Reading Notes #543

Already 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, podcast episodes, and books that catch my interest during the week. 

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

The Suggestion of the week

• What is .NET, and why should you choose it? (.NET Team) - This is not an ordinary blog post. It makes me think of those deep interesting MSDN articles. A great read for young or older developers that would like to know more about .NET or refresh their memory.

Cloud

• Azure DevOps Pipelines: If Expressions and Conditions (John Folberth) - This nice post in the series on Azure Pipeline focuses on conditions. Avery has efficient tools to customize our pipeline just like we want them.

• What is an Azure Load Balancer? (Cary Roys) - Do you know what an Azure Load Balancer is or you only thing you know? In this nice post not only you will learn what it really is but it the post shares some OSS tools to test your ALB and explains how to use them.

Programming

• Asynchronous Programming Patterns in .NET (Code Maze) - This is a great tutorial that explains 3 asynchronous patterns with code samples and explanation. Perfect to get started and understand legacy code or write new one.

• Coding 102: Writing code other people can read (Max Pekarsky) - This is an excellent post with so much wisdom in it. Writing readable code is extremely important. Whether it's just a few lines in excel, a script, a query for a database, or a full app.

• Use multiple identity providers from a Blazor WASM ASP.NET Core App secured using BFF (Damien Bowden) - An interesting post that explains how to implement authentification.

Podcasts

• Sustainable Open Source with Sarah Novotny (.NET Rocks!) - Great episode with the Microsoft Open Source Lead talking about why truly open source is important and how Microsft really believes in its future.
• Digging Up the Past with Sarah Parcak (A Bit of Optimism) - Using satellite images to do archeology... wait what?! Great episode really interesting from the early second until the last one.

Miscellaneous

• ChatGPT: One million people have joined the waitlist for Microsoft's AI-powered Bing (Liam Tung) - What a first day! This is a little post that shares a little info about the new Bing and its kickoff.

~Frank

Reading Notes #529

Good Monday (standard time for many :) ),

It's time to share new ReadingNotes. Here is a list of all the articles, podcasts, and blog posts, that catch my interest during the week. 

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

Cloud

• Azure Developer CLI (azd) – November 2022 Release (Savannah Ostrowski) - New beta version released with java and bicep updates...Great work.

• Azure SQL Database Overview (Daniel Calbimonte ) - This post is a great one to get started on Azure SQL Database. It answers many of the initial questions and provides the answers.

• Build a globally resilient architecture with Azure Load Balancer | Azure Blog and Updates | Microsoft Azure (Mahip Deora) - An azure load balancer is definitely a powerful tool when your customers aren't centralized. This post provides a nice overview.

Programming

• Create your .NET portfolio in the .NET Conf student zone (Katie Savage) - The .NET Conf conference is next Tuesday (Nov. 8) and students have a very special place. Have a look!

• How to Implement Decentralized Storage Using Docker Extensions - Docker (Marton Elek) - Second and last part of a series discussing about the storage with docker.

• Performance improvements in ASP.NET Core 7 (Brennan Conroy) - It's both impressive and inspiring to see so much improvement in performance in that next version.

• [Improving Your Desktop Applications—ToolTips in .NET MAUI](Leomaris Reyes ) (https://www.telerik.com/blogs/improving-desktop-applications-tooltips-dotnet-maui?utm_source=readingnotes) - Tooltips are now here!

• Personalize a static site based on a previous site referral (Salma Alam-Naylor) - This is a cool tutorial that explains how to leverage Netlify edge code to change a static website page base on where the visitor came from.

Miscellaneous

• Bicep for Real Site Launched (Sam Cogan) - Wonderful! The tutorial a was waiting for and it will be good because it's done by Sam.

~frank

Reading Notes #243

Suggestion of the week

• IaaS isn’t your only path to outsized gains (James Staten) - Excellent post full of true and interesting facts that, at a very high level, explains the real power of the cloud.

Cloud

• Azure Advanced Data Center Bootcamp class now available (mwasham) - Great opportunity to pass at the advanced level.
  
• Azure PowerShell support for Enterprise Integration pack features now available (Jon Fancey) - Quick tutorial that uses PowerShell to create LogicApp.
  
• Getting to Know Actors in Service Fabric - This is the post is about all we need to know about microservices with actors. Even few patterns are described.
  
