Reading Notes #629

This edition of ReadingNotes covers new AI tools, WSL updates, .NET 9 features, and debugging tips with GitHub Copilot. Plus, insightful podcasts on .NET Aspire, productivity tools, and frontend engineering. 

Happy reading and listening!

Programming

• Dramatically faster package restores with .NET 9's new NuGet resolver - .NET Blog (Jeff Kluge) - A major operation to make our experience better. This post shares how I was done.

• Blazor WebAssembly debugging with Visual Studio (Mark Downie) - Marvelous! New and improved! Who wouldn't be happy about that?

• Using Dependabot to Manage .NET SDK Updates - .NET Blog (Jamie Magee) - Dependabot is one of those tools that when you start using it you wonder how you were doing it before. The new update now supports the SDK, lovely.

AI

• Evaluate the quality of your AI applications with ease - .NET Blog (Wendy Breiding) - Interesting new tools. Add 3 packages to your project and a few lines of code to get started.

• Transform your debugging experience with GitHub Copilot - Visual Studio Blog (Wendy Breiding) - An interesting new tool in Visual Studio where Copilot, our AI pair programmer, can join us to help while debugging.

Podcasts

• David Fowler: Architecture of .NET Aspire - Episode 322 (Azure & DevOps Podcast) - .NET Aspire described from the inside. Learn more about what it is, and what planned for it.

• 95. From Dev Containers to OpenTelemetry: Mastering .NET Productivity - with Alex Thissen (Betatalks the podcast) - There are so many great tools that so many of us don't know yet are effraid to start using. Learn a bit more about them in this episode.

• 96. The Evolving Craft of Frontend Engineering: Balancing Complexity and Simplicity - with Stefan Judis (Betatalks the podcast) - The web frontend is not the same as a few years ago. There are many frameworks and eengineers are trying to make them structured but also performant and light.

Miscellaneous

• What’s new in the Windows Subsystem for Linux in November 2024 (Craig Loewen) - The RedHat distro joins the possibly in WSL, an improved administration and security.

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 

Reading Notes #623

Ready for another round of intriguing reads and insightful listens? This week's edition of Reading Notes dives into the seamless blending of Python and .NET, fresh monetisation strategies in open source, AI innovations, and thought-provoking podcast discussions. 

Get comfy and let's dive in!

Programming

• Embedding Python into your .NET project with CSnakes (Anthony Shaw) - Get 2 best of both languages without losing performance... Intrigued? Learn more about it in this post and open your horizons.

• SponsorLink v2: A New Hope (Daniel Cazzulino) - Interesting post about ideas and experiment related to monetisation of open source code.

AI

• Introducing Microsoft.Extensions.AI Preview – Unified AI Building Blocks for .NET (Luis Quintanilla) - Really interesting new library that open the door to many scenarios. Bruno did a great demo of that on the community stand-up have a look.

• Using an AI Assistant to Script Tools (Docker Labs) - First post of a series that looks how different code written uses AI to write code ,script, and other things.

Podcast

• How Simple is as Simple as Possible with Mark Rendle (.NET Rocks!) - How complex your application should be? Is it possible to make great application with a more simple and straightforward approaches? Nice episode that discuss today's status.

• Does Donovan Brown hate retirement? (You're So Quiet) - One year already for Donovan! Well this couple looks good. Learn more about the first adjustment and the current "state of mind".

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 #619

It's reading notes time! It 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. 

You also read something you liked? Share it!

Suggestion of the week

• Easily dock and float tool windows (Mads Kristensen) - Oh my! One of the best post I read since a long time. It cannot me more accurate, funny, nor useful.

Programming

• DevOps for Beginners: A Complete Roadmap to Get Started (Harshhaa Vardhan Reddy) - This post is a really good overview of DevOps. If your are interested to he topic but don't know where to start,that one is for you.

• How to Build Frontend Apps 10x Faster (Anmol Baranwal) - An interesting tools that you install that act as middle man and helps while developing and testing.

• Switch Branches in Git Without Losing Your Work (Asad Bukhari) - Quick little tip to save time with Git.

• Incorporate GitHub Copilot into your daily flow (Rhea,Sinem,Mika) - Copilot go more accessible!This post summarizes how Copilot will be easier to use with suggested code. That's a good example of product feedback well used, everybody wins!

