Reading Notes #657

This week's collection of interesting articles and resources covers AI development, DevOps practices, and open source tools. From GitHub Copilot customization to local AI deployments and containerization best practices, here are the highlights worth your attention.

AI

• Customize AI responses from GitHub Copilot (Matt Soucoup) - I talked many times about it, but now this is it, thanks Matt we have finally a blog post about instruction

• Pondering About Using AI for Coding (Shawn Wildermuth) - Interesting post about AI in our code editors.

• Top 5 MCP Server Best Practices (Ivan Pedrazas) - mCP server is a very hot topic, thinking about riding your own, here are five best practices to make sure you will be successful.

• Local AI + .NET = AltText Magic in One C# Script (Bruno Capuano) - A cool way to use AI locally and nice integration of the new C# feature!

• Containerize Your Apps with Ask Gordon (Steve Buchanan) - I already have Docker desktop on my Windows pc, I should definitely give Gordon a try more to come

DevOps

• Local Deploy with Bicep (Sam Cogan) - A perfect short story, I'll explain why the hell bicep can now deploy locally and how to do it

Open Source

• Introducing OpenCLI (Patrik Svensson) - A standard that describes CLI so both humans and agents can understand how it works. Love it!

~frank

Reading Notes #650

It's time for another edition of Reading Notes! This week brings exciting developments in the open source world, with major announcements from Microsoft making WSL and VS Code's AI features open source. We've also got updates on Azure Container Apps, .NET Aspire, and some great insights on developer productivity tools.

 

Let's dive into these interesting reads that caught my attention this week.

Cloud

• Happy 5th Birthday Bicep! (Sam Cogan) - What?! Five years already! That's incredible, I remember all the discussion about how we make our business better and honestly, bicep is a big success. Congrats to the team

• Have I Been Pwned 2.0 is Now Live! (Troy Hunt) - New look, new merch, and confetti, all without API breaking changes! Learn all about this major update in this post.

• Announcing Workflow in Azure Container Apps with the Durable task scheduler – Now in Preview! (greenie) - Exciting news about a new service. It looks solid and perfect for integration scenarios. Looking forward to experimenting with it.

Programming

• Pushing a whole stack of branches with a single Git command (Andrew Lock) - I'm always amazed to learn how people use git. This post shares a very smart way to push clear feature in multiple branches

• What's new in .NET Aspire 9.3 (David Pine) - Wow! How so many great new features can be added in a single version?! Aspire is a must for all .NET developers.

• Accelerate Your .NET Upgrades with GitHub Copilot (McKenna Barlow) - That's the tool I've been waiting for ages! Adding a Copilot to the extension is the smartest move they could make. I'm going to update an app right away. I'll share more later

Open Source

• Edit is now open source (Christopher Nguyen) - That's a great news! I installed it half through the post and it great! Fast, simple, and tiny!! Love it!

• The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source (Pierre Boulay) - And another project that turns out to be open source, I love it, it's just fantasti,c read all the details and dispose

• VS Code: Open Source AI Editor (VS Code team) - I strongly believe in open source. Very happy to see this change!

AI

• Agent mode for every developer (Katie Savage) - Great new for everyone as the agent mode become available in so many different editor. This post also contains videos to shows some scenarios.

Podcasts

• Reimagining the Windows Terminal with Warp's Zach Lloyd (Scott Hanselman) - A very interesting talk with the CEO of Warp that answers so many questions I had about this very different terminal. Really interesting episode, and terminal too BTW)

• The power of empathy in leadership with Jerry Colonna (Macmillan Holdings, LLC) - This very interesting episode is about the power of empathy in leadership.

• 362. Maximal Fitness with Minimum Time with Ben Greenfield (Part 1) (Greg McKeown) - Interesting conversation with a triathlete about different ways to train and nutrition

Miscellaneous

• The experience is enough (Salma Alam-Naylor) - Whether we like it or not, we are people creature. We all need to stop hiding behind our screens and get out there!

