Reading Notes #628

For this week reading notes, I have some exciting blog posts and podcast episodes. Covering topics including .NET scaffolding, Visual Studio updates, the Builder Pattern in C#, and OpenAPI in .NET 9. Plus, tips on validating identity with GitHub, improving Azure Identity, and podcast highlights on GitHub Universe and presentation skills. 

Cloud

• Better Azure Identity authentication support and performance during local development with .NET Aspire (Anthony Simmon) - A cool demo/tutorial with all the code snippets and explanations.

Programming

• dotnet scaffold - Next Generation Content Creation for .NET - .NET Blog (Sayed Ibrahim Hashimi) - Yay! Scaffolding CLI and it looks well done too! It's time to try it and if you are interested it's an OSS project.

• Making you more productive with Visual Studio v17.12 - Visual Studio Blog (Mads Kristensen) - Mad's blog post are always synonym of fun and happiness as it means Visual Studio has new cool features that ease or day and make us more productive. I love that that simple copy error message one.

• The Builder Pattern in C# [2024] - This is a very nice post that explains clearly with code different scenarios where that pattern would make sense.

• OpenAPI document generation in .NET 9 (Mike Kistler) - This is a great new feature in NET9 when building APIs. The post shares how to update existing APIs to get it. I'm looking forward to migrating my stuff.

Podcasts

• 435: GitHub Universe Recap + M4 is here with a NEW Mac mini!!! (Merge Conflict) - Cool summary and nice news for iOS user about xCode.

• How to prepare for a nerve-wracking presentation (Modern Mentor) - Good strategies for new or experienced speakers.

Miscellaneous

• Validate your identity on Bluesky with your GitHub account (Mark Downie) - That's a neat trick, sir!

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 #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 #593

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!

Cloud

• Azure Functions Extensibility - Runtime Scaling (Tomasz Pęczek) - A well written post that goes in the details.Perfect to really understand how things works.

Programming

• 5 Powerful HTML Attributes That Don't Require JavaScript (Ashish Patel) - Wow! I didn't even known that most of those attributes existed..

• Docker Init for ASP.NET Core Compared to VS or VS Code Extensions (Julie Lerman) - awesome comparison! I've been thinking about doing it for a little while. Another great post from Julie.

• Blazor and .NET 8: How I Built a Fast and Flexible Website (Jeffrey T. Fritz) - optimisation is often a step that people forgets, but it's one that is extremely rewarding.This series seams very interesting, we will s| more of those in the notes...

• Warp, the modern terminal, is now available for Linux (Aloke Desai, David Stern) - I didn't heard of that terminal before. It looks interesting! Looking forward to try it.

• Using Visual Studio Code for .NET MAUI Development (Vijay Anand) - it's incredible the progress that was done in such little time I'm looking forward to try it.

• The FAST and the Fluent: A Blazor story - .NET Blog (Vincent Baaij) - Nice post that teach us a bit of history. I'm fan of Fluent UI and Blazor...and more recently of the Fluent UI Blazor library. I think it's a must for all Blazor developers.

• GraphQL vs. REST—Which is Better for API Design? (Hassan Djirdeh) - Pretty cool comparison of different type/design of APIs.

Miscellaneous

• Windows AI Studio : Getting Started ( Shreyan Fernandes) - Nice tools the works locally. I'm installing it, will you?

~Frank

Reading Notes #591

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

• Make demo typing easy with DemoType in ZoomIt v8.0 (John Stephens) - This is such a game changer! Of course live demo are the best but losing precious secondes because of a typo is a real nightmare.

Cloud

• Planning for Resiliency with Azure OpenAI (Matthew Anderson) - Like everything else in the cloud we need to think about resiliency. This nice post get us started and explains 2 different architectures for our system.

• Azure Developer CLI (azd) - February 2024 Release (Grace Kulin) - Cool feature now supported in this new release with helm support for kubernetes and many other features.

Programming

• The Difference Between RESTful APIs and Web APIs Using ASP.NET Core (Januarius Njoku) - A very complete post about APIs their definition and differences.

• Scaling Docker Compose Up (Milas Bowman) - Interesting post that do a deep dive into docker compose file.

• Our Vision for .NET 9 - .NET Blog (.NET Team) - Inspiring plan for the future release of .Net.

• My Top 10 NEW Visual Studio Features of 2023 for .NET Developers - .NET Blog (James Montemagno) - I don't code everyday and when I do it's on all kind of device and OS so I end up more often using VS Code. But, when I can use Visual Studio it's always a treat. In this post, James shares his favorite new features part of that great IDE. Those are only the recent ones, there are so much more!

