Reading Notes #581

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

• ASP.NET Core Basics: Essential NuGet Packages (Part 1) (Assis Zang) - Great idea this post! Those five packages are definitely very useful, and I like that they are not just mentioned but also explained and implemented in the demo solution.

Programming

• Announcing .NET 8 - .NET Blog (Gaurav Seth) - Tons of update with as many videos. Enough to satiate everyone.

• Entity Framework Core 8 (EF8) is available today - .NET Blog (Arthur Vickers) - Of course the Entity framework update to follow .NET of course.

• Get ready for .NET Conf, Microsoft Ignite, and GitHub Universe (Matt Graven) - So many events and news packed in a single month. This post helps to do an overview so help us make an ideas.

• Connect to localhost from inside a dev container (Jim Bennett) - Interesting... I thought Dapr was the easiest but the solution presented in this post could be a easier workaround, at lease while coding/ testing it.

• Fake It Til You Make It...To Production - .NET Blog (Martin Taillefer) - This post shows 3 pretty useful fake/mock included in .NET 8: Logger, Clock, and Metric.

• Building debugging context for Copilot Chat (Mark Downie) - Cool extension for Visual Studio.

• Announcing .NET Chiseled Containers - .NET Blog (Richard Lander) - The new image are available.Yay

Databases

• Importing Flat Files into Azure SQL DB (Josephine Bush) - Omg! That makes Azure Data Studio the easiest and low friction tool to import data from a flat file into a Ms SQL database

Miscellaneous

• OpenAI drama is over. (Kim Menikh) - Well.I was curious.I didn't follow all of it.

~Frank

Reading Notes #565

It's 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

• Adding Application Insights Logging to an ASP.NET app using the .NET SDK (David Giard) - This is a quick tutorial to get us started. Let's get control of our data.

Programming

• Required Parameters in Blazor WebAssembly (Code Maze) - This is a very well-explained post. How to use features added in .NET 6 to make our application reliable.

• What does Azure AD renamed Microsoft Entra ID mean for .NET developers? - .NET Blog (Jeremy Likness) - Learn more about the Identity. This post also includes other links to learn more about it.

• Shell integration in the Windows Terminal (Mike Griese) - Its very interesting to read the upcoming features and understand how these things will works.

• What Are HTTP Headers? | Postman Blog (The Postman Team) - This is a great post about headers. Used by everyone known by developers involve in API, they are the key of a clear communication.

• Introducing a powerful new Extension Manager - Visual Studio Blog (Maia Kelner) - Looking forward to trying this redesigned manager!

• Introducing TypeChat (Anders Hejlsberg, Steve Lucco, Daniel Rosenwasser, Pierce Boggan, Umesh Madan, Mike Hopcroft, and Gayathri Chandrasekaran) - That looks like a pretty cool package to add to our apps!

Data

• Azure Data Studio Schema Compare Extension (Josephine) - There is an extension for everything ...almost. I love that we can customize our tools the way we like.

Low Code

• How To Build Responsive Power Apps Forms From Scratch (Matthew Devaney) - Build an App quickly, that's nice. But make that App look great on any screen, now your talking! This is very detailed and complete example that helps us build our first responsive App.

Podcast

• Who are the Ops Behind the DevRel Curtain? (Ep 80) (Community Pulse) - Interesting episode about DevRel and more particularly two who are doing less visible work. Helping those who are helping... And a tiny bit about bread! Yell done, David!

• 60. How security is everywhere & the balance between legislation and innovation - with Scott Helme (Betatalks the podcast) - An episode about security of course but also tech, cars, coffee, and question like does your oven should really have internet access?

Miscellaneous

• Blazor Basics: Data Binding in Blazor (Claudio Bernasconi) - Nice post that explains the little particularity of those bindings. It could save you a lot of time.

~Frank

Reading Notes #563

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

• Using WSL and Let's Encrypt to create Azure App Service SSL Wildcard Certificates (Scott Hanselman ) - A nice step-by-step tutorial. And after this, you will have a very useful script.

• Deploy your Blazor app to Azure now for free! (Dennis Frühauff) - This is a simple easy-to-follow tutorial to deploy your Static web app in the cloud.

Programming

• API Architectural Styles: REST vs. SOAP vs. GraphQL vs. gRPC | Postman Blog (Bruno Pedro) - Selecting the best architecture for our needs that a scary decision. This post explains the different architecture and shares a real-life story and tools to help decide.

