Episode 40: Shawn Wildermuth on Silverlight 3 and RIA Services

Episode 40

This week on Herding Code, the full cast talks to Shawn Wildermuth about Silverlight 3 and RIA Services: 

• Shawn talks about shared code, validation rules logic and general line of business application development with RIA Service and the guys become skeptically about RIA Service's good and bad magic.
• Kevin's draggy-droppy spidey senses kick in and asks if RIA Services merely demos well.  Shawn speaks candidly about nobody knowing if RIA Services will work well in the wild (will it scale, for example) and encourages everyone to download and play with the bit and provide feedback. 
• Scott K asks why he should even care about RIA Services, comments on how this is another example of building plumbing code frameworks in a vacuum, scoffs at Microsoft products like Silverlight, OSLO and Windows Workflow Foundation and goes so far to ask if is it too early for a RIA Service Vote of No Confidence.  In response, Shawn has some fun with Scott K and defends RIA Services along with some of the Microsoft development teams.  Shawn also shares his enthusiasm about OLSO.
• Kevin questions Microsoft's choice in terminology.  Does RIA Services really speak to what the framework does?
• K Scott and Shawn briefly discuss the RIA Service's TDD story and touch upon SilverUnit.
• Jon and Shawn discuss their favorite new Silverlight features which include direct writing of pixels and audio, Silverlight out of browser, and behaviors.
• The guys do a quick wrap up of Mix09 announcements and talk about Sketchflow's designer focus and cynically talk about its unavailability.
• To the delight of those on the call, Jon talks about Expression Web SuperrrPreeevieewww!
• And there's a special guest question from Rachel Appel and a Twitter question from Scott Watermasysk.

Show Links:

• Shawn Wildermuth's blog - http://wildermuth.com/
• Silverlight Tour - http://silverlight-tour.com/, http://agilitrain.com
• Shawn's MSDN Article on MVVM - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/dd458800.aspx
• Shawn's MSDN Articles on OSLO and DSLs - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd441702.aspx, http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd548006.aspx
• Shawn's Recent Articles - http://wildermuth.com/Articles
• Shawn's MSDN Article on Prism - Coming soon
• Rachel Appel - http://rachelappel.com/
• Nikhil Kothari - http://www.nikhilk.net
• Brad Abrams - http://blogs.msdn.com/brada/
• Nikhil Kothari's MIX09 Session: http://videos.visitmix.com/MIX09/T41F
• Brad Abrams' MIX09 Session: http://videos.visitmix.com/MIX09/T40F
• Rocky Lhotka - http://www.lhotka.net/
• Scott Watermasysk - http://simpable.com/
• SilverUnit - http://cthru.codeplex.com/
• Silverlight ToolKit (with Test Framework) - http://silverlight.codeplex.com/
• MIX09 - http://live.visitmix.com/
• Sketchflow - http://videos.visitmix.com/MIX09/C01F
• SuperPreview - http://expression.microsoft.com/en-us/dd565874.aspx

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Episode 40: Shawn Wildermuth on Silverlight 3 and RIA Services