Reading Notes #498

Good Monday, Already time to share my reading notes of the week. A list of all the articles, blog posts, that catch my interest during the week.

You think you may have interesting content, share it!

Cloud

• Tutorial: Using Azure Table Storage or Azure Cosmos DB with Microsoft Orleans (Nick) - A nice tutorial from a series this one focusing on Storage locally using Azurite.

Programming

• The Ultimate Web Dev Environment (Aaron Powell) - Extremely complete post that shows so many little details and how to make them work together.

• Containers on Azure App Service - Tips & Tricks - Philly.NET CodeCamp 2022 recording (Guy Barrette) - A cool video from my friend Guy sharing some tips and tricks. There is stuff to learn for everyone.

• Negative Space Scheduling (Oren Eini) - Very cool real-life scenario. So true! If you ever have worked on a scheduler, you know.

• vscode.dev Visual Studio Code for the Web (Chris Dias) - There was already some kind of flavor of vscode with the dev.github.com, but there is something amazing about the standalone version. Brilliant!

Miscellaneous

• 5 Tips on Managing a Remote-first Development Team (Marcelo Wiermann) - As all of us have been working remotely for a while, it's a good moment to remember how communication is important and understand that in a more normal situation being remote can be good.

• Maximizing 1on1 time with your manager (Mark Downie) - I love that. It is definitely a good plan.

~frank

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 #307

Cloud

• Azure WebJobs vs. Azure Functions (Simon Timms) - This post answer a question that is often asked... What's The difference...
• How to Create a Logic App Connector in an ARM Template | Vincent-Philippe Lauzon's on WordPress.com (Vincent-Philippe Lauzon) - Here it is guys, the definition of the CosmoDb connector for ARM.

Programming

• DevOps for Data Science – DevOps Maturity (Buck Woody) - This post is the fist of an interesting series.
• Different code styles for different code blocks in ReSharper and Rider (Maarten Balliauw) - Pretty cool comparison.

Miscellaneous

• Extreme Remote Work: The Pros And Cons Of Teamwork Beyond Borders (Tanya Accone) - Are you working in has remote or does your team has remote member? If yes, you should read this post.
• The Value of Continuous Delivery (DAVE NICOLETTE) - This is a really good post that talk/ question why cd.

Reading Notes #199

Suggestion of the week

• First look at Application Insights (Andrei Dzimchuk) - Excellent post. Perfect to make your idea about why and how we should use Application Insights. Nice touch to the config.

Cloud

• Integration with Azure Service Bus (Vincent-Philippe Lauzon) - Great post that summarizes best practices and important tips related to Azure service Bus.
  
• Azure Backup update – New features in IaaS VM backup support (Trinadh Kotturu) - Very amazing backup services.
  
• Deploying Flynn Clusters on Azure - Promising deploying tool. A thing to follow.
  
• Using Azure CLI to Capture and Deploy a CentOS Virtual Machine - Another way to create an image of an Azure VM. Useful script that will work in any environment.
  
• Announcing the Azure SDK 2.7.1 for .NET (Brady Gaster) - This post describes the major new features in this release.
  
• Do-until looping in logic apps - Useful addition to the loops in Logic Apps.
  
• Getting started with Azure Backup (Viswanath Tata) - An essential tool for any production environment, backup is now very easy to setup and secure.

Programming

• On a Cloud: Queues (Jef King) - This post suggests two short videos that talked about queues and how to use them.
  
• Help, my diagram doesn’t fit on one page! - Interesting thoughts about how to “cut” diagrams.
  
• Deploy Jekyll Pages using Git and Travis CI - Interesting deployment setup that looks simple and efficient.

Databases

• Get the DocumentDB SQL query cheat sheet (Aravind Ramachandran) - Confuse sometime with the syntax of noSql, this post shared a cheatsheet that should be saved (or printed).
  
• Announcing Great New SQL Database Capabilities in Azure - Great announcement to the database world with this two new release described in this post.

Miscellaneous

• On Disconnecting - Choose your poison: workaholic, social addict or “paranoia”… Oh! Scott is definitely not alone.
  
• Building Trust with 100% Distributed Team & 100% Flexible Schedules (Brian Whipple) - Very interesting thoughts about trust and the place it should take between employees and companies.
  
• The Role of QA in Cloud DevOps - Interesting thoughts regarding the QA role and how it could change.

As strong as a team

Everybody knows that we are stronger together. At work, we are grouped in small teams to accomplish more and... but wait, are we really working as one big strong force or are we working in a group but focusing on our own personal achievements? Let me share with you how as a team, we achieved what we thought was impossible.

The Context

The project was an application integrating different parts of the client's environment. A lot of technology was involved and of course, the schedule planned for it was really tight. We were a small team with different levels of experience.

The fall

As a team, we thought that splitting the job was the best option. Every member took a piece of the puzzle and started working on his side.
The juniors got themselves overwhelmed in complex patterns and best practices. They forgot the client's needs and tried to stubbornly use new technologies. The more experienced were pushed in this swirl of queries and technological challenges, lost their landmark, their concentration and the big picture.
The solution we were building was looking like an ugly patchwork that was not even functional. Continuing this way was a guarantee of failure.

The recovery

Of course, I wouldn't be writing this post if we did continue, instead we met and looked at what we could do better. Hopefully, for us, most of what we did was not a loss. If we re-focused, with a bit of a ramp-up and some extra hours put in, everything was still possible.
We did some lunch-and-learn to share the knowledge. We wrote templates to get all on the same base when we were starting new sections. We also produced short documents that explained how to get started with the concepts and technologies present in the project. The goal was to keep it short and simple so it will be readable at a glimpse.
However, all this would have been lost without code-review for everyone. Often code-reviews are perceived negatively. A review is the chance to improve not only "your" code but to standardize variable names, namespace structures, code patterns and to get to know the functions/ tools available.
Another valuable thing was our daily scrum meetings. That way, as soon as one team member had issues the best resources could jump-in to resolve the problems, or share his previous experience on how to solve this kind of complication.
With all these efforts we not only did we deliver a great solution, but we built something better: a team. Not only that people worked with each other, yet they were team-members that worked in synergy and that, is a great accomplishment.

The Lesson

I discovered something that I already know! A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. It sounds so simple but is it not always like that with the truth? Feel free to share what you did to improve your teamwork in the comment section.


~Frank

References

• www.scrum.org