Reading Notes #480

Yes, another Monday. It's time to share my reading notes; a list of all the articles, blog posts, 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!

Programming

• Blog: Top 5 Things an Azure Developer Needs to Know: Kubernetes Applications ( Sophia Parafina) - Nice post that layer after layer adds configuration and tools to have a better experience with our containers.

• Git Credentials Binding for sh, bat, powershell (Harshit Chopra) - Learn the option while using Jenkins and Git, in this short post.

• Introducing DevOps-friendly EF Core Migration Bundles (Jeremy Likness) - I remember my days coding with EF, it was really good. Today it looks just amazing, maybe I need a project idea that would require EF.

Miscellaneous

• Governance Audit for Logic Apps and Tracking Manager (Subiksha Gopal) - Nice new feature of BizTalk360.

Books

• The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture (by Scott Belsky) - Interesting book about management/ entrepreneurship. A fresh new spin or examples on things you may already know, but that new angle makes it good.

Have a nice week!

~Frank

 

Reading Notes #479

Cloud

• Putting some more FUN into Azure Functions, Managed Identity & Microsoft Graph (Luise Freese) - Very nice post that gets you started with powerful tools in a very secure way. This is the perfect place to start even more if you are an occasional (aka citizen) developer.

• Azure Active Directory B2C with Blazor WebAssembly Hosted Apps (Marinko Spasojevic) - A nice tutorial to see the requirement and code snippets with B2C.

• Optimize your cloud spend with Azure (Microsoft Azure) - This post lists many tools, more detailed posts, and videos to continue our journey feeling safe in the cloud.

Programming

• Developer Best Practices - Structuring Your Repository for Static Web Apps (April Edwards) - Great post easy to understand and to learn how to be more secure.

• What is an API? (Salma) - Wonderful post that explains so well API. I definetly think that could be the best post to get started about the topic.

• Why do we need Dapr? (Mark Heath) - A very clear example that illustrates simple but frequent situations where Dapr would help us. Reference to a book also in.

Podcasts

• #TracyPodTips: Why You Should Nod And Not Comment When Recording A Guest Interview (Feed Your Brand) - That's an excellent pro tips!

• Shannon Doherty on A Platform to Influence Happiness (What's Essential hosted by Greg McKeown) - A fun and interesting episode where a life-hack content cretor shares her reflection about how to find what will works and different hacks of course.

• 264: FOSS, Code Tours, & .NET MAUI Web with Ooui (Merge Conflict) - Tons of news in many different topics... Nice show, as usual, looking forward to learn more once both of them use more MAUI in their projects.

~Frank

Reading Notes #478

It's Monday, time to 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

• Comparing Azure Static Web Apps vs Azure WebApps vs Azure Blob Storage Static Sites (April Edwards) - Excellent post that lists all the features of the latest flavor and compares it to the previous one. Tons of references to get started.

Programming

• 9 Vital Reasons to Use Docker With ASP.NET (Arjun S.) - Nice post that lists, at a high level, the reasons why Docker should be worth your time to learn.

• Blazor and Cancelling Asynchronous Calls With CancellationTokenSource (Khalid Abuhakmeh) - Nice post that clarifies some details. And the code is available.

• Install WSL with a single command now available in Windows 10 version 2004 and higher (Craig Loewen) - This is very interesting and will certainly ease the install process. I mean it's hard to beat a single command of only a few characters.

• Stringly Typed vs Strongly Typed (Scott Hanselman) - I love it! That's totally the questions I will ask myself next time I use magic strings.

Books

Making Work Visible: Exposing Time Theft to Optimize Work & flow

Author: Dominica Degrandis, Tonianne DeMaria

This book helps define and explains how to really do and use tools like Kanban. It's not a story like in The Phoenix Project. There is a lot in this book and it is worth taking your time to read it.

A book to share.

~Frank

Reading Notes #477

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!

The suggestion of the week

• Tips and Tricks and Best Practices for Hybrid Meetings with Microsoft Teams and more (Scott Hanselman) - I love that post. We learned so much in the last months. Now that all have experienced the remote, let's keep that in mind and build best practices on top of it.

Cloud

• Azure Cost Management and Billing updates – July 2021 (Michael Flanakin) - Many updates are introduced in this post, and there are also videos if you prefer.