• Scaling Docker Compose Up (Milas Bowman) - Interesting post that do a deep dive into docker compose file.

• 8 ways to set the URLs for an ASP.NET Core app (Andrew Lock) - What!? So many different ways to assign the url.

~ Frank

Reading Notes #590

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!

Cloud

• Observability on Azure Container Apps (Abdullah Abu-Hassan) - Great post to get started. We can download all the code required to try it ourself.

• WTH is Azure Copilot? (Sam Cogan) - I believe this copilot will be extremely useful for so many people... including me.

Programming

• Solved! Visual Studio .http File Not Sending Authorization Header (Steve Smith) - The devil is in the details as they say. Great post that shares the investigation of an issues. A time saver.

• Should I put my Blazor components in the server project, or the client project? (Jon Hilton) - Short and clear explanation of the blazor structure, very helpful post.

• How to Make Your Web Sites Accessible (Beau Carnes) - Accessibility is a must and now there a course available on camp to help us making our website accessible.

• What's new for the Microsoft Fluent UI Blazor components 4.4 (Vincent Baaij) - Nice new components. Its going fast!

• Dev Tunnels: A Game Changer for Mobile Developers - .NET Blog (James Montemagno) - Dev Tunnel is definitely a incredible tool.I used it for debugging connector in Power Platform and there is no doubts it will help with mobile app...No more guesses debug with the real thing.

Miscellaneous

• Introducing Sudo for Windows! (Jordi Adoumie) - Wow! This is a really good new feature. How many time a forgot to start my terminal as admin and needed to starry over again...Looking forward to try it.

~Frank

Reading Notes #589

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!

Cloud

• Using Azure Load Testing to test Multi-Tenant services (Frédéric Le Coquil) - Nice post that explains in details how to test a scale and cost efficiently our API.

• WASI 0.2 Preview: A New Dawn for WebAssembly (Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols ) - Looking forward how WASI will impact our web. Nice little post to quickly understand what it is.

• How to deploy .NET Aspire apps to Azure Container Apps - .NET Blog (Jiachen Jiang) - It looks simple enough don't you think? I'm trying it today!

• Build your Web Apps faster with the Azure Cache for Redis: Quick Start Template ( Ricky Diep) - This is definitely a simple and quick way to deploy all your assets at once. There is a video with a demo.

Programming

• Understanding C# 8 default interface methods (Andrew Lock) - Very clear post about the new feature available in interfaces, with great examples that make us understand why and when it is useful and how to implement it.

Open Source

• Celebrating One Year of Open at Microsoft (Japhlet Nwamu) - It was surely a nice first year.

Podcasts

• Code Visualization with CodeSee's Shanea Leven (Hanselminutes with Scott Hanselman) - Another very interesting episode. CodeSee definitely catches my attention, I'm planning to try it with my OSS project to get started.

~Frank

Reading Notes #588

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!

Programming

• Developing & Working with .NET Containers on Windows ARM Devices (James Montemagno) - I'm a big fan and user of dev containers.But I didn't know it was hard for Arm device owner.Love the idea.If you never heard of Podman here a nice teaser.

• Overview over Microsoft's developer tools for Windows (Aaron Junker)) - So many great tools to make the dev experience even better on Windows.Did you see so many are oss projects.

• How to deal with API rate limits (Salma Alam-Naylor) - Perfect post to learn why rate limit exists (its easier to manage them if we understand them), and a few suggestions on how to deal with them.

• Persisting Data Volumes With .NET Aspire | LINQ to Fail (Aaron Powell) - Great tips to be more efficient with .NET Aspire preview 2

~Frank

Reading Notes #576

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

• Visual Studio Code: C# Dev Kit Now Generally Available (Almir Vuk) - As a .NET developer that spend a lot of time in Linux, I was already using a lot VSCode and started using DevKit curious to see if if would really helps. I felt empowered. Great work, and congrats on the GA that was fast!

Programming

• How to version your ASP.NET API (Dennis Frühauff)- Versioning will stay easy and hard at the same time...But me must give ot our best.... Right?

• Announcing .NET 8 RC2 - .NET Blog (Jon Douglas) - So much in this next release,the team is seeking feedback, if you have some they will be pleased to listen.

• Introducing Windows Terminal Canary (Christopher Nguyen) - That's a brilliant idea how many times I heard people asking to get the earliest bits faster...Well here it is!