• 5 Must-Have NuGet Packages for .NET Developers: Elevate Your Code! (Ken Fedorov) - Nice post that shares indeed useful packages.

• GitHub Models and .NET: Building Generative AI apps for engineers (April Yoho) - Very easy to use and accessible, those AI models are perfect for developers. GitHub successfully removed many blockers that aloud a fast onboarding experience.

• Semantic Kernel - Multi agent systems (Bart Wullems) - Nice quick post with a lot of to code to helps understand the concept.

~Frank

Reading Notes #602

It's reading notes time! It 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.

Having interesting content? Share it!

Cloud

• Azure SDK Release (April 2024) (Hector Norzagaray) - Lots of SDKs updates for many different languages and services.

Programming

• .NET Aspire preview 6 - .NET Aspire - The more a play with Aspire the more I like it. .NET developers you must give it a try.

• How to upload a file with Blazor SSR in .NET 8? - (Jon Hilton) A nice quick tutorial with all the code snippets we need.

• What's new for the Microsoft Fluent UI Blazor library 4.7 - (Vincent Baaij) A lots o new features and improvements in this release.

• Why don’t we talk about minifying CSS anymore? - (Salma Alam-Naylor) An interesting post. I didn't think about it but it's true, we used to talk way more about minification...

• Minimal APIs Nuget Packages - (Shawn Wildermuth) Same great tools but new names to make it easier to remember and more of the same family.

AI

• #SemanticKernel: Local LLMs Unleashed on #RaspberryPi 5 - (Bruno Capuano) This is the perfect tutorial to get started with local AI. No powerful computer required.

~Frank

Reading Notes #601

It's reading notes time! It 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.

Having interesting content? Share it! 

Suggestion of the week

• Announcing: Azure Developers (Mehul Harry) - Looking forward to this event. I have the pleasure to present a session with Jerry Nixon about Data API Builder. Join us!

Cloud

• Demystifying Azure CLI pagnination (Jeremy Li) - That's great! It's so sad when all the information is "throw" on us without any control and it's on us to find our "needle" we are looking for in those screens full of line. This will definitely helps.

Programming

• Blazor Basics: Localization Using Resource Files (Claudio Bernasconi) - A nice and complete tutorial.

• What's new for .NET in Ubuntu 24.04 - .NET Blog (Richard Lander) - This is a good news! Definitely going in the right direction.

• Minimal APIs Nuget Packages (Shawn Wildermuth) - Same great tools but new names to make it easier to remember and more of the same family.

• Useful features in Entity Framework Core 8 for your application (Dennis Frühauff) - A great post with detailed explanation and code samples that covers the major new feature and enhancements of EF8.

• Better Minimal APIs Endpoint Organization With Carter in ASP.NET Core (Ivan Gechev) - Carter looks like a very useful library definitely something to explore a bit more.

• Warp’s Team plan for developer productivity is available today (Melanie Crissey) - I started using this terminal a few weeks ago on a personal device. It's interesting to see all the different options an the possibilities for teams.

Open Source

• Open sourcing MS-DOS 4.0 - Microsoft Open Source Blog (Scott Hanselman, Jeff Wilcox) - That a cool news! I'm curious what people will do with it, what kind of experiments they will try.

~ Frank

Reading Notes #581

It is time to share new reading notes. It 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 think you may have interesting content, share it!

Suggestion of the week

• ASP.NET Core Basics: Essential NuGet Packages (Part 1) (Assis Zang) - Great idea this post! Those five packages are definitely very useful, and I like that they are not just mentioned but also explained and implemented in the demo solution.

Programming

• Announcing .NET 8 - .NET Blog (Gaurav Seth) - Tons of update with as many videos. Enough to satiate everyone.

• Entity Framework Core 8 (EF8) is available today - .NET Blog (Arthur Vickers) - Of course the Entity framework update to follow .NET of course.

• Get ready for .NET Conf, Microsoft Ignite, and GitHub Universe (Matt Graven) - So many events and news packed in a single month. This post helps to do an overview so help us make an ideas.

• Connect to localhost from inside a dev container (Jim Bennett) - Interesting... I thought Dapr was the easiest but the solution presented in this post could be a easier workaround, at lease while coding/ testing it.

• Fake It Til You Make It...To Production - .NET Blog (Martin Taillefer) - This post shows 3 pretty useful fake/mock included in .NET 8: Logger, Clock, and Metric.