~frank

It turns out, it's not difficult to remove all passwords from our Docker Compose files

I used to hardcode my password in my demos and code samples. I know it's not a good practice, but it's just for demo purposes, it cannot be that dramatic, right? I know there are proper ways to manage sensitive information, but this is only temporary! And it must be complicated to remove all the passwords from a deployment... It turns out, IT IS NOT difficult at all, and that will prevent serious threats.

In this post, I will share how to remove all passwords from a docker-compose file using environment variables. It's quick to setup and easy to remember. For production deployment, it's better to use secrets, because environment variables will be visible in logs. That said, for demos and debugging and testing, it's nice to see those values. The code will be available on GitHub. This deployment was used for my talks during Azure Developers .NET Days: Auto-Generate and Host Data API Builder on Azure Static Web Apps and The most minimal API code of all... none

The Before Picture

For this deployment, I used a docker-compose file to deploy an SQL Server in a first container and Data API Builder (DAB) in a second one. When the database container starts, I run a script to create the database tables and populate them.

services:

  dab:
    image: "mcr.microsoft.com/azure-databases/data-api-builder:latest"
    container_name: trekapi
    restart: on-failure
    volumes:
      - "./startrek.json:/App/dab-config.json"
    ports:
      - "5000:5000"
    depends_on:
      - sqlDatabase

  sqlDatabase:
    image: mcr.microsoft.com/mssql/server
    container_name: trekdb
    hostname: sqltrek
    environment:
      ACCEPT_EULA: "Y"
      MSSQL_SA_PASSWORD: "1rootP@ssword"
    ports:
      - "1433:1433"
    volumes:
      - ./startrek.sql:/startrek.sql
    entrypoint:
      - /bin/bash
      - -c
      - |
        /opt/mssql/bin/sqlservr & sleep 30
        /opt/mssql-tools/bin/sqlcmd -U sa -P "1rootP@ssword" -d master -i /startrek.sql
        sleep infinity

As we can see, the password is in clear text twice, in the configuration of the database container and in the parameter for sqlcmd when populating the database. Same thing for the DAB configuration file. Here the data-source node where the password is in clear text in the connection string.

"data-source": {
 	"database-type": "mssql",
	"connection-string": "Server=localhost;Database=trek;User ID=sa;Password=myPassword!;",
	"options": {
		"set-session-context": false
	}
}

First Pass: Environment Variables

The easiest password instance to remove was in the sqlcmd command. When defining the container, an environment variable was used... Why not use it! To refer to an environment variable in a docker-compose file, you use the syntax $$VAR_NAME. I used the name of the environment variable MSSQL_SA_PASSWORD to replace the hardcoded password.

/opt/mssql-tools/bin/sqlcmd -U sa -P $$MSSQL_SA_PASSWORD -d master -i /startrek.sql

Second Pass: .env File

That's great but the value is still hardcoded when we assign the environment variable. Here comes the environment file. They are text files that holds the values in key-value paired style. The file is not committed to the repository, and it's used to store sensitive information. The file is read by the docker-compose and the values are injected. Here is the final docker-compose file:

services:

  dab:
    image: "mcr.microsoft.com/azure-databases/data-api-builder:latest"
    container_name: trekapi
    restart: on-failure
    env_file:
      - .env
    environment:
      MY_CONN_STRING: "Server=host.docker.internal;Initial Catalog=trek;User ID=sa;Password=${SA_PWD};TrustServerCertificate=True"
    volumes:
      - "./startrek.json:/App/dab-config.json"
    ports:
      - "5000:5000"
    depends_on:
      - sqlDatabase

  sqlDatabase:
    image: mcr.microsoft.com/mssql/server
    container_name: trekdb
    hostname: sqltrek
    environment:
      ACCEPT_EULA: "Y"
      MSSQL_SA_PASSWORD: ${SA_PWD}
    env_file:
      - .env
    ports:
      - "1433:1433"
    volumes:
      - ./startrek.sql:/startrek.sql
    entrypoint:
      - /bin/bash
      - -c
      - |
        /opt/mssql/bin/sqlservr & sleep 30
        /opt/mssql-tools/bin/sqlcmd -U sa -P $$MSSQL_SA_PASSWORD -d master -i /startrek.sql
        sleep infinity