• Creating a VS Code editor extension (Tim Heuer) - The journey of a dev building an extension for Visual Studio Code.A very interesting post.

Open Source

• Build an Open Source Project: Behind the Scenes (Alexey Yuzhakov) - This post shares a story of a real-life open source project. It's about putting in the effort and doing the extra work to make our project more useful and accessible.

Low Code

• Power Apps Dynamic Forms - Generate Forms From A Questions List (Matthew Devaney) - A tutorial that shows how to build a very useful form using code. But once you build it you can reuse it at many places.

• Power Apps Code Review Tool (Mehdi Slaoui Andaloussi) - That's a really cool tool! I need to test it now!

Podcast

• Podman In Action: Desktop, Machine, and more (DevOps and Docker Talk: Cloud Native Interviews and Tooling) - The perfect episode to get started with Podman. Very interesting.

• Building Apps using OpenAI with Mark Miller (.NET Rocks!) - So much energy in this episode and great topics.

~Frank

Reading Notes #533

Good Monday!

It's time to share my reading notes. Those are a curated list of all the articles and blog posts, 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

• Azure SQL Trigger for Azure Functions in Public Preview (Renato Losio) - This is interesting this way you could beneficiate the trigger and keep the code outside of the database.

Programming

• Install Terminal App Themes in Windows 11 (Sofia Sondh) - Simple and we have the choice, great!

• My Top 10 Visual Studio Code Extensions for 2022 (John Kilmister) - Oh wow, there were a few gems I didn't know in this post. Great list.

• Ref vs Out C#: Which is the Better Choice when? (Byte Hide) - A simple post that lists the differences between those two keywords.

• Web Security 101 - Part 1: Secrets (Abbey Perini) - This is a nice post that lists places or methods to save our secrets and explains the pro and cons of each.

• Fluent Insights EP4: Slots (Paul Gildea) - The new episode of Fluent UI Insights is out. This one talks about slots, JSX children, and triggers.

Miscellaneous

• 10 SEO Tips For Technical Writers And Software Developers (Mahesh Chand) - A great post about SEO and why we should care.

~Enjoy!

Reading Notes #518

Good Monday, Already time to share new reading notes. Here is a list of all the articles, blog posts, and podcast episodes that catch my interest during the week.

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

Cloud

• MySQL and PostgreSQL… in Azure! (Sarah Dutkiewicz) - This short post shares information about our different SQL options in Azure.

• Public preview: Update management center in Azure - If you are using VMs you need to look at this management tool.

Programming

• 4 Ways to Optimize Your Workflows with Docker Extensions (Felipe Cruz) - Nice! There are so many great extensions that can simplify our lives. I'm downloading two of those right now.

• GitHub Pages now uses Actions by default (Chris Patterson, Yoann Chaud) - That's excellent news! I have a few GitHub pages and Jekyll too. Look like fun little projects are coming up.

• Heap Sort in C# (Code Maze) - It was nice to refresh my memory about this sort of algorithm. Remembering the details and performance; nice post.

• Prompting Developers to Install Recommended Azure Tools (John Kilmister) - I started to do this to make it easier when working on that project from a different machine and to ease the onboarding experience. It is simple and it makes a difference.

Podcast

• Measuring DevSecOps with Victoria Almazova (.NET Rocks!) - DevSecOps, what's that? Security, yes, but to what limit, so many great questions are discussed in this nice episode.

• Photographing Home with Mylo Fowler (Wild Ideas Worth Living) - This post is a great example that there are so many completely different journeys to reach your destination. Follow yours and enjoy it as much as you can.

~frank

Reading Notes #511

Good Monday, it's time to share new reading notes. Here is a list of all the articles, blog posts, and podcast episodes that catch my interest during the week. 

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

Cloud

• Visual Studio Code Tools for Azure Revamped (David Ramel) - Time flies! Five years already... And probably the first extension I personally ever installed.

Programming

• Who should mark PR comments as resolved? (Dan Clarke) - In your team who is doing it?

• 14 Containerization Use Cases: Hit a Home Run with Containers (Hiren Dhaduk) - Nice list of real-life story and situation where docker shines and empower.

• Adding a CLA Bot to Your GitHub Repository (Calvin) - This seems simple to do... I assumed adding a bot in GitHub was more complicated than that. Nice post.