• Building debugging context for Copilot Chat (Mark Downie) - Cool extension for Visual Studio.

• Announcing .NET Chiseled Containers - .NET Blog (Richard Lander) - The new image are available.Yay

Databases

• Importing Flat Files into Azure SQL DB (Josephine Bush) - Omg! That makes Azure Data Studio the easiest and low friction tool to import data from a flat file into a Ms SQL database

Miscellaneous

• OpenAI drama is over. (Kim Menikh) - Well.I was curious.I didn't follow all of it.

~Frank

Reading Notes #546

Cloud

• How to build, test and deploy your application using Azure and GitHub - Azure DevOps Blog (Liam Hampton) - A nice DevOps tutorial that requires no installation because it all happens in the browser.
• Introducing the Reliable Web App Pattern for .NET - .NET Blog (Matt Soucoup, Nish Anil) - This post explains the best practices build on top of the well architect Azure framework.

Programming

• Run Appwrite on a Raspberry Pi (Jim Bennett ) - This post will make you save money and time while setup your dev environment.
• Can WebAssembly Solve Serverless's Problems? (Cameron Gain) - This is an interesting post that shares why WASM is an excellent idea and how it can help today's businesses.
• How to Read and Parse a JSON File in C# (Januarius NjokuUnknown) - Multiple ways to parse a file. How many did you know?
• How to automate your dev environment with dev containers and GitHub Codespaces (Kedasha Kerr) - Since I discover the devcontainer I use it all the time. Lucky for me my computers are powerful enough to manage my simple project. Codespace provides all that comfort but online...Have a look.
• Write a high-quality README for NuGet packages - The NuGet Blog (Lynn Dai) - Wonderful initiative! I believe that well-written documentation is the missing piece to many great hidden projects.

Podcasts

• 344: Exploring CoreData and CloudKit (Merge Conflict) - Honestly it felt good hearing about those two genius struggling with data. But more than that to see them continue to look for different alternatives, and try new tools and patterns. Great episode, as usual.
• 51. Minimal web API’s and API Management & learning by teaching - with Jonah Andersson (Betatalks the podcast) - Jonah is just amazing! I knew her before listening to the episode, I just love her even more! Brilliant mind mixed with a contagious passion!

Books

• 
  
  Learning Blazor (David Pine) - This book is just perfect! It explains a bit of everything. It is packed with real examples and code variation (because there are so many ways to write something). There was even a full chapter un test with playwright, I didn't expect that and it was great!

Reading Notes #515

Good Monday, it's time to share new ReadingNotes. Here is a list of all the articles, and blog posts, that catch my interest during the week. 

 If you think you may have interesting content, share it!

Cloud

• Azure App Containers (Kevin Logan) - An interesting post that shares the first contact and spets with Azure container Apps. Where to learn, how to build what is included.

• Introducing the Azure Developer CLI: A faster way to build apps for the cloud (Savannah Ostrowski) - Exciting new preview looking forward to try and see the future of this tool.

Programming

• Making production diagnostics easier with Source Link (Mark Downie) - This post shares a pretty neat trick to make investigation (debugging) easier.

• How to build & publish NuGet packages with Azure Pipelines (James Croft) - All the steps are clearly explained in this tutorial for us to be ready.

• Using the Microsoft Docker Extension for Visual Studio Code (David Giard) - This post is a quick tour of the Docker extension. A very simple and powerful one.

~Frank

Reading Notes #495

Good Monday, 

Already time to share new reading notes. It is a habit I started a long time ago where I share a list of all the articles, blog posts, podcast episodes, and books that catch my interest during the week. 

Suggestion of the week

• Include diagrams in your Markdown files with Mermaid (Martin Woodward, Adam Biagianti) - This is very interesting. For a simple little diagram, we can now do that in text in the same document... Looking forward to trying it. Mermaid is also supported in Azure DevOps

Cloud

• Azure CLI: Delete All Resources Within Resource Group (Chris Pietschmann) - Nice tips to delete all resources in a resources group. However I prefer deploying an empty resource group with override, work each time, and the command seems simpler.

• Creating Azure DevOps WIKI Pages from within a pipeline - part 2 (Stefan Stranger) - Super cools automation during a deployment. I love it.

• Host Static Web Sites for Free in Azure (Sameer Doshi) - There are still so many running on complex systems. Have a look.

