Reading Notes #602

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!

Cloud

• Azure SDK Release (April 2024) (Hector Norzagaray) - Lots of SDKs updates for many different languages and services.

Programming

• .NET Aspire preview 6 - .NET Aspire - The more a play with Aspire the more I like it. .NET developers you must give it a try.

• How to upload a file with Blazor SSR in .NET 8? - (Jon Hilton) A nice quick tutorial with all the code snippets we need.

• What's new for the Microsoft Fluent UI Blazor library 4.7 - (Vincent Baaij) A lots o new features and improvements in this release.

• Why don’t we talk about minifying CSS anymore? - (Salma Alam-Naylor) An interesting post. I didn't think about it but it's true, we used to talk way more about minification...

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

AI

• #SemanticKernel: Local LLMs Unleashed on #RaspberryPi 5 - (Bruno Capuano) This is the perfect tutorial to get started with local AI. No powerful computer required.

~Frank

Reading Notes #546

Cloud

• How to build, test and deploy your application using Azure and GitHub - Azure DevOps Blog (Liam Hampton) - A nice DevOps tutorial that requires no installation because it all happens in the browser.
• Introducing the Reliable Web App Pattern for .NET - .NET Blog (Matt Soucoup, Nish Anil) - This post explains the best practices build on top of the well architect Azure framework.

Programming

• Run Appwrite on a Raspberry Pi (Jim Bennett ) - This post will make you save money and time while setup your dev environment.
• Can WebAssembly Solve Serverless's Problems? (Cameron Gain) - This is an interesting post that shares why WASM is an excellent idea and how it can help today's businesses.
• How to Read and Parse a JSON File in C# (Januarius NjokuUnknown) - Multiple ways to parse a file. How many did you know?
• How to automate your dev environment with dev containers and GitHub Codespaces (Kedasha Kerr) - Since I discover the devcontainer I use it all the time. Lucky for me my computers are powerful enough to manage my simple project. Codespace provides all that comfort but online...Have a look.
• Write a high-quality README for NuGet packages - The NuGet Blog (Lynn Dai) - Wonderful initiative! I believe that well-written documentation is the missing piece to many great hidden projects.

Podcasts

• 344: Exploring CoreData and CloudKit (Merge Conflict) - Honestly it felt good hearing about those two genius struggling with data. But more than that to see them continue to look for different alternatives, and try new tools and patterns. Great episode, as usual.
• 51. Minimal web API’s and API Management & learning by teaching - with Jonah Andersson (Betatalks the podcast) - Jonah is just amazing! I knew her before listening to the episode, I just love her even more! Brilliant mind mixed with a contagious passion!

Books

• 
  
  Learning Blazor (David Pine) - This book is just perfect! It explains a bit of everything. It is packed with real examples and code variation (because there are so many ways to write something). There was even a full chapter un test with playwright, I didn't expect that and it was great!

Reading Notes #522

Yep! It's Monday again :) 

 Already time to share new reading notes. Here is 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 DevSecOps on Azure (Daniel Krzyczkowski) - DevSecOps is a real thing and it's accessible for all. This post explains what it is and provides examples of how it could be implemented at a high level.

• Using Azure CLI Authentication within Local Containers (James Dawson) - This post provides two very useful workarounds with WSL and docker to a difficulty we might encounter while using a different platform.

Programming

• #RaspberryPi – Install raspi-config on Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS (Bruno Capuano) - A short post that shows how to get Unbuntu 22.02 on your Pi.

• Adding color to bracket pairs (Mads Kristensen) - A call for feedback on an up common feature of Visual Studio. Rainbow Brackets yes it will colorize the brackets but what should be the options?

• Browser Extension with Blazor WASM - Cross-Browser Compatibility (Justin Yoo) - Nice post in a series that really shows in the details and explains how to use the extension.

• DevOps monitoring: The Why, What, and How of DevOps monitoring (Hiren Dhaduk) - This is an excellent post to get us to think about our first step. It explains the reason why we should care and briefly lists a few tools available today on the market to help.

• Get started with NDepend: Uncle Bob and the Zone of Pain (Dennis) - A nice article that explains how to get started with NDepends.

• Rewrite your git history in 4 friendly commands (Salma Alam-Naylor) - The git trick of the week for when you want to do a major cleaning.