• Keep your experiments separate (Jessica Joy Kerr) - This post shares good practices when adding features to our app... Because we never know the full impact when we start.

• Static code analysis with NDepend (Andreas Nesheim) - I'm always curious about those tools. I think they could also be useful when connected to your CICD and automation processes.

• When WebAssembly Replaces Docker (B. Cameron Gain) - Interesting post that explains why WASM is indeed more interesting than docker in some scenarios.

Miscellaneous

• 5 great books for the summer (Bill Gates) - There are a few books that I put on my to-read list. There you go.

~Frank

Reading Notes #506

Good Monday, Already time to share my reading notes of the week. 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!

Cloud

• Introduction to Azure Chaos Studio (Paul Michaels) - This is a very interesting tool, looking forward to see more services included

Programming

• Asynchronous Programming in C# (Sukhrob) - A good post that takes the time to explain the why.Why we should complexify our code to make it asynchronous.
• ASP.NET Core CRUD with NoSQL: Part 3 (Matthew Groves) - We continue to learn, this time, a bit more about the sql+ and the create of the crud API.
• All Roads Lead Back to Infrastructure as Code (Joe Duffy) - From where it started to where it is going this very detailed post covers it all.
• Bringing code navigation to communities (Patrick Thomson) - This is really interesting... Looking forward to read more about it.
• Major update to the PowerShell Extension for Visual Studio Code (Sydney Smith) - Ok wow... I need a PowerShell script right now just to try that new version; it looks amazing!
• Visual Studio on an ultra-wide monitor - Visual Studio Blog (Mads Kristensen) - It's not a "problem" I particularly have because I used 2 regular monitors, but I heard about it. It's really nice to see that so many possibilities are available to us.

Podcasts

• Docker Desktop for Linux is Here! (DevOps and Docker Talk) - Great episode so much energy! Discussion about the brand new Docker Desktop for Linux, who to report bugs, ask for a new feature, and the DockerCon!
• Épisode 15 - Gengis Khan (Les Pires Moments de l'Histoire) - I keep those episodes very preciously as a threat, and this one was such a good one! It's in French and the topic is the biggest empire that ever existed... No, it's the Romain.
• How to Productively Show Off What You've Learned (Modern Mentor) - Nice episode. That's a good idea I should share what I think of books and posts I read! ;) I guess I'm not too bad.
• Comparing Infrastructure-as-Code with Chris Klug (.NET Rocks!) - Terraform, Pulumi, ARM, and Bicep... All those are mentioned because it's all about Infrastructure-as-Code. Interesting talk about the different options we have.

Miscellaneous

• Understanding the Role of a Developer Evangelist (Karl Hughes) - As a cloud advocate, I don't remember how often I explained what is my role. This 360-degree post covers all angles and provides a really good answer.

~frank

Reading Notes #473

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!

Suggestion of the week

• Transform C# objects to a flat string dictionary (Josef Ottoson) - I love so much those developer's coding journey. We learn so much more than if only the "happy path " was shared. Great post thank you for sharing.

Cloud

• Develop production-scale modern web apps quickly with Azure Static Web Apps (Daria Grigoriu) - Nice summary of what is an Azure Static web app and what and all the included features since it reached Global Availability this week.
• The New Azure Logo - Microsoft Azure Icon (Abhijit Jana) - This is my favorite so far.
• Using Auth0 with Static Web Apps (Aaron Powell) - Ah wonderful! I noticed this new feature in Azure static web App this week. This post details how it works and gives a great example.

Programming

• VS Code shortcuts that you must know! (Mac and Windows) (Raynaldo Sutisna) - Learning new shortcuts is always nice.
• 4 Tips on How to Refactor Code in Visual Studio Code (Alex Omeyer) - Nice! I didn't know about that cool extension.
• 5 Ways to Improve the Performance of C# Code for Free (Sasha Mathews) - Interesting deep dive in the performance of our code and the why it goes fast or could go faster.
• Add a README to Your NuGet Package (Christopher Gill) - Now I understand! I noticed that, earlier this week, and thought: Wow, this is wonderful, why they are not all doing that! Now it all makes sense.
• How To Customize Azure DevOps Projects Process Templates? (Abhijit Jana) - Azure DevOps is a very very powerful tool. This post and video will show you how to start customizing it.
• What Do You Mean By Automated Tests And Continuous Integration? (Charles L Flatt) - Great answer.