• Why Does My SQL Server Availability Group Need a Load Balancer in Azure? (Paul Burpo) - This post is the answer of a very common question and also explains how to do it correctly.
  
• Introducing Microsoft Stream: the secure destination to manage and share videos for businesses of all sizes (James Phillips) - Really exiting news, get started in less than 5 seconds and share video only for the viewer(s) you wish, on any devices, and securely.

Programming

• Exploring a minimal WebAPI with ASP.NET Core - Interesting new series that explores the possibilities with dotnet and different component.

Miscellaneous

• Azure Logic Apps Reaches General Availability (Jeff Hollan) - Exiting news, the availability of so many great features and tool like the LogicApp editor inside VS.
  
• Stop the madness! Ridiculous security scare tactics revealed - Like always, by being informed half the problem is already solved.

Reading Notes #242

Cloud

• Amazon launches QuickSight, a cloud-based business intelligence tool (Jordan Novet) - This post announces a powerful tool in the BI world. It looks very nice.
  
• Azure Infographic: Cloud Design Patterns - Wow! A fantastic infographic that shows many different patterns that should be used when developing with Azure.
  
• Azure PowerShell support for Enterprise Integration pack features now available (Jon Fancey) - Quick tutorial that uses PowerShell to create LogicApp.
  
• Create the roadmap for your enterprise cloud strategy (James Staten) - A book based on the real-live situation and Microsoft best practices... Sounds really useful to me.
  
• Querying the VSTS Work Items API directly from Power BI - Very impressive work, I know few managers who will love that tool. And the good news is that it is entirely customizable.
  
• Release notes (Matt Farmer) - Easier than ever, no more need to dig to know what new in each release. Read what the Api Management team has cooked for us.
  
• Why Does My SQL Server Availability Group Need a Load Balancer in Azure? (Paul Burpo) - This post is the answer of a very common question and also explains how to do it correctly.

Programming

• Exploring dotnet new with .NET Core (Scott Hanselman) - I discover the different types in dotnet new command during Julie Lerman's talk at DevTeach and now this post shows a list of incredible opportunities.

Miscellaneous

• 3 Significant Flaws in the Concept of Googliness (Melissa Burns) - Interesting point of view about what look first as good idea that could turn out as bad ideas...
  
• The 3 Things Scrum Teams Get Wrong - Interesting post, how your team score?
  
• Why I Left Google Redux (James Whittaker) - Interesting article about Google's business model and few other things.

Reading Notes #235

Suggestion of the week

• Is technology killing curiosity? (Scott Hanselman) - Very interesting reflections. A post to read.

Cloud

• Diagnose and resolve issues with Azure Troubleshooting (Ritesh Garodia) - Nice post that helps us to know the troubleshooting tools available in Azure portal.
  
• Deploy a Geo-HA Service Fabric Cluster on Azure (Alexandre Brisebois) - Fantastic post. It may require a second read to catch all the information contained, but it is worth it.
  
• How to Load Balance Virtual Machines in Azure (Marc Gagne) - Nice tutorial t explains step by step how to create, and configure an environment with a load balancer.
  
• Azure Export Template – Your new best friend (Vincent-Philippe Lauzon) - True, this relatively new feature is a real benediction.
  
• Turning on Windows features using Powershell DSC extension and Azure CLI (Kirpa Singh) - This post explains a clever method to active Windows features on multiple VMs.

Reading Notes #149

Cloud

• Using the Internal Load-Balancer with Azure Virtual Machines - Fantastic post that explains how we can use the internal load balancer in Azure. Even the PowerShell scripts are included.
  
• Using Reserved IP Addresses with Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines - Nice PowerShell scripts and comments to help us with our Azure fixed IP.

Programming

• Free eBook on Model View View Model design pattern (Surf4Fun) - MVVM is a very useful pattern, so a free e-book on he topic is a good news!
  
• Unusual Ways of Boosting Up App Performance. Boxing and Collections - Interesting post that explains how to find and fix different memory issue in our application.

Miscellaneous

• How To Come up with Great Ideas for Blog Posts, Every Single Time - Good advice to fight the white page situation.

Reading Notes #139

Suggestion of the week

• Refactoring your CSS with LESS in Visual Studio Web Essentials (David Paquette) - Web essentials is really essential! This post explains how easy it is to manage our CSS files with LESS.

