Mark Relph on Windows Development for .NET Rocks!

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Over the past number of years, I’ve listened to quite a number of podcasts. As I’ve said many times before, in terms of “learning on-the-go”, podcasts provide one of the best means of exercising your brain. Got a 45-minute commute? Why not educate yourself at the same time? On a long walk with the dog? You could use that time to listen to a podcast and educate yourself along the way! Washing the dishes? Well, you get the idea.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve been able to limit my favourite podcasts down to a select few. These include Career Tools, HanselMinutes, Manager Tools, Polymorphic Podcast, the New! and Awesome! This Developer’s Life, This Week in Tech (TWiT), and Windows Weekly. However, without question, one of my all-time favourite podcasts is .NET Rocks! . Its hosts – the dynamic duo of Richard Campbell and Carl Franklin – provide an excellent discussion forum on a number of key technologies and topics that are important to .NET developers. In fact, I enjoy this podcast so much that I would classify it to be an essential resource for any developer in the English-speaking world. (Yes, I really do feel this way.)

About two weeks ago, Richard and Carl joined us at TechDays in Vancouver (AKA, “the greatest city in the world” according to Richard). In addition to delivering sessions and chatting with attendees, Richard and Carl sat down with my former boss, Mark Relph (Senior Director, Windows Business Group) to chat with him about developing applications on the Windows platform:

.NET Rocks! Episode #598 – Mark Relph Wants More Windows Applications!

I listened to Mark’s conversation with Richard and Carl earlier today and I was reminded by the amount of choice – from a technology perspective – that developers have at their disposal when building applications that target Windows, both for unmanaged and managed code. When you couple that with the number of form factors that Windows supports, you end up with an immensely capable and flexible platform for developers.

Touch First ApplicationsAnother interesting side note shared by Mark during his conversation was massive number of touch-enabled devices in the marketplace today. If you think about it, the total number of these devices will only continue to grow. This is an important point to make when you consider the impact that this will have of the expectations of your end users. If you’ve built an application that doesn’t support touch or it’s an application that’s not optimized for a “touch-first experience”, your users will notice. In his conversation with Richard and Carl, Mark underscores the need for developers to ensure that applications are “finger-friendly”. That is, developers need to consider the aesthetic qualities of applications (e.g. size of buttons and other visual cues).

Overall, I really enjoyed Mark’s conversation with Richard and Carl on .NET Rocks! and I think you will as well. I would encourage you to go check it out and give it a listen over the weekend. I’m sure there’s a few of us Canadians who have some leaves to rake on Sunday. Seems like a great time to exercise your brain while filling up garbage bags.

Interested in learning more about developing for Windows? Here are a few resources worth checking out:

Finally, don’t forget to subscribe to .NET Rocks! in your podcasting application (e.g. iTunes, Zune) and start exercising your brain while you’re on-the-go!