• Blazor Basics: Creating a Todo App using Blazor WebAssembly (Claudio Bernasconi) - A tutorial like I like them: simple And where we do stuff! Great place to get started.

Podcasts

• What do we want from a web browser? (The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source) - I think it was my first episode of The Changelog. I liked it. Interesting discussion about what should be a "good" web browser...

~Frank

Reading Notes #575

Happy Thanksgiving to all Canadian🍁! 

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

• New experiences designed to make every developer more productive on Windows 11 (Mike Harsh) - Damn! I'm very tented to go right away and reinstall Windows on my dev PC, it looks so great.

Programming

• Get Started with the Microcks Docker Extension for API Mocking and Testing (Ajeet Singh Raina, Yacine Kheddache, Hugo Guerrero) - This looks like an amazing and simple to use tool to test all our API.How doesn't need it.

• Windows Subsystem for Linux September 2023 update (Craig Loewen) - Wow! So many new improvement. Its time for an update which one will it be for you WSL -update or -pre-release update ?

• New Azure DevOps scopes now available for Microsoft Identity OAuth delegated flow apps - Azure DevOps Blog (Angel Wong) - Security is the job of everyone , right? Nice update for Azure DevOps.

• Hugo + VSCode + Docker = ❤️ (Aaryn Smith) - After an upgrade of Hugo or the theme, one of my site wasn't being generated anymore. Happy to to find a that devContainer, I will be able to investigate quickly.

Open Source

• Windows Terminal Preview 1.19 Release (Christopher Nguyen) - Cool updates! I love that right-click web search! You know... when there is an error it will be so much efficient! An that was a community contribution! Fantastic!

• Unlocking DevOps Magic: Dive into the Azure Kubernetes Service Wonderland in Visual Studio Code! (Japhlet Nwamu, Tatsat Mishra) - Great tools that really simplify the life of Azure Kubernetes Services (AKS). It was the topic of an episode of open at Microsoft.

Podcasts

• Introducing TypeChat with Anders Hejlsberg (Hanselminutes with Scott Hanselman) - It's the second time I hear about TypeChat, remember Reading Notes #565, it seams extremely interesting.
• How to rally support for your big idea (Modern Mentor) - Listening to winning strategies to make sure our biggest ideas have good start... It's always a good idea.
• Community and Empowerment with Sharmadean Reid (A Bit of Optimism) - See ideas and challenges as a way to learn more, to learn maybe something different, to climb higher as Simon says, love it.

~Frank

Reading Notes #571

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!

Cloud

• Serverless Playwright the easy way with Azure Container Apps (Anthony Chu) - I didn't think about that scenario but wow! Thats very efficient ant much easier.

Programming

• 6 Best Practices for Documenting APIs (Nduka John) - Documentation is often what makes the difference. Bad docs may cause users to not use correctly the APIs.

• New .NET Upgrade Assistant version with feature updates and .NET MAUI improvements! - .NET Blog (Olia Gavrysh) - Wow that a pretty cool and powerful tool! I really like the mixed upgrade with project file and version.

• Generative AI and .NET - Part 2 SDK | LINQ to Fail (Aaron Powell) - Nice series where we explore the SDK building a .NET poroject.

Open Source

• Walkthroughs in the Windows Terminal Repository (Mike Griese) - Contributing to big oss project is challenging.The Windows Terminal team had a cool idea to make it easier.There is a video version of this blog is you prefer.

• Microsoft PowerToys v0.73.0: A Comprehensive Overview (Kunal Chowdhury) - Cool post that shares new utilities in PowerToys and explains the optimization of the others.

Miscellaneous

• Navigating Developer Burnout: Causes, Impacts, and Strategies for a Ba (Christopher Johnson) - A truthful and realistic post. If you never been exposed to burnout, take 2 minutes to read this.

~Frank

Reading Notes #567

Programming

• Debugging .NET Containers with Visual Studio Code Docker Tools - .NET Blog (Chet Husk) - This new version of the tools looks brillannt! Definitely a must try asap.

• Docker for Developers: Understanding the Core Concepts (Dan Wahlin) - This is a very nice and detailled article that explains what is Docker where it comes from and how it works.

• .NET Conf 2023 (Mehul Harry) - Net cof is coming reverse the dates! And for those if you who knows .NET there is a call for paper here is your chance the share your knowledge!

• Power Platform as Connected Service for Visual Studio is Generally Available | Power Platform Developer Blog (Marcel Ferreira) - Its now GA! This is an excellent news.Using this its now easier thann ever to transform our APIs to power platform connector and empower everyone not fust the developers.

