Reading Notes #629

This edition of ReadingNotes covers new AI tools, WSL updates, .NET 9 features, and debugging tips with GitHub Copilot. Plus, insightful podcasts on .NET Aspire, productivity tools, and frontend engineering. 

Happy reading and listening!

Programming

• Dramatically faster package restores with .NET 9's new NuGet resolver - .NET Blog (Jeff Kluge) - A major operation to make our experience better. This post shares how I was done.

• Blazor WebAssembly debugging with Visual Studio (Mark Downie) - Marvelous! New and improved! Who wouldn't be happy about that?

• Using Dependabot to Manage .NET SDK Updates - .NET Blog (Jamie Magee) - Dependabot is one of those tools that when you start using it you wonder how you were doing it before. The new update now supports the SDK, lovely.

AI

• Evaluate the quality of your AI applications with ease - .NET Blog (Wendy Breiding) - Interesting new tools. Add 3 packages to your project and a few lines of code to get started.

• Transform your debugging experience with GitHub Copilot - Visual Studio Blog (Wendy Breiding) - An interesting new tool in Visual Studio where Copilot, our AI pair programmer, can join us to help while debugging.

Podcasts

• David Fowler: Architecture of .NET Aspire - Episode 322 (Azure & DevOps Podcast) - .NET Aspire described from the inside. Learn more about what it is, and what planned for it.

• 95. From Dev Containers to OpenTelemetry: Mastering .NET Productivity - with Alex Thissen (Betatalks the podcast) - There are so many great tools that so many of us don't know yet are effraid to start using. Learn a bit more about them in this episode.

• 96. The Evolving Craft of Frontend Engineering: Balancing Complexity and Simplicity - with Stefan Judis (Betatalks the podcast) - The web frontend is not the same as a few years ago. There are many frameworks and eengineers are trying to make them structured but also performant and light.

Miscellaneous

• What’s new in the Windows Subsystem for Linux in November 2024 (Craig Loewen) - The RedHat distro joins the possibly in WSL, an improved administration and security.

Sharing my Reading Notes 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 have interesting content, share 

Reading Notes #567

Programming

• Debugging .NET Containers with Visual Studio Code Docker Tools - .NET Blog (Chet Husk) - This new version of the tools looks brillannt! Definitely a must try asap.

• Docker for Developers: Understanding the Core Concepts (Dan Wahlin) - This is a very nice and detailled article that explains what is Docker where it comes from and how it works.

• .NET Conf 2023 (Mehul Harry) - Net cof is coming reverse the dates! And for those if you who knows .NET there is a call for paper here is your chance the share your knowledge!

• Power Platform as Connected Service for Visual Studio is Generally Available | Power Platform Developer Blog (Marcel Ferreira) - Its now GA! This is an excellent news.Using this its now easier thann ever to transform our APIs to power platform connector and empower everyone not fust the developers.

DevOps

• How to deploy Azure Container Apps (Shawn Sesna) - This is a grewt tutorial to get your container Apps deploy without having to care about to much infrastructure aka.kubernetes.

Podcasts

• Beyond the Hype: WebAssembly – from the browser to beyond (Colin Eberhardt) - Episode of a new podcast for me! They got me with WebAssembly and I will defenetly listen to more episodes.

• Kevin LaBranche: Leading teams through DevOps - Episode 251 (Azure DevOps Podcast) - Yes! DevOps is not a thing you implement in 2-3 weeks, it takes time. Great episode that highlight even more that it's not about the tech but the way you do things...

Frank

Reading Notes #561

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!

The suggestion of the week

• How to use GitHub Copilot: Prompts, tips, and use cases (Rizel Scarlett, Michelle Mannering) - A very helpful post that helps thinking how to communicate efficiently with Copilot, by breaking down our instructions and being more specific.

Programming

• Step-by-Step Guide: Testing HTTP Endpoints in Visual Studio 2022 Using Endpoints Explorer (Andy) - So many new API related features these days in VS. This post shows you some of them.
• Learn how to mock your HttpClient in C# now with 2 simple methods (Henrique) - Nice post that explains how to Mock these HTtp calls... Because unit tests are important and APIs are everywhere it's a must!
• Docker Desktop and Windows – what’s the best option for you? (Vinicius Apolinario) - I didn't know there was such a difference between those two! I mean I get it but I'm still surprised by the differences. This is a very instructive post.
• Azure App Configuration and .NET API: a smart and secure way to manage configurations (Davide Bellone) - This is a nice tutorial that shares best security practices.
• Introducing the New T4 Command-Line Tool for .NET - .NET Blog (Mike Corsaro) - Feels like ages since I used T4... Happy to see that this powerful tool is still around and even more, updating.

