Reading Notes #169

 

Happy New Year!

 

Suggestion of the week

• Magic Strings – No More! - Great post that explains different ways to manage string in our code. Clear and efficient.

Cloud

• The cloud saves the day and other non-myths (Brian Heckert) - Nice post that discusses some myths mentions in Gartner's presentation about the cloud.

• Automating Azure on your CI server using a Service Principal - Great tutorial that explains how to use Active Directory (AD) to access resources in Azure.

• Scaling #Azure Cloud Services Up and Down Like Clockwork (Alexandre Brisebois) - Really interesting post that explains how scaling up & out and down &in can mean huge saving in our pockets.

Programming

• Could not load file or assembly… NuGet Assembly Redirects (blog.maartenballiauw.be) - Nice clever tricks to avoid losing time.

• UI Considerations When Using Asynchronous Methods (Jeremy) - Good tutorial that explains some key features we must adapt in the UI when making our code async.

Miscellaneous

• 4 Simple Tricks to Help Make Your Content Stand Out (AJ Agrawal) - This post provides a nice list of tools to improve our content.

• Why You Should Say Goodbye to Work-Life Balance in 2015 (Aaron O'Hearn) - Interesting thoughts.

• The Key to Increased Productivity? Stop Working (Justin Bariso) - This post suggests simple thins to do to improve our productivity. Perfect to start the new year...

• XML Sitemaps for the Ghost Blogging Platform - Time to update our Ghost blogs...

~Frank Boucher

Reading Notes #163

Suggestion of the week

• Save the date! Connect(“November 12 & 13”); is almost here - If you missed this incredible event, don't cry because all the presentations were recorded. We can watch them on demand on Channel 9.

Cloud

• Azure API Management Part One: An Introduction - Really nice post to get started with the brand-new API manager of Windows Azure.

• Building a Text Adventure with Azure and Orleans (Chris Risner) - While the game is not a triple A, I find the idea quite interesting.

• Opening up Visual Studio and .NET to Every Developer, Any Application: .NET Server Core open source and cross platform, Visual Studio Community 2013 and preview of Visual Studio 2015 and .NET 2015 (S.Somasegar) - This article explains all the new things that came out this week.

• Success by a thousand cuts: Visual Studio 2013 Update 4 and SQL Azure - Ha Ha, I will quote the author: “Oh man, there is so much stuff I don’t know”.

Programming

• .NET Core is Open Source - Get a better understanding of what is .net Core and the meaning / purpose of the open source announce.

• Visual Studio Community 2013 - Now that all developers can have their Visual Studio, learn what's in this community version.

• The Roadmap for WPF - This post gives all the details about what is coming next for Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF).

• Announcing Open Source of .NET Core Framework, .NET Core Distribution for Linux/OSX, and Free Visual Studio Community Edition - Another good summary of all the great things that was released this week in the Microsoft world.

• Visual Studio 2013 Update 4 (2013.4) RTM - Learn all about the new features in this update... Codelens, webjobs, Intelisense and so much more!
  
• Visual Studio Community 2013 - Now that all developers can have their Visual Studio learn what 's in the free version called community.

Miscellaneous

• Agile Lifecycles for Geographically Distributed Teams, Part 1 - Interesting. Agile is more than scrum...

• Why Citi Got Rid of Assigned Desks - Nice post that explains how a re-organized floor can help the productivity and the team spirit.

• Visual Studio 2015 Preview, Visual Studio Community 2013, Visual Studio 2013 Update 4, and More - Learn more about all the amazing releases that happened this week during the Connect event.

• Announcing .NET 2015 - .NET as Open Source, .NET on Mac and Linux, and Visual Studio Community (Scott Hanselman) - This post lists some post that cover all the new stuff that just came up this week. Happy reading.

~Frank