Note the env_file directive in the services definition. The file .env is the name of the file used. The ${SA_PWD} tells docker compose to look for SA_PWD in the .env file. Here is what the file looks like:

SA_PWD=This!s@very$trongP@ssw0rd

Conclusion

Simple and quick. There are no reasons to still have the password in clear text in the docker compose files anymore. Even for a quick demo! Of course for a production deployment there are stronger ways to manage sensitive information, but for a demo it's perfect and it's secure.

During Microsoft Build Keynote on day 2, Julia Liuson and John Lambert talked about how trade actors are not only looking for the big fishes, but also looking at simple demos and old pieces of code, looking for passwords, keys and sensitive information.

Reading Notes #594

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 Resources with Deployment Stacks (John Kilmister) - That's a very useful tool, and nicely documented.

Programming

• Extract Method Refactoring Technique in C# – What You Need To Know (Nick Cosentino) - Great post that go over one of the most powerful method that every developers will be using all along their career. Simple and so useful, it's a must!

• Dapr v1.13 is now available (Dapr project maintainers) - I really like those post that goes over the news and also named all the contributors. This is when you see how many people are involved.

• Are Containers Only for Microservices? Myth Debunked (Zubair Aslam, Jay Schmidt) - Interesting post that demystify the myth about container by in only for micro services.

• Marten 7.0 is Released! (Jeremy D. Miller) - Nice update. Version 7 already...

• How to Fix CORS Error With AnyOrigin and AllowCredentials (Code Maze) - Anyone who work or build API go that error message about CORS. Here is a nice post to learn more about it and understand who we can fix it in an API.

AI

• RAG is Dead. Long Live RAG! (David Myriel) - Nice post that explains the differences between two type of AI RAG and LLM.

Databases

• Get Started with Milvus Vector DB in .NET - .NET Blog (Luis Quintanilla) - This post starts by explaining what's a vector databases and than show a nice example with movies.

~Frank

Reading Notes #551

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

• Microsoft Cost Management updates—March 2023 (Michael Flanakin) - Because we all need it and or worry about it. Learn the new features that are available for you in the cost management.

• Azure Spring Clean: Compliance for Bicep with Checkov (Sam Cogan) - That's a pretty cool tool to add to our box. I need to get that onto my pipeline...like now!

• Logic Apps Aviators Newsletter - April 2023 (Kent Weare) - One of my friends shared this with me, and I loved it! It's packed with information about new features, and upcoming events...

• This Month in Azure Container Apps: March/April 2023 (Anthony Chu) - I caught the live stream by pure chance and they pass through all the news contained in the post. Very happy to see Azure Container App growing so quickly!

Programming

• Run dotnet core projects without opening visual studio (Karthik Chintala) - Yes, it is possible and even fun! I code in VSCode 80% of the time.

• How to Do an Inner Join in LINQ? (Code Maze) - Nice post to get started about relations between tables type of joints and of course how to do it with LINQ.

• Running .NET Console Apps in Azure Container Instances (Mark Heath) - A neat way to run an application in the cloud. Have a special look at how the secret config is managed to avoid pushing them into the code repository.

Podcast

• Let's Chat About AI (Ep 76) (Community Pulse) - Extremely interesting episode about AI. Should we be worried, what would be the impact? So many great questions asked.
• 54. Cloud native and the Container landscape on Azure - with Daniel Paulus (Betatalks the podcast) - A little bit about the container's history, its present, and potential future.
• Chris Sainty: Blazor in Action - Episode 238 (Azure DevOps Podcast) - I already like Blazor, but I think you will also after listening to this episode.
• Down A Rabbit Hole with Seth Godin (A Bit of Optimism) - Great episode is about many different little things to make life better. You can feel the complicity between Seth and Simon.
• Windows WSL and Containers in 2023 (DevOps and Docker Talk) - WSL what it is and why people say it's so useful. All that and more in this episode.