Low Code

• Exploring the Power of AI Builder: Empowering Students and Educators (Lee Stott) - Why should you be interested in AI Builder and where to find it. This is what that post is about.
• Integrating Microsoft Sentinel and Power Platform to better monitor and protect your low-code solutions (Simran Kaur) - Currently only available in preview this solution will definitely help enterprises to manage their Power Platform more securely.

Miscellaneous

• Introducing the Microsoft Store channel on Discord - #ifdef Windows (Sergio Pedri) - Nice news. There is now a place to talk about the store.
• 9 Steps to Master the Keyboard and Become an Ultra Efficient Software Developer (Michael Shpilt) - Short post that gives a few ideas on how to use more efficiently your keyboard and enjoy it.

~Frank

Reading Notes #516

Good Monday, 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 Boards Summer Update (Dan Hellem) - Wow! So many nice improvements.If you are an Azure DevOps user I'm sure you will agree with me.

Programming

• 14 software architecture design patterns to know (Vicki Walker) - This post definitely shares common patterns for different situations or contexts.

• 5 tricks every C# dev should know about LINQPad (Davide Bellone) - Nice tricks! I didn't know the shortcut for writeline.

• Integrated Terminal in Visual Studio: New SSH integration for Linux targeting (Sinem Akinci) - An interesting new feature from Visual Studio.

• Modernize with Azure Migrate (Shiva Shastri) - Inspire, the Microsoft event starts today looking forward to the update in this world to ease the migration and best practices.

• PowerToys 0.60 Arrives with Windows 11 Features - If you never tried Power Toys before now is your cue. So helpful!

• Should I write a new JavaScript framework? (Salma Alam-Naylor) - For the JavaScript developer that may have that idea, here is a website to help you to start on the good foot.

Podcasts

• EP 011 | 2+ Million Subs While Living Off the Grid with My Self Reliance (Matti Haapoja Podcast) - When two of the YouTuber you like meet in a podcast to talk about trends and how you can follow them or not. It was delightful.

• How to overcome common workplace fears (Modern Mentor) - As usual great advice in a concise episode.

• How To Create An Inviting Podcast Intro That Hooks Listeners? (Feed Your Brand) - So true, and I would say that most of those advices also applies to videos.

• SPI 594: How to Heal Burnout with Valerie Hamaker (The Smart Passive Income Online Business and Blogging Podcast) - With so many people around the globe feeling tired and disconnected from themself, it's great to hear that there are tools and people to talk too. Don't wait.

• The future of supply chain with Ox's CEO Charu Thomas (Hanselminutes with Scott Hanselman) - This is inspiring. In my previous life, I did work in the inventory management world, and I was kinda surprised things didn't change much. But I like where it's going.

Miscellaneous

• Shut It Down (Michael Szul) - It's way hard than it looks to make those decisions.

~Frank

Reading Notes #453

Cloud

• Handling Events Inside an Azure Function (Paul Michaels) - Great post that explains, both the bug/ cause and how to fix the problem.

• How to Deploy a Blazor Application in Azure App Service (Sridhar Narasimhan) - Nice post to learn quickly different ways to deploy our apps.

Programming

• Organizing My Reaction GIFs Using Node.js, Sharp, And Angular 11.0.2 (Ben Nadel) - Definitely a cool project. The chance of failure should never block you to try, learn, or have fun.

• Docker V2 Github Action is Now GA - Docker Blog (Ben De St Paer-Gotch) - A really nice update on those actions.Nice

• Getting Started With NuGet 5.8 (Jon Douglas) - A very interesting post about the new features included in NuGet, and since it is the first one supporting .Net 5, some advice for a better experience.

• Understand The .NET 5 Runtime Environment (Khalid Abuhakmeh) - A helpful post that describes the different environment and their characteristics.

Miscellaneous

• Upgrading Blazor Blogs (Version 1.0 to Version 2.0) (null) - Nice little tutorial. It's upgrade time.

