Reading Notes #324

Cloud

• Using Chocolatey with Azure VMs (Dan Patrick) - If you are on Windows you must know Chocolatey.
• Gartner recognizes Microsoft as a leader in enterprise integration (Microsoft Azure) - It's always interesting to see the Gartner Magic Cadran result every year.
• How to quickly refer all available Azure services? (Abhijit Jana) - Nice post that gives a few key places to view the list of services available in Azure.

Programming

• ASP.NET Core 2.1 Preview on VSTS (Adam Storr) - This post explains a nice quickfix for your VSTS build flow.
• Searching docs using a .NET Core global tool (Shayne Boyer) - I didn' t know that dotnet-doc project! It's not only pretty cool but it just got better now available globally!
• Using HTTPS with Azure Functions in local development (Christos Matskas ) - Pretty cool quick post that explains the local https feature of the Azure Function v2.
• Windows Template Studio 2.0 is now available! (Clint Rutkas) - This is the perfect post to know what happened under the hood of this new version.

Miscellaneous

• Do you have to know English to be a Programmer? (Scott Hanselman) - Interesting post... At the end, English may not be a blocker...but you need some base. Otherwise, how could you even read this post!
• Release Flow: How We Do Branching on the VSTS Team (Edward Thomson) - Really interesting post about the Git practice at Microsoft and why they are doing it that way.
• The Canadian Real Estate Association delivers a better house-buying experience in the cloud (null) - Nice post about a reel business going in Azure.

Books

Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time

Author: Brian Tracy

A short book that pushes to action. I really enjoyed it. A book to read and read again.

ASIN: B01MYEM8SZ

Reading Notes #226

Microsoft Build 2016

• Keynote Presentation - Day 1 - The grand opening! All about us: developers.
• Keynote Presentation - Day 2 - The second day opening, with all the details about Azure and Xamarin!
• Build 2016 - So many great presentations, make your own schedule or download them all using the Alex's Script.
• Download All Sessions in SD Quality (Alexandre Brisebois) - With most of the big event comes the Alex's script... very useful!

Cloud

• Using PowerShell to manage API Connections (Kevin Lam _ Microsoft) - Quick tip to do some clean-up in our connections.
  
• Effective ways to delete resources in a resource group on Azure - I love it! Very clever trick to delete all resources in a group but not deleting the group. And so simple.
  
• Brand new Docker Machine for Azure (Ahmet Alp Balkan) - Important notice in this update since it is no backward compatible.
  
• Gartner names Microsoft Azure a leader in aPaaS (Nicole Herskowitz) - Good news, Azure PaaS identified as a leader by Gartner for the third year.

Programming

• Getting to Know #Azure Mobile App Part 2 - Nice post that explains how to setup VSTS and HockeyApp to deploy an Universal application.

Reading Notes #186

I finally watch most of the recorded sessions from Build, Ignite and MVPvConf, and I had more time to read.

Suggestion of the week

• Learning to git bisect (Rural) - Very, very interesting walkthrough, I never knew Git got that kind of feature.

Cloud

• Azure preview portal support for Cloud Services (Nick Harris) - +1 for the Preview portal.
  
• Azure Bits #1 - Up and Running (Rik Robinson) - Nice little tutorial that implement an asp.net website with queue and tasks.
  
• Azure Automation: New Graphical and Textual Authoring Features (Chris Sanders) - Perfect post to get started on Azure Automatiom.
  
• Azure PowerShell DSC Extension v1.10 released (Kris Bash) - Cool
  
• A taste of DocumentDB through our Query Playground (Andrew Hoh) - This post is a quick introduction of an interesting tool available for free on the Azure website.
  
• .NET Rocks! - Episode 1137 (Carl Franklin and Richard Cambell) - Nice episode where Sam Vanhoutte shares with us his impression about BizTalk in Azure in all it's different flavor: VM, SaaS, LogicApp.
  
• Debugging Desired State Configuration (DSC) on (Alexandre Brisebois) - This post explains every step of a debugging session with DSC using PowerShell.
  
• A Monster VM Azure Resource Manager Template (Alexandre Brisebois) - Nice deep dive into how to create a custom template for the Azure Resources Manager.
  
• Microsoft – the only vendor named a leader in Gartner Magic Quadrants for IaaS, Application PaaS, and Cloud Storage (Nicole Herskowitz) - Very interesting post that summarizes the Gatner document about today cloud leaders.

Microsoft is currently the only vendor to be positioned as a Leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrants for Cloud Infrastructure as a Service , Application Platform as a Service , Cloud Storage Services and Server Virtualization

• Getting Started with Azure Notification Hubs (xximjasonxx) - This is a nice post to get started with Azure Hub and nice tool Service Bus Explorer (available online).

Programming

• JustDecompile Engine Becomes Open Source (Iana Tsolova) - Time to go checks what's under the hood.
  
• Create Node Task for Visual Studio Code (Steve Michelotti) - Nice post that explains clearly how create a task in VisualStudio Code.
  
• Customize ASP.NET MVC 6 View Location Easily (Jeff) - Nice tips, and a very simple solution to make the Shared folder more visible.

Miscellaneous

• Task Management for Teams (JD Meier) - Interesting thoughts about the size of our planned periods.
  
• Getting Started with Azure Notification Hubs (xximjasonxx) - This is a nice post to get started with Azure Hub and nice tool
  
• Open Source: A Small Guide for Newcomers (Felix Rieseberg) - If you already know your base with git and would like to jump-on the open-source wave, this post is the perfect start point. It provides nice advices and good references for more detail information.

~Frank

Note about the image of this week: This graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The Gartner document is available upon request here.

Reading Notes #169

 

Happy New Year!

 

Suggestion of the week

• Magic Strings – No More! - Great post that explains different ways to manage string in our code. Clear and efficient.

Cloud

• The cloud saves the day and other non-myths (Brian Heckert) - Nice post that discusses some myths mentions in Gartner's presentation about the cloud.

• Automating Azure on your CI server using a Service Principal - Great tutorial that explains how to use Active Directory (AD) to access resources in Azure.

• Scaling #Azure Cloud Services Up and Down Like Clockwork (Alexandre Brisebois) - Really interesting post that explains how scaling up & out and down &in can mean huge saving in our pockets.

Programming

• Could not load file or assembly… NuGet Assembly Redirects (blog.maartenballiauw.be) - Nice clever tricks to avoid losing time.

• UI Considerations When Using Asynchronous Methods (Jeremy) - Good tutorial that explains some key features we must adapt in the UI when making our code async.

Miscellaneous

• 4 Simple Tricks to Help Make Your Content Stand Out (AJ Agrawal) - This post provides a nice list of tools to improve our content.

• Why You Should Say Goodbye to Work-Life Balance in 2015 (Aaron O'Hearn) - Interesting thoughts.

• The Key to Increased Productivity? Stop Working (Justin Bariso) - This post suggests simple thins to do to improve our productivity. Perfect to start the new year...

• XML Sitemaps for the Ghost Blogging Platform - Time to update our Ghost blogs...

~Frank Boucher