Herding Code 101: Kelly Sommers on Mobile Development and User Interface design

Episode 101

In this episode of Herding Code, the guys talk to Kelly Sommers.

• Jon asks Kelly about her first big post, What fuels my passion for technology & writing code
• Kelly talks about her experience getting started on Twitter
• Jon asks Kelly about her post on how desktop UI's feel boring compared to mobile UI's
• Jon and Kelly discuss notification systems like Growl
• Scott K talks about how non-Windows operating systems have included things like multiple desktops, status widgets, etc. for a while
• The discussion moves to how Windows is focused on the mouse, and how we'd like to see desktop UI's that are geared towards touch and keyboard
• Jon mentions Desktops as a multiple desktop interface for Windows
• Jon drops his Alt+Space keyboard secret, and Kelly counters that it's old news
• The discussion moves on to synchronizing applications and systems
• Jon brings up Mesh, and Kelly talks about why it didn't catch on as much as it could have. Jon talks about how there's a chicken and egg problem with cool Microsoft API's which aren't used in Microsoft products, and Scott Koon talks about how he though Mesh applications seemed cool but he just couldn't get a hold of the SDK.
• Next, the discussion moves to mobile development. Jon asks Kelly for her opinion of how Windows Phone development compares with other mobile development platforms.
• Jon and Kelly discuss the Metro UI and UI discoverability in general
• Kelly talks about performance tips for Windows Phone
• Jon asks if there is any cross-platform development between mobile platforms
• K. Scott asks about the upgrade scenario
• Darrel Miller asks via Twitter about the online brainstorming meetings Kelly had previously proposed
• Jackson Harper asks via Twitter what's the most interesting thing Kelly has learned in the past month, and the conversation switches to node.js, threading, fibers, etc.
• The gang discusses the Await keyword, recently announced at PDC
• Scott K. asks for bets on how long until Await shows up in the Mono nightly builds
• Random speculation of whether the Async CTP actually works on .NET 4
• Kevin compares the Await syntactic sugar approach to hiding asynchronicity with the node.js approach which embraces node.js.

Show Links:

• Kelly Sommers (blog, @kellabyte)
• Desktops utility
• Hanselminutes Podcast 228 - Performance of Silverlight on Windows Phone 7
• Windows Phone 7 Developer Tips and Tricks from Jeff Wilcox (posted by Tim Heuer)
• Windows Phone "Really" commercial
• Nathan Bowers (blog, @nathanbowers)
• Darrel Miller (blog, @darrel_miller)
• REST Fest
• Jackson Harper, @jacksonh
• The Async CTP link on MSDN
• Eric Lippert's series on Continuation Passing Style
• FAQ's on the Async keyword

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 101: Kelly Sommers