Podcasts

• What is a Developer Game Jam? (Coding Blocks) - Interesting episode about Game Jam... I barely know that universe. Yes, I said universe because it is a completely different world or better another dimension. There are tons of events and participants but you may never hear of that. It's very interesting.

• A Blast from the Past and Life's Interesting Journey — Back After 8 Years (The Smart Passive Income Online Business and Blogging Podcast) - Inspiring episode about how communities can be built and be interesting.

Reading Notes #423

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. You think you may have an interesting post, share it!

My office is in the basement... so I didn't conplained.

Cloud

• Integration Testing Azure Functions with SpecFlow and C#, Part 5 –... (Jonathan George) - Excellent post that concludes a series on Specflow, an interesting tool to tests our code.

Programming

• Blazor WebAssembly 3.2.0 Preview 5 release now available (Daniel Ruth) - New preview coming our way. Nice.
• Creating and Packaging a .NET Standard library | Visual Studio Blog (Sayed) - A very cool tutorial that explains all the steps to get to sharing your NuGet package.
• How to resolve a git merge conflict ( Brian Breniser) - Nice tutorial Git merges are so frequent...
• Windows Terminal Preview v0.11 Release | Windows Command Line (Kayla) - Hmmmmm.That terminal! Awesome.

Podcasts

• Michelle Khare - Her YouTube Series "Challenge Accepted": Training with the FBI, Marines & NASA (That Creative Life) - A very inspiring episode. We can push our limits with a lot of works.

Miscellaneous

• This Is The #1 Ritual You Need To Do Every Day (Pandemic Edition) - Barking Up The Wrong Tree (Eric Barker) - A very nice story, and very simple things we can all do to say, happy healthy humans.
• How to Remote Desktop (RDP) into a Windows 10 Azure AD joined machine (Scott Hanselman) - Nice little tips here to RDPing.
• Injecting Services Into ASP.NET Razor Views (Khalid Abuhakmeh) - A nice and simple post that explains the injection in the newest .Net framework.
• Local Azure Storage Development with Azurite, Azure SDKs, and Azure Storage Explorer (Jon Gallant) - A really cool tool that virtualized completely storage into a local version.Very interesting.
• Quarantine work is not Remote work (Scott Hanselman) - It's not normal...

~

Reading Notes #411

Cloud

• Azure CLI Kung-Fu Tips and Tricks (Dan Patrick) - A true story for a real warrior... This post explains how a well done Azure CLI script can save you in hard conditions.

• How to Reduce the Costs of your Azure IaaS VMs (Thomas Maurer) - Amazing post that will help us to migrate and/or optimize our virtual machine usage in the cloud.

Programming

• Blazor WebAssembly 3.2.0 Preview 1 release now available (Daniel Roth) - Oooooh, it's coming. New version and big update for the .Net Core WebAssembly. Have fun!

• Getting Started with Visual Studio Online – Cloud IDE (Chris Pietschmann) - Announced in May it's already there and so nice to be able to work with VSOnline that is ( this time ;) f a real Visual Studio but in the cloud.

• Trying out Container Tools in Visual Studio 2019 (Scott Hanseleman) - An interesting post that shows us all the great features packed into the new update of the container tool inside VsStudio 2019. So powerful.

Podcast

• Done playing Microsoft's corporate game (Software Engineering Unlocked) - Great episode with the lovely Suz (aka: noopkat) talking about her roles and experience to different enterprises.

• John Sonmez - Becoming a Finisher, Part 2 (The Solo Coder Podcast) - Second part of the interview with the very prolific John. Once more the episode is very interesting.

Reading Notes #403

Every week, I publish my reading notes. Those are the articles, blog posts, podcast episodes, and books that catch my interest and that I found interesting. It's a mix of the actuality and what I was looking for.

The suggestion of the week

• Azure Cost Management updates – November 2019 | Blog | Microsoft Azure (Michael Flanakin) - This is great news. Finally also available for CSPs learn more about it in this post and there also a link to the Ignite recorded session video.

Cloud

• Deploying Containerized Azure Functions with Terraform (Jason) - Nice quick tutorial to avoid deploying a "zip file".

