Reading Notes #630

This week, ReadingNotes shares some insightful blog posts that caught my attention. From embracing a positive mindset and integrating local AI models with .NET Aspire, to leveraging Docker for cloud-native development and exploring AI-powered Blazor Kanban, there's plenty to dive into. Happy reading!

Programming

• Beyond Containers: Unveiling the Full Potential of Docker for Cloud-Native Development (Giri Sreenivas) - Docker is known for revolutionizing container tools, but it is more than that. This post covers all of Docker's capabilities.
  
  
  

AI

• Using Local AI models with .NET Aspire (Aaron Powell) - This new integration with Ollama in .NET Aspire is super useful and simple.

• AI-Powered Blazor Kanban: Integration with Microsoft Extension Packages (Arun Kumar Ragu) - I'm always intrigued to see how other dev uses AI in their app, and this post is a treat! All the code is there with explanations.

LowCode

• Friday Fact: You need to be logged in to open a workflow in Logic App Standard Designer inside Visual Studio Code (Sandro Pereira) - This is a nice tip that will definitely improve the experience of many. I forgot there was an extension in VSCode and have been going to the portal. I'll have to try it out.

Miscellaneous

• This Is The Most Fun Way To Make Your Life Awesome (Eric Barker) - From time to time, I feel like I'm seeing the glass half empty. This post shares ways to see it half full instead.

• How making an impulsive purchase made me realise I haven’t been OK since my dad died (Salma Alam-Naylor) - Salma is a great content creator and a very smart woman. And an example of determination.

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 

~Frank

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 #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 #627

This week, I stumbled upon some fascinating reads. From the announcement of .NET 9 and its incredible versatility to an intriguing new type of failover for Azure Storage, there's plenty to explore. Discover how to get .NET 9 running on your Raspberry Pi, check out the latest Blazorise update, and delve into the power of GitHub Models in .NET with Semantic Kernel. Plus, don't miss out on the introduction of GitHub Copilot for Azure and a new season of AI-related sessions in Visual Studio. And for my fellow open-source enthusiasts, the .NET Aspire Community Toolkit is a game-changer. 

Dive in and let's geek out together! 🌟

Suggestion of the week

• Announcing .NET 9 - .NET Blog (.NET Team) - You can build anything with C# (aka .NET) and I love it! With runs everywhere, it's open source, it's fast and free!

Cloud

• WTH is Planned Failover for Azure Storage? (Sam Cogan) - Interesting new type of fail over that could help to practice without losing any data.

Programming

• Install and use Microsoft Dot NET 9 with the Raspberry Pi (Pete Codes) - C# everywhere! I love it! I do have some code that run on a Pi as a mini server, bubi need to have a look for a IoT library that could be used.

• Blazorise v1.7 (Mladen Macanović) - New version of a nice looking CSS Framework for our Blazor website with more features and better performance.

AI

• Unlocking the Power of GitHub Models in .NET with Semantic Kernel - .NET Blog (Bruno Capuano) - Super cool, very quick to setup, secure, and perfect why we are "just" developing.

• Introducing GitHub Copilot for Azure (Chris Harris) - After trying it, I can tell that it is pretty amazing! It's like have someone else besides you with the Azure portal answering all you're questions.

• Learn how to create a Client-Server Application in under 45 Minutes in the new Season of AI - Visual Studio Blog (Pablo Lopez) - A lot of AI related session are coming up, it's time to register.

Data

• Integrating .NET Aspire With Azure Storage (Fiodar Sazanavets) - Nice wait to have an emulator for local work. I will have to check this as I'm using Azure table storage in many of my projects.

Open Source

• Introducing the .NET Aspire Community Toolkit - .NET Blog (Aaron Powell) - Very happy (and proud) about this OSS project. .NET Aspire makes things so much easier for developers. And now we can simply add more types of integration thanks to the CF.

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 #626

Kick off your week with this curated list of must-read tech articles. From .NET modernisation patterns and new C# 13 LINQ methods to open-source contributions and thought-provoking reads, there's plenty to explore. 

Enjoy!

Programming

• Microsoft Introduces Modern Web App Pattern for .NET: Accelerating App Modernization to the Cloud (Almir Vuk) - This is a nice post that overviews pattern that Microsoft suggest to use.

