Reading Notes #318 - MVP Summit 2018

Last week, it was the 25 edition of the MVP Summit. An event, where Microsoft invites all his MVP to get to Seattle and spend some time with the products teams and learn on the latest news and best practices.

This year was particularly inspiriting by the Microsoft roadmap, of course,  but even more by all the amazing people a got the chance to meet and discuss with. I'm all pump-up, and I have tons of ideas and projects… more to come.

I already miss you…

Cloud

• Deploy Docker containers fast to Microsoft Azure (Michelangelo van Dam) - This is an excellent tutorial to get started with Docker and also to see what's possible with Azure Container Instance service (ACI).
• Testing Precompiled Azure Functions Locally with Storage Emulator -- Visual Studio Magazine (Jason Roberts) - Nice post that explains how to use the emulator.

Programming

• ASP.NET Identity for your custom user and roles models (Dominique St-Amand) - A nice detailed tutorial that explains clearly how to setup the identity with .Net Core.
• Upgrading a 10 year old site to ASP.NET Core's Razor Pages using the URL Rewriting Middleware (Scott Hanselman) - True upgrade story, I loved it.
• Upgrading my podcast site to ASP.NET Core 2.1 in Azure plus some Best Practices (Scott Hanselman) - Nice second post about a migration passing through today's best practices.

Reading Notes #131

Suggestion of the week

• Build End-to-End Apps with TypeScript (Gil Fink) - Amazing tutorial that gives the opportunity to learn a lot about recent language and tools. A mandatory reading for all web developers.

Cloud

• Windows Azure Websites online tools you should know about (Nir Mashkowski) - Nice quick and clear introduction to Kudu dashboard.
  
• Stupid Azure Trick #8 – Take control of Management Certificate names (Bill Wilder) - Nice clarification about certificate and security management in Windows Azure.
  
• Remote Administration of Windows Azure Websites using IIS Manager (Nir Mashkowski) - Soooo convenient. This post explains how we can remotely connect to a Windows Azure website with IIS.
  
• Stupid Azure Trick #7 – Use Windows Azure’s Local Storage Emulator with Web Sites & VMs (Bill Wilder) - Nice trick that explains how to use Azure emulator, because it's something we (or will) need.
  
• #WindowsAzure Lessons Learned : Don't be Afraid to Duplicate Data - Interesting re-design of a cloud solution.
  
• Announcing General Availability of Oracle Software on Windows Azure and Updates to Windows Azure Traffic Manager (Steven Martin) - Great new images and useful feature are now available.
  
• Tutorial: Finding Virtual Machine Images for Windows Azure in VM Depot (Ross Gardler) - That a very nice upgrade: an amazing search/sort engine.
  
• Is Your Application Built for the Cloud? - Interesting questioning about when to know if our application is built for the cloud, and nice list of pattern that are really well compatible with cloud solutions.

Programming

• NuGet Package of the Week: FluentAutomation for automated testing of Web Applications (Scott Hanselman) - Interesting tools to automate things like the ScriptCS.(Available via Chocolatey).
  
• Remove that dirty CSS! - Very useful tutorial that uses Node.js and Grunt.

Miscellaneous

• How to Clear Your Mind in 15 Minutes (Kevin Daum) - Sometimes to get more productive, we need to pause. Here are few tips on how-to achieve that.
  
• Why NOT measure progress using subjective percents - | Gunnar Peipman - Programming Blog - Interesting point of view about calculating project progress.
  
• Keepin' Track of Your Views - I found this post interesting because it explains how pageviews are counted.
  
• Logiciel libre : soyons clairs! (Laurent Bounin) - Very interesting point of view about open-source software (in French).
  
• Back to Basics: Assert your assumptions and diff your source code (Scott Hanselman) - Aah debugging... Never assume something. Thanks for sharing this story, I feel less alone now.

~Frank