DevOps

• How to deploy Azure Container Apps (Shawn Sesna) - This is a grewt tutorial to get your container Apps deploy without having to care about to much infrastructure aka.kubernetes.

Podcasts

• Beyond the Hype: WebAssembly – from the browser to beyond (Colin Eberhardt) - Episode of a new podcast for me! They got me with WebAssembly and I will defenetly listen to more episodes.

• Kevin LaBranche: Leading teams through DevOps - Episode 251 (Azure DevOps Podcast) - Yes! DevOps is not a thing you implement in 2-3 weeks, it takes time. Great episode that highlight even more that it's not about the tech but the way you do things...

Frank

Reading Notes #565

It's 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!

Cloud

• Adding Application Insights Logging to an ASP.NET app using the .NET SDK (David Giard) - This is a quick tutorial to get us started. Let's get control of our data.

Programming

• Required Parameters in Blazor WebAssembly (Code Maze) - This is a very well-explained post. How to use features added in .NET 6 to make our application reliable.

• What does Azure AD renamed Microsoft Entra ID mean for .NET developers? - .NET Blog (Jeremy Likness) - Learn more about the Identity. This post also includes other links to learn more about it.

• Shell integration in the Windows Terminal (Mike Griese) - Its very interesting to read the upcoming features and understand how these things will works.

• What Are HTTP Headers? | Postman Blog (The Postman Team) - This is a great post about headers. Used by everyone known by developers involve in API, they are the key of a clear communication.

• Introducing a powerful new Extension Manager - Visual Studio Blog (Maia Kelner) - Looking forward to trying this redesigned manager!

• Introducing TypeChat (Anders Hejlsberg, Steve Lucco, Daniel Rosenwasser, Pierce Boggan, Umesh Madan, Mike Hopcroft, and Gayathri Chandrasekaran) - That looks like a pretty cool package to add to our apps!

Data

• Azure Data Studio Schema Compare Extension (Josephine) - There is an extension for everything ...almost. I love that we can customize our tools the way we like.

Low Code

• How To Build Responsive Power Apps Forms From Scratch (Matthew Devaney) - Build an App quickly, that's nice. But make that App look great on any screen, now your talking! This is very detailed and complete example that helps us build our first responsive App.

Podcast

• Who are the Ops Behind the DevRel Curtain? (Ep 80) (Community Pulse) - Interesting episode about DevRel and more particularly two who are doing less visible work. Helping those who are helping... And a tiny bit about bread! Yell done, David!

• 60. How security is everywhere & the balance between legislation and innovation - with Scott Helme (Betatalks the podcast) - An episode about security of course but also tech, cars, coffee, and question like does your oven should really have internet access?

Miscellaneous

• Blazor Basics: Data Binding in Blazor (Claudio Bernasconi) - Nice post that explains the little particularity of those bindings. It could save you a lot of time.

~Frank

Reading Notes #564

Monday! It is time to share my reading notes. It is a habit I started a long time ago where I share a list of all blog posts that catch my interest during the week. 

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

 

Cloud

• How To: Remote Debug a Deployed Azure Function using Visual Studio 2022 (Jamie Maguire) - Because sometimes the only solution is to debug live from the cloud. It's great that it's possible.

• Enabling Azure Application Insights for an App Service (David Giard) - It's one of those tools it's right there and you didn't know you couldn't live without until you try it and you get all that information.

DevOps

• Modifying Docker images during Kubernetes deployments (Matthew Casperson) - This is a very detailed tutorial that helps and explains clearly each step of that deployment pipeline.

Programming

• Tech Notes: Quick hacks on GitHub Pages (Evan Martin) - Nice git tricks.

• Debugging distributed systems is hard! (Dennis Frühauff) - This is a very nice post that explains clearly a situation. How many of us have been in this situation before where you try to debug a system and it's just so hard?

• Healthcare and Life Sciences Blog (Kyle Raymond) - This is a cool tutorial/ example that explains what is and how to use semantic Kernel.

Data

• Speeding up Queries with Materialized Views (Derek Comartin) - Great post that will inspire us on how to get the best performance for our databases.

~Frank

Reading Notes #563

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!

Cloud

• Using WSL and Let's Encrypt to create Azure App Service SSL Wildcard Certificates (Scott Hanselman ) - A nice step-by-step tutorial. And after this, you will have a very useful script.