• Isolated Azure Function in .Net 6 (Paul Michaels) - A nice short post that highlights the differences between these two types/versions of functions

• Start Creating Azure Bicep Modules for Code Reuse (Chris Pietschmann) - That looks amazing, and simple to do. I have a few complex ARM templates, I should try to break them down in bicep to make them easier to read and maintain.

Programming

• Observer Design Pattern in C# (Code Maze) - A really clear tutorial. I've been waiting for this kind of refresh to implement this pattern in a text-based game I was building... Maybe now is the time.

• 10 Best C# NuGet Packages to Improve Your Productivity in 2022 (Rajeshwari Pandinagarajan) - What I like with those lists of tools/ packages is that most of the time you found something you didn't know.

• Disguising Podman as Docker Desktop on Windows (Mark Richards) - Nice! A Docker alternative that could potentially interest many, but for myself, I will stick to Docker. I'm an occasional citizen, and I feel there will be more docs with the current favorite.

• Happy 20th Anniversary, .NET! (Beth Massi) - Very happy to see .NET reaching 20 so strong. Nice post, nice video packed with interesting anecdotes and nice moments.

• Introducing FakeAuth for .NET Core (Caleb Jenkins) - That looks very interesting! For PoC, demo, or temporary solution it's brilliant. Code and sample in GitHub.

Book

Greenlights

Author: Matthew McConaughey

This autobiography is funny, light, interesting, and even weird at some moments. But you know what? I liked it. I totally kept some quotes, as I found them good. I partially read it and listen to it. The audio version is done by Matthew and it's nice to hear him telling us his story.

~frank

 

Reading Notes #473

Every Monday, I share my "reading notes". Those are a curated list of all the articles, blog posts, podcast episodes, and books that catch my interest during the week and that I found interesting. It's a mix of the actuality and what I consumed.

You think you may have interesting content, share it!

Suggestion of the week

• Transform C# objects to a flat string dictionary (Josef Ottoson) - I love so much those developer's coding journey. We learn so much more than if only the "happy path " was shared. Great post thank you for sharing.

Cloud

• Develop production-scale modern web apps quickly with Azure Static Web Apps (Daria Grigoriu) - Nice summary of what is an Azure Static web app and what and all the included features since it reached Global Availability this week.
• The New Azure Logo - Microsoft Azure Icon (Abhijit Jana) - This is my favorite so far.
• Using Auth0 with Static Web Apps (Aaron Powell) - Ah wonderful! I noticed this new feature in Azure static web App this week. This post details how it works and gives a great example.

Programming

• VS Code shortcuts that you must know! (Mac and Windows) (Raynaldo Sutisna) - Learning new shortcuts is always nice.
• 4 Tips on How to Refactor Code in Visual Studio Code (Alex Omeyer) - Nice! I didn't know about that cool extension.
• 5 Ways to Improve the Performance of C# Code for Free (Sasha Mathews) - Interesting deep dive in the performance of our code and the why it goes fast or could go faster.
• Add a README to Your NuGet Package (Christopher Gill) - Now I understand! I noticed that, earlier this week, and thought: Wow, this is wonderful, why they are not all doing that! Now it all makes sense.
• How To Customize Azure DevOps Projects Process Templates? (Abhijit Jana) - Azure DevOps is a very very powerful tool. This post and video will show you how to start customizing it.
• What Do You Mean By Automated Tests And Continuous Integration? (Charles L Flatt) - Great answer.

Podcasts

• Bonus: Understanding Digital Body Language (Modern Mentor) - That we wanted or not, we need to get better with those new tools: the webcam, the microphone. We need to understand how to use them correctly and how to understand what the person on the other hand is really sharing. Great episode.
• Social Robots with De'Aira Bryant (Hanselminutes with Scott Hanselman) - Okay I crack at... If only they knew! A very interesting episode about... yes robots!
• Write Great APIs (Coding Blocks) - What's an API, what's a good API, why it's good, or why it's bad... Great episode that may me think... I really need to get back to my code and update a few things.

~frank

Reading Notes #466

Every Monday, I share my "reading notes". Those are a curated list of all the articles, blog posts, podcast episodes, and books that catch my interest during the week and that I found interesting. It's a mix of the actuality and what I consumed.

You think you may have interesting content, share it!

The suggestion of the week

• How do I Navigate GitHub Code? (Brian Lagunas) - Two very simple tricks that make a huge difference when you browse a GitHub repo.Wow.

