Reading Notes #568

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!

Programming

• What Does an Open Source Triage Team Do? (BekahHW) - There are so many ways to get involved in the community and make an OSS project better. It's fantastic.

• Replacing Mock and Stub with a Fake by Mark Seemann (Mark Seemann) - Learn more about how fakes can simplify your test and some best practices in this post.

• 5 Benefits of a Container-First Approach to Software Development (Ben Cotton) - Container without being the solution for everything did indeed change a lot in the industry. Nice post that highlights that.

• EF Core Fundamentals for EF Core 7 (Pluralsight) (Julie Lerman) - Great course from Julia to learn the fundamental of EF 6 or 7.

• Using SQL Server as a Message Queue with Wolverine (Jeremy D. Miller) - I love the idea of reusing SQL instead of adding more components to your system. Well done Wolverine.

Data

• Unleashing SQL Sorcery: Increasing Performance and Complexity with GitHub Copilot (Subhojit Basak) - Copilot is a very useful pair programming partner. This post shares how to use it for your queries.

Low Code

• Power Automate Standards: Variables (Matthew Devaney) - Nice series about best practices in flows.

Open Source

• On Moq and our Part in the OSS Sustainability Social Contract (Sean Killeen) - An excellent post that explains the controversial event that occur with the Moq project recently and shares thoughts.

~Frank

Reading Notes #424

Suggestion of the week

• Microsoft Build 2020 registration is not only open, it's FREE, it's LIVE, it's VIRTUAL, and it is all FOR YOU (Scott Hanselman) - Amazing news right?! Who doesn't needs some good news... I will see you there!

Cloud

• Microsoft’s Making Azure AD SSO “Free” (Brad Sams ) - That's an excellent news Azure Active Directory for everyone!

Programming

• Blazor WebAssembly 3.2.0 Release Candidate now available (Daniel Ruth) - We are getting closer now... I didn't have the time to try the last preview!
• Announcing Entity Framework Core 5.0 Preview 3 | .NET Blog (Jeremy Likness) - Awesome I'm looking forward to trying the final version. But in the meantime... why not try it.
• Blazor - Changing the title without JavaScript (Jimmy Engström) - A nice tutorial that shows how to go over certain boundaries in Blazor.
• Clean Coding in C# - Part I (Calvin A. Allen) - A great little post packed with 200% of wisdom.
• How to Integrate Unit Testing with ASP.NET Core 3.1 (Vijayaraj Angappan) - A very clear tutorial that explains how to use Moq and NUnit 2 great tools.
• Markdown .NET Core Library (Jason N. Gaylord) - That looks nice! And it's in .Net!
• Tips, tricks, hacks, and secrets from Alyson La (Alyson La) - A nice little list of pro tips...perfect to get started, or push forward if you are already a git user.

Podcasts

• 465: How to Lead a Virtual Team, with Susan Gerke (Coaching for Leaders) - Nice show. It doesn't matter if you are a manager or just that you work in a remote team, there nice tips.

Miscellaneous

• Visual Studio Codespaces (Nik Molnar) - I really like the new name I think it says more about what it is. And seriously how can I not like the new price! Less than 2$/day for a machine!

Reading Notes #407

Every Monday, I share my reading notes. Those are 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.

Cloud

• Linked ARM Templates for a Multi Resource Azure Solution (Roy Kim (MVP)) (Roy Kim) - A nice quick post with code sample to show how to simplify and help to maintain ARM templates.

• Azure Advent Calendar video - Azure CLI and Cloudshell (Dan Clarke) - Wow! One great post and a ton of pretty cool videos available on YouTube...

• Generating Images with Azure Functions (Aaron Powell) - Brilliant usage of Azure function and its the first one I see in F#! All the code is available in GitHub, definitely worth the detour.

Programming

• A WebAssembly Powered Augmented Reality Sudoku Solver (Colin Eberhardt) - This is sick! I'm very impressed by all that work and of course by the result! A great post that explains all the steps to get that working.

• ASP.NET Core Integration Testing & Mocking using Moq (Muhammad Rehan Saeed) - Great post that explains all the setup to put in place a stable and reliable test solution.

• Use MongoDB in Your C# ASP.NET Apps (Terje Kolderup) - This is a very complete tutorial the shows all the code and explains step by step how to add, configure and use MongoDB.

Podcasts

• SPI 401: Jesse Cole—The Yellow Tux Guy (Jesse Cole) - Wow! Great show, if you don't feel pumped up and 200% motivated after listening to this show... We might be in Zombieland already.... 😜.

Miscellaneous

• Is that position available for remote? (Mark Downie) - A very interesting post that, I think, explains well the 'behind the scene' of the response we can get when asking the remote question.

~

Reading Notes #286

Cloud

• Azure Portal: The missing ClearDB MySQL database (Iris Classon) - Wooo! This is an amazing workaround of what could be a major problem. Good catch!
• Azure Site Recovery between Azure regions - Easier than ever.
• Enable client side monitoring in Azure with Application Insights (Beckylin Orooji) - Pretty slick new way to get client side Application Insights running.
• Tutorial: Login with Amazon Integrations - Auth0 - Cool tutorial to add more flexibility in our Amazon web apps.

Programming

• Docker for .NET Developers (Part 3) (Steve Gordon) - Great post that gives all the details on the context of this series. Why Docker, why .Net Core...etc.
• Testing ASP.NET Core MVC Controllers: Getting Started (Jason Roberts) - Nice little tutorial it shows us how to build our first test using moq and .Net Core.

Reading Notes #198

Cloud

• Announcing Backup of Windows 10 machines using Azure Backup (Giridhar Mosay) - Low-brainer, safe and efficient it's a must.
  