• Working with System.Random and threads safely in .NET Core and .NET Framework (Andrew Lock) - Interesting post about Random numbers in .NET.

Podcasts

• 38. Open source framework MVVM Light, Azure Static Web Apps & timekeeper.cloud with Laurent Bugnion (Betatalks the podcast) - Cool episode about, well my friend! :)
• How to be a great (new!) leader (Modern Mentor) - Really interesting episode for new leaders/ influencers.

~frank

Reading Notes #383

Cloud

• 4 best practices to help you integrate security into DevOps (null) - Fantastic post that shows how, in fact, security is accessible to all with simple practices.
• Creating a Chatbot with Microsoft Azure QnA Maker and Alexa (James Ashley) - This post explains all the steps about a pretty cool project.
• How to Schedule Cosmos DB Data Processing With Azure Functions (Jason Roberts) - Cool demo with a time trigger (scheduled) Azure function.

Programming

• Views, Partial Views, and Layouts in ASP.NET Core MVC (Code Maze) - Very simple, but yet complete Asp.Net MVC tutorial. Perfect place to get started.
• Getting Started with Docker in Visual Studio 2019 (Wael Kdouh) - This is a nice tutorial to get started with Containers.
• Visual Studio Code Remote Development over SSH to a Raspberry Pi is butter (Scott Hanselman) - VS Code is simplifying the life of all IoT developers. So cool.

Miscellaneous

• It's Time ⌚ to Talk 5535756803! The Day of Your Presentation (Jeremy Likness) - Awesome post that is load with advice and experience.

~

Reading Notes #363

Cloud

• Automating Releases in GitHub through Azure Pipelines (Raiyan Alam) - So cool, I need to find a project to do that. Ok bye.

Programming

• Creating a Windows Container Build Agent for Azure Pipelines (Jakob Ehn) - This excellent post explains how to build a container with all the components required to have a full .Net build agent.
• How to use Windows 10's built-in OpenSSH to automatically SSH into a remote Linux machine (Scott Hanselman) - Nice post that explains how to configure what we already have, instead of installing yet another tool.
• Remote debugging with VS Code on Windows to a Raspberry Pi using .NET Core on ARM (Scott Hanselman) - A great example of the mojo: if you do a thing twice... automate it.
• Security bugs are fundamentally different than quality bugs (Tanya Janca) - This is a nice post that examines, dissects the difference between QA and security tests.

Databases

• MongoDB on Windows in Minutes with Docker (Jeremy Likness) - A great quick tutorial to install a mongodb in a container in 2 minutes.

Miscellaneous

• Simplicity is Key - Exploring Minimal Web Design (Cameron Chapman) - A very inspiring post that shows us many good designs.
• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective IT Leaders (JD Meier) - Interesting post. It covers pretty well all the aspect of efficient IT people. Easy to identify hard to master.
• What's the Best Video Stabilization Software? Premiere, After Effects, Resolve Reviewed (Lewis McGregor) - Very detailed analysis of the stabilization feature.

~

Reading Notes #329

Suggestion of the week

• Azure Logic Apps, tips from the real world (gord) - Nice post that explains a real-life situation fixed using Logic Apps.

Cloud

• Create Your First ‘No Code’ Logic App in Microsoft Azure (Timothy Warner ) - Another great example of how easy and useful logic apps are.
• How I choose which services to use in Azure (Barry Luijbregts, Scott Hanselman) - Oh wow! Very interesting video, presenting a nice and structured way to pick our cloud services.
• Import Azure Portal Dashboard (Abhijit Jana) - Nah! I didn't know you could import/ export... That's cool.
• Quick Navigation using Azure Portal Keyboard Shortcuts (Abhijit Jana) - Nice reminder... I'll definitely have a new look at them and use them more.
• Serverless with AWS Lambda and Scala (Rob Hinds) - Interesting Tutorial to get started with the AWS Lamba Amazon Serveurless offer}
• Exploring Azure App Service – Web Apps and SQL Azure (Andrew B Hall) - Quick and simple tutorial about Azure webapp with EF and a database.