Cloud

• Prevent exceeding Azure budget with forecasted cost alerts (Adam Wise) - Clients are worry to spend more than plan. But they could avoid many surprises by using this tool.

Programming

• Highlights from Git 2.31 (Taylor Blau) - There definitely new features that I will use. And some that I didn't even know was possible that become better and faster.

• Implement Unit Testing in ASP.NET Core 5 Application – Getting Started (Sanjay) - An extremely complete article with code simple and architecture example.

• Integrating ASP.NET Identity Password Policies with Password Managers (Scott Brady) - A great tutorial that explains how to take control of the strength of the password in our app.

• Learn to build HTTP APIs with .NET (Jon Galloway) - So many great suggestions for blog posts, videos, and even a brand new learning path!

• Use C# to upload files to a GitHub repository (Dave Brock) - This is awesome no need to create a rest wrapper and all those little things.

Miscellaneous

• How to Be Happier Without Really Trying - Barking Up The Wrong Tree (Eric) - Is it tricking your own mind, or is it just taking back control? Well as much as we can take control ...of course. Nevertheless, these are interesting ideas that I will try.

~Frank

Reading Notes #453

Cloud

• Handling Events Inside an Azure Function (Paul Michaels) - Great post that explains, both the bug/ cause and how to fix the problem.

• How to Deploy a Blazor Application in Azure App Service (Sridhar Narasimhan) - Nice post to learn quickly different ways to deploy our apps.

Programming

• Organizing My Reaction GIFs Using Node.js, Sharp, And Angular 11.0.2 (Ben Nadel) - Definitely a cool project. The chance of failure should never block you to try, learn, or have fun.

• Docker V2 Github Action is Now GA - Docker Blog (Ben De St Paer-Gotch) - A really nice update on those actions.Nice

• Getting Started With NuGet 5.8 (Jon Douglas) - A very interesting post about the new features included in NuGet, and since it is the first one supporting .Net 5, some advice for a better experience.

• Understand The .NET 5 Runtime Environment (Khalid Abuhakmeh) - A helpful post that describes the different environment and their characteristics.

Miscellaneous

• Upgrading Blazor Blogs (Version 1.0 to Version 2.0) (null) - Nice little tutorial. It's upgrade time.

Podcasts

• What is a Developer Game Jam? (Coding Blocks) - Interesting episode about Game Jam... I barely know that universe. Yes, I said universe because it is a completely different world or better another dimension. There are tons of events and participants but you may never hear of that. It's very interesting.

• A Blast from the Past and Life's Interesting Journey — Back After 8 Years (The Smart Passive Income Online Business and Blogging Podcast) - Inspiring episode about how communities can be built and be interesting.

Reading Notes #437

Cloud

• Introducing Azure Tools, a new blog community for Azure command line tools - Open Source Blog (PUI CHEE CHAN, MARK GRAY) - Nice! Anew smart source of information, that et you filter the post you see.

• Tip 272 - Azure Security Best Practices | Azure Tips and Tricks (Michael Crump) - Seven great methods to keep our solution secure in Azure.

Programming

• 5 Ways Artifactory NuGet Repositories Boost .NET Development (Rami Honig) - This post introduces an end to end DevOps solution to manage packages dependencies. It looks very interesting.

• Exploring the .NET open source hybrid ORM library RepoDB (Scott Hanselman) - A great open-source solution... I need to give it a try, maybe with my Use-R-vote project...

• Highlights from Git 2.28 (Taylor Blau) - Nice update. I'm personally very please with the default name of our choice.

• Introducing GitHub's OpenAPI Description (Marc-Andre Giroux) - An interesting project.

• New Developer Landing Page and Issues Repo - Windows Developer Blog (Rich Turner) - Nice now we have a customized entry door to the knowledge word.

• Official Support for Remote Debugging a .NET Core Linux app in WSL2 from Visual Studio on Windows (Scott Hanselman) - Wsl2 is an incredible tool. There only one of my machines that don't have it yet because it running on public Windows release... But I should have it soon everywhere and it will be so great!

• Pimp up your Blazor EditForms with Tailwind CSS! (Tarik Alkathiri) - Nice tutorial.

• When does it make sense to use containers in a development workflow? (Sean Killeen) - Nice post that shares a very good answer.

Podcasts

• 211: Failure To Launch (Merge Conflict) - Interesting conversation about when it's time to stop adding features and deploy. Finding a comfortable point could be difficult sometime.