• Deploy your Blazor app to Azure now for free! (Dennis Frühauff) - This is a simple easy-to-follow tutorial to deploy your Static web app in the cloud.

Programming

• API Architectural Styles: REST vs. SOAP vs. GraphQL vs. gRPC | Postman Blog (Bruno Pedro) - Selecting the best architecture for our needs that a scary decision. This post explains the different architecture and shares a real-life story and tools to help decide.

• Creating a VS Code editor extension (Tim Heuer) - The journey of a dev building an extension for Visual Studio Code.A very interesting post.

Open Source

• Build an Open Source Project: Behind the Scenes (Alexey Yuzhakov) - This post shares a story of a real-life open source project. It's about putting in the effort and doing the extra work to make our project more useful and accessible.

Low Code

• Power Apps Dynamic Forms - Generate Forms From A Questions List (Matthew Devaney) - A tutorial that shows how to build a very useful form using code. But once you build it you can reuse it at many places.

• Power Apps Code Review Tool (Mehdi Slaoui Andaloussi) - That's a really cool tool! I need to test it now!

Podcast

• Podman In Action: Desktop, Machine, and more (DevOps and Docker Talk: Cloud Native Interviews and Tooling) - The perfect episode to get started with Podman. Very interesting.

• Building Apps using OpenAI with Mark Miller (.NET Rocks!) - So much energy in this episode and great topics.

~Frank

Reading Notes #561

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!

The suggestion of the week

• How to use GitHub Copilot: Prompts, tips, and use cases (Rizel Scarlett, Michelle Mannering) - A very helpful post that helps thinking how to communicate efficiently with Copilot, by breaking down our instructions and being more specific.

Programming

• Step-by-Step Guide: Testing HTTP Endpoints in Visual Studio 2022 Using Endpoints Explorer (Andy) - So many new API related features these days in VS. This post shows you some of them.
• Learn how to mock your HttpClient in C# now with 2 simple methods (Henrique) - Nice post that explains how to Mock these HTtp calls... Because unit tests are important and APIs are everywhere it's a must!
• Docker Desktop and Windows – what’s the best option for you? (Vinicius Apolinario) - I didn't know there was such a difference between those two! I mean I get it but I'm still surprised by the differences. This is a very instructive post.
• Azure App Configuration and .NET API: a smart and secure way to manage configurations (Davide Bellone) - This is a nice tutorial that shares best security practices.
• Introducing the New T4 Command-Line Tool for .NET - .NET Blog (Mike Corsaro) - Feels like ages since I used T4... Happy to see that this powerful tool is still around and even more, updating.

Low Code

• Exploring the Power of AI Builder: Empowering Students and Educators (Lee Stott) - Why should you be interested in AI Builder and where to find it. This is what that post is about.
• Integrating Microsoft Sentinel and Power Platform to better monitor and protect your low-code solutions (Simran Kaur) - Currently only available in preview this solution will definitely help enterprises to manage their Power Platform more securely.

Miscellaneous

• Introducing the Microsoft Store channel on Discord - #ifdef Windows (Sergio Pedri) - Nice news. There is now a place to talk about the store.
• 9 Steps to Master the Keyboard and Become an Ultra Efficient Software Developer (Michael Shpilt) - Short post that gives a few ideas on how to use more efficiently your keyboard and enjoy it.

~Frank

Reading Notes #554

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!

Cloud

• Migrate ASP.NET Web App to Azure App Service (Justin Yoo) - This great post shows and explains the very few changes suggested to migrate our .NET website into Azure.

Programming

• Minimal API growing with .NET 7 (Christian Nagel) - Ooh! That looks really nice! I will need to play around a little with it to fully appreciate all and I have just the right project for it.

• Visual Studio–Generate C# client for OpenAPI (Bart Wullems) - Interesting post that explains what is happening behind the scene of the OpenAPI client generator.

• Web API development in Visual Studio 2022 - Visual Studio Blog (Sayed Ibrahim) - Wow! You have the choice of that super detailed post with all the new features to help us be fantastic at creating APIs or also included in the post the video with a similar overview.