Programming

• Installing PowerShell Core on a Raspberry Pi (powered by .NET Core) (Scott Hanselman) - It looks like the Raspberry Pi is now "more accepted" into the familly. It's time to try docker and PowerShell again.
• Building, Running, and Testing .NET Core and ASP.NET Core 2.1 in Docker on a Raspberry Pi (ARM32) (Scott Hanselman) - Fantastic! Now that .Net Core is So easily portable on Pi, I can start building my summer project with a familiar language.
• Introducing Play with Kubernetes (Mano Marks) - Bookmark this post, next rainy day ( or before) let's learn some new stuff.
• Do you need to speak English to Code? Noor - An Arabic Programming Language (Ahmed Abdalla, Scott Hanselman) - Very interesting question, and even more interesting the solution Ahmed built! Great episode.

Books

Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World (Gary Vaynerchuk) - Great book, for all of us you are trying to tell something, pass a message on the social media... This is a must.

Miscellaneous

• Why invest in backend developers when your customers don’t care? (Forrest Brazeal) - Interesting post about serverless and architecture patterns.
• Entreleadership #263: Thriving in the Age of Overload (Juliet Funt, Ken Colman) - I love that idea of Whitespace. Great episode very inspiring.

Reading Notes #328

Cloud

• 10 Reasons to Use Durable Functions (Mark Heath) - To celebrate his new course about durable function, Mark shares with us his top10 of the best reason with should use durable functions.

Programming

• Advanced Raspberry Pi traffic lights simulator (Gunnar Peipman) - This Windows IoT project looks really awesome! Let's have a threat...
• Creating NuGet packages in Docker using the .NET Core CLI (Andrew Lock) - A useful tutorial that explains how to use .Net CLI with Docker commands.
• Why should we care about containers for development (Shayne Boyer) - Another nice Docker post this time focus on the continuous integration and deployment.
• Creating PDF on ASP.NET Core (Gunnar Peipman) - Am bookmarking this one. Creating PDF is a common task and that code look "simple".

Data

• Power BI Desktop May Feature Summary (Amanda Cofsky) - The monthly updates is always a great new. This month shows more about that new Q&A feature... You may not know about it, but you really want to use it...
• Data Encodings and Layout (Clemens Vasters) - Very useful and deep article that provides the best practices for data encoding for different type of situation.

Books

Exactly What to Say, The Magic Words for Influence and Impact
(Phil M. Jones)
I listen to this audio book and really enjoy it. Simple powerful key works selection tat helps us to get where we want to go. It was only about two hours long and I listen to it in one shoot. And I’m mostly certain I will listen to it again.
ISBN 9780692881958

Miscellaneous

• The Next Time You Want to Complain at Work, Do This Instead (Peter Bregman) - We all did it at least once… Should we do with again... This post explains why we shouldn't.

Reading Notes #313

Suggestion of the week

• 5 Crazy Easy Things You Can Tweak Now for Better SEO (Liza Wilde) - Guys 5 really simple tips easy to apply... We all need to read this.

Cloud

• Azure Storage for Serverless .NET Apps in Minutes (Jeremy Likness) - Very interesting little project both simple and useful using Azure Function and Azure Storage.
• Launching of my Azure Rocks! YouTube channel (Guy Barette) - Pretty nice channel named Azure Rocks, that my friend just started, it worth a look.
• The moment I came to play with .NET Standard 2.0 part 2! (Dominique St-Armand) - Great post packed with tons of gotchas and advices, just how I like them.

Programming

• Install and run Ghost 1.x on Raspbian on Raspberry Pi (Ghost Pi) - Pretty cool tutorial that mixes low tech with a recent blog engine.
• Exploring the Azure IoT Arduino Cloud DevKit (Scott Hanselman) - This is an excellent post to know where to star with arduino and make your mind of what to expect in terms of effort vs result.
• Scalable and Performant ASP.NET Core Web APIs: Introduction (Carl Rippon) - This post is the first of a promising series about best practices building efficient APIs.

Databases

• Interacting with Azure SQL Using All Command Line Tools (K. Scott Allen) - I'm a big fan of terminal prompt when it's time to write SQL queries, this nice little one even got auto-completion, that's cool.

