Reading Notes #648

Welcome to this week's reading notes! Dive into the latest on Microsoft's new AI chat template, explore Docker's MCP CLI, learn about integrating AI into .NET applications, and discover how to automate .NET MAUI library publishing with GitHub Actions. 

Whether you're interested in AI advancements, programming techniques, or DevOps practices, there's something valuable waiting for you below.

MsDevMtl Meetup - Uno

Suggestion of the week

• Exploring the new AI chat template (Andrew Lock) - This new .NET template looks pretty useful and has a lot of components already baked in. This post explains those and shows how to customize it for our usage.

Programming

• Crates and Dependencies: NuGet, Meet Cargo - Chris Woody Woodruff (Chris Woodruff) - Interesting comparison there, a bit more love toward Rust, I think, but that doesn't make this series less valuable.

• How to Host Blazor WASM on Docker (Rikam Palkar) - Nice post with all the code you need to reproduce.

DevOps

• Packaging and Publishing a .NET MAUI Library with GitHub Actions - .NET Blog (Sweeky , David) - I'm always amazed by what we can do with automation. Second post of a series on .NET MAUI.

AI

• Getting Hands-On with the Docker MCP CLI (Sarthak Varshney) - How to get, use, and connect the brand new MCP tool from Docker.

• AI Repo of the Week: GitHub Copilot Adventures (Dan Wahlin) - When open-source meets AI, and this time, games! Interesting series where AI-related repositories are featured.

• Microsoft.Extensions.AI: Integrating AI into your .NET applications (Japhlet Nwamu) - This package is amazing. It allows you to connect to many models hosted in many different places. This post is the perfect place to get started.

Sharing my Reading Notes is a habit I started a long time ago, where I share a list of all the articles, blog posts, and books that catch my interest during the week. 

If you have interesting content, share it!

~Frank

Reading Notes #647

This post is a collection of my latest reading notes, highlighting interesting articles and resources on AI, programming, databases, and more. Each link includes a brief summary of what I found valuable or noteworthy.

AI

• Getting Started with Azure MCP Server: A Guide for Developers (Lee Stott) - Quick post about this new feature.

• Protecting against indirect prompt injection attacks in MCP (Sarah , Den) - Security must be in our list of priorities in all types of projects. This post explains how we can secure them.

• How to build and deliver an MCP server for production (Colin McNeil) - That makes sense doctor is known to encapsulate and simplify the portability of application

Programming

• Set the default file encoding - Visual Studio Blog (Mark Downie) - Nice tip! As a developer who works daily on different operating systems, I know to well this issue.

• 4 real-life examples of using reflection in C# ( Ali Hamza Ansari) - Very interesting and useful post that go over 4 scenarios

• Microsoft Extends SLNX Solution File Support in .NET CLI - InfoQ - Have you tried yet the new format? It's still on my to-do list.

Databases

• DuckDB in Depth: How It Works and What Makes It Fast (Barry Smart) - This is a very interesting post that explains a little bit more how a vectoral database works and why it's so performant with documents

Miscellaneous

• Help yourself to thrive (Salma) - The human body is an extraordinary machine, extremely strong and conciliant, but it also requires a fine turning. Great post, we must learn from it.

Sharing my Reading Notes is a habit I started a long time ago, where I share a list of all the articles, blog posts, and books that catch my interest during the week. 

If you have interesting content, share it!

~Frank

Reading Notes #646

Welcome to this week's collection of fascinating reads across cloud computing, AI, and programming! As technology continues to evolve at breakneck speed, I've gathered some of the most insightful articles that caught my attention. From securing MCP servers to exploring Rust, there's something here for every tech enthusiast. 

Dive in and discover what's new in our rapidly changing digital landscape.

Cloud

• Azure API Management Your Auth Gateway For MCP Servers | Microsoft Community Hub (PranamiJ) - Why all the fuss about MCP, we must not forget security. This post suggests a simple solution.

AI

• How Azure Copilot Helped Me Quickly Troubleshoot a Demo (David Giard) - That's a good example of how AI can help you not do the job for yourself but avoid mistakes and do it faster.

• Secure Remote MCP Servers With Entra ID And Azure API Management (Den Delimarsky) - Nice solution in Python to secure your MCP servers

Programming

• When ASP.NET Core Identity Is No Longer Enough (Andrea Chiarelli) - Authentication and authorization have an important place in our Apps. This post shares details about how things work and the different processes.

• New Docker Extension for Visual Studio Code (Remy Suen) - This extension was already a must, they made it better, it's a must must! But seriously give it a try and try it by yourself.

• From C# to Rust: A 42-Day Developer Challenge (Chris Woodruff) - Cool tease of an experiment that promises a lot of learning.

• How to Programmatically Create MS Word DOCX Documents with .NET C# on Linux (Bjoern Meyer) - Cool package that helps create Word documents. Perfect when running in a Linux container.

• Preview 2 of the .NET AI Template Now Available (Jordan Matthiesen) - New templates with AI, Qadran and Aspire, oh boy life is good!

Sharing my Reading Notes is a habit I started a long time ago, where I share a list of all the articles, blog posts, and books that catch my interest during the week. 

If you have interesting content, share it!

~Frank