• 482: How to Sell Your Vision, with Michael Hyatt (Coaching for Leaders) - nice episode that shares a few points to guide us when it's time to build/ present our vision.

• #167 – The Most Sensible Debate on Hustle Culture and Work-Life Balance with Natalie Nagele and DHH (The Indie Hackers Podcast) - A very interesting discussion about the "entrepreneur" mentality. Are there too many differences between the guess (cultural)? It's definitely good to ear all their points... But be aware that's mostly a two-hour long episode.

• The Open Source Ecosystem, .NET Foundation, and Microsoft with Sebastien Lambla (.NET Rocks!) - A fantastic episode. A hot topic very strong opinion but done in with class!

• Managing remotely with Asana Engineering Manager Kate Reading (Hanselminutes with Scott Hanselman) - Interesting conversation. It's not a not topic, but they're a lot of unprepared managers that were forced into this situation.

Miscellaneous

• New Windows Virtual Desktop capabilities now generally available | Azure blog and updates | Microsoft Azure (Kam VedBrat) - Wow, that very nice news.

• Simplified YouTube live streaming with Azure and OBS Studio. ( Ihor Leontiev) - With more and more people doing conferences or streaming online this alternative could simplify a lot of technical issues.

Reading Notes #423

Every Monday, I share my "reading notes". Those are the articles, blog posts, podcast episodes, and books that catch my interest during the week and that I found interesting.

It's a mix of the actuality and what I consumed. You think you may have an interesting post, share it!

My office is in the basement... so I didn't conplained.

Cloud

• Integration Testing Azure Functions with SpecFlow and C#, Part 5 –... (Jonathan George) - Excellent post that concludes a series on Specflow, an interesting tool to tests our code.

Programming

• Blazor WebAssembly 3.2.0 Preview 5 release now available (Daniel Ruth) - New preview coming our way. Nice.
• Creating and Packaging a .NET Standard library | Visual Studio Blog (Sayed) - A very cool tutorial that explains all the steps to get to sharing your NuGet package.
• How to resolve a git merge conflict ( Brian Breniser) - Nice tutorial Git merges are so frequent...
• Windows Terminal Preview v0.11 Release | Windows Command Line (Kayla) - Hmmmmm.That terminal! Awesome.

Podcasts

• Michelle Khare - Her YouTube Series "Challenge Accepted": Training with the FBI, Marines & NASA (That Creative Life) - A very inspiring episode. We can push our limits with a lot of works.

Miscellaneous

• This Is The #1 Ritual You Need To Do Every Day (Pandemic Edition) - Barking Up The Wrong Tree (Eric Barker) - A very nice story, and very simple things we can all do to say, happy healthy humans.
• How to Remote Desktop (RDP) into a Windows 10 Azure AD joined machine (Scott Hanselman) - Nice little tips here to RDPing.
• Injecting Services Into ASP.NET Razor Views (Khalid Abuhakmeh) - A nice and simple post that explains the injection in the newest .Net framework.
• Local Azure Storage Development with Azurite, Azure SDKs, and Azure Storage Explorer (Jon Gallant) - A really cool tool that virtualized completely storage into a local version.Very interesting.
• Quarantine work is not Remote work (Scott Hanselman) - It's not normal...

~

Reading Notes #419

Every Monday, I share my "reading notes". Those are the articles, blog posts, podcast episodes, and books that catch my interest during the week and that I found interesting.
It's a mix of the actuality and what I consumed. Enjoy!

Suggestion of the week

• Approval Workflows With GitHub Actions (Aaron Powell) - Wow! That's a very clever and impressive way to have step flow in GitHub. All the details are in the post if you would like to create your own.

Cloud

• How to use Azure App Service managed certificates (Michael Crump) - It's that simple. A few clicks and you will; have https.

Programming

• Using GitHub Actions to deploy a .Net Web App (Gregor Suttie) - A nice tutorial to learn how to deploy a Hugo website.
• Blazor WebAssembly 3.2.0 Preview 3 release now available (Daniel Ruth) - OMG! Super excited about all those new features as they will all help me in a current project I'm working on...
• Creating an event-driven architecture out of existing, non-event-driven systems (Richard Seroter) - An interesting post that explains the different options to go event-driven.
• GitHub with Azure DevOps | Premier Developer (GitHub with Azure DevOps) - Very interesting post that explains al the benefits of using this mixt, and why an enterprise would be interested to do that.