Miscellaneous

• Technical Writing 101: Working with SMEs - Big Nerd Ranch (Cole Henry) - effectively.

~frank

Reading Notes #545

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 portal January 2023 updates (Allison Cordle) - Noce quick update from the portal.A few new features related to VMs.

• Creating a Configuration Module for your Infrastructure as Code (Sam Cogan) - This is a great post to help us be more efficient in our DevOps practices when writing IaC.

• Fetching Credentials with the Azure CLI (Mark Heath) - Awesome post that shares very useful commands. Add this on your cheatsheet or bookmark that post.

• Host WordPress in Microsoft Azure with App Service (PaaS hosting) (Chris Pietschmann ) - When we are interested in WordPress, we are looking for a key in-hand experience. We don't want to manage code and connections and too much technical stuff. Having it hosted in PaaS Azure simplifies even more this.

Programming

• Docker Desktop 4.17: New development functionality (Alyssa Shames) - Learn more about how this new release helps us to be more secure and track the details of our containers in the post.

• Dapr 1.10 - More steps in the right direction (Mark Heath) - This is great! I'm happy to see the multi-app functionality as I was totally waiting for it. And the workflow is definitely something that interests me.

• What To Be Wary of With Iterators and Collections in C# (Nick Cosentino) - An interesting deep comparison between different ways to fetch and manipulate data in C#.

~ frank

Reading Notes #532

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

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

Cloud

• Setup the Auto-shutdown on VM using Bicep template (Massimo Bonanni) - VMs are so useful. One of the best ways to save money is to turn them off when you are not using them. Part 6 about Bicep explains how to do it in your IaC script.

• What is Azure Container Registry? (MakendranG) - A quick intro on Azure Registry and how to create one.

Programming

• Authorization and Authentication in Minimal APIs (Assis Zang) - This is a great tutorial...Time to secure our APIs

• Converting Markdown to DOCX and PDF in C# (Bjoern Meyer|) - Interesting post with all the code required to do this project.Shorter than I thought.

• How to publish .NET 7 apps directly to Docker (Dennis Frühauff) - Pretty cool stuff. I need to try it.

• Make a Web Reporting App Using a Blazor Reporting Tool & Microservices | ActiveReports.NET (Sergey Abakumoff) - Report services... That brings memories! I like the idea of using Blazor as the container to display the reports.

• The dangers and gotchas of using scoped services in OptionsBuilder (Andrew Lock) - A very complete post that shares all you need to know about scopes.

Miscellaneous

• My IoT problem: the garage door opener : Algorithms for the masses - julian m bucknall (Julian M Bucknall) - Technology! Marvelous, when it works...

~frank

Reading Notes #529

Good Monday (standard time for many :) ),

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

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

Cloud

• Azure Developer CLI (azd) – November 2022 Release (Savannah Ostrowski) - New beta version released with java and bicep updates...Great work.

• Azure SQL Database Overview (Daniel Calbimonte ) - This post is a great one to get started on Azure SQL Database. It answers many of the initial questions and provides the answers.

• Build a globally resilient architecture with Azure Load Balancer | Azure Blog and Updates | Microsoft Azure (Mahip Deora) - An azure load balancer is definitely a powerful tool when your customers aren't centralized. This post provides a nice overview.

Programming

• Create your .NET portfolio in the .NET Conf student zone (Katie Savage) - The .NET Conf conference is next Tuesday (Nov. 8) and students have a very special place. Have a look!

• How to Implement Decentralized Storage Using Docker Extensions - Docker (Marton Elek) - Second and last part of a series discussing about the storage with docker.

• Performance improvements in ASP.NET Core 7 (Brennan Conroy) - It's both impressive and inspiring to see so much improvement in performance in that next version.

