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 #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 #601

It's reading notes time! It is a habit I started a long time ago, where I share a list of all the articles, blog posts, and books that catch my interest during the week.

Having interesting content? Share it! 

Suggestion of the week

• Announcing: Azure Developers (Mehul Harry) - Looking forward to this event. I have the pleasure to present a session with Jerry Nixon about Data API Builder. Join us!

Cloud

• Demystifying Azure CLI pagnination (Jeremy Li) - That's great! It's so sad when all the information is "throw" on us without any control and it's on us to find our "needle" we are looking for in those screens full of line. This will definitely helps.

Programming

• Blazor Basics: Localization Using Resource Files (Claudio Bernasconi) - A nice and complete tutorial.

• What's new for .NET in Ubuntu 24.04 - .NET Blog (Richard Lander) - This is a good news! Definitely going in the right direction.

• Minimal APIs Nuget Packages (Shawn Wildermuth) - Same great tools but new names to make it easier to remember and more of the same family.

• Useful features in Entity Framework Core 8 for your application (Dennis Frühauff) - A great post with detailed explanation and code samples that covers the major new feature and enhancements of EF8.

• Better Minimal APIs Endpoint Organization With Carter in ASP.NET Core (Ivan Gechev) - Carter looks like a very useful library definitely something to explore a bit more.

• Warp’s Team plan for developer productivity is available today (Melanie Crissey) - I started using this terminal a few weeks ago on a personal device. It's interesting to see all the different options an the possibilities for teams.

Open Source

• Open sourcing MS-DOS 4.0 - Microsoft Open Source Blog (Scott Hanselman, Jeff Wilcox) - That a cool news! I'm curious what people will do with it, what kind of experiments they will try.

~ Frank

Reading Notes #567

Programming

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

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

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

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

DevOps

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

Podcasts

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

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

Frank

Reading Notes #552

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

• Resource Group Location Matters (Sam Cogan) - And voila! Planning is everything... Almost

Programming

• Visual Studio Code Day 2023 (Burke Holland) - An event is coming up for VS Code and you don't want to miss that. During that one day, so much will be shared about this amazing editor.

• Docker Gets up to Speed for WebAssembly (B. Cameron Gain) - Excited to see this wasm + docker story progressing. Should I give it a try or wait a little more... That's the questions

• Create a Custom Connector for your Web API from within Visual Studio (Marcel Ferreira) - Interesting! So the question is not IF I will create a connector, but more by WHAT should I start?!

• Static Methods vs. Non-Static Methods in C# (Matjaz Prtenjak ) - Learn all the differences, pros, and cons between the two. No stone is left unturned.

• Docker Compose Experiment: Sync Files and Automatically Rebuild Services with Watch Mode (Milas Bowman) - This preview command is available for an easier development time.

• Docker Gets up to Speed for WebAssembly (B. Cameron Gain) - take the best advantages of the Wasm ecosystem.

DevOps

• Choosing a container platform (Kit Dergilev) - This is a great post that shares different options for our container environment based on some scenarios.

Miscellaneous

• How to contribute to Microsoft documentation (Luke Murray) - Oh yes! You should give it a try the feeling you get when your changes are merged...

~Frank

Reading Notes #548

The suggestion of the week

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

Cloud

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

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

Programming

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

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

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

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

Miscellaneous

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

~frank

Reading Notes #444

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

• Optimizing bandwidth in the Azure Cosmos DB .NET SDK | Azure Cosmos DB Blog (Matias Quaranta) - Optimization is an art& sooo important.

• Publishing an ASP.NET Core App to Azure App Service Using Visual Studio (Code Maze) - A nice tutorial very easy to follow that explains how to create and deploy your first web app to Azure using .Net.

Programming

• Cross-platform diagnostic tools for .NET Core (Scott Hanselman) - Interesting sets of dotnet commands.

• .NET Conf 2020 and Community Events this October | Xamarin Blog (microsoft.com) - Nice event coming up mid-November...