• Tip 236 - Deploy your web app in Windows Containers on Azure App Service | Azure Tips and Tricks (Michael Crump) - Great and easy way to get started with containers using Visual Studio

• Using Azure File Storage as Container Volume Mounts in App Services | (Michael Jolley) - A nice piece of information and so useful! Every one needs volumes...

Programming

• ASP.NET Core updates in .NET Core 3.1 (Sourabh Shirhatti) - I'm very excited about this 3.1 version.I'm not sure why maybe it's because it is the long-time support (LTS). Nevertheless, I will update all my projects.

• Working with Linux and Windows Containers simultaneously on Docker Desktop (Mark Heath) - A very and I mean VERY interesting post that proof that it is possible to run containers with mix OS from Win10 without any fancy or preview features.

Miscellaneous

• Use Google Sheets to translate faster (Robin Kretzschmar) - Woo! That's pretty cool. Automatic translation is never the best but this is very convenient.

• 7 Dangers of Micromanagement ( Jack Wallen) - Nice post to help you give the best version of yourself. (Note it's now 6, but it was 7 when I read it)

• Defragmenting your Calendar and your Outlook (Scott Hanselman) - Time management is hard...Timeboxing, Pomodoro, no meeting, short meetings... What's your thoughts?

Books

Build Your Dream Stream

Ashley

Great book with many very interesting ideas.Not the same things that we ear elsewhere, or if it is, it's in very different words.

~

Reading Notes #402

Every week, I publish my reading notes. Those are the articles, blog posts, podcast episodes, and books that catch my interest and that I found interesting. It's a mix of the actuality and what I was looking for.

Cloud

• Azure Functions with QueueTriggers and .NET Core – Configuration and Troubleshooting (Jeff) - Poor Jeff, I was there on his stream and he struggles so much to understand what was happening. And honestly me too! Despite the fact that I know and use Azure Function regularly I completely missed the missing instruction... The good news is since the documentation is open-source we can improve it...

Programming

• A quick overview of ASP.NET Core with Rider (Rachel Appel) - I never used Rider in a real project. However, the quality of this code IDE is not in question. It looks awesome and this post shows how it supports the latest version of .Net Core.
• An Introduction to Blazor and Web Assembly (Jeremy Likness) - The perfect post to get started with Blazor and also learn where it comes from.
• Visual Studio Extensions: 8 You Should Check Out (Carlos Schults) - A nice post that shares useful extensions for developers. I also like the fact that in the title it's 8 and in the url it's 7 LOL...

Miscellaneous

• How Serverless is Working in Azure SQL Database – SQLServerCentral (Steve Jones) - Interesting post where the author shares his experience with serverless database version.

Books

The Art of Thinking Clearly

by Rolf Dobelli

I'm still balanced about this book. It was a good book, even if I found some chapters that were too long. I also got lost by moments. I had the impression that some thoughts or ideas were not developed correctly and more quickly wrapped. In counterpart, some were very well served and clear.

Reading Notes #358

Cloud

• Managing Durable Functions Orchestration History (Mark Heath) - Perfect quick post to learn the new features in Azure durable function.
• Microsoft Announces New Features and Integrations for Azure Pipelines (Steef-Jan Wiggers) - Really cool new feature to work with the Azure DevOps Pipeline...like a VSCode extension!

Programming

• Using Cake GitHub Action (Gary Ewan Park) - This post explains how to bonify our CI/CD very interesting.
• API Controllers in ASP .NET Core (Shahed Chowdhuri) - Interesting post to learn more about the Controllers and its nuances.
• Introducing check runs and annotations (Meaghan Lewis) - A nice new update to the GitHub extension.

Miscellaneous

• Get to code: How we designed the new Visual Studio start window - Super interesting post that shows how Microsoft take our feedback, listen and react to our comments in order to continuously improve their/our tools.
• How to remove words from the Windows Autocorrect Spell Check Dictionary (Scott Hanselman) - Great tips thanks Scott.
• Why you should write [code] every day - A geek with a hat (Swizec Teller) - Great post to be motivated. Keep doing it and to do it more!

~

Reading Notes #338

Suggestion of the week

• Why Code Reviews Hurt Your Code Quality and Team Productivity - Simple Programmer (Lou Bichard) - A very interesting story that told us a huge change that a team implemented.

