Reading Notes #644

This post gathers my recent reading notes on artificial intelligence, programming, and a few inspiring podcasts. It includes links to articles, tutorials, and fascinating discussions. Whether you're interested in the latest AI developments, .NET tools, or modern architectures, there's plenty here to spark your curiosity. 

Happy reading!

AI

• Microsoft Copilot in Azure is now generally available | Microsoft Community Hub (Ruhiyyih Mahalati) - Oh wow! That was fast! If you haven't tried it yet, you should it's extremely useful and quick. Ask something about your resources or services you would like to use.

• Build a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server in C# - .NET Blog (James Montemagno) - A nice tutorial about the MCP server and how to use one in VSCode

Programming

• Generating architecture diagrams from .NET Aspire resources at publish time (Anthony Simmon) - This is one new feature that will be so useful. How many times did I need to refer to a diagram that was outdated.

• Exploring new .NET releases with Dev Containers - .NET Blog (Mike Kistler) - Really cool trick shared in this post. Yes, trying the new version in a container but how that container is build; that's cool!

• .NET Aspire 9.2 is Now Available with New Ways to Deploy - .NET Blog (Jeffrey Fritz) - This week was the release of Aspire new version, and it's packed with many features. The launch party video is also very interesting.

• Aspire: A Platform for Reusable Infrastructure (David Fowler) - For once, I think Aspire is the perfect name because it's inspiring.

• How we ended up rewriting NuGet Restore in .NET 9 - .NET Blog (The NuGet Team) - A very interesting article that explains how a tool that all .NET developers use got rewritten

• Porting Code with LLMs (Mark Heath) - It's always interesting to see how people use AI to help them do their work. Love it!

Podcasts

• Per Kops: Architecture of Ollama and Local LLMs - Episode 342 (Azure & DevOps Podcast) - An interesting discussion about Olama (local LLMs), .NET architecture, and Semantic Kernel.

• Vertical Slice Architecture with Jeremy Miller (.NET Rocks!) - This episode is about Vertical Slice Architecture, what it is, when it makes sense to use it, and some comparisons with the others that we know.

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 #640

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! 

Cloud

• Azure Developer CLI (azd) - March 2025 - The azd CLI just got better, with some new features, improved error messages, and of course bug fixes. Don't forget to update your version.

• Dapr in Two Minutes: Simplifying Distributed Application Development (Whitney Lee) - A great explanation of Dapr. Spoiler, it's a great tool.

AI

• .NET AI Template Now Available in Preview (Jordan Matthiesen) - .NET new AI stuff, I love it! You can add new templates for you 'dotnet new' to get AI project!

Programming

• .NET Aspire and Dev Container (Laurent Kempé) - DevContainers are really a game changer. You don't have to be a container guru to use it, and it will make a dev environment constant everywhere on any device.

• A 10x Faster TypeScript - TypeScript (Anders Hejlsberg) - Very impressive results. The video is great.

• .NET Aspirations - Embracing OpenTelemetry (Alexandre Nédélec) - This nice post explains how the open telemetry is set in .Net Aspire Dashboard.

~frank

Reading Notes #616

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!

 

Cloud

• Static Sites on Azure Storage vs Azure Static Web Apps (John Kilmister) - Yes both options are available.Do you know the differences?

Programming

• Easier to fix async exceptions (Mark Downie) - Debugging Asynchronous code as been always more complicated, looking forward to seeing (and using) that new capability in .NET 9.

• Simplify development with Dev Container templates for Azure SQL Database (Carlos Robles) - I love that! Instead or having multiple containers (database, dev environment) we can now have only one. No special configuration, faster into the code.

• The 3 Most Common Security Mistakes Developers Make () - This is an interesting post that shares popular mistakes yes but also some better practices accessible to all.

• How to make your web page faster before it even loads (Salma Alam-Naylor) - To make sure our users have he best experience possible it important to fine-tune some little details. This post goes deep and explains them very well.

Miscellaneous

• How to save your online writing from disappearing forever ( Barbara Krasnoff) - A series of online tools that could keep copies of the blog post you put online.

~ 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 #573

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

• Should you use the .NET 8 Identity API endpoints? (Andrew Lock) - Things are changing in the upcoming .NET 8. Interesting post that shares thought about if those changes feels like moving forward or backward.

• Create a Multi-service Development Environment With VS Code and Docker (Bernd Bornhausen) - A nice tutorial that helps setting up a multi container dev environment with vscode .

• Blazor Plugin Architecture – How To Manage Dynamic Loading & Lifecycle (Nick Cosentino) - So much dynamic functionalities can be done. Nice how it works post.

• How IKEA Retail Standardizes Docker Images for Efficient Machine Learning Model Deployment (Karan Honavar, Fernando Dorado Rueda) - A very interesting and detailled article about Ikea's tech strategy.