Podcast

• Episode 172: Maintainer Month 2023 with Sarah Boyce & David Blass (Sustain) - Special double episode for the Maintainer Month.
• Donovan Brown is Retiring - Episode 242 (Azure DevOps Podcast) - Whatever Donovan is talking about you can feel his passion. Extremely interesting episode. Enjoy your new challenge sir!
• 356: Sunsetting software, libraries, & APIs (Merge Conflict) - You build stuff? Great, but what do you do after, when do you know when it is time to retire an API or a service? James & Frank might not have all the responses, but they definitely feel the problem.
• 56. Building Drabble.social using Azure PaaS - Bram de Buyser (Betatalks the podcast) - Great episode! What a challenge. It takes only a few seconds to create an account ;)
• Can You Really Convert Podcast Fans Into Active Subscribers? (Feed Your Brand) - So many great tips in this episode. By looking at the type of email I receive... many should listen to it.
• Creating Walkable Cities with Nathan Allebach (Hanselminutes with Scott Hanselman) - What do you think when you read walkable? Was it what was discussed in this episode? Strange how something great ideas are derailed without any bad intentions.

LowCode

• Master Power Apps Do Until Loops for Efficient Workflow Management (and Unleash Your Inner Nerd) 🤓 (Shane Young) - Funny and educational tutorial about a very powerful tool indeed.

~frank

Reading Notes #553

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!

Programming

• Smoother rebases with auto-squashing Git commits (Andrew Lock) - Git is a very powerful tool, it worth make do the thing the way you like them.

• Accelerate API Development in Visual Studio with .http/.rest Files! (Dirk Strauss) - Nice integration to Visual Studio.That way we can have less software up and running while coding.

• Let's Learn .NET Virtual Events - All Around the World - .NET Blog (Matt Soucoup) - Super cool events to get started with Azure using .NET and the best of it in many different timezones or languages!!

LowCode

• Low-code signals 2023 (Richard Riley) - Interesting post that shares numbers related to the growth of low-code practice.

• Power Apps PDF Function: Create, View & Download PDFs (Matthew Devaney) - A nice cool app with a lot of features!

Miscellaneous

• I'm a former Microsoft VP of HR. Here are the real reasons why layoffs are happening and how much longer they'll last. (Chris Williams ) - Interesting post that explains what this layoff season is really about.

~frank

Reading Notes #548

The suggestion of the week

• GitHub Copilot X: The AI-powered developer experience (Thomas Dohmke) - Wow! Very excited about this news. Copilot is way more than just a buzz. After using it for a while I really appreciate the suggestions it was making. Looking forward to trying that next release.

Cloud

• Announcing: Azure Developers (Mehul Harry) - A nice online event is coming up. I'm honored and excited to be part of the sneakers. Looking forward to it.

• General Availability: ASP. NET web app migration to Azure App Service using PowerShell Scripts - This a nice tool that can help so many with that first step.

Programming

• A first look at Blazor and .NET 8 (Damien Bowden) - The future of Blazor looks very promising and interesting in .NET 8

• Announcing Docker+Wasm Technical Preview 2 (Djordje Lukic) - This wasm+docker is making progress fast! I feel like it was yesterday when they announced the first bits.

• Secure your .NET cloud apps with rootless Linux Containers - .NET Blog (Richard Lander) - In this post, the .NET teams explain their decisions ti make the images more secure. Safer containers are always better, right?

• Turn your database into an API in minutes with Data API builder for Azure Databases (Jasmine Greenaway) - A pretty cool open-source project that can definitely help.

Miscellaneous

• What’s different about these layoffs (Eira May) - It is a troubled period. how many of us were affected directly or indirectly.

~frank

Reading Notes #547

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!

Cloud

• Managing your Azure Cognitive Services Costs (Matt Eland) - Cost management is always a good idea. This post is part of a series of spring cleaning is not an exception.

• Uploading Large Blobs in Parallel with the Azure SDK (Mark Heath) - Wonderful! I tried recently to write a little POC of something like that but it did work as expected. Looking forward to digging into this code as I think I already see my mistake. Great post.

Programming

• Contrasting API Contract Testing and Functional Testing (Kin Lane) - This is an interesting post not about code but more about words, ideas, plans, and more.

• Adding Dependency Injection to a Console App in .Net 7 (Paul Michaels) - Short an simple the perfect answer to a how-to question.

• How to write your own cron Job scheduler in ASP.NET Core (like Quartz, Hangfire, ...) (Steven Giesel) - A really cool post that shows and explains how to build a simple background Service. I love those kind of projects as you learn so much doing them by yourself.

• PSReadLine 2.3.0-beta0 Release - PowerShell Team (Steven Bucher) - I'm a big fan of the Predictor, looking forward to trying this upgrade.

Miscellaneous

• How atomic Git commits dramatically increased my productivity - and will increase yours too (Samuel Faure) - A simple best practice to avoid pain later... I like it!

~ Frank