-related events.
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