Data

• Azure Data Studio 1.46 and New Features (Erin Stellato) - I love that tool! Its fast, customizable, and its avalaible across platform meaning I don't have to use different tools depending on the computer I'm working from.

Miscellaneous

• OpenAI releases third version of DALL-E (Emilia David) - Looking forward to try this new version.

~Enjoy!

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 #526

Good Monday, 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 Functions – 2022 update (Eamon O'Reilly) - So great to have news from the Azure Function team. Of course, I'm pretty happy about v4 isolated and the .NET updates but there is so much more.

• Introducing the Azure Static Website Component (Sean Holung) - This is a nice tutorial that shows how to deploy a static web app using Pulumi.

Programming

• How to get ready for Hacktoberfest 2022 (Michelle Mannering ) - Oh boy, we are already mid-October and I just realized that... Did you jump on?

• ASP.NET Core - Why async await is useful (Steven Giesel) - Ah ha! Learn the real reason... A nice quick post that explains it all.

• DevContainers for Azure and .NET (Justin Yoo) - Dev Containers are so great. This post explains how they work, and lists many components to customize them. Here it's about .NET but all languages are supported.

• How to generate header images for blogs and ASP.NET Core (Thomas Ardal) - Nice tools to simply create custom images.

Podcast

• Securing Containers, First Steps in Docker and Kubernetes (DevOps and Docker Talk) - Because security is an important topic, this episode is worth your time.

• C64 OS - A new operating system for the Commodore 64 with Gregory Naçu (Hanselminutes with Scott Hanselman) - A new OS for the old C64? Yes, and it's open source... How cool is that?!

Miscellaneous

• Should we hire junior developer advocates? (Rizèl Scarlett) - Great post, I was already on the yes team but it is worth reading in you are not sure.

~Frank

Reading Notes #498

Good Monday, Already time to share my reading notes of the week. A list of all the articles, blog posts, that catch my interest during the week.

You think you may have interesting content, share it!

Cloud

• Tutorial: Using Azure Table Storage or Azure Cosmos DB with Microsoft Orleans (Nick) - A nice tutorial from a series this one focusing on Storage locally using Azurite.

Programming

• The Ultimate Web Dev Environment (Aaron Powell) - Extremely complete post that shows so many little details and how to make them work together.

• Containers on Azure App Service - Tips & Tricks - Philly.NET CodeCamp 2022 recording (Guy Barrette) - A cool video from my friend Guy sharing some tips and tricks. There is stuff to learn for everyone.

• Negative Space Scheduling (Oren Eini) - Very cool real-life scenario. So true! If you ever have worked on a scheduler, you know.

• vscode.dev Visual Studio Code for the Web (Chris Dias) - There was already some kind of flavor of vscode with the dev.github.com, but there is something amazing about the standalone version. Brilliant!

Miscellaneous

• 5 Tips on Managing a Remote-first Development Team (Marcelo Wiermann) - As all of us have been working remotely for a while, it's a good moment to remember how communication is important and understand that in a more normal situation being remote can be good.

• Maximizing 1on1 time with your manager (Mark Downie) - I love that. It is definitely a good plan.

~frank

Reading Notes #465

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

• Announcing Az Predictor preview 2 (Damien Caro) - Already preview 2 it looks so great.

• Ask About Azure: Why do resource groups need a location? | Dave Brock (Dave Brock) - Brilliant! This question is asked so many times, and the answer is perfect.

• Azure Communications Voice Calling QuickStart (Dan Wahlin) - Wonderful solution and I know some dev who is now very happy that they now have this tool.

• Azure REST API through Logic App (Brad Watts) - I love Logic Apps I think it's a tool that is overviewed by too many. Great post.

• Penny Pinching in the Cloud: Azure Static Web Apps are saving me money (Scott Hanselman) - Azure static web app for the win! Seriously they are amazing I use them a lot. It's still in preview. But all good.

Programming

• Easily nuke secrets from your Git history | Dominique St-Amand (Dominique St-Amand) - Interesting post going deep into Git spelunking artifact from our history.

• Installing Docker Desktop for Windows and WSL 2 (Andrew Lock) - This post guides ys in the installations of WLS2 with Docker on Windows. It is now kind of simple... But a lot of us are still afraid. We shouldn't, give it a try!

• Your Open Source Project Needs a devcontainer - Here's Why | LINQ to Fail (Aaron Powell) - The dev container tools are pure madness. BUT on the positive side. It is incredibly useful and easy to use. Pair with Codespace its magic. I'm looking forward to seeing the public release.

Miscellaneous

• How to: Deploy GitHub Pages on a Schedule to Publish Future Posts (Sean Killeen) - Omg! So simple. A wonderful post. Thank you so much for this.

~Frank