• 6 Tools I use for Web Development (Jakob Klamser) - A nice list of great tools. I'm surprised to read that notion would be more flexible then OneNote, I heard a lot of good from it but never tried it.

• Bringing the browser developer tools to Visual Studio Code (Microsoft Edge Team) - Cool...I need to try that.

• Render diagrams on the fly in your Blazor apps (Jon Hilton) - A cool and simple way to add graphics inside your App, wonderful!

• WebAssembly Could Be the Key for Cloud Native Extensibility (Joab Jackson) - Oh, interesting topics, I need to check that podcast.

Let's the adventure beginning!

It's coming!  I'm not talking about winter here but I'm about Microsoft Ignite. One of the biggest Microsoft events for the DevOps and Dev amount us. This 4 days long event is a fantastic opportunity to get up to date with your favorite technology, learn the best practices, get certified and meet tons of experts to talk about your projects!

This year it's very special for me because I have the great pleasure to be part of the adventure, I will be presenting two sessions that are part of the Learning Paths.

A Learning Path is a series of connected learning modules that include sessions, hands-on experiences, technical workshops, certifications, and expert connections. Learning Path’s work together to build upon what you’ve learned to provide a comprehensive set of skills to help you reach your goals.

Figuring out Azure Functions (AFUN95)
Tailwind Traders is curious about the concept behind “serverless” computing – the idea that they can run small pieces of code in the cloud, without having to worry about the underlying infrastructure. In this session, we cover the world of Azure Functions, starting with an explanation of the servers behind serverless, exploring the languages and integrations available, and ending with a demo of when to use Logic Apps and Microsoft Flow.

Options for building and running your app in the cloud (APPS10)
See how Tailwind Traders avoided a single point of failure using cloud services to deploy their company website to multiple regions. We cover all the options they considered, explain how and why they made their decisions, then dive into the components of their implementation. In this session, see how they used Microsoft technologies like Visual Studio Code, Azure Portal, and Azure CLI to build a secure application that runs and scales on Linux and Windows VMs and Azure Web Apps with a companion phone app.

But wait, there is more...

For the second time, after the Microsoft Ignite "the event", will starts another event a tour! This year, it is thirty (30) cities that Microsoft Ignite The Tour will visits! All continents, except for Antarctica (why?! 😉), will be visited. Check the complete list of the cities on the website and mark the dates on your calendar!

I will also be presenting many different sessions during this tour. While I'm not doing all of them, I'll be present on many occasions.

Looking forward to meeting you

So if you are planning to go to one of those events, and would like to meet to talk about your project, show some bugs, ask questions, or just to chat! Reach-out, It's ALWAYS a pleasure, and I'll bring some stickers and some special swag¹ with me...

Drop me a message on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook.


1: Follow me on Twitter to know more about this ;)

Reading Notes #325

Suggestion of the week

• 6 Presentation Mistakes Every Professional Should Avoid (Mike Pacchione) - Very interesting post about mistakes that most (read all) of us do, and of course how we could avoid them.

Cloud

• Dependency Injection and ILogger in Azure Functions (Rory Primrose) - Nice post that explains how to do logging with ILogger in Azure functions.

Programming

• About Blockchain (Clemens Vasters) - Blockchain; the what, the how, the why and probably all your questions about it are answered in this post.
• Connecting Your Azure Bots with QnA Maker Services (Abhijit Jana) - Nice post to get started with the bot framework and learn how to test your prototype.
• Join Microsoft Build Live for the ultimate digital experience (Microsoft Azure) - It's this week reserve your days!
• Keep VS Code from Becoming an IDE (Ryan Palo) - Great finally! I super happy to see I'm not the only one doing that. Now what we need is a way to quickly change setups... Going from Markdown editor to Azure C# Function.
• VS Code can do that?! (Burke Holland and Sarah Drasner) - Pretty cool little tips and tricks with vscode.

Data

• Power BI Desktop April Feature Summary (Amanda Cofsky) - Check out all the new features from April release.