• [Improving Your Desktop Applications—ToolTips in .NET MAUI](Leomaris Reyes ) (https://www.telerik.com/blogs/improving-desktop-applications-tooltips-dotnet-maui?utm_source=readingnotes) - Tooltips are now here!

• Personalize a static site based on a previous site referral (Salma Alam-Naylor) - This is a cool tutorial that explains how to leverage Netlify edge code to change a static website page base on where the visitor came from.

Miscellaneous

• Bicep for Real Site Launched (Sam Cogan) - Wonderful! The tutorial a was waiting for and it will be good because it's done by Sam.

~frank

Reading Notes #520

Good Monday, Already time to share new reading notes. 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!

 

Suggestion of the week

• How Cloudflare Broke My Build and How I Fixed It (Giorgi Dalakishvili) - Wow! That was a hard one. Like searching for a needle in a haystack. Those stories are incredibly useful as they teach how to investigate issues. Thank you so much for sharing it.

Cloud

• Create an App Service for Containers with Bicep (Sam Cogan) - This is a nice tutorial that shares the minimum requirements and the commands to create your next app.

• Securely connect to your Azure Linux Virtual Machine with Tailscale SSH (Paul Yu) - A very complete post that follows one of the many tutorials available in the Microsoft opensource repo. Very well detailed and explained.

Programming

• 18 Useful GitHub Repositories Every Developer Should Bookmark (Madza) - Nice list of great repositories indeed.

• Blazor Binding, Events and Parameters (Michael Washington) - A very complete tutorial that explains it all. The complexity of the example is incremental, meaning that if it's your first contact with Blazor the bites will be just the right size all along.

• Fluent UI Insights EP2: Styling (Paul Gildea) - Really interesting second episode of Fluent UI Insights. A series of video that explains the design decisions.

• Visual Studio Code's New Editor Sticky Scroll Feature - Never Get Lost In The Code Again! (Dotnetsafer) - At first, I thought this feature was like feeze pane and didn't understand the hype about it. But it is not! It is some kind of smart pane auto-scrolling. The frozen section display when the current scope is opened. It looks very useful

• Windows Package Manager 1.3 (Demitrius Nelon) - Very happy to see Winget getting more apps and new features.

Podcasts

• 316: Hosting Websites & Web Apps for Free (Merge Conflict) - Who doesn't like getting a free website? Learn more about the option available for you in this episode. And also, why you shouldn't operate your drone on water.
• Why the buddy system works... at work (Modern Mentor) - Love the idea of a buddy system. Simple and effective.
• Épisode 19 - Les Olympiques d'Hitler (Les Pires Moments de l'Histoire) - (In French) I love this podcast you learn stuff and for sure you will at least smile if not laugh.
• Daniel Roth: Blazor Futures - Episode 204 (Azure DevOps Podcast) - Perfect episode to learn what is currently in trial, plan to be and what will stay for sure in the next release.

Miscellaneous

• You will not do it later (most likely) - I'm a procrastinator, I know (Keff) - So true! The do-it-now approach seems too simplistic to be true but is a real change to accomplish on a regular basis. Any tips?

~frank

Reading Notes #513

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!

The suggestion of the week

• Deploy Azure Static Web Apps With Bicep | LINQ to Fail (Aaron Powell) - Great tutorial that explains how to build a well-structured deployment pipeline using bicep and GitHub action. I will need this for sure, bookmarked.

Cloud

• Azure Container Hosting Demystified - 2022 Edition (Sam Cogan) - Great post that lists all Azure services that use containers, with their pros and cons.

• Building Messaging Endpoints in Azure: Container Apps (Jimmy Bogard) - This excellent tutorial shows all the steps from code to deployment.

Programming

• The Best C# .NET Web Application Tech Stack: Choosing The Front End (Michael Shpilt) - Nice post that describes all C# frontends with their pros and cons.

• ApiController Attribute in ASP.NET Core Web API (Code Maze) - This post contained many best practices and detailed explanations to get a great API and make sure the user experience is the best possible.