Cloud

• AWS Step Function Serverless Applications (Gerald Bauer) - What a great tutorial! Very interesting all the plumbing and toolings is explained in this Hello word AWS Lambda.

Programming

• 5 Essential Tips for Service Worker Development (Kezz Bracey) - Nice top 5.
  
• Containers - What Are They Good For? Running Our CI Builds (Jimmy Bogard) - Cool post that helps to avoid a lot of errors.
  
• Fritz and Friends present The Virtual Software Architecture Workshop (JeffFritz) - Wow, a very impressive achievement done by the man with a million hats Jeff. I'm still not done watching all that content. However, I can assure you that every bit is delicious.
  
• PowerApps Newbie – getting started (Jen Kuntz) - Nice first post of a promising series ;) To all the #powerusers of planet earth... you want to use PowerApps... so this is your chance to get started!

Miscellaneous

• The Ability Hacks: The story of two hackathon teams embracing the transformative power of technology (Jenny Lay-Flurrie) - An inspiring post that I'm sure is just a glimpse of what we will find in this book. This book definitely found his place at the top of my to-read stack.
  
• Chocolatey Package Manager and How I Use It (David Giard) - Chocolatey is a must tool to have to any developers or power user on Windows.
  
• Markdown View — Markdown Viewer for the Web, Windows 10, Android and everything (Alan Mendelevich) - It looks pretty cool and simple. I'll install it for sure.

Reading Notes #330

Cloud

• Integrating ACI with other Azure services (Mark Heath) - Great post and source of tons of also good references.
• Securing an Azure App Service Website under SSL in minutes with Let's Encrypt (Scott Hanselman) - Really cool tutorial AND info about Free certification that you can automatically install... on Azure. Well it possible elsewhere, it's just not explained in this post.;)

Programming

• .NET Core 2.1 and AWS | Amazon Web Services (Norm Johanson) - AWS, containers, .Net Core all together to make your code sits where ever you like. Pretty useful.
• Effective bundling with ASP.NET MVC (Gunnar Peipman) - Nice post about the bundling process in our asp.net MVC application.
• New Updates for Azure Development in Visual Studio (Visual Studio Team) - Great update to the tooling that makes our life easier... Or at least that reduce (a lot) the pain when starting and deploying a project.
• Some tricks I learned recording & publishing an educational video every day for 30 days - A geek with a hat (Swizec Teller) - I really liked that series and I learned tons of stuff while watching it about React of course but also about how to present technical tutorial and make them interesting to watch. Great work buddy!

Data

• Apply a Filter to a Slicer (Mike Carlo) - Sooooo useful. If you don't know how to do it (yet), just watch the video, you'll thanks me later.

Miscellaneous

• How to Become a Successful Technical Speaker (Daniela Petruzalek) - Interesting and motivating post about how to get prepared and how to learn.
• Pwned Passwords in Practice: Real World Examples of Blocking the Worst Passwords (Troy Hunt) - Incredibly Useful tool that helps us all to stay secure and also check if we are compromised.

Reading Notes #299

Cloud

• Azure Log Analytics – meet our new query language (Noa Kuperberg) - This post shares great examples of simple, but useful query to get started.
• Azure Site Recovery powers new Managed DR offerings by Microsoft Partners (Mayank Nayar) - Nice DR option with well-known partners to keep our VM safe as our business.
• Five more reasons why you should download the Azure mobile app (Shankar Sivadasan) - This app is getting better and better every time I hear about it. Guess what I will install in a few...
• How to configure log4net on Azure App Service (Benjamin Perkins) - You prefer log4net because your App is also deployed on-premise, or because you are just doing a lift&shift, or any other reason, this post is for you, every little things are explained in details.
• Integrating Azure Advisor Into Your Workday (Timothy Warner) - The azure advisor is one of my favorite tools in Azure, always something nice to do with it... Well until you fix it.
• Query across resources (Noa Kuperberg) - Wow! This is a really good news.

Programming

• Server-side rendering a D3 chart with React 16 - A geek with a hat (Swizec Teller) - It's an interesting tutorial that shows how to optimize the refresh of your chart using React.
• Tabs vs Spaces - A peaceful resolution with EditorConfig in Visual Studio. Plus .NET Extensions! (Scott Hanselman) - I personally don't really care to use spaces or tab ( I will use what's already there) but that config editor... That's something that will save a few teams... This is a post to share!
• What’s brewing in Visual Studio Team Services: September 2017 Digest (Buck Hodges) - VSTS is so packed of features it's a must to every developer and team. This post does a tour of the new feature it will give you an idea of this gigantic tool.