Miscellaneous

• How Can You Be Sure Someone Has True Leadership Skills? Look for These 2 Rare Signs (Marcel Schwantes) - Interesting post. Its True, we all have our stories.

Books

• The ONE Thing The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results
  
  Authors Gary Keller, Jay Papasan
  That book was fantastic, and I really mean it. It helps on so many points! Professional, personal, social... It must be in your library.
  ISBN: 978-1885167774

Reading Notes #300

Cloud

• An introduction to Azure Web Apps on Linux (Christos Matskas) - Web App for all! Seriously, it's a really good news and it's already GA.
• Azure Logic Apps Monthly Update – September 2017 (Sriram Hariharan) - Get a good summary of all the new features in only one post. But of course, it's only an overview.
• Manage your Azure VM backups with Azure CLI 2.0 - Preview (Kartik P V R) - Azure CLI is so convenient, I know some will prefer graphical interfaces. However, CLIs are the only way for automation.
• Microsoft Integration (Azure and much more) Stencils Pack v2.6.1 for Visio (Sandro Pereira) - It's time (already..) to update our stencil to include the lastest and greatest. Thanks!

Programming

• Generating Google Slides from images using Apps Script (Wesley Chun) - Pretty neat features. Definitely worth the time to write a script when you need to edit tons of slides, or build a deck multiple times.
• 7 Hidden Gems in Visual Studio 2017 (Visual Studio Team) - This post shares not the usual tips. Seriously, how many you already knew before reading the article?
• Adding circuit breakers to your .NET applications | Richard Seroter's Architecture Musings on WordPress.com (Richard Seroter) - This post is a great introduction to Steeltoe and the circuit-breaker pattern. The code used in this sample is .net core but it also works with .Net framework. Perfect for all our micro-services.

Data

• Power BI Desktop October Feature Summary | Microsoft Power BI Blog | Microsoft Power BI (Amanda Cofsky) - Once again, this month release is packed with tons of great new features. I can't summarize thus the post, but the bookmarking capabilities alone worth your time reading this post or watching the video.

Miscellaneous

• #223: Mike Erwin—The Power of Solitude (Entreleadership - Mike Erwin) - Interesting reading suggests on leadership and the importance of solitude time.
• Microsoft announces next Azure OpenDev: October 25, 2017 (Ashley McNamara) - Awesome community event coming ... Save the date.
• Social Presentations with Mark Rendle (Carl and Richard) - That look like a very promising tool... except for the name that I continually forget... (but that's probably just me). I will definitely have a to the Github repo.
• The Simple Reason to Learn to Lead Yourself First (Joshua Spodek ) - Interesting thoughts about becoming a leader.
• What is a Cloud Developer Advocate? (Jeremy Likness) - Great article. A few of my friends joined that team, and even though I already had this talk with them, now I have a better picture.

Let’s talk Hybrid Cloud with Clemens Vasters at a Special Montreal Event.

The summer is mostly here, and that usually mean a break for the community group, but the Azure Group of MSDevMtl still have one more surprise for you. Clements Vaster, the Microsoft's "Principal Messenger", driving global technical strategy for Microsoft's Azure Messaging platform services: Azure Service Bus, Azure Event Hubs, and Azure Relay, is coming to Montreal!

Join us on the Friday June 9th 2017, for a great talk about “Hybrid cloud”. These days most solution need to run by a combination of on-premises and public cloud assets. In this morning session, we will learn how those systems can be integrated. This perspective is, however, largely constrained to data-center like assets, and typically to the scope of one organization.

For this special event, we decided to remove the usual fee, so it's a FREE event!

Register quickly on the meetup site because the places are limited. Register here: https://www.meetup.com/msdevmtl/events/239731426/


See you there!

What is an AzureCon View Party?

First what is AzureCon?

In less than a week Microsoft is doing a great event called AzureCon. This event is a virtual conference that will focus on Microsoft Azure. It is a virtual event because it's happening online. Even more, it will be available to watch it live for free! The lineup as been published and four great speaker will share with us the latest news about Azure.