Podcasts

• The Joy of making with LEGO Master and Cosplaying Engineer Amie DD (Hanselminutes with Scott Hanselman) - A delicious episode and BTW I watch Lego master because of that.
• #31: Julie Lerman - Software Coach, Writer & Speaker (The Solo Coder Podcast) - I was really looking forward to listen to this interview. Julie is an extraordinary person and an amazing communicator.
• 193: UI Is Messy (Merge Conflict) - I, once more, had a nice moment listening to that discussion/ argumentation about different patterns pros and cons.

Miscellaneous

• Bond At A Distance With The Remote Team Cooking Challenge (Alexia) - We are so creative when we want. Super.

Reading Notes #412

Every Monday, I share my reading notes. Those are the articles, blog posts, podcast episodes, and books that catch my interest during the week and that I found interesting. It's a mix of the actuality and what I consumed.

Cloud

• Creating Azure Functions with Function Monkey–First Look (Jason Roberts) - A nice quick tutorial that explains how to create a function with Monkey.

• Creating subdomains to Azure DNS from ASP.NET Core (Gunnar Peipman) - A pretty cool tutorial that shows how to do the DNS config by code.

• How serverless beats servers - A geek with a hat (Swizec Teller) - Very nice post that demonstrates how a serverless pair with static websites are great.

• How to Restrict Network Access to Azure Key Vault Using Firewalls & vNets (Mike Racine) - Excellent post and video.Very clear and it helps to understand how Keyvault is good for us.

Programming

• Hosting your own NuGet Server and Feed for build artifacts with BaGet (Scott Hanselman) - Woooo. I didn't know so many options were available. Once more great post that opens to so many scenarios.

• Visual Studio Code January 2020 (VSCode Team) - How this team manages to pack so many goodies in every new version is a mystery. Wonderful.

Podcasts

• Influencer Marketing EXPLAINED (by an influencer) (That Creative Life) - What a great episode! She can't barely contain herself... that's how Sara is passionate and honest! I love the show, great episode!

• Colin O'Brady - First to Ever Cross Antarctica COMPLETELY Unassisted (That Creative Life) - I have been waiting for someone to write a book like that forever! Thank you to let me discover Colin O'Brady. I already order the book... looking forward to reading it. Life IS the ultimate adventure, a mandatory listening for all of us!

• #25: Shayne Boyer - Social Coder (The Solo Coder Podcast) - Once again a very nice episode. It was wonderful to discover my colleague to this interview. Well done.

• Making Gatsby easy to understand with Laurie Barth (Software Engineering Unlocked) - That how you do an interview! Great conversation, Lauria is fantastic. I didn't know her but now I'm following, and waiting for the next "question".

Miscellaneous

• The Benefits of a Developer Community: Motivation (schwammy) - It has never been much easier to be part of a community. However, the first step still requires us to say hi! Don't Stay alone.

☁

Reading Notes #273

Cloud

• Analyze your data with Application Insights Analytics (Dan Hadari) - Nice sample that really shows the power of that tool.
  
• Announcing Azure Service Fabric 5.5 and SDK 2.5 (Vaclav Turecek) - Nice updates in the SDK, and now supports Asp.Net Core.
  
• Azure IoT Suite adds device management capability updates (Sam George) - Nice little post that lists the new features available with the last update.
  
• Azure API Management, Release Notes – March 17 (Vlad Vinogradsky) - This post lists the details about the new features.
  
• Short introduction to serverless architecture (Gunnar Peipman) - Great agnostic overview of was are these serverless services.

Programming

• Using Azure AD with ASP.NET Core (Gunnar Peipman) - A cool tutorial that explains very clearly how to use AD.
  
• Using Dependency Injection in Multiple .NET Core Projects (Juergen Gutsch) - An interesting tutorial that explains how to implement one of the most-used patterns with the new .Net Core.
  
• Visual Studio 2017 can automatically recommend NuGet packages for unknown types (Scott Hanselman) - Nice little post that shares cool tricks with VS that you probably didn't know.

Miscellaneous

• Introducing Microsoft Data Amp (Mitra Azizirad) - All we need to know about this new online event.