Cloud

• Simple Web Site Backup retention policy with WebJobs (Eduardo Laureano) - That’s a really nice tutorial that explains how to use Azure webjobs.
• Basic Tier Virtual Machines (Kenai Kwa) - It’s time to save money. We need to change the type of our VM to be basic for all Azure VMs that don’t need load balancer or scalability.
• IIS Reset on Windows Azure Web Role (Value Maker) - Safe yourself sometimes and gray hair by reading this post before you got to do IISReset on an Azure VM…
• Cloud Power: How to scale Azure Websites globally with Traffic Manager (Scott Hanselman) - Great example of scaling a website with Azure.
• Managing your Azure Storage account with Zudio - This post introduces a very intuitive tool for when we want a quick and simple view of our stuff.

Programming

• Save Time, Money, and Your Sanity: Coded UI Testing for the Windows Phone - Part 1 (Lori Lalonde) - This post lists the prerequisites required to do a UI unit test that will be explains in a future post.
• What should I be looking for during Code Reviews? - Very interesting post that gives us a good idea of what we should think about when doing a code review.
• ASP.NET MVC Helper - MoreLessText (James Curran) - That’s a nice HTML helper simple and efficient, like all the best are.

Mobile

• Build Some Ears on Your App and then Listen! (Mark B Schramm) - This post lists the best practices about how we should take care of our apps once they are live.

Miscellaneous

• SonicAgile Now with Dropbox Integration - Nice new add-on to this great management tool.
• FREE Pluralsight video: “Get Involved” in community! (Scott Hanselman) - Excellent video that will help you to get started. You don’t have any excuse anymore since it’s free!
• VM Image PowerShell ‘How To’ Blog Post (Christine Avanessians) - Really useful post that gives a lot of code snipets with the explication on what they do. A must.

~Frank

Reading Notes #136

 

Suggestion of the week

• Open Source is a thankless job. We do it anyway (Scott Hanselman) - A post that brings back the essence of what supposed to an open-source project and what it means to participate.

Cloud

• Creating an Azure Mobile Services .NET backend from scratch (Carlos Figueira) - Great tutorial here without magic. Every steps are well explained.
  
• Microsoft Azure Load Balancing Services (Marios Zikos) - Great article that explains how the load balancer work and how to configure it based on our needs.
  
• Information on Microsoft Azure and Heartbleed (Andrew Cushman) - This post explained when, even if running on Microsoft Azure, the Heartbleed vulnerability could affect your app.
  
• Size Matters… A LOT! - This post gives nice options to minimize the impact of a mobile application using the cloud as backend.
  
• Reading from a queue in an Azure WebJob - This post got us started with Azure webjobs.
  
• VM Image (Christine Avanessians) - Wonderful, so many new functionalities! I'm really looking forward to know more and try it.
  
• VM Agent and Extensions – Part 1 (Kundana Palagiri) - This post introduced the currently available extensions with a quick example. VMExtension looks a very promising feature with a lot of potential.
  
• Azure Updates: Web Sites, VMs, Mobile Services, Notification Hubs, Storage, VNets, Scheduler, AutoScale and More (Scott Gu) - I don't know where to start. This last release contained so many new features it's incredible. You must read this post.
  
• Les architectures émergentes, l'innovation en architecture et les nouvelles tendances - Annonce d'un événement à Montréal sur l'architecture notamment pour le "cloud".
  
• How to assign a private Static IP to a Windows Azure VM - Useful powershell script to manage your Azure's VMs.
  
• IT Pros ROCK! - This post explains very clearly all the options with their pros and cons when shutting down AzureVM.
  
• Automating Environment Creation using Microsoft Azure PowerShell - Nice scrit!
  
• Deep dive: Visual Studio 2013 Update 2 RC and Azure SDK 2.3 (Mohit Srivastava) - Great post that goes into details in all the major new features from the last Azure SDK and visual studio release.

Programming

• Developing for Windows Phone 8.1 using XAML (Nick) - This post got us started with the three choices we have to develop windows phone application.
  
• Announcing release of Microsoft Avro Library (Maxim Lukiyanov) - Great news, a new serializer for .Net and it's available on NuGet.
  
• Exploring ASP.NET Web Pages - A fully-featured MiniBlog using just Razor (Scott Hanselman) - This post introduced another but quite minimalist blog engine call miniBlog.
  
• Il était une fois… Modernizr (Anne B) - Outil très utile pour le développement web.