Podcasts

• Bonus: Understanding Digital Body Language (Modern Mentor) - That we wanted or not, we need to get better with those new tools: the webcam, the microphone. We need to understand how to use them correctly and how to understand what the person on the other hand is really sharing. Great episode.
• Social Robots with De'Aira Bryant (Hanselminutes with Scott Hanselman) - Okay I crack at... If only they knew! A very interesting episode about... yes robots!
• Write Great APIs (Coding Blocks) - What's an API, what's a good API, why it's good, or why it's bad... Great episode that may me think... I really need to get back to my code and update a few things.

~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 #464

Every Monday, I share my "reading notes". This is a curated list of all the articles, blog posts, 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.

Cloud

• Azure REST APIs with Insomnia (Jon Gallant) - Awesome post I didn't know that extension and they had never tried the import. Very useful.

• Microsoft Ignite 2021 Book of News (Microsoft) - If you are looking for the complete list of all the news done at Microsoft Ignite here it is.

• Top 5 things to get the most out of Microsoft Ignite (Rick Claus) - Nice tips to get ready.

Programming

• Tip 307 - How to create faster and smarter apps with .NET 5 | Azure Tips and Tricks - A nice quick review of .Net improvements.

• .NET Interactive with SQL!| .NET Notebooks in Visual Studio Code (Maria Naggaga) - A very interesting tool when you want to do a quick exploration of the data or invalidate some queries while in your code.

• Don't forget about the GitHub Command Line (Scott Hanselman) - I forgot about that CLI... That could be useful.

• Generate iCal calendar with .NET using iCAL.NET (Kristoffer Strube) - A nice quick tutorial for that package.Looking forward to seeing in the latest .Net version.

• IntelliSense for appsettings.json | ASP.NET Blog (James Newton-King) - That's a cool feature! How many times I was in the settings and struggling on the format, or name of a properties.No more Internet search!

• What Makes VSCode so Popular?. Visual Studio Code is bae | by Richard So | Feb, 2021 | codeburst (Richard So) - A great post that will put words into your thoughts. And if you don't use vsCode, it will explain why so many people around love it that much.

• You must be insane to be a software developer (Matt Lacey) - Interesting question.

Miscellaneous

• 4 Ways To Balance Under And Over-Communication As A Remote Work Manager (Shitika Anand) - Important and simple tools for our times.

~Frank

Reading Notes #425

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

• Configuring Azure Services and emulators using Visual Studio (Angelos Petropoulos) - Pretty nice feature coming up our way in Visual Studio.

Programming

• New from Satellite 2020: GitHub Codespaces, GitHub Discussions, securing code in private repositories, and more (Shanku Niyogi) - If like me you missed this amazing event, this post is a nice recap.
• All about Github Satellite 2020 - Codespaces, Discussions & More (Saad) - Another great summary of the GitHub event.Nice.
• Is Asynchronous The Best Way To Go in ASP.NET Core? (David Grace) - Awesome post that explains very clearly the difference between the two types of processes.
• Working with GitHub Issues in Visual Studio Code ( Alex Ross) - A very interesting extension. I will need to check that one.

Shameless Plugs

• How to make your deployment simple and flexible with nested Azure Resource Manager (ARM) template (Frank Boucher) - Short video that explains how you can deploy all the pieces of a solution individually, or altogether without writing more deployment. They're also a blog post if you prefer, all links are in the description. 

Podcast

• 070: Securing DevOps in the Cloud (CloudSkills.fm) - Great episode talking about security yes but also best practices and to change mindsets. Love it.
• Running a successful dev shop with Martin Gratzer (Software Engineering Unlocked) - This show is one of my new favorites. Always interesting and very dynamic. This time it was about the hard reality of "dev shop". Very interesting, so true!
• The Overreaction Paradox (Developer Tea) - I never thought about it that way... But it's so true. Are we celebrating the wrong things?
• #34: Michael Jolley - The Fresh Prince of Live Coding [S02-E13] (The Solo Coder Podcast) - Okay, I'm a total fanboy of Michael... but how can you resist?! If you feel the passion inside you... Don't way, share, create, enjoy! Another great episode.
• 197: I Need a Website (Merge Conflict) - They got me 50% of the time... I think they are talking to me: 'Frank we are ....'. Nice episode sharing some dreams about a perfect tool (aka website) for apps developers.