Miscellaneous

• Building 0verkill on Windows 10 Subsystem for Linux - 2D ASCII art deathmatch game (Scott Hanselman) - That post brings back souvenirs...
• Running BBS Door Games on Windows 10 with GameSrv, DOSBox, plus telnet fun with WSL (Scott Hanselman) - This is a big chuck of my adolescence. I need to try that.
• You got this! You know the fundamentals. You are a learner. Plus The Imposter's Handbook (Scott Hanselman) - I think we all fit in there.

Reading Notes #290

Cloud

• Artificial Intelligence tunes Azure SQL Databases (Veljko Vasic) - Very interesting article that shares a real-life situation where a Microsft Partner used SQL Auto tuning capability of SQL Database in Azure to optimize all his databases.
• Azure For Developers – Part 2: Your First App Service (Jesse Liberty) - Great new series that just started. It's a good point for beginners whom would like to have an overview.
• How Azure Security Center helps protect your servers with Web Application Firewall (Hayden Hainsworth) - Tools exist guys... They aren't perfect, but they will cover your ... for a good part. Take two minutes and have a look.

Programming

• A Comparison of Docker GUIs (Chris Ward) - This post surprises me by his very long list of graphical interfaces for Docker. I only knew the default one, but I'm now very tented to try other ones.
• Setting up Raspian and .NET Core 2.0 on a Raspberry Pi (Dave) - This post is packed with tons of little advice and tips that will save us time and energy.

Databases

• Building MEAN Apps with Cosmos DB - Part 1 (John Papa) - Pretty awesome series of little videos that explain step by step how to build the Mongo Express Angular Node (MEAN) application.
• First release candidate of SQL Server 2017 now available (SQL Server Team) - SQL server 2016 was such a big release, that it's nice to see that the 2017 version will also be packed.
• Tableau and Azure SQL DB, a match made in the cloud (Joseph Sack) - Interesting post that lists few best practices.

Miscellaneous

• 13 hours debugging a segmentation fault in .NET Core on Raspberry Pi and the solution was... (Scott Hanselman) - Aaaah, damn it. We all have those moments where nothing seems to make sense... Thanks for sharing Scott.
• Installing Visual Studio 2017 Made Easy (Mayur Tendulkar) - Pretty awesome tricks to install tons of Visual Studio without killing your Internet bandwidth.
• Monospaced Programming Fonts with Ligatures (Scott Hanselman) - Pretty cool hack. I mean I knew those characters existed, but I didn't know they had a name, and that we had display options.

Reading Notes #270

Suggestion of the week

• Azure Command Line 2.0 now generally available (Kamaljit Bath) - Azurecli definitely made a great jump in this version 2.0. With it reaching GA, we should all start using it.

Cloud

• Azure Managed Disk–Overview (Vincent-Philippe Lauzon ) - This post is a nice quick introduction on what are managed disks.
  
• Azure brings 5 new services to Canada (Chelsea Carter) - Good news for our clients that need to stay in Canadian Data centers, they now have a lot more tools in their box.
  
• Deploying ARM Templates using Visual Studio Team Services (Jakob Ehn) - This post shows how to automate Azure deployments. It doesn't do it with the usual happy path, but with a very common situation where we need access Key and other information from the deployed resources to complete the deployment.
  
• Deploying a web app and an Azure SQL database with ARM template without providing any password (Vivien Chevallier) - Great tutorial that gives us a very good opportunity to learn some best practices.
  
• Integrating SharePoint With Other Services Using Azure Logic Apps - Part One (Nakkeeran Natarajan) - Nice quick intro to the SharePoint connector in Logic Apps.
  
• Serverless architecture with Azure - Simple Talk (Christos Matskas) - Good post that does a little tour of the serverless services in Azure.However, I would disagree on the simplistic view of Logic Apps and its limitation. Furthermore, I would have talked more about are extremely powerful these services can become if put together in a solution.

Databases

• Loading files from Azure Blob Storage into Azure SQL Database (Jovan Popovic) - Cool. This bulk command has been so useful on-premises; it's great to have them back.
  
• Deploy Docker Container to Oracle Cloud Service (Arun Gupta) - Great post that explains a lot on how to use databases in dicker containers.

Miscellaneous

• GitKraken vs the CLI (Brett Goldman) - Cool comparison between the Git prompt and GitKranken.
  
• Introducing Raspberry Pi Zero W - Great news from Raspberry Pi this week, this new version is simply gorgeous.