• Continuous Integration Vs. Continuous Delivery: Know the Differences & Draw a Line (Hiren Dhaduk) - This post is very interesting as it describes both parts of the flow, and lists the benefices and challenges.

• Incremental ASP.NET Migration Tooling Preview 2 (Mike Rousos) - The second preview already! Things are looking good...

• Understanding your middleware pipeline in .NET 6 with the Middleware Analysis package (Andrew Lock) - This post introduces a nice package to have better visibility into our code. Nice.

Miscellaneous

• New Resources to Get Started with .NET MAUI - .NET Blog (Matt Soucoup) - Are you planning to learn something new this summer? I suggest you .NET MAUI, to build an application that can go everywhere. This post shares tons of references to get you started.

• Why Microsoft Measures Employee Thriving, Not Engagement (Dawn Klinghoffer, Elizabeth McCune) - Interesting article.

~frank

Reading Notes #503

It's Monday, time to 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.

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

Cloud

• Quickstart: Container Apps using Bicep (Jason Haley) - Nice tutorial to get started with bicep and Azure Container Apps.

• Azure SDK Release (April 2022) - Always good to know what is updated. Did you know the team also maintains slides for you?

• Configure Azure Cosmos DB Continuous Backups (Rajendra Gupta) - Backup can be so powerful! You could return in time just before an error to understand what happens... Or so many other scenarios.

• Quickstart: Deploy an existing container image to Container Apps using Bicep (Jason Haley) - Great tutorial

• Unlock cloud savings on the fly with autoscale on Azure | Azure Blog and Updates | Microsoft Azure (Diana Gao) - This is the perfect post to get started with autoscaling. Witch services what can you expect and more.

Programming

• Announcing Docker SBOM: A step towards more visibility into Docker images (Justin Cormack) - Oh, that's pretty cool! Easy to try. Give it a shot!

• How To Run PowerShell Scripts (Brien Posey) - A script can be frightening at first, but this nice post will help you to understand them better. Perfect for less technical people.

• Introducing Qodana for Azure Pipelines (Anastasia Khramushina) - Qodana is can analyze your code in CICD on many platforms, and now also in the Azure DevOps.

• Uploading Files with HttpClient in .NET 6 (Calvin) - Nice tutorial to upload a file all the code is there.

~Frank

Reading Notes #501

Another Monday, another Reading Notes. 😀

It's been five hundred weeks, this is more than nine years! Who knew I will keep doing that for so long... 

If you are new around here, welcome, The Reading Notes 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.

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

Cloud

• Bicep Access policies and Managed Identity (Gregor Suttie) - This is a nice post that connects docs pages and different blog posts and information so we have the big picture.

• Cloud-Native Application Security (Samir Behara) - This post is listing so many best practices, patterns, and anti-patterns, it is a must for any "cloud-native people".

Programming

• Get started faster with the new 5-minute Quickstarts (Hannah Hunter & Nick Greenfield) - A short post that shares a few quickstart tips and examples.

• Compare Arrays in C# (Code Maze) - Great post that explains some subtleties in the comparison operators.

• Connecting a .NET Application with MongoDB Atlas (Assis Zang) - Great tutorial to setup a .NET 6 web app to connect to an existing MongoDB database.

• Microsoft Won't Do Drag-and-Drop for Blazor (David Ramel) - A very interesting post about the reasons that leaned Blazor developers team to let go of that feature.

• Run Custom Scripts In Docker With Arguments - ENTRYPOINT Vs CMD (devopscube) - A nice post. Did you know the difference? I didn't.

• Visual Studio Code March 2022 (VS Code team) - New commands, new features, new experiences everything is explained in this one post.

Miscellaneous

• Missing Insights from the Virtual Water Cooler (Modern Mentor) - There are smarts way to get the human interaction that we crave these days.
• Greg on The Genius of Routine (What's Essential) - Habits are very powerful tools in our toolbox for so many things... It's worth learning more about it.
• Short-Season Podcast: Is It Worth Your Time And Effort? (Feed Your Brand) - Seasons are everywhere, but does it applies to everything? This episode discusses the pros and cons.