Databases

• Yes to databases in containers - Microsoft SQL Server available on Docker Store - Docker Blog (Elton Stoneman) - Pretty convenient I think, looking forward to trying it.

Miscellaneous

• Why I won’t write code demos, articles or new talks in your interview process (Frédéric Harper) - Interesting thoughts about some hirering practices. Finding a good math it's hard on both side.

Reading Notes #217

Suggestion of the week

• Building an ASP.NET 5 website using Visual Studio Code (VSCode) and Yeoman - If you are looking for a super light .Net environment, whatever you are on Windows, Linux or Apple, this is th perfect post to get started.

Cloud

• Azure IoT Hub in Public Preview - Quick intro to Azure IoT Hub leveraging the excellent AzureCon video.
  
• Freeing your Azure data with F# Type Providers - This nice post regroupes nice Azure storage type, enough to make you fall in love with F# right await.

Programming

• Version Control PowerShell Scripts with Visual Studio and Visual Studio Team Services - This post describes a fantastic solution if you already have Visual Studio (it could also be the free community edition). But vscode could also be a nice. solution.
  
• Evolution of #CSharp (1.0 to 6.0) - an Infographic (Kunal Chowdhury) - Cool recap an infographic.
  
• Submitting your first Pull Request (David Paquette) - Nice post, that demystifies a lo o things, if Git is new for you or that open source projects.
  
• Task runners in Visual Studio 2015 (Mads Kristensen) - This post regroups many extensions to Visual Studio that will definitely speed up repetitive process.

Miscellaneous

• Visualizing Your (Real) Software Architecture (View all posts by Erik Dietrich) - This post describe a situation that too often true, and suggested a way to avoid it.
  
• When did we stop caring about memory management? - That totally right!
  
• Developers: Here’s why you should make yourself replaceable - Interesting post, how many of this Howard type did you work with?

Reading Notes #216

Cloud

• Best practices: How to handle sensitive data in Azure Resource Manager templates using Key Vault (Stephane Lapointe) - Good first post of a very promising series about Azure Key Vault.
  
• Azure Automation: Graphical and textual runbook authoring (Chris Sanders) - Nice post that shows th nice graphical interface available to edit our Azure cookbooks.
  
• New book: Modern Authentication with Azure Active Directory for Web Applications (Kim Spilker) - Another book that goes on my to read stacks...

Programming

• What’s New in Fiddler 4.6.2 (Eric Law) - In today's world of connectivity, a tool like Fiddler is a must. This post shared the features of the last release, and what need to be done once you upgrade.
  
• 10 Visual Studio tips to improve your development productivity - This post group 10 useful article that explain ho to can customize VS to be more productive.(or at least more comfortable).

Data

• Introducing a simplified configuration experience for SQL Server in Azure Virtual Machines (Ninar Nuemah) - Wow, this is very convenient upgrade... Really cool.

Podcast

• .NET Rocks! vNext - Really interesting podcast episode. I think it's the clearer and more comprehensible explanation of Git I have ever eared.

Miscellaneous

• No, you can’t join my wifi network (Troy Hunt) - Just after the holidays, after a lot of people visit others to their houses... This is a scary but really interesting post to read.
  
• It’s 2016 already, how are websites still screwing up these user experiences?! (Troy Hunt) - Nice post about the not so nice reality of today's internet.
  
• Join us in congratulating MVP awardees! - Congratulations to all of you.
  
• A Project Guide to UX Design And Content Strategy - Very nice document that tells us how a team organizes their work to create a great user experience. Step by step, we pass what look like a real case.
  
• New Year, new Git release - Can an awesome tool become even more amazing? Learn how Git did it.

Reading Notes #214

Suggestion of the week

• Express - This is the perfect post to get started with node.js with Azure. This post starts with you step by step from a vanilla computer running OS X or Linux to your first App.