~

Reading Notes #402

Every week, I publish my reading notes. Those are the articles, blog posts, podcast episodes, and books that catch my interest and that I found interesting. It's a mix of the actuality and what I was looking for.

Cloud

• Azure Functions with QueueTriggers and .NET Core – Configuration and Troubleshooting (Jeff) - Poor Jeff, I was there on his stream and he struggles so much to understand what was happening. And honestly me too! Despite the fact that I know and use Azure Function regularly I completely missed the missing instruction... The good news is since the documentation is open-source we can improve it...

Programming

• A quick overview of ASP.NET Core with Rider (Rachel Appel) - I never used Rider in a real project. However, the quality of this code IDE is not in question. It looks awesome and this post shows how it supports the latest version of .Net Core.
• An Introduction to Blazor and Web Assembly (Jeremy Likness) - The perfect post to get started with Blazor and also learn where it comes from.
• Visual Studio Extensions: 8 You Should Check Out (Carlos Schults) - A nice post that shares useful extensions for developers. I also like the fact that in the title it's 8 and in the url it's 7 LOL...

Miscellaneous

• How Serverless is Working in Azure SQL Database – SQLServerCentral (Steve Jones) - Interesting post where the author shares his experience with serverless database version.

Books

The Art of Thinking Clearly

by Rolf Dobelli

I'm still balanced about this book. It was a good book, even if I found some chapters that were too long. I also got lost by moments. I had the impression that some thoughts or ideas were not developed correctly and more quickly wrapped. In counterpart, some were very well served and clear.

Reading Notes #389

Cloud

• 
  How to audit Key Vault Access Policy using Azure Resource Graph (Stephane Lapointe) - Another great example of how Azure Graph can help you to search and more importantly find quicky what you are looking for.
• 
  Managing Jenkins Artifacts with the Azure Artifact Manager Plugin (Jie Shen) - This post explains very clearly how to leverage those two great tools together.

Programming

• 
  Remote Edit Files on Azure Linux VMs using VS Code (Thomas Maurer) - An awesome tutorial that teaches us a nice way to edit files remotely.
• 
  Remote SSH access with Visual Studio Code (Sana Ajani) - It's sooooo easy and powerfull! Take two minutes and try it!
• 
  VS Code Profile Switcher Extensions Support (Aaron Powell) - Wonderful! Thanks Aaron, you just create the extension group has been asking for so long!
• 
  ASP.NET Core and Blazor updates in .NET Core 3.0 Preview 7 (Daniel Roth) - Nice update, it's amazing to see how fast this project evolves.
• 
  Installing PowerShell with one line as a .NET Core global tool (Scott Hanselman) - On every platform or even from inside a container...Pretty cool.

Miscellaneous

• Top Developer Collaboration Tools (Roman Zhidkov) - Wow, a pretty cool list with tons of suggestions for all kind of needs.

Reading Notes #375

Cloud

• 5 Developer Tools you need to check out! (Tomek Poniatowicz) - Really cool (and useful, obviously) tools to work with AWS.
• The Most Minimal Serverless Function (Ryan Levick) - A nice introduction post to Azure function.
• 
  

Programming

• Dependencies and Git branches (Felix Rieseberg) - Git never stops to amaze me. This short post explains a nice trick.
• How developers can release custom newsletters for $0.00 (Geoff Stevens) - This post explains a great solution that requires only node.js and a free account ... Pretty slick.
• Particle Workbench: supercharge your IoT development with professional tools (David Scheltema) - Nice! I didn't know some extensions were available for IoT in VSCode.
• Top 15 Visual Studio Code Extensions in 2019 (Gift Egwuenu) - Nice list of extension that targets primarily JavaScript developers but there's definitely a few gems for all of us.

Podcast

• Anthos Migrate, with Issy Ben-Shaul (Kubernetes Podcast from Google) - Nice update. I like the talk about Anthos it look like a great migration tool. I need to find that GitHub repo...

Reading Notes #374

Cloud

• Publishing Static Content to Azure Blob Storage (Jason N. Gaylord) - Yet another great tutorial to copy files from inside an Azure Pipeline.
• The Wide World of Microsoft Windows on AWS | Amazon Web Services (Jeff Barr) - Great list of Windows services running on AWS with some context, very instructive.

