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 #382

Cloud

• Getting Started with the Cognitive Services Computer Vision API - The Wit and Ramblings of David Giard (David Giard ) - Nice little tutorial to get started quickly with the Vision API.
• Kubernetes: What it is and what it isn’t (Jason Haley) - Cool source of resources related to how to learn Kubernetes
• Sync Folder with Azure Blob Storage (Thomas Maurer) - Wow, this is so sick! Very happy about this feature.
• Using Entity Framework with Azure Functions (Jeff Hollan) - Pretty cool demo about the new dependency injection feature of Azure Function.

Programming

• Clever little C# and ASP.NET Core features that make me happy (Scott Hanselman) - Nice post about some C# gems...If I can say that.
• 10 Top Blazor Tools Just a NuGet Away -- Visual Studio Magazine (David Ramel) - Wow, so many great projects...
• Top 10 C# Developer Books for Summer 2019 (Claudio Bernasconi) - Great list of books to get started with C# or as a developer. I'll definitely refer people to it when asked where to start.

~

Reading Notes #350

Cloud

• Ghost Contact Form with Azure Functions (Tom Faltesek) - Being myself a user of both Ghost and Azure function I'm very excited about this new series of posts.
• Azure Functions local.settings.json Secrets and Source Control (Tom Faltesek) - Great post that demonstrates options to manage sensitive information aka secrets
• Azure Tips and Tricks Part 169 - Part 2 - A quick tour around Azure DevOps Projects using Node.js and AKS (Michael Crump) - Another great tip, this time deploying containers in a DevOps project.

Programming

• .NET Core and .NET Standard for IoT - The potential of the Meadow Kickstarter (Scott Hanselman) - Once again a Kickstarter project that looks fantastic this time in the IoT world... It very tempting.
• Azure DevOps Roadmap update for 2018 Q4 (Alex Nichols) - Nice review of the Azure DevOps roadmaps.
• Building offline Blazor application (Gunnar Peipman) - A very interesting post about an experience done with Blazor. It's usually during those that I learn the most.
• Introducing the Cake.Discord Addin (Gary Ewan Park) - A few weeks ago I used cake to deploy in Azure and I was very impressed by cake. Its great to see this project continues to evolve and get new addin is very cool.
• Kubernetes deployments made easy - Octopus Deploy 2018.9 (Rob Pearson) - I really need to try Octopus that tool looks awesome and its now so simple with kb8
• Marking up the Web with ASP.NET Core and Markdown (Rick Strahl) - So many great ideas and cool projects in this article. If you use Markdown it's a must. If you are not using markdown, hmmm... what?!
• Tracking Cross-team Projects in Azure DevOps Boards (null) - Very interesting Azure DevOps extension.

Miscellaneous

• How Microsoft is moving LinkedIn's 14,000 employees from Google services to Office 365 (Mary Jo Foley for All About Microsoft | October 26, 2018 -- 16:40 GMT (09:40 PDT) | Topic: Cloud) (Mary Jo Foley) - Interesting migration use case/ case study.
• How to enable clipboard history and sync your clipboard across devices on Windows 10? (Kunal Chowdhury) - A very nice feature that should have been there by default for so long ...
• Side by Side user scoped .NET Core installations on Linux with dotnet-install.sh (Scott Hanselman) - Cool post that shows that yeah... it's the same difference... Pretty nice.

Books

Fast Focus (Damon Zahariades) - Great short book. Not like the other of his kind, this book goes right to the point and offers actionable item. It's very practical and accessible to everyone. At the end of the book, you know what to do to get started and improve your focus.

Reading Notes #281

Cloud

• 5 simple steps to create and test your first Azure Function App (Abhijit Jana) - It couldn't be simpler.
  
• Azure CLI 1.0 vs 2.0 Compared, Installation and Usage (Chris Pietschmann) - This is such a nice post. It compares side by side both versions.
  
• Upgrade classic Backup and Site Recovery vaults to ARM Recovery Services vaults (Aruna Somendra) - Nice post that shares a good overview of all the news related to vault.

Programming

• BUILD 2017 Conference Rollup for .NET Developers - Scott Hanselman (Scott Hanselman) - I'm sure we'll continue to see more of those MsBuild summaries, but this one is from Scott directly and focuses on .Net.

Databases

• Dear DocumentDB customers, welcome to Azure Cosmos DB! (Rimma Nehme) - This post explains where CosmoDB is coming from.
  
• Introducing Per Minute (RU/m) provisioning to lower your cost, increase your performance (Arnaud Comet) - Great post that explains the relation between RU/m and RU/s two very important notion in CosmoBD.
  
• Migrating to Azure Data Sync 2.0 (Joshua Gnanayutham) - I always found that tool useful, and I'm happy to see it continues to evolve.

Miscellaneous

• Don't tell people to turn off Windows Update, just don't (Troy Hunt) - A very interesting post about a painful situation, and user's obligations.
  