• Bring Your Own Storage in Azure Web App (Kevin Li) - Interesting post that explains how the details about how to do it. I wish there were more details about some good scenarios of when to use that.

Programming

• PowerShell: Download script or file from GitHub (Thomas Maurer) - That cool! I wish it was as simple as the bash curl, but it's a start.

• ASP.NET Core updates in .NET 6 Preview 6 (Daniel Roth) - Nice post that explains the new features, how to get started, and also how to migrate.

• Blazor Debugging Improvements in Rider 2021.2 (Rachel Appel) - That's super cool debugging wasm...

• Welcome to the Community Toolkit! (Michael Hawker) - A new name, more friends so much news for this group.

Miscellaneous

• Should you attend yet another meeting? (Luise Freese) - Think about it... We all do it. Nice and funny diagram.

~Frank

Reading Notes #476

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

• Using App Roles with Azure Active Directory and Blazor WebAssembly Hosted Apps (Marinko Spasojevic) - A nice tutorial that explains step by step the configuration to use AAD with your App.

• Create and link a custom domain to an Azure App Service (pcmichaels) - A very complete post and video that guides us in our custom domain journey.

• Tutorial: Blob backup and restore using Azure Backup via Azure CLI (Srinath Vasireddy) - Cool post that helps to create a script that could automatically backup things on a regular basis for us...

Programming

• Markdown Monster 2.0 is here (Rick Strahl) - Very interesting behind the scene post. It's not because the changes are not really visible that they aren't important. Great work!

• Sure, you could write all those Blazor HTTP calls yourself... (Jon Hilton) - Perfect timing I was looking for something like this for my project.

Podcasts

• Episode 265 (rerun of 216): One-on-ones and inter-team power struggles (Soft Skills Engineering) - Very happy to see tha I'm totally normal! And that I have a good manager. One-on-ones are one of a kind, very interesting episode where both sides are mentionned.

• Azure APIs with Jeff Richter (.NET Rocks!) - A very. I mean VERY interesting episode. Have you ever wonder how updates in Azure are approuved? Then this episode is for you.

• Mental health, music and the wild with Joseph Mulherin (Wild Ideas Worth Living) - Very interesting talk about nature and how it can helps to manage emotions.

• Épisode 98 - La musique qui nous entraîne (Grand écart) - Very cool episode, in French, that could give you pretty interesting sugestions to add to your workout/ run playlist.

Miscellaneous

• 5 learnings as a Product Manager | Humble Bits (Kitty Bhasin) - I really liked this post, and honestly, I think it's useful at any moment of our career.

~Frank

Reading Notes #475

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!

The suggestion of the week

• What makes a good Git commit? (Al Tenhundfeld) - Great post. It's always good to read opinions from others about collaborating as it helps to better understand others, be in their shoes, and then become a better team player.

Cloud

• Azure Service Bus: Queues vs Topics (Davide Bellone) - Most people know about queues but topics is not as well known. This is a great post to understand why, how, and what you need.

• Azure Service Bus and C# - an introduction (Davide Bellone) - This is a nice and detailed post perfect to get started with the service Bus and queues.

• Building and auto-deploying an ASP.NET Core application - Part 7 - Improving your build and release processes ( Imar Spaanjaars) - This series is gold for anyone interested to learn more about best practices when deploying. It covers many different scenarios and got into the details.

• Creating Azure Functions, Custom Connectors and using them inside of Power apps (Charles Sterling) - Quick tutorial that connects two amazing tools.

• Leveling Up Static Web Apps With the CLI (Aaron Powell) - A pretty cool demo running locally. The explanation of the tasks fike is awesome.

Programming

• Best Practices for Microservices (dilshan ukwattage) - 7 best practices to help us building great microservices solutions.

• Conditional compilation for ignoring method calls with the ConditionalAttribute (Andrew Lock) - An interesting post about commands that we don't see that often, or at least that I don't see often.

• How to use GitHub actions and Contentful webhooks to show your latest blog posts on your GitHub profile README (Salma Alam-Naylor) - Wow, This is pretty cool! I didn't think we could do this kind of thing with our page...but I guess we can do all we want; love it.

• Extending HttpClient Testing With Templating (Adam Storr) - A nice quick post that shares unit test pattern

• Exploring .NET interactive notebooks with VS Code (Andrew Lock) - Nice practical utilization of that tech and I love the historic vibe into it.