Miscellaneous

• "New Boards Hub" Public Preview - Azure DevOps Blog (Dan Hellem) - Boards are so useful to visualize information quickly. Flip that preview switches on to give it a try.

~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 #472

Cloud

• Announcing NubesGen, an Open Source tool to automate Azure deployments (Julien Dubois) - A very interesting project use can use it participate and learn.
• Azure Bicep Refreshed (Justin Yoo) - Infrastructure As Code with Bicep. It looks great.
• Effective ways to delete resources in a resource group on Azure in 2021 ( Stephane Lapointe) - Nice post that shows us how to be smarter even when we delete resources.
• Getting Started with Azure Web PubSub Service (Abhijit Jana) - This is a great new service and the cherry on the top... It's fully managed!
• What’s the most configurable Kubernetes service in the cloud? Does it matter? (Richard Seroter) - Interesting post that compares the configuration options of the different service providers. From my point of view (code focus), it's not who has the more options that are the more appealing. It's Who let me go with the fewer click with a good setup.

Programming

• Build and ship software better with GitHub and Microsoft Teams (Teams team) - I installed the app with pure curiosity, but I kept it because it is useful. I'm happy to see those new features.
• 10 Reasons to Attend DockerCon LIVE 2021 - Docker Blog (David Oro) - It's coming soon...
• Blazor - Component Mockup Library (Cody Merritt Anhorn) - Anice tutorial that explains how to get started with this lib.
• Securing an ASP.NET Core app and web API using windows authentication (Damien Bowden) - Nice tutorial with tons of code snippets.
• tabs ↹ over ␣ ␣ ␣ spaces (Jiri Cincura) - Experimenting is still one of the best ways to learn things. Just like in this post.

Podcasts

• Designing the Future with Brian Collins (A Bit of Optimism) - Great episode, very inspiring. How as more experienced humans can we help the younger ones to build a better future... And learn in the process.
• Use Storytelling to Get Ahead at Work (Modern Mentor) - Storytelling is important and this episode help to get started. Because the best stories are not improvised.
• Épisode 93 - Quand la santé tourne à l’obsession (Grand écart) - In French, with so many people that run... We need to stay focus and do it for the good reason. It an eye-opening episode.
• Hello World: April 22, 2021 - Special Hello Earth! (Hello World) - Shameless plug... Hello World is now available in Podcast!
• 252: Linux GUI Apps on Windows - WSLg (Merge Conflict) - I was happy when I saw the news about the WSL GUI Apps announcement, but didn't have the time to try anything. In this episode, Frank and James ask all the good questions and provide so many answers. Awesome.
• SPI 482: The 3-Second Rule That You Need to Know (The Smart Passive Income Online Business and Blogging Podcast) - Getting out of our comfort zone is hard. And introducing ourselves could be so challenging. I love the idea of that tips.
• Leadership, Radical Delegation, And Integrated Problem Solving with Admiral John Richardson (The Idealcast with Gene Kim by IT Revolution) - Interesting episode. The first thought was if the military can review their approach, everyone can. Great lesson.

Miscellaneous

• 10 Best Visual Studio Code Extensions for Increased Productivity (Dirk Strauss) - This post is so much more than a list of 10extensions...It explains some differences between Visual Studio and VS Code, and shares those extensions, and explains why there are so amazing.

~frank

Reading Notes #469

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!

Cloud

• Deploying an Azure Function App with Bicep (Mark Heath) - A nice example of a bicep script with a few resources. Not too many so it is complicated but enough to cover some particularities.

Programming

• ASP.NET Core User Secrets and Secret Manager Tool (Steve Gordon) - Its hard to explain secret or invisible things, but this post does a really good job.

• Blazor Power BI Paginated Reports (Michael Washington) - Ooooh It's been a moment since I play with my friend PowerBi... This is very interesting. I just needed a project with data... That shouldn't be that hard to find, right?