• New LINQ methods in C# 13: Index, CountBy, AggregateBy (Tim Deschryver) - Simple and efficient post that shows new command coming up in C#13.

• The Legacy Coder's Guide to .NET Conf 2024 (DeeDee Walsh) - .Net Conf is coming up and how doesn't like some suggestions about wish sessions? This will be a great event for new and experienced developers.

• .NET Upgrade Assistant Now Supports Upgrading to Centralized Package Mangement (McKenna Barlow) - Cool tool that become even better I just wish you had an option to run it from let's say Linux

Open-Source

• .NET MAUI Welcomes Syncfusion Open-source Contributions (David Ortinau) - This is a really exciting news! Very happy to see a great company like Syncfusion investing in Open source like this.

Miscellaneous

• Why Don’t You Fucking Retire Already? (James Whittaker) - Food for thoughts no doubt. It's still a delight to read you sir Whittaker.

• Microsoft Tech Community: Upgrade complete (Allie Thompson) - It was time. I didn't dig too much and looking forward to experience the new features as a writer but also as a reader.

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 #625

Welcome to another edition of Reading Notes! This week, dive into the latest updates on Azure DevOps, Docker best practices, System.Text.Json enhancements in .NET 9, AI innovations from GitHub Universe, and more. 

Enjoy your reading!

Cloud

• Using Entra profile information in Azure DevOps (Andrew Brenner) - This is nice, I will save us to re-enter information and should make more profile more complete at the same time.

Programming

• Docker Best Practices: Using ARG and ENV in Your Dockerfiles (Jay Schmidt) - A nice post that improve how we are using Arg by going through a few examples.

• What's new in System.Text.Json in .NET 9 (Eirik Tsarpalis) - This is a nice post that explains with code sample the new features.

AI

• GitHub Spark (Devon Rifkin, Terkel Gjervig Nielsen, Cole Bemis, Alice Li) - Fascinating news from GitHub Universe. A new spin on the lowcode app but with code. Looking forward to trying it and see what I can build with it.

• GitHub Copilot in Windows Terminal (Christopher Nguyen) - There it is, Copilot making his entrance into our beloved Terminal. It's only in version Canary for now, but I'm sure it will help many of us when no sure what command to use, or the equivalent bash/ PowerShell.

Miscellaneous

• Releasing WinAmp source goes badly for its owners, anyway (Liam Proven) - A true story that looks unreal. It's a bit sad that this OSS opportunity was missed.

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 #624

Dive into this week's fascinating mix of tech insights, troubleshooting tales, and productivity tips. From the latest in Azure Dev tools to real-world debugging adventures and cutting-edge .NET innovations, there's something for everyone.

Happy reading!

Cloud

• Azure Developer CLI (azd) – October 2024 (Grace Kulin) - Quick post to share about the most recent features like customizing our API version when deploying our containers.

Programming

• Webcam randomly pausing in OBS, Discord, and websites - LSVCam and TikTok Studio (Scott Hanselman) - Weird technical issues are so unpleasant and it's worse when I imply an external devices.Is it a driver, the cable, some software.. In this post Scott shares about how he investigated and found a workaround.

• 3 more productivity tips for .NET developers (mtmattei) - Interesting tips to be and stay productive by different people.

• How we build GitHub Copilot into Visual Studio (Anson Horton) - It is so interesting to read how things happens and the different interactions. If you use vs code or Visual Studio, you should read this article.

• Introducing the New .NET MAUI Kanban Board (Saravanan Madheswaran) - I'm always impressed when I see components build be third parties. The quality, the customization, the look... It's a lot of work make one in your app with half the features; wow.

Podcast

• Microsoft Playwright Testing with Debbie O'Brien (.NET Rocks!) - Great tool to help making tests on our websites. It's open source and now support .NET.

• Inspektor Gadget (DevOps and Docker Talk: Cloud Native Interviews and Tooling) - THe first time I heard about Inspektor Gadget was in an episode of Open at Microsoft. I don't use much Kubernetes, but that will be part of my toolbox when I do. Great security, troubleshooting, and observability utility.

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 #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 #622

Welcome to this week’s reading notes! In this post, you’ll find a curated selection of insightful articles and tutorials covering various topics in technology and programming. Whether you’re looking to enhance your testing skills with .NET Aspire, improve your code comprehension with GitHub Copilot, or explore the world of Docker for DevOps, there’s something here for everyone. Dive in and enjoy these valuable resources!