Reading Notes #271

 

 

Suggestion of the week

• Azure Functions vs Web Jobs: How to choose? (Chris Pietschmann) - Wow! This is the best post I've read about Azure Function. It really describes clearly the differences between the two. A must for every cloud developer.

Cloud

• Creating Azure Key Vault with logging using Azure Resource Manager ARM templates (Stéphane Lapointe) - Nice post that shows how to use the quick template and explains how pieces work together.

Programming

• Announcing New ASP.NET Core and Web Development Features in Visual Studio 2017 (Jeffrey T. Fritz ) - With the release of VS2017this week comes also a lot of great improvements in the .Net Core tooling, and that a good news.
  
• Azure App Service Authentication in an ASP.NET Core Application (Adrian Hall) - Interesting tutorial to learn more about security (authentification) with Asp.Net Core.
  
• Azure Functions Visual Studio Tools Preview (Chris Pietschmann) - Great improvement, we can now work, code, and debug in our "home " comfort.
  
• Simplifying Bundling and Minification in ASP.NET Core (Shayne Boyer) - This post is the perfect tutorial, short and complete. After reading it, you will be ready to use this package.

Databases

• Azure Data Lake Tools for VSCode (Preview) - March Update (Jenny Jiang) - Really cool extension.

Miscellaneous

• Azure Data Sync update (Joshua Gnanayutham) - This post shares the road map of a very useful tool. Glad to see it coming in the new Azure Portal.
  
• Microsoft has created an A.I. that can write its own code (QuHarrison Terry) - Interesting innovation, it will be nice to see where that will bring us.
  
• Swarm Mode with Fleet Management and Collaboration now in public beta, powered by Docker Cloud (Borja Burgos) - Interesting new feature available on all the main "Docker platform".

Reading Notes #228

Cloud

• But Why Do You Trust Your Data? (Buck Woody) - I consider this post as a really great teaser. After ready his post most chances are you will check the video it recommended... and next give a shot to Azure data Catalog.

Programming

• An update on ASP.NET Core 1.0 RC2 - This post explains why the next release is taking "so long".
  
• PowerShell: Simplify Complex Function Calls (John Kirkham) - I love it! It's time to clean our scripts or at least stop writing more obfuscated ones.
  
• How to host your own NuGet Server and Package Feed - Wow, I didn't know it was that easy to have a private Nuget server...Definitely something to explore more deeply.

Data

• Analyzing your Azure Search traffic (Berni Torres Garayar) - Great post that explains how to improve our services by listening to our client's search requests, leveraging the new Azure Search Analytics and PowerBi.

Miscellaneous

• Give yourself permission to have work-life balance - In a connected world, it's easy not to slow down a moment and raise our head to look around us. Interesting post to read before you win the race to the burnout.
  
• Check out the new MVP Channel 9 page! - Channel9 has a brand-new section where you can see all MVPs video... see it by yourself.

~Frank

Reading Notes #208

Suggestion of the week

• Microsoft Azure--the Big Picture (Tony Meleg) - Very complete summary of the Azure platform.

Cloud

• What Are All of Microsoft Azure’s Application Integration Services? (Richard Seroter) - Very interesting post that answers two questions: What's it? and What's new? For all the features in the Azure Integration "branch."
  
• What Developers Need to Know About Docker (Paul Ballard) - Nice post that gives pros and cons about Docker, how it works and even how to create one.
  
• The Walking Dead: No Man's Land game soars to #1 supported by Azure DocumentDB (Aravind Ramachandran) - Cool post. Games are serious business, and databases are fun!

Programming

• Visual Studio - Bower: Modern Tools for Web Development - Fantastic post that demystify bower and an excellent tutorial.
  
• How to simulate a low bandwidth connection for testing web sites and applications - I plead guilty. I thought it was more complicated to do... really cool post.
  
• NuGet Package of the Week: Microphone registers and discovers Web APIs and REST services with Consul - Another useful NuGet Package, I love this "thread" of post.

Miscellaneous

• How To Deliver a Great Technical Presentation - Interesting tips and tricks to know.
  
• The Five Knows of Programming - Nice post to calm the student among us... And Remember us also that learning is fun!
  
• A Simple Formula for Changing Our Behavior (Peter Bregman) - Interesting article that expresses a nice and simple solution to walk through difficult situations... at work or at home.
  
• Using the Surface Pro 4 Type Cover with Fingerprint Reader on a Surface Pro 3 - Cool post ... it's nice to have a real user review.