Cloud

• Troubleshooting – ma llowedContentLength Exceeded - Useful quick post for all the none asp.net user on Azure.
• September update for Web Apps and App Service environments in the Azure Preview Portal (ron Tardif) - Nice post that lists the September features of the new (not preview anymore). Azure portal.
• Microsoft Takes Azure Portal out of Extended Preview (2015 | Richard Seroter on Dec 14) - It's all in the title, but since the devil is in the detail .... that the post to know about it.

Programming

• Setting up Continuous Deployment for Android with VSTS and HockeyApp - HockeyApp is definitely a must for all mobile develpment teams. This post is a nice intro to it and also to VisualStudio Team Services.
• What I Learned After A Week of Visual Studio Code and ASP.NET 5 - I've been too busy (or lazy) to do that test myself and try to do my next project on a Linux machine only with VSCode as tools... that post was a real pleasure to read of that.
• Exploring Azure DocumentDB in Visual Studio (Andrew Hoh) - This post reveals all the feature of this very powerful addition the already great cloud explorer, VisualStudio add-on.
• Visual Studio Code: PowerShell Extension (Sergiy Baydachnyy) - Nice post of a series and cool introduction to a useful vscode extension... if you still don't have already installed it yet.

Data

• Power BI Desktop Custom Visualization (Scott Murray) - Learn more about how Power BI let you expand the Wow effect of your data in this nice post.
• Reading Your Way Into Big Data - Perfect post to get started to the data platform and build your ready queue.

Miscellaneous

• “Fixing” Windows Live Writer’s NotFound - Open Live Writer… - The brand-new Open Live Writer is still very young, this is how walkaround one of the frequent problems.
• Announcing Open Live Writer - An Open Source Fork of Windows Live Writer - Great newsthis llong time amazing tool will probably get a lot of improuvement in the next months.
• Get more awesome Pluralsight content than ever for zero dollars! - That news was the sunshine of my day, now we don't have any excuse not to get our subscription in Plurasign.

Azure SDK 2.7 my savior

Recently, I got a very unpleasant problem: I needed to remove all my Microsoft Azure accounts from Visual Studio. An error was popping every time Visual Studio was trying to connect to Azure preventing me to anything else. It could happen to everyone, so I decide to share that story so other could save time and energy trying to fix that.

The Context

Long time ago I created my Azure account using my Hotmail account. I modified the administrator to my Outlook.com when it came-up (approx. two years ago). When I installed Azure SKD 2.6, the problem started.

The Error

In Visual Studio 2013 Update 4 or VS 2015 RTM, every time VS was trying to connect to Azure, I was receiving this error message.


Every time Visual Studio 2013 Update 4 or VS 2015 try to connect to Azure...

The Fix

If you only need Visual Studio, remove the "damaged" Azure account. If you need Visual Studio to work with Azure you have two options:

1. Azure SDK 2.5 will work, if that is an acceptable workaround. You would need to make sure Azure SDK 2.6 was never installed on the machine, otherwise it will still have the offending dll.
2. Install Azure SDK 2.7 and/or Visual Studio 2015. In my case, it fixed everything!

~Frank

Reading Notes #196

Suggestion of the week

• Push-to-succeed: a look into Azure Notification Hubs for business (Alexander Laysha) - Interesting post that explains how Azure and his Notification Hubs could be really useful in marketing.
  
• Getting Started with Windows 10 - This week it's the Windows 10 week. And this post regroups many useful tutorial to get started.

Cloud

• July update for Web apps and App Service environments in the Azure preview portal (Ron Tardif) - This post is a great summary of the new July features.

Programming

• One of My Favorite PowerShell Functions - Nice and useful little piece of code.
  
• Describe Your PowerShell Variables - Nice quick tips to help us remember what we thought when we created those variables.
  
• Installing EF Power Tools into VS2015 (Julie) - Interesting tutorial that shows how to "upgrade" an extension to use it in VS...
  
• Five Common Daylight Saving Time Antipatterns of .NET Developers - Ah the "time"... The more you play with it, the more confuse you can be. Interesting post to avoid common mistakes.

Miscellaneous

• The Secret (and Oh So Simple) Way to Get People to Pay Attention to You (Betty Liu) - Interesting post about business relationship.
  
• How to stay productive while working from home (Xavier Nayrac) - Being myself a remote worker a found this post very close to the reality and inspiring.