If you have interesting content, share it!

Suggestion of the week

• Getting started with testing and .NET Aspire (Aaron Powell) - This is a great tutorial, with a video version if you prefer, to get us started with test when .NET Aspire is part obor solution.

Cloud

• Enhancing Code Comprehension: GitHub Copilot’s Features in Visual Studio 2022 17.11 (Rhea Patel) - This post is a must for all developers. Copilot becomes so much more efficient with those little tips don't miss it.

• How to use Azure Policy to enforce resource naming conventions in your DevOps pipelines (Luise Freese) - Naming is for sure not the most exciting topic,but it is the key to an healthy cloud subscription. Don't miss this post that shares a good way to keep consistent names.

Programming

• Exploring Docker for DevOps: What It Is and How It Works (Todd R. Weiss) - This is a nice post to learn more about Docker and how /why it could be used to improve the DevOps processes.

• .NET Aspire for Data Chatting (Tommaso Stocchi) - Super cool project to query our database without knowing SQL.

LowCode

• How to rotate secrets with Azure Logic Apps, Key Vault and Managed Identity (Luise Freese) - Cool idea o automation to do a important but boring task. And it doesn't required code!

Miscellaneous

• Hosting a (DevOpsDays) Tech Conference (Dewan Ahmed) - I went to this even and you could feel it was prepared with patio and care. It very interesting to learn about the behind the scene and all the work put both before and after.DevOpsDay Halifax you won my heart.

~ Frank

Reading Notes #620

It's Reading Notes time and this week we learn how to improve our experience and security while using AI and containers

 a zip line spider?

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.

Cloud

• Securely Connecting Azure Container Apps to Azure OpenAI Using User Managed Identity (Yoshio Terada) - This is a nice and detailed guide that explains step by step how to leverage manage identity in Azure Container App and stay secure.

AI

• Avoid These 5 Common AI Project Mistakes for Success (Narcosa Admin) - AI is a great tool and with it's new easy accessibility more are integrating it into there services, This post shares tips to give you more chance of success.

• 7 Best Practices for Using GitHub Copilot (Visual Studio Code team) - AI is a great tool, but to enjoy it as much as possible there are a few things we can do, This post shares those tips that could make the differences.

Programming

• Docker for Web Developers: Getting Started with the Basics (Todd R, Weiss) - This is a very well written introduction to container and Docker, From the why should we care to running our first container,

• Building a GraphQL Client in ,NET with JetBrains Rider and StrawberryShake (Maarten Balliauw) - This is a nice post to get started with GraphQL, There is example an many references.

• Improving GitHub Copilot Completions in Visual Studio for C# Developers (Mika Dumont) - Great news! The Semantic Kernel files are now part of the context for Copilot, This improves the experience for the C# developers.

~Frank

Reading Notes #618

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!

Programming

• Announcing .NET Aspire 8.2 – Goodbye Components, Hello Integrations! (Maddy Montaquila) - New release, new name, new functionalities, and one documented breaking change. All in this post.

• C# Dev Kit update brings enhanced Razor IntelliSense, Project Status, and New Config Options (Wendy Breiding) - Wow so many great improvements! I can't wait to enable the experimental ones and open my vsCode again.

• Working with tar files in .NET 8 (Andrew Lock) - A nice post that explored and show what we can to do with tarbal from .NEt and explains some of the limitations.

• Blazor Basics: Testing Blazor Components with BUnit (Claudio Bernasconi) - We all agree that tests are important (or we should). bUnit is specially build for Blazor Applications. If you are using this web frontend you should definitely have a look!This post helps you getting started.

Miscellaneous

• If you’re going to block your time, do this, too (Michael Eaton) - Simple and efficient time blocking is a great way to be productive.

~frank

Reading Notes #617

Less posts and articles this week, I was devouring books! I guess a special "book edition" of the Reading Notes should be coming soon... 

If you are new on this blog, welcome! The reading notes post 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

• Containerising Azure Functions without Dockerfile (Justin Yoo) - Cool post that shares while providing all the required code two way to create containerized .NET Azure Function.

Programming

• The Singleton Pattern in C# Today Is Not Your Dad's One! (Metalama Team) - Learn more about one of the oldest pattern, how it was, how it evolved.