Miscellaneous

• Merge conflicts in csproj files - Nice post that explained why the merge method had to change in Git to merge Visual Studio project file.
  
• What price might you really be paying for Woolworths “free” wifi? - Aaah marketing, when will you stop to surprise me?

Reading Notes #51

The Cloud Storage

Cloud

• Setting up a webfarm using Windows Azure Virtual Machines (Maarten Balliauw) - Nice post that explains how to build a web farm with a free load balancer using the brand new Windows Azure. This post pass-through all steps putting the emphasis on important notion to have a nice web farm up and running.

[…]Sysprep ensures the machine can be cloned into a new machine, getting its own settings like a hostname and IP address. A non-sysprepped machine can thus never be cloned.[…]

• GitHub for Windows Azure Websites (Maarten Balliauw) - This tutorial is very easy to follow and will help to to setup a Windows Azure Website that will use Git as sources instead of regular package.
• Windows Azure Service Management API Cheat Sheet with PowerShell (Michael Washam) - Nice PowerShell script sample that show how easy it is to manage the new Azure capabilities thru the API.
• Reintroducing Windows Azure, Part 1: The New Management Portal (David Pallmann) - Nice first post of a series of four this one introduce the new Azure portal with also a quick recap of the "stuff".
• Reintroducing Windows Azure, Part 2: Windows Azure Web Sites (David Pallmann) - This second post of the nice series presents all the new features around the Windows Azure Websites. Enjoy!
• Microsoft Gives Windows Azure Amazonian Facelift (Cade Metz) - After June 7, Windows Azure is definitely a cloud platform or cloud infrastructure or cloud... something that must be considerate if you planning to go in the cloud.
• Episode 83 - Windows Azure June 2012 Release - This is the longest episode of the Cloud Cover Show, but a great one! It talks about so many things... Find the time, it's a must.
• Updates to Windows Azure Storage – Reduced Transaction Pricing and Geo Replication (Gaurav) - Everything you need to know on Azure Storage and is geo replication feature (this post as been updated).
• 10x Price Reduction for Windows Azure Storage Transactions - Nice recap of all the novelties about Azure Storage.
• Thoughts on AWS (Arthur) - Nice post. A real AWS environment is break down to expose every part and the author gives is opinion about it.
• Can you use BizTalk in Azure Virtual machine for production use? (saravana) - Nice post that explain the details that you must know before using the cloud for your production environment. This is following this one.
• The cloud will cost you, but you’ll be happy to pay (Service Mesh Dave Roberts) - Very interesting post that explain the Jevons paradox and is application the cloud computing.
• Loading data to SQL Azure the fast way - Incredibly complete post. The perfect post to before you get started with massive data import into SqlAzure.
• Windows Azure Virtual Machines (Michael Washam) - Amazing post that wrap-up everything about the brand new Azure virtual machine and virtual network. All the features are deeply explains. A must for all it peoples.
• Reintroducing Windows Azure, Part 3: Virtual Machines (David Pallmann) - Third post in the series this one focus on windows VM. How to create, configure, connect and use them.
• Reintroducing Windows Azure, Part 4: Linux Virtual Machines (David Pallmann) - Same thing as the previous one except this one is about Linux VM.
• Windows Azure SQL Reporting is now available - That great news a good reporting tool is always important. More to come.

Programming

• Marked As Pertinent - The perfect post to read when looking for a NoSql (or a key/value store), because this post compare a lot of them.
• Nuno Filipe Godinho - Very nice feature. You don’t need any more to uninstall Azure SDK to install a new one! Even more you have a new dropdownlist that will act as a filter in visual studio when creating your new project.
• DFW Ajax Users Group - Nice post that presents the characteristics of the two main architecture of site (with sample) and explains why most actual sites are in fact hybrid.
• Using the Windows Azure Cache Preview with SDK 1.7 - Nice demo of Azure Cache preview and a quick fix on a potential problem you could have trying it with the emulator.

Miscellaneous

• 4 Things Great Leaders Do Better Than You (Les McKeown) - Inspiring post.
• What The Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast (Laura Vanderkam) - Nice post. I'm a morning guy since I was a teenager and I kept this morning habit. It’s incredible how many things we can do!

[…]Come up with a plan and assemble what you need, but whatever you do, don’t label this vision as impossible[…]

• How to Stop Sucking and Be Awesome Instead (Jeff Atwood) - Seriously not serious. download the slides...Awesome.

~Frank