Reading Notes #157

Suggestion of the week

• Microsoft Azure Web Site Cheat Sheet - Wow! I really think that ALL the information about Azure website is on this page, and it's super clear. Amazing job.

Cloud

• Soup to Nuts: From Raw Hardware to Cloud-Enabled Device - Excellent article that shows very exiting Raspberry Pi projects with Azure Services.

• Cloud, cloud, everywhere - This post makes me realize how many different cloud solution I'm using.

Programming

• Three steps to use jQuery UI in ASP.NET MVC 5 (Dhananjay Kumar) - Direct to the point. This is a good tutorial to not losing time and gets our solution correctly configured the first time.

• 3 Essential Sublime Text Plugins for Node & JavaScript Developers (Scott Smith) - Great! Life is so beautiful when we have the right tools.

• Inception-Style Nested Data Formats (Scott Hanselman) - What seem to be a good solution at one point could put you in a big problem tomorrow. This post explains one possible cause.

• WordPress -> Ghost -> Harp (Remy Sharp) - Great post about customizing a Harp blog (node.js).

• **The Ajax Control Toolkit are now maintained by DevExpress - Good news for a very nice library.

• Visualizing Security Information with Fiddler (Eric Lawrence) - This post explains how to customize the view in Fiddler to see security information.

• I was wrong about AngularJS - In this post, the author explains why after a difficult start, he now prefers AngularJS to BackBone.

• Implement Step-by-Step Generic Repository Pattern in C# - Nice post to know more about howto implent this important pattern.

Database

• Azure SQL Database Point in Time Restore (Tony Petrossian) - Nice post to know more about Azure SQL database backup.
  
• Let's play with Azure SQL Database backup and the Point in Time Restore (Frank Boucher) - A simple post to demistify the new Backup/Restore service in Windows Azure. ;)

Miscellaneous

• The most marketable skill in the job market: communication! - Nice advice for all new people on the market.

• Markdown Style Guide - This post gives some simple tips to keep our Markdown document easy to read when not converted.

• Announcing Windows 10 (Terry Myerson) - Great news about features in the next Windows...

• Windows 10: First Impressions - Get some idea of how it feels..
• How to create a Virtual Machine for run Windows 10 Technical Preview (Sara Silva) - This post is perfect if you want to try by yourself the new Windows 10, it will guides you to be all set.

~Frank

Reading Notes #156

Suggestion of the week

• Your Azure website CPU is going nuts and it’s not your fault (Troy Hunt) - This post tells us about a troubleshoot on Azure when looking for the casu of CPU spikes.

Cloud

• Enabling Hybrid Scenarios on Microsoft Azure (haishibai.blogspot.ca) - Nice post that presents five hybrid cloud scenarios with Azure.
  
• #Azure Talk - Working with Microsoft Azure Resources - Useful post that compares many different tools that manage Azure resources.
  
• Azure Websites for the Enterprise with Virtual Networks - Nice quick tutorial about connecting an Azure website with an un-premises computer.
  
• Mostly Cloudy – Sept 19th, 2014 - This post introduces some nice opensource project and reminds us to update our OS Familly in Azure.
  
• How I used Azure Mobile Services in my Unity game (Mickey MacDonald) - This post shows us some of the options available to simplify our life when we want to use Azure Mobile Service in our mobile apps.
  
• Soup to Nuts: From Raw Hardware to Cloud-Enabled Device - Excellent article that gives very exiting Raspberry Pi project that uses Azure Services.

Programming

• Choosing a JavaScript Framework with Craig McKeachie - Really interesting episode talking on key features to pick a Javascript framework, base on our projects or code that you like .
  
• Jump-Location - A Change Directory (CD) PowerShell Command that reads your mind (Scott Hanselman) - Great little tools to have.
  
• Towards a better console - PSReadLine for PowerShell command line editing (Scott Hanselman) - Two really nice PowerShell tools in one post.
  
• Web API Documentation Tools -- Visual Studio Magazine (Terrence Dorsey) - Many great tools to generate API documentation.

Miscellaneous

• **Scaled Agile Framework: Using TFS to support epics, release trains, and multiple backlogs whitepaper (Gregg Boer) - This post introduces us to an interesting whitepaper.

~Frank