• What Is OpenTelemetry? The Ultimate Guide (B. Cameron Gain) - Learn more about what is,why it's useful, what are the golden points in the nice post.

• Asynchronous HTTP APIs with Azure Container Apps jobs (Anthony Chu) - This is a great post. it explains the long process async pattern and provides the code to so it can be implemented with Azure container app.

Podcasts

• Debug Containers with Mintoolkit (DevOps and Docker Talk: Cloud Native Interviews and Tooling) - Great episode about the intricacy of debugging containers and a tool mintoolkit,before knows as DockerSlim, that could really simplify things for us.

• Fine tuning Products with Stanza System's Stacie Frederick (Hanselminutes with Scott Hanselman) - Do we really need to have that automatic build and deployment x time by week, or day? Are far should we go? Are we trying to solve a real problem or just find a solution we think we need. Great episode that will help you answering those questions.

• Better ways to have tricky conversations at work (Modern Mentor) - It's been many stories I heard from people who quit their job before even talking to their manager... This short episode will provides you a few tips to get more prepare and try different alternative.

~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 #615

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.

Back from a two weeks time off it was nice to get back into tech read.

You also read something you liked? Share it!

Cloud

• Azure Developer CLI (azd) – August 2024 (Grace Kulin) - Wow so many new features (many security related) and tons of new templates.

Programming

• Adding .NET Aspire to your existing .NET apps (Jon Galloway) - This great post explains step by step how to add .NET Aspire to your existing app, saying what you gain and how it's helping you to be faster at buildinba better application.

• Bring your AI Copilots to the edge with Phi-3 and Semantic Kernel (Arafat Tehsin) - First post of a very interesting and promising series to build our own local only AI app.

• Combining multiple docker images into a multi-arch image (Andrew Lock) - Another great article from Andrew that explains very clearly a Docker feature: generate multiple image under the same ta to target different OS and infrastructure (ex: x64,arm32)

• Logging in Banana Cake Pop (Pascal Senn) - What a amazing new feature! This will greatly improve development and debugging productivity!

• An Absolute Beginner's Guide to LangGraph.js (Anchit) - A great tutorial that requires not API key and provides detailed steps to learn using Node how to use AI.

• The ultimate guide to developer happiness (Jeimy Ruiz) - Many great tools and solution within GitHub "circle". This post provides best practices to improve developers productivity and announces when the next GitHub Universe is coming up.

• Different Containerising Options for .NET Developers (Justin Yoo) - So many options! The classic one with all the Docker command or the some more embedded... Your choice!

~frank

Reading Notes #614

In this edition of Reading Notes, we delve into a diverse range of programming topics, from stream manipulation in C# to the latest updates in Docker Desktop. Whether you’re interested in adding AI to your .NET apps or understanding the implications of .NET 6 reaching end-of-support, we’ve got you covered. 

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.

Programming

• How to Convert a Stream to a File in C# (Bozo Spoljaric) - Learn more about stream and file manipulation in this useful post.

• Add AI to Your .NET Apps Easily with Prompty (Bruno Capuano) - This is a nice tutorial to build an API using Semantic Kernel to communicate to Prompty and add AI to your project.

• .NET 6 will reach End of Support on November 12, 2024 (Rahul Bhandari) - NET 6 will be reaching end of support, okay but what does that means for you?This post covers it all.

• Disambiguating types with the same name with extern alias (Andrew Lock) - It's always a pleasure to read Andrew's post that goes deeper explains more complex scenarios.

• Docker Desktop 4.32: Beta Releases of Compose File Viewer, Terminal Shell Integration, and Volume Backups to Cloud Providers (Deanna Sparks) - Some great new features and improvement for this new update of Docker Desktop.

• How use a Blazor QuickGrid with GraphQL (Frank Boucher) - QuickGrid is an excellent component that came recently in Blazor. Optimized and compatible with tons of modern patterns to display,sort,filter our data.This post share a few o those things filling the grid with a GraphQL endpoint.

Miscellaneous

• What CrowdStrike teaches us about risks & resilience (Om Malik) - Nice post to learn more about that event,and understand the real risk.

~ Frank

Reading Notes #612

In this week’s Reading Notes, we explore cloud debugging, .NET Aspire, and more. Join us for insights, workshops, and podcasts covering a range of exciting topics! 🚀

 
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.