What is a View Party?

A View Party is the chance to watch live the same content of all other, but in a group. It's an opportunity to ask your question while it's happening and gets answers from the MVPs or other viewers.

Where are those View Party?

By the time I'm writing this post, I don't know all of them, but please sharing is good, so if you know a view party is happening in your area share the info using the comment session. You could also send me an e-mail, and I will update this post. I will be at Ottawa, looking forward to meeting you there!

• Montreal
  MsDevMtl Community
  2000 McGill College, 5e étage, Montréal, QC, Montréal, QC
  Meetup
  
• Ottawa
  Ottawa IT Community
  100 Queen Street, Suite 500 , Ottawa, ON
  Meetup

Microsoft MVP Virtual Conference, one more day to go

Yesterday, was the first day of the #MVPvConf 2015. I already write about this event presented by MVP for everyone.

I really enjoy switching from one path to the other following the best fits of my interest. I even got some real though decisions to take because two sessions were at the same time! But wait; there is more!


Today it's Day 2, and many great presentations will by available.

Developer track with topics like: Roslyn Windows 10 ASP.NET Azure Cross-Platform...

IT Pro track with topics like: DevOps System Center Hyper-V Migration Office 365...

Consumer track with topics like: Pivot Table Data Windows 10 Cortana OneNote Security...

LATAM track with topics like: Power BI Exchange Enterprise Mobility Suite (EMS) Office 365...

Brazil track with topics like: Azure Active Directory Hybrid Cloud SQL Server...

Build your own agenda, and come join-us!

The first ever Microsoft MVP Virtual Conference

Did you eared about that great free event that Microsoft and the MVPs are putting on in May? On the 14th and 15th (yes two days!), join Microsoft MVPs from the Americas’ region as they share their knowledge and real-world expertise during a free event, the MVP Virtual Conference.

by MVPs, for everyone

 

Gigantic event

The MVP Virtual Conference will showcase 95 sessions of content for IT Pros, Developers and Consumer experts designed to help you navigate life in a mobile-first, cloud-first world.  Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President of Developer Platform, Steve Guggenheimer, will be on hand to deliver the opening Key Note Address.
 

Still not sure if you will found what you are looking for?

The conference will have 5 tracks:

• IT Pro English
• Dev English
• Consumer English
• Portuguese mixed sessions
• Spanish mixed sessions

There is something for everyone! Learn from the best and brightest MVPs in the tech world today and develop some great skills!

Join Me!

Be sure to register quickly to hold your spot and tell your friends & colleagues.


 
 
 


The conference will be widely covered on social media, you can join the conversation by following @MVPAward and using the hashtag #MVPvConf.

From Ottawa to Montreal in April 2015

This April two event kept my attention, let me present them.

The MVP Cloud RoadShow - April 11

Where: Ottawa
Register: Meetup

Bored that every one is telling you to move to the cloud, but don't explain how to get there or are how it's working in the cloud?

The MVP Cloud RoadShow, is the perfect opportunity to meet Microsoft Azure MVPs. These specialists will talk about: Intune, Hybrid Identity, Rights Management, SQL Business Intelligence and Building a Lab in Azure.

Here all the information you need on the Meetup page.

Global Azure Bootcamp (Montreal edition) - April 25

Where: Montreal
Register: Meetup

This year is marks the third edition of this great event. In more than 190 locations around the globe, people will develop Cloud Computing applications for Azure, this is definitely a great learning opportunity. Many goods hands-on-labs:

• Infrastructure as a Service in Microsoft Azure (Virtual Machines)
• Getting started with Azure Websites and ASP.NET
• Building a web application with ASP.NET MVC using DocumentDB
• Get Started with the Azure WebJobs SDK
• Get started with Mobile Services
• How to Use Azure Redis Cache
• etc.

For all the detail about the Montreal edition be sure to go on the Meetup page. For more information about the global event go on http://global.azurebootcamp.net/

~Frank B.