• The client development did start two weeks ago. I got started three weeks ago for the server stuff.
  
  
• The app was always going to be a messaging app, but the original theme was... let's say a bit larger. We had to change it to "Kinder Chat" because someone (either Microsoft or us) got cold feet. That change came about last week. But we never changed our namespaces, so if you look at the VS project on screen, you can see what we were going for .
  
  
• The actual original idea was something Miguel thought of before I got to the company. It was a joke he's been kicking around. Seeing that he had everything well thought out, I asked if he went the extra step of actually making a spec for it. And sure enough, he did. We started talking about the fesability of it and were planning on actually doing this outside of Xamarin, but then it was decided to bring it in house and use our resources. That's how I got involved.
  
  
• The Azure crash they talked about was real. Originally the messaging server was on my own Azure account, and I totally forgot about it when we moved it to a Xamarin project. I was not there when they decided to send a blast email to everyone in the company to get it tested, so when we had all those people on it, it blew through the credits. I moved it to our own accounts, scaled it, and all was well.
  
  
• The encrypted messaging stuff they talked about is real. Basically, here's how it works. The user creates a new account and after they enter in their confirm token, the device they are on gets added to their user as a new device, with a public and private key. Technically, this device is actually a hacked together ASP.NET Identity, because I didn't have time nor energy to roll my own solution, nor did I really want to (seriously, three weeks). I generate a username and password on the server, which the client then sends back to get an Auth token. They then use this auth token to make requests, so now I know they are, in fact, a verified user. The client generates a public/private key. The private key is stored on the device and never leaves it. The public key gets saved with the device on the server. When you send a message, it gets encrypted with the other users public key, so that when they receive it, it gets decrypted. That is live and (magically) worked great on stage.
  
  
• The achievement system as shown was fake. There is a real system on the server that's handling them, but we didn't have time to add it into the app.
  
  
• The link to parent feature is fake, but the original app didn't call for it being there at all. Originally, when you made a new user, a "hidden device" was added so every message you made would be sent to another entity without your knowledge. That's actually still there, so all the messages they were sending on stage were being sent to my account in Boston. And of course, it all worked .
  
  
• As is somewhat typical of Miguel, he had way way way more ideas for the app. On top of ideas I flat out said I wouldn't do (He wanted encrypted video. Three days before BUILD. Ha ha ha no.), we had to scale down the more ambitious elements of the app.
  
  
• For avatars, there is a static default animal set that is pulled from the server on initial load, and have a "AvatarType" enum so if we want to add more static avatars that we can sort by type, we can. User uploaded avatars are added to the same table with a "User" value.
  
  
• The Xamarin Inspector is legit cool and does work. There is network support in it, and originally there were going to show it off, but didn't have time. The big issue though is that it does not work over HTTPS very well. So for the demo, it's all being run over the wire with no encryption. So the "Encrypted" messaging app is not being run with SSL. The messages are encrypted on the client though, so even if you did see it, you could not read it.
  
  
• They mentioned that we used Twillo for SMS and SendGrid for emails. We never implemented Twillo, but we did talk to them and get credits for it. Just not enough time to demo it. SendGrid was implemented, but the only reason I used it was because I didn't want this demo to touch our actual production mail client. So I figured implementing SendGrid was a good compromise.
  
  
• They didn't show the "ServerClient" project in VS, but I wrote that. I kept documenting the API for the server, but no one had time to integrate it into the clients, so I did it for them, since I already knew what the server needed (since I wrote it ). So if they DID open it, you would see similar patterns to what my apps usually have, except the code is a poo poo load better, with much more and better error handling and interfaces actually being implemented. It's also integrated with Insights.
  

Drastic Actions fucked around with this message at 15:09 on May 2, 2015

• Nameof provides a refactoring-safe way of getting the name of e.g. a parameter, member or type as a string.
  
• Using null-conditional operators, you can get a built-in null check while accessing and invoking members and indexers.
  
• String interpolation: String interpolation provides a concise way of describing string templates that insert expressions into format strings (C# only at Preview, both VB and C# at RTM).
  
• Methods, getter-only properties, etc., can now have a single expression as their body, just like lambdas.
  
• Auto-properties can have initializers and no longer require setters.
  
• Index initializers: Inside an object initializer, you can now initialize a specific index of the new object. C# only.
  
• Exception filters let you look at an exception and decide whether to catch it with a given catch block.
  
• Using clauses for static classes bring their static members directly into scope, so you can call for example WriteLine() or Sqrt() without prefixing with the class name.
  
• Await now works in catch and finally blocks, obviating some very tricky workarounds.
  

public class AddUserCommand : Command
{
    public default AddUserCommand(User newUser, User creator);

    public AddUserCommand(User newUser)
        : this(newUser, creator: newUser)
    {
    }
 
    public User NewUser { get; protected set; } = newUser;
    public User Creator { get; protected set; } = Verify.NotNull("creator", creator);
    Guid _creatorId = creator.Id;
}

Inverness fucked around with this message at 03:01 on May 3, 2015

Convert.ToBoolean( (object) key.GetValue("hotkeyCTRL", false))

using System;

var rand = new Random();

for (int i = 1; i <= 100; i++)
{

var SchrödingersRegistry = rand.Next(2) >= 1 ? true : (object) "FALSE";

Console.WriteLine(Convert.ToBoolean(SchrödingersRegistry));
}

NihilCredo fucked around with this message at 11:01 on May 3, 2015

ljw1004 fucked around with this message at 18:47 on May 4, 2015

Space Whale fucked around with this message at 20:59 on May 7, 2015

chippy fucked around with this message at 16:51 on May 7, 2015

Private Sub Button1_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click
        Dim glass As New Plexiglass(Me, True, True, "Test")
        glass.Show(Me)
End Sub

 Dim glass As New Plexiglass(Me, True, True, "Storing records...")
 glass.Show(Me)
        
  ' Do some work

glass.Close()

chippy fucked around with this message at 17:47 on May 7, 2015

<!-- main window, datacontext is viewmodel -->
<Button Content="Open Sub-window" Command="{Binding OpenSubWindowCommand}"/>

interface IWindowService // everything's an object because maybe a test harness view wouldn't use System.Windows.Window???
{
  object OpenWindow(object window);
  bool FocusWindow(object window);
  bool CloseWindow(object window);
}

class WindowService : IWindowService
{
  object OpenWindow(object window)
  {
    // type checks here
    if (window as string == "SubWindow")
    {
      System.Windows.Window w = new Window();
      w.Show();
      return w;
    }
  }
  bool FocusWindow(object window) { return (window as Window).Focus(); }
  bool CloseWindow(object window) { (window as Window).Close(); return true; }
}

class MainWindowViewModel : IDisposable
{
  private IWindowService _MyWindowService; // set in ctor
  public RelayCommand OpenSubWindowCommand = new RelayCommand(x=>OpenSubWindow());

  private object _SubWindow;
  private void OpenSubWindow()
  {
    _SubWindow = _MyWindowService.OpenWindow("SubWindow");
  } 
  
  private void FocusSubWindow() // pretend I had the command etc for this too
  {
    if (_SubWindow != null) _MyWindowService.FocusWindow(_SubWindow);
  }

  public void Dispose()
  {
    if (_SubWindow != null) MyWindowService.CloseWindow(_SubWindow);
  }
}

Ciaphas fucked around with this message at 20:59 on May 7, 2015