Programming

• Accessibility Insights for the Web and Windows makes accessibility even easier (Scott Hanselman) - Nice tools. Definitely, something I will look into.
• New features for extension authors in Visual Studio 2019 version 16.1 | The Visual Studio Blog (Mads Kristensen) - That's a lot of 'little' thing that would make a big difference. Well done.
• Progressive Web Apps & Electron (Felix Rieseberg) - Excellent post that does a thorough comparison between pwa and electron app.
• Tests code coverage in Visual Studio Code with C# and .Net Core (Alberto Bar-Noy) - Awesome post that introduces a code coverage tool for .Net Core.

Podcast

• Hevesh5 - Making a YouTube Career from Viral Domino Art (#46) (That Creative Life) - Great show. An amazing story.
• Azure Functions using Node with Simona Cotin (.NET Rocks!) - Great show. I just switch my website following that Jam stack pattern. I was planning to use Azure Functions to add a few little twists.... I'm happy to see that I not alone thinking like that!
• 0230 - Alain Vezina - Le métier du DevOps (Visual Studio Talk Show) - Super épisode, très intéressant d'entendre parler du rôle de DevOps de quelqu'un qui le vie au quotidien. Merci de la suggestion, je crois, bien que je suis du pour relire The Pheonix Project.
• Goal Setting Tips & Tracking KPIs (Video Pursuit Podcast) - Really interesting episode. Everybody is talking about matrix and KPI... But it's not frequent to hear about the "how". I really like how the goals are explained, achievable, but not easy... And how we should react when we don't reach them.
• 
  

Miscellaneous

• Show the Time to Read Your Markdown in VS Code (John Papa) - Cool new little extension for writers.
• Surface Pro – Don’t forget to update the Dock (buildbod) - Great advice, that will save you a lot of time.

~ Good week!

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

Connect VSCode to Azure SQL Database from everywhere

Visual Studio Code looks like a simple text editor. However, the fact that it running from anywhere (Windows, Linux, MacOs) and that you can highly customize it, make it very special. The way you customize your VSCode is by using extensions. The last extension I installed was MSSQL. In this post, I will explain how to leverage this extension to connect from everywhere to your database.

Installation

Adding the extension is very simple you can go to the Extension menu and type mssqm in the search area; then click Install.

Configuration

To create your connection profile, you could just open Command Palette and type connect, the extension will then ask you to enter the server name, username, password…


To avoid any typo I tend to copy/paste the information, but every time the dialog was losing the focus it was closing. The workarounds to this unfortunate problem was to open the User Settings and specify my connection information. Here is the configuration:

"mssql.connections": [
    {
        "server": "{{put-server-name-here}}",
        "database": "{{put-database-name-here}}",
        "user": "{{put-username-here}}",
        "password": "{{put-password-here}}"
    },
    {
        "profileName": "Azure SQL FBoucher",
        "server": "sqlservername.database.windows.net",
        "database": "demodb",
        "user": "admin",
        "password": "",
        "authenticationType": "SqlLogin",
        "savePassword": true
    }
]

I kept password empty and savePassword equal to true. This way the first time you connect to the database you will need to enter it and it will be saved outside of the user Setting using the Password Management.
Now to connect you only need to open the Command Palette and type connect or mssql, to see the MS SQL: Connect option and select the connection profile you just created.

Using the mssql extension

Of course, you can type any query you like, but the extension is offering not only snippets, but a contextual auto-completion. That mean the VSCode once connected will know all the column’s names of all tables and boost as must your productivity.


To execute the query a simple Ctrl + E, and voila!

Wrapping up

This fantastic extension is providing a light-weight setup to execute or write any SQL scripts whatever you are on Windows, Linux or MacOS. It doesn’t have all the features of the bigger tool like SQL Server Management, when databases are not your primary focus or even to have a light setup on the go, the Visual Studio Code SQL Server extension is definitely a must.

References:

• Visual Studio Code
• Github project: Visual Studio Code SQL Server extension

Reading Notes #256

Cloud

• What’s this all about? (Alexandre Brisebois) - The cloud broth with him new patterns in the technology world, but knows that the business should also adapt.
• Azure Container Registry preview (Steve Lasker) - Containers, containers, containers, containers.... sound familiar? They are everywhere, learn more about this new service that will be available in preview in mid-November.
• Fluent API Libraries for Azure .NET SDK - These new azure commands definitely look good.
• Simpler Azure Management Libraries for .NET (Asir Selvasingh) - It looks very friendly, looking forward to trying it.
• Ten ways to minimize Azure costs (Iris Classon) - Nice few tips to save money... Time to do your checklist.