• Microsoft Graph Fundamentals learning path – Module 1 (Luise Freese) - Wonderful! Does this learning path as been created just for me? Perfect timing.

• Windows Containers on Windows 10 without Docker (using Containerd) · James Sturtevant (James Sturtevant) - Interesting container project.

Books

Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know 

Author: Adam M. Grant

- I really like this book. It validates that it's okay to rethink decisions, to change your mind. The goal is to have (and keep) an open mindset. It seems easier than it is, of course. I heard amazing comments about this author, so it's probably not the last one I will read from him.

Miscellaneous

• GraphQL Editor - new release v. 4.5 (Tomek Poniatowicz) - I didn't know that tool, but now I really need to look at it; it seems awesome.

~ Frank

Reading Notes #468

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!

Cloud

• Bicep - Why do we need yet another way to deploy stuff in Azure? (Mark Heath) - I still didn't play with bicep, but really looking forward to it. This post just made me even more excited about finally trying g it.

• Why won't you load my configuration Azure Functions? (Adam Storr) - Yes, it can definitely be a little confusing at the beginning, but that way is the secure way.

• Common Misconception #2 – Serverless is good for APIs (Jason Farrell) - Interesting post about lamda and serverless in general.

Programming

• How to make Command Prompt, PowerShell, or any Shell launch from the Start Menu directly into Windows Terminal (Scott Hanselman) - This is just what I was looking for amazing... And so simple!

• Monitoring and Observability in Cloud-Native ASP.NET Core apps | ASP.NET Blog (Nish Anil) - Nice post about this misunderstood topic. There are good examples and references to it. Excellent pairing it Scott Hanselman podcast episode with Tori Wieldt.

• The Windows Terminal made better with the Command Palette plus Multiple Actions in one Command (Scott Hanselman) - Wow, okay this is super cool and even more useful... Let's get started!

• Who Is Responsible For Building Tests? - Redgate Software (Grant Fritchey) - That's an excellent question! What's your answer?

Miscellaneous

• Add Developer PowerShell and Developer Command Prompt for Visual Studio to Windows Terminal (Luise) - Del

• What shall I use for managing tasks? Email? Outlook Tasks? Planner? To Do or even OneNote? (Luise) - Still, using pen and paper and thinking to move digital? This post is for you.

~Frank

Reading Notes #442

Cloud

• ASP.NET Core Configuration – Azure Key Vault (Vladimir Pecanac) - A nice tutorial that shows how to setup our keyvaul. All the commands and code snippets are there to help.

• Azure SDK Release (September 2020) | Azure SDK Blog (Jon Gallant) - Super SDK update...

• Introducing the new Azure Tables Client Libraries | Azure SDK Blog (Christopher Scott) - Storage is everywhere, this post is an excellent starting point to benefits of how the new SDKs can help us.

• Project Bicep Sneak Peek (Justin Yoo) - Very interesting new project from the ARM team. I really need to try it.

Programming

• Dependency Injection with Azure Functions (Joseph Guadagno) - Interesting code perspective on the AzFunctions.

• Azure Container Instances - Docker integration now in Docker Desktop stable release (MacKenzie Olson) - Learn more about this really useful integration in this post.

• Creating a Progressive Web App with Blazor WebAssembly -- Visual Studio Magazine (Peter Vogel) - A really cool idea, not perfect but pretty fun.

• Introduction à Bicep (Lucas de Carli) - A nice FRENCH post that gives us an introduction of Bicep and where it comes from.

• Making Scott Hanselman's Powerpoint Greenscreen trick work with RevealJS via Blazor Server (Jon Hilton) - Really cool post that shows the magic of another presentation tool.

• Starting to Use Git Hooks With a Team - Redgate Software (Grant Fritchey) - Interesting uses of the hook.nice.

• The First Blazor Dock Manager (Brian Lagunas) - Nice demo/ tutorial of the new dock manager with Blazor.The pretty cool component in this suite.

• VSCode Tips for Power Users (Boris Yordanov) - Because there is always something new that we can learn about this amazing tool.