 

Cloud

• GalaSoft Laurent Bugnion (Laurent Bugnion) - Nice post debugging investigating a bug, that cannot be reproduce locally only in the cloud.... But with the right tools it's much easier.

Programming

• Let's Learn .NET Aspire - Start your cloud-native journey live! - .NET Blog (James Montemagno) - The .NET Aspire workshop is been deliver in many languages and available online. To learn what it is, when should we use it and how it works, join a live session or watch it on demand.

• Exploring docker compose watch in Visual Studio Code (Julie Lerman) - That looks fantastic! And thanks to Julia we will avoid a few gotchas.

• Simplify Your .NET Aspire Caching With Metalama (Metalama Team) - 2 great tools in synergy make the result so much better. This nice post is good to get us started on caching.

• Join Us for .NET Aspire Developers Day – Elevate Your Cloud Native Skills! - .NET Blog (Mehul Harry) - July 23 - Check the date there will be a .NET Aspire event with more advanced stuff like building custom components and more.

• Why and How to Execute GraphQL Queries in .NET (Frank Boucher) - Shameless plug... Did you know GraphQL could improve the performance of your application by avoiding over fetching?

• Apprendre .NET Aspire en français (Frank Boucher) - Another shameless plug for French content this time. I did a 1h45 long video where I explain the basic of .NET Aspire by doing a workshop and providing details.

Podcasts

• Martin Hinshelwood: Migration Azure DevOps Server to the Cloud - Episode 302 (Azure DevOps Podcast) - Interesting episode about migrations and how to approach them. Because so many stories start by a migration.
• GitHub Evolving with Damian Brady (.NET Rocks!) - Great episode to learn all things GitHub... and these days that mean a lot.
• 416: Going Light + How Spatial Video Really Works (Merge Conflict) - Great episode. Is going with two phone is going light however? Hhmmmm...
• Episode 287: Why You As A Developer Must Care About Managing Your APIs (Web Rush) - The 1M questions episode! Answers are optional because the fun is about being curious... right?
• Mitch Denny: .NET Aspire Architecture - Episode 304 (Azure DevOps Podcast) - Learn more about .NET Aspire what it is, because yes it's hard to explain, and what's the road map.
• How to finally have that dreaded conversation (Modern Mentor) - Yes it's hard, but pause, and do those talks.

Miscellaneous

• What is platform engineering? (Julia Kulla-Mader, Chuck Lantz) - Platform engineering is gaining in popularity, but what ibis really. This article gives a good explanation to start our learning journey.

Reading Notes #611

Welcome to this week’s edition of Reading Notes! In this roundup, we explore a variety of topics across cloud, programming, databases, and AI. From understanding Docker’s USER instruction to styling Blazor components with CSS, I’ve got you covered. Let’s dive in!

Suggestion of the week

• Understanding the Docker USER Instruction (Jay Schmidt) - A great post to that explains really clearly the basic usage of user when building our container. After reading this post you should feel confident to follow this best practices.

Cloud

• Azure Static Web Apps–SWA CLI behind the scenes (Bart Wullems) - Cool post to that quickly explains how the CLIworks and a few different tools.

Programming

• Blazor Basics: Styling Blazor Components with CSS (Claudio Bernasconi) - That will solve an issue I was having... Blazor for the win!

• Is Your ASP.NET Core Application Running In A Container? (Adam Storr) - Very neat tip to know when the App is or not in a container.

• Setting up NGINX load balancer for .NET WebApi (Oskar Dudycz) - Very well done tutorial to set a reverse proxy.

Databases

• Automating SQL Deployments using GitHub Actions - Part 2 (Eduardo Pivaral) - That's pretty neat. Of course, there is a SQL option but I never thought about it. Excellent idea to keep everything in one place with versions.

AI

• Updated Documentation for Semantic Kernel (Sophia Lagerkrans-Pandey) - Nice update in the documentation, new content new look.

~frank

Reading Notes #610

Happy Canada Day!
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

• Is .NET Aspire NuGet for Cloud Service Dependencies? (Phil Haack) - I like the comparison with NuGet. Using .NET Aspire in a project does indeed simplify a lot things. I'll be waiting for that follow up post.

Programming

• Dev Home Preview v0.15 Release (Kayla Cinnamon) - Cools news updates in Dev home.