Programming

• 10 Tips for Using GitKraken (Sara) - I really like this kind of format for tips. You learn so much in a snap.
• Extensibility in Visual Studio '15': Increasing Reliability and Performance - This post lists few key elements for extension author, don't miss it.
• Mobile DevOps - The Source of Truth: The Role of Repositories in DevOps (Kraig Brockschmidt) - Very interesting article about devops real word.
• Stateless 3.0 - A State Machine library for .NET Core (Scott Hanselman) - Interesting tutorial that shows how that new lib could be useful.
• Using MongoDB with Web API and ASP.NET Core (Mahesh Sabnis ) - Dotnet core is now considerably more stable and so much more preferment. It worth try it.

Miscellaneous

• How to Make Time for Blogging During Your Lunch Break - Not a idea. However, I think it's more realistic to lower the number of posts produced... at least in my case.
• Introducing Markdown Monster - a new Markdown Editor (Rick Strahl) - Yet a markdown editor.... Will it be your new favorite? This post lists most of the feature and also contains a video if you prefer.
• Microsoft Flow is Now Available - Thurrott.com (Paul Thurrott) - Build on top of the excellent LogicApp platform Flow is free and doesn't require an Azure subscription but benefits from a lot of connectors.

Reading Notes #220

Suggestion of the week

• Microsoft Azure IoT Reference Architecture - Great post that explains part in IoT and micro-services with their respective roles.

Cloud

• Azure Search .NET SDK roadmap (Bruce Johnston) - All in one post, the list of new features and the ones coming next.
  
• What is Azure Stack? - Usually, we refer to the stack as a group of products from the same provider. Azure stack is a little of that, but with a little twist... it's on-premises! This post explains it all.
  
• Azure welcomes Parse developers (Glenn Gailey) - Interesting server who is now well supported in Azure.
  
• Azure Logic Apps Monthly Update – January 2016 (Sriram Hariharan) - Nice summary of the Logic App team's January video updates.

Programming

• Application Insights announces availability of Release Annotations (Mike Gresley) - A useful feature that is explained in this post.
  
• Why I No Longer Use MVC Frameworks - Very complete and moreover, very interesting article about strengths and weaknesses of different patterns and frameworks.
  
• Introducing Insiders Builds (Chris Dias [MSFT]) - The Insider's previews are back in a more convivial structure.

Data

• General availability: Azure SQL Database Query Performance Insight - What an awesome tool that gives us the ability to get the biggest resources consumer over a long period... and that, without redeploying.
  
• Queries To Debug SQL Server Replication Issues (Tim Smith) - If you are using database synchronization in your system, you should definitely bookmark this post that provides nice tools to us to diagnose problems.

Book

• Software Development Book Giveaway! - Cool! A great opportunity, 3 free books are given: Building Microservices, Working Effectively with Legacy Code, and Javascript: The Good Parts.

Miscellaneous

• GitHub Pages now faster and simpler with Jekyll 3.0 - Important changes announced for github and Jerkel users. And alternatively an important note to al Markdown users.

Reading Notes #196

Suggestion of the week

• Push-to-succeed: a look into Azure Notification Hubs for business (Alexander Laysha) - Interesting post that explains how Azure and his Notification Hubs could be really useful in marketing.
  
• Getting Started with Windows 10 - This week it's the Windows 10 week. And this post regroups many useful tutorial to get started.

Cloud

• July update for Web apps and App Service environments in the Azure preview portal (Ron Tardif) - This post is a great summary of the new July features.

Programming

• One of My Favorite PowerShell Functions - Nice and useful little piece of code.
  
• Describe Your PowerShell Variables - Nice quick tips to help us remember what we thought when we created those variables.
  
• Installing EF Power Tools into VS2015 (Julie) - Interesting tutorial that shows how to "upgrade" an extension to use it in VS...
  
• Five Common Daylight Saving Time Antipatterns of .NET Developers - Ah the "time"... The more you play with it, the more confuse you can be. Interesting post to avoid common mistakes.

Miscellaneous

• The Secret (and Oh So Simple) Way to Get People to Pay Attention to You (Betty Liu) - Interesting post about business relationship.
  
• How to stay productive while working from home (Xavier Nayrac) - Being myself a remote worker a found this post very close to the reality and inspiring.

~Frank