~Frank

Reading Notes #190

Suggestion of the week

• Cloud Success Comes in Completing the Cloud Handshake (James Staten) - Great post that places different tools or services in context one to the other, that helps to get a better view of the big picture.

Cloud

• Testing Visual Studio on Azure (Alexandre Brisebois) - If you need to deploy a dev environment, this post explains how to leverage the AMR to do the quick and smart way.
  
• Locking a Virtual Machine Resource - Azure Resource Manager Template (Alexandre Brisebois) - A post to read, period.
  
• Azure Bits #3– Adding a Message to an Azure Queue (Rik Robinson) - Nice tutorial that shows how to interact with Azure Queues from an Asp.Net MVC web site.

Programming

• Visual Studio Online Wunderlist extension on GitHub (Clemens Reijnen) - Interesting idea of a VSO extension.
  
• Deploying an Azure Web Site using the new build system in Visual Studio Online (Charles Sterling) - This post shows ow easy it is to build & deploy a simple website using VSO.
  
• Visual Studio Web Development Tip - Add Chrome Incognito Mode as a Browser (Scott Hanselman) - The great tips are often the simpler! That should be in by default.
  
• Why to avoid fat controllers (Gunnar Peipman) - Interesting thoughts about different types of architecture and their testability.
  
• Historical Debugging, Profiling, New Diagnostic Tools in Visual Studio 2015 (Scott Hanselman) - Another good reason to start using VS2015.

Miscellaneous

• Write Once, Publish Anywhere (Jonathan Rozenblit) - An energizing post that shows here to find writting oportunities
  
• How to Build Your Blog’s Audience with Long Form Evergreen Content (Darren Rowse) - Interesting reflection on how the length of our post affects the traffic of our blog.

~Frank

Reading Notes #188

I was really happy to ear about Microsoft Azure Data Center that will be built in Canada. And it was definitely not only good thing that was published this week...

Suggestion of the week

• Create Multi-Geo Environments using Azure Resource Manager (Alexandre Brisebois) - Very interesting experience with ARM. The result is explosive.
  
• Press Release - Fantastic news!

Cloud

• MCSD: Azure Solutions Architect - Announced at Build, here is the detail about the new Azure certification.
  
• New Azure Infrastructure Services Implementation Guidelines (Joe Davies) - Great new! A free guideline for the IaaS.
  
• Import Sample Data to Azure DocumentDB (Stephen Baron) - Document playground is not the only tools available to get started. This post introduces the Data Migration tool.
  
• Spotlight Resources - This post lists some of the useful tools that can help you when working with Azure.
  
• Use the Azure Resource Manager Copy Operation to Deploy Duplicates - Always exploring the possibility with ARM, Alexandre Brisebois show us how to be very productive when deploying.
  
• Azure data services part 1 HDInsight (Alice Waddicor) - Nice introduction post about HDInsight.
  
• Microsoft to open data centres in Toronto and Quebec City (David Shum) - Watch this great announcement about the new Azure data center...in Canada!
  
• BREAKPOINT: Know Your App Inside and Out with Application Insights (Lachezar Arabadzhiev) - Great show about a great tool.
  
• Application Insights Pricing Effective June 1 (Dale Koetke) - Nice post that explains the cost and features.
  
• Announcing Custom Origin Support for Azure CDN (Manling Zhang) - Nice announce of a more convenient solution, more flexible.
  
• Microsoft to open data centres in Toronto and Quebec City (David Shum) - Watch the recorded video of the TV announcement.

Programming

• Was This Trip Really Necessary? (Rod Vagg) - Interesting thoughts about the Node's journey.

Database

• New Titan DB offering from ClearDB (ron Tardif) - Aah! I know a lot of WordPress users that will be very happy with this news.

Miscellaneous

• And the Release Date for Windows 10 Is... (Paul Thurrott) - The official date is finally out!
  
• Totally stressed out? Sync to Paper (Scott Hanselman) - ... And I thought I was different. ;)
  
• Visual Studio Time Saver – Presenting code in PowerPoint (David McCarter) - If you do technical presentation, this tool is a must!
  
• What's the deal with Windows 10 for the Non-Technical Friend (Scott Hanselman) - Because we are the head of IT support for our friends and family...
  
• Speaker style bingo: 10 presentation anti-patterns - This post provides a list of nice tips to be a better and more organize presenter.