• Announcing TypeScript 5.5 - TypeScript (Daniel Rosenwasser) - Really good news for the JavaScript developers. This post shares all the new features like ECMAScript, Set Methods support, and the performance improvement included in this release candidate of Typescript.

• Refactor your code with default lambda parameters - .NET Blog (David Pine) - A really good post, last of a series of four about new features of C# 12. I really like that new way to declare defaults I think it's much clearer.

• Blazor Basics: Dealing with Complex State Scenarios (Claudio Bernasconi) - Interesting package Fluxor that help managing states. The post also explains different pros and cons of methods to maintain states.

Databases

• What is SQL Injection in Cybersecurity? How to Prevent SQLi Attacks (Jen Swisher) - This post explains what are SQL injections and how they could affect our website. When I shares how to prevent those attack the post focuses on CMS like WordPress.

AI

• Mistral Introduces AI Code Generation Model Codestral (Daniel Dominguez) - On nice! A new model that specializes into code, and many languages on top of that.

~frank

Reading Notes #609

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

• It's Finally Possible To Hibernate Azure VMs (Sam Cogan) - This new feature must be such a relief for all the VM users. Make sure to read this post to know the requirements of the VM tone able to hibernate it.

• Enhancing Performance in Azure Container Apps (Cary Chai) - This post gives us an history of the different algorithm used in ACA but also explains briefly how does one works.

Programming

• Visual Studio 2022 - 17.10 Performance Enhancements - Visual Studio Blog (Ashok Kamath) - Impressive improvement going up to 50% in specific cases! Congratulations to the team,event the smaller speed improvement will be feel.

• Setting up NGINX load balancer for .NET WebApi (Oskar Dudycz) - Very well done tutorial to set a reverse proxy.

• What's new for the Microsoft Fluent UI Blazor library 4.8 (Vincent Baaij) - awesome update just before summer! (well, in the north hemisphere).

AI

• Using Phi-3 & C# with ONNX for text and vision samples - .NET Blog (Bruno Capuano) - Nice post that shows that when using great tools it can be really simple todo amazing things.

• I Will Fucking Piledrive You If You Mention AI Again — Ludicity - ChatGPT and other tools have an impact and it disturb the flow. Some embraces the change other don't like the change. Interesting post where the author shares his concerns.

~frank

Reading Notes #608

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

• Running a Playwright scheduled job with Azure Container Apps (Anthony Chu) - A very nice post about recording test session using azure container app. Good idea!

Programming

• The .NET MAUI Extension for Visual Studio Code is now Generally Available - .NET Blog (Maddy Montaquila) - Wow,already GA! Looking forward to try it on my Linux PC. This post shares all the features packed in this release, and there videos too.

• Introducing collection expressions in C#12: Behind the scenes of collection expressions - Part 1 (Andrew Lock) - First post of a series that goes deeper into c# comparing expressions, initialization, and what the compiler does.

• Making C# Simple with Fluent Techniques (Niraj Ranasinghe) - Nice post. I didn't realise that Fluent path was used in so many places. It makes it so cleaner when we can use it.

AI

• Visual Studio Code AI Toolkit: Run LLMs locally (Shreyan Fernandes) - It goes so fast! It used to be complicated to get AI and now we can get one locally directly from vs code... Quick post to get us started.

• Announcing the official OpenAI library for .NET - .NET Blog (.NET Team) - Yay! New version of the SDK.

Podcast

• 84. Comparing Terraform, Pulumi and Bicep: Infrastructure as code - with Sam Cogan (Betatalks the podcast) - Create episode with Sam. Really interesting to listen about those three IaC.

• Dan Garfield: GitOps with Kubernetes - Episode 298 (Azure DevOps Podcast) - Interesting episode about containers and deploying platforms, tools and so much more.

• Episode 1900 with Scott Hanselman! (.NET Rocks!) - Three of my favorite people in the word in a single episode! It was such a pleasure to listen pleasure to listen talk about all those little stories. Long live to .NET Rocks (and HanselMinutes)

Miscellaneous

• What's new in the Windows Subsystem for Linux in May 2024 (Craig Loewen) - Tons of experimental features are being move to regular ones, and more are coming up to manage our distro, improve security and more.

• 8 Learning Paths for Beginners on GitHub (Cynthia Zanoni) - Wow! so many very cool learning Path to get started with anything you can think about it. I may do one or two just to refresh my knowledge.

~ Frank