• Is There a Correct Way to Comment Your Code? - NDepend (Erik Dietrich) - Interesting post that tries to find the answer of the eternal question comment or not comment.
  
• Note-taking made easier for everyone—redesigning OneNote (OneNote Team) - Nice new features. To unload your Onenote, simply click on file (or th left arrow), then account, and finally the update button.
  
• Suggestions and Tips for attending your first tech conference - Scott Hanselman (Scott Hanselman) - I think I will do a copy of that one, and I will share-it with people who come with me on an event. Really nice.

Reading Notes #219

Suggestion of the week

• I Hated JavaScript - Awesome post that presents Typescript under is best light.

Cloud

• Announcing the Azure SDK 2.8.2 for .NET (Brady Gaster) - This post will explain why you really want to upgrade to this new SDK version.
  
• Syncing Files Between Devices with Azure File Sync | - Nice tutorial that shows how to build a Xamarin application leveraging files synchronization between devices.
  
• Upgrading to the Azure Search .NET SDK version 1.0.1-preview - Wow!So So much in this new version, I'm looking forward to play with it.
  
• Getting Started with Selenium Testing in a Continuous Integration Pipeline with Visual Studio (Charles Sterling) - Great tutorial that shows how to use one of the more popular testing tools in a CI solution running in VisualStudio Team Services (VSTS).

Programming

• Visual Studio Code and local web server (Lachezar Arabadzhiev) - Really cool and light solution to develop a website or web application.
  
• Interactive Coding with C# and F# REPLs ScriptCS or the Visual Studio Interactive Window (Scott Hanselman) - Repl...Yep it's real thing an it could be really useful. L more about this tools and where to find it, in this post.

Books

• Free eBook: Enterprise Cloud Strategy - Hmmmm. To read.

Reading Notes #99

 Suggestion of the week

• Windows Azure: Major Updates for Mobile Backend Development (Scott Gu) - Another big release for Windows Azure that boost the Mobile Services offers.

Cloud

• Azure VM Access Control with PowerShell (Tyler Doerksen) - Great with this post we now know all the new features that came up last week: PowerShell command.
• 10 Dos and Don'ts for Running Proof-of-Concept Projects in the Cloud - Nice post that highlights the pros and cons.
• Conflicts: Windows Azure Mobile Service to SQLite Data Sync for Windows Phone and WinRT with Portable Class Libraries - Nice post about possible sync conflicts.
• BASE Jumping in the Cloud (Jason Bloomberg) - Interesting post that explains why a re-architecture is more than often needed when moving our application in the cloud.

Programming

• Using Duck Typing to Avoid Conditionals in JavaScript - Good explication of Duck Typing method by refractory code step by step.
• Introduction to Unit Testing (Don’t Worry, Your Secret is Safe with Me) (Erik Dietrich) - Interesting post about unit testing. What is it, and what it isn't.
• Claim based Authentication and WIF : Part 1 - First of a series, this post describes what is a claim base process and who are the players involve in it.
• Stop Doing Internet Wrong (Scott Hanselman)- Interesting list of some simple things to do to get a better experience online.
• Using Azure Mobile Services in SharpDevelop - Nice alternative to Visual Studio. Check out the video here to see it developing with Azure.

Databases

• Amazon RDS Lowers On-Demand and Reserved Instance Prices Globally - And the battle for the lowest price continues (that's good for us) this time the databases are targeted.

User eXperience (UX)

• Bundling and Minification in ASP.NET MVC (Suprotim Agarwal) - Minification is a important process to have a nice UX. It's now easier than ever.

Miscellaneous

• Marketing 101 for developers (Phil Cross, saraallison Natasha Joseph) - Why a developer should care about marketing? Because we need it? This post answers the question.
• The Importance of Closed Captioning - How To and Why Subtitle (Scott Hanselman) - Really interesting post. Doing subtile look like a lot of effort, but it's worth it. This post contains sample, tutorial and tools references.
• 8+ Practical Tips for Avoiding Pickpockets - Simple tips that can save you a lot of problems when you are traveling.

~Frank

Reading Notes #94

Suggestion of the week

• 10 Tips for Learning a New Technology) - Nice post that gives simple suggestion to have a better kick start when learning new stuff. It gives a lot of online training website references.
  
• Creating a “Flat File” Shared Database with Amazon S3 and Node.js - Very interesting and inspiring tutorial.
  
  

Cloud

• How Do You Choose Your Cloud Provider? (Toddy Mladenov) - This post doesn't give an easy answer, because it's impossible. However, it explains how to find your answer.
  
• Penny Pinching in the Cloud: Enabling New Relic Performance Monitoring on Windows Azure Websites - Indeed, NewRelic is an incredible tool. Check-it out.
  
• Microsoft working on DaaS solution hosted on Azure (Kenneth van Surksum) - That could be interesting.
  
• Moving all a website's images and assets to the Azure CDN - This one was on me stack since few days now, but I shouldn't have waited; really nice. I liked the live thing also, it gives a real idea of the effort. Time, and difficulty of the project. Note:Watch until the end.
  