• Git – What to do when things go wrong (pcmichaels) - Wonderful post...We all been there when we screwed up then not sure how to fix things. This post is packed with helpful commands and explanations on how to use them and the expected result

Miscellaneous

• Diagram as Code with Diagrams (Sam Cogan) - Interesting tool, I use drawio most of the time because it doesn't require any installation, but I am curious to see it.

• Speaking CTO (Gregor Hohpe) - Nive post with really good and simple best practices.

~Frank

Learning how to Build, Secure, and Deploy your Azure Static Web App in C#

Recently I participated in a series of videos about Azure Static Web Apps: Azure Tips and Tricks: Static Web Apps on Microsoft Channel 9. The series is perfect to get started and cover multiple different scenarios in different Javascript frameworks and C#. In this post, I wanted to regroup the four videos related to .Net Blazor. I also added the GitHub links part of the references at to end.

How to create a web app in C# with Blazor & Azure Static Web Apps

In this video, we start from scratch. We will build and deploy a brand new static website with .Net Blazor.

How to add a C# API to your Blazor web app

Now that you built your web app with C# and Blazor, what about adding a serverless C# API to it? Have a look!

How to secure your C# API with Azure Static Web Apps

Prevent unwanted users to access your C# API by configuring authentication and authorization in your Blazor Azure Static Web Apps.

I hope those videos will help you to get started. If you have questions and/or comments don't hesitate to reach out (comments, DM, GitHub issues), it's always a pleasure.

How CI/CD and preview branches work with Azure Static Web Apps

In this video, I wanted to show one of the great features of Azure Static Web App Learn: the creation of pre-production environments. Using the CI/CD workflow, you can preview your pull requests changes before it's in production leveraging the automatic creation of pre-production environments!

References:

• Watch the full series: https://aka.ms/StaticWebAppsTipsC9
• GitHub Sample: https://github.com/FBoucher/AzureStaticWebApp-CSharp-SimpleDemo
• Interactive tutorials on Microsoft Learn: https://aka.ms/Learn/StaticWebApps

Reading Notes #474

Every Monday (or Tuesday when the previous was a holiday 😏), 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

• Achieving observability in async workflows (Colby Callahan, Megha Manohara, and Mike Azar.) - Interesting real-life story.

• The fastest way to get started with Microsoft Azure (Abhijit Jana) - That a piece of very good advice, I need to remember that next time someone asks me.

• Updating Azure App Service on Linux for Docker via Webhooks from C# - Dangl.Blog(); (Georg Dangl) - Yep it's so simple to update in PaaS.

Programming

• Exploring the Visual Studio Code REST Book extension for native Notebooks (Scott Hanselman) - Quick post about an interesting extension, and if you are interested you can collaborate.

Podcasts

• 118: How to Get Into Teaching & Public Speaking (Plus My Entire Gear List) (CloudSkills.fm) - If you are thinking about starting to Podcast or event streaming... This is a nice podcast to help you to get started.

• Automating all the Things with Home Assistant's Paulus Schoutsen (Hanselminutes) - I enjoy that episode... How did you start? And all those reflections about how to do it so everyone enjoys it even when not everybody is "pro-tech" at home.

• Having a Laugh with Michael McIntyre (A Bit of Optimism) - Definitely a fun episode to listen to.

• How to Show More Grit at Work (Modern Mentor) - New to remote work (aka pandemic forced to work remotely) you still need to make your work visible and this episode could help you to get started.

• The Art of Podcasting, the Future of Angel Investing, and Startup Ideas for Indie Hacker with Rob Walling of Tinyseed (Indie Hackers) - Interesting discussion about the podcast and the remote interaction with an audience.

• #93: Cristian Florea - Coach For Aspiring Developers (The Solo Coder Podcast) - Nice episode perfect for the new developers to help them to find that first job. I really like the live question part of it.

• SPI 486: One of the Most Important Things You Can Do for Entrepreneurial (and Life) Success (SPI podcast) - That was a nice episode talking about helping each other and doing so to grow. Tons of ideas.

• 0255 - Tidjani Belmansour - Azure Communication Services (Visual Studio Talk Show) - It's in French. Once more great episode, interesting talk about one of the "recent" addition to the Azure services