• Announcing Geospatial support in Azure DocumentDB! (Aravind Ramachandran) - Fantastic, this option was present in the wishlist of many people. And we can try it right now in the DocumentDB playground.
  
• Azure Site Recovery is now available in Central US, North Central US, South Central US, East US2 (Ashish Gangwar) - Great news!
  
• Copy a Blob From an Azure Datacenter to Another Using PowerShell (Alexandre Brisebois) - I write previously about that here, but the monitoring idea is a nice addition. time to update my scripts.
  
• What’s New In Azure Storage (Gaurav) - Nice summary of the azure blob storage (.Net client), on how to use the new AppendBlob type.
  
• Moving a CentOS Virtual Machine to Another Azure Datacenter (Alexandre Brisebois) - Very complete script to move Linux machine using RAID0 between accounts.
  
• Azure Automation, Remote PowerShell And a Virtual Machine (Alexandre Brisebois) - This post provides a nice PowerShell script clearly commented, to execute commands remotely in an Azure VM.
  
• Meet AzureCon (Nicole Herskowitz) - A date to remember: September 29.
  
• New CDN features – country filtering, compression and analytics (Manling Zhang) - This post announced a new feature in Azure CDN.

Podcast

• .NET Rocks! - Great episode very interesting discussion about the new Azure Service Fabric.

Programming

• Using Callbacks with Moq (Richard Carr) - The callback method is a powerful tool in Moq, and this post explained it very clearly.
  
• AC's Blog: Running Mocha Tests with Visual Studio Code - Nice little tutorial that goes to the essential and explains debugging with. VSCode and Gulp.
  
• 12 tips to increase the performance of ASP.NET application drastically – Part 1 - Evangelism - Nice tips to improve performance. I like the sixth one, I wonder how much the performances are improved with it.
  
• 12 tips to increase the performance of ASP.NET application drastically – Part 2 - Second part of the performance tips list... still very interesting.

Databases

• JavaScript as Modern Day T-SQL (Andrew Liu) - This post explains the awesome evolution of the Javascript Query language DocumentDB.

Reading Notes #57

 

Cloud

• How to Assess Costs of using Windows Azure for your Applications (Himanshu Singh) - Quick post about a windows paper that provide all the information on Azure usual monthly charges.

Check out the paper.

• Hands-on Windows Azure Services for Windows (Maarten Balliauw) - M. Balliauw is asking a good question, that I ears often: Why should I do this?
• Windows Azure Visio Shapes - Yahooooo! I never enough Visio shape... Thanks Buck Woody!
• Service Bus for Windows server, the new features - Good post that introduces the new features of the service Bus and explains them quickly.
• Cloud Cover – Episode 84 - Windows Azure Storage Updates and a Preview of the Client Storage Library vNext - As usual nice video (shorter than last time ;) ). It reviews the new features available in Azure Storage, and show a preview of the Azure Storage libraries that will be release soon.

Programming

• ASP.NET Web API and Azure Blob Storage (Yao) - Super tutorial that show step by step how to manage your Azure Blob Storage by code, by doing a nice helper class.
• The 5 thing to immediately grab from EF Open Source - Good post that point out some place where you can see good code sample.
• When do you need a 3-tier architecture? - Good question! And this post is trying to answer it.
• Building an Offline HTML5 Application - Great tutorial about a well-structured HTML5 application that will also works offline.
• Entity Framework 5 and 6 Roadmap - The list of interesting features of the EF5 and some that are planned for the version 6.
• Beyond Agile Estimation Part I: Measuring Key Data Points - Nice post that summarize how to use some keys counters in order to have a better estimation of the project delivery date.
• CloudSurvey (Nathan Totten) - Nice work. A great sample to see how things are done.
• WCF - Top 10 Interview Questions (Imran Abdul Ghani) - Excellent post and excellent revision of what is WCF. Short and clear.
• Exterminating Common jQuery Bugs (Elijah Manor) - Wow what a great video. It goes through all most frequent mistake we make, explain why it doesn't works and fix it. Take a look at the tool he is using. An open source (soon) presentation framework. Very nice!
• 10 Application Performance Tuning Tips - Nice tips, simple and efficient.
• So you want to contribute to EF? Part 1: Introduction (Arthur Vickers) - Excellent series not only to kwon more about how to contribute with the Entity framework (EF) but with any kind of open source project.

Miscellaneous

• 5 Ways to Think Wisely in Development (Dimitrios Kalogirou) - Nice post that expose 5 ways to be a wiser developer.
• Sitting is Making You Fat and Killing You - Nice warning post that explains why say sit for a long period is bad and gives some tips to improve our comfort.
• Who Are You Really Mad At? (Peter) - This is about a life lesson: Pause. And like in the post you will be reward.
• Time to stop reusing your passwords - Nice reminder of the reason why we shouldn't reuse our e-mail.
• Get The Most Out of Your Mornings - Nice post that explain how to you could use your mornings to add 280 hours in your year.
• Time Management Tips #3 - Three Wins for the Week (JD Meier) - Simple tips from the book Getting Results the Agile Way that will help you to have a better week.
• 10 classic mistakes that plague software development projects (Justin James) - Nice post that make me smiling. I challenge you to pass through the list without thinking: oh yeah that's so true...
• True Secret to Success (It's Not What You Think) (Geoffrey James) - Suggest a very simple mental exercise to make your day more positive.
• I Won't Hire People Who Use Poor Grammar. Here's Why. (Kyle Wiens) - I agree the grammar is really important, even if I’m not good as I want to be.
• 3 Interview Questions That Reveal Everything (Jeff Haden) - Nice post. I like the questions it's true that you should learn a lot from them even if the candidate is not "verbose".

~ Frank