• Windows Azure SQL Data Sync - The Maximum Limit For Index or Statistics Key Column List is 16 - Nice workaround of an Azure Data Sync limitation.
  
• Using Existing Windows Azure SQL Databases with Azure Mobile Services - Nice short post answering one common question about the Azure Mobile Services.
  
• Paper: Infrastructure-as-a-Service Product Line Architecture Fabric Architecture Guide (Kenneth van Surksum) - Two papers about IaaS Fabric Architecture got public...
  
  

Programming

• Git Explained: For Beginners - If you don't know about Git, or you still not familiar with it? This is definitely the post for you. From vocabulary to code sample, this tutorial explains all you need to know.
  
• CDNs fail, but your scripts don't have to - fallback from CDN to local jQuery - Nice post that gives samples of CDN fallback, because we it will append, but we don't know when.
  
• Utilize Compilation as a Service to create the next level plugin capability (youtube.com) - Wow! This idea is fantastic. A nice video that explains how we could use Roslyn.
  
• Sublime Text (2) (Drew Barontini) - I discover Sublime Text 2 few months ago, and since then I'm installing it everywhere. Here is a nice post that presents important features and customizations.(To install using Chocolatey just type cinst sublimetext ).
  
• 10 Ways to Make Agile Design More Effective - Interesting post that gives nice tips to improve your journey in an Agile project.
  
• Merge Files with Git Merge Tool - Perfect tutorial for a beginner with Git (like me) , this post explains the basic of the merge process.
  
  

Databases

• SQL SERVER - Azure SQL Databases Backup Made Easy with SQLBackupAndFTP - Free and simple to use. That a nice tool.

Integration

• BizTalk 2013 Installation and Configuration – Important considerations before setup the server (Part 1) - Nice tutorial with some time-saver tips.

Miscellaneous

• 6 Things Exceptional Leaders Do Better (Peter Gasca) - Know what you need to improve.
  
• Are You Used to Delivering Working Software on a Daily Basis and Changing the Software in Response to Emerging Requirements? - A quiz for yourself to know how really responsive to change you are.`
  
  

~Frank

Reading Notes #53

This post is an important milestone for this blog. It completes the first year of Reading Notes, since a year as 52 weeks and it’s also the 100th post!

Thanks for being there and continue reading, a lot of good stuff is coming…

~Frank

Cloud

• Cloud Strategy Begins with Value and Balances Risk (Microsoft Enterprise Team) - Nice post that help to identify risks. The information is display in tables that helps.
• Windows Azure Performance: Best Practices (Rick Saling) - Good reference to more detail video on the topic.

[…]great video of a presentation on Federations by Cihan Biyikoglu at the 2012 US Tech Ed conference in Orlando. […]

• Windows Azure PowerShell and Ruby Cloud Services - Great post where updating is RubyRole project the author make interesting discovery. Learn more about some new functionality available in the Azure SDK 1.7.
• Deploying Windows Azure Website using Visual Studio Web Publish wizard - Nice quick tip to use Visual Studio with the new Azure website.
• Data Series: SQL Server in Windows Azure Virtual Machine vs. SQL Database - Great big post that cover every difference between those two Sql database. Perfect reading to stop being confuse.
• Windows Azure Websites, Virtual Machines, and More « Jonathan Rozenblit - Great! If you missed the conference at Toronto on June 20th this is your chance to catch-up. The full conference is available to watch by steaming or offline by downloading.
• 10 Questions to ask when Outsourcing to Azure (Surf4Fun) - Good questions.
• Data Synchronization using SQL Azure Data Sync (Félix Martínez Retama) - Nice post first of a serie. This one is illustrating few possible scenarios of synchronisation with Azure Data Sync.
• Data Series: Exploring Windows Azure Drives, Disks, and Images (BradCalder) - Amazing article that pass throut all details about Azure drive, disk, image and cache. A must to all cloud developer.
• New Article: Windows Azure Queues and Windows Azure Service Bus Queues (Valery Mizonov) - Very good article that perfectly summarises the content of the longer MSDN article about the difference between Azure queues and Azure Service Bus Queues. Simple easy to read and accurate.

[…]Following is the high-level technology selection considerations section from the full article on MSDN. […]

• Windows Azure - When do I use What? (Andrew Coates [MSFT]) - Nice quick post that demystify when it's the time to use a Azure website, webrole or a VM.

Programming

• JQuery 1.8 beta 1: See What’s Coming - Wow, a lot of things are coming with the next version of JQuery. This a good post to catch the big picture.

[…]new build system based on Ben Alman’s awesome grunt tool. […]

Miscellaneous

• Reminder, basic quick fixes for troubled gear - Nice check list for no-technical people of what they can do by them self before calling you to rescue when they computer/gadget stop working. ;)
• ScrumMaster Tales – Learning How to Estimate (Mark Levison) - Interesting post that relates the experience of an Agile team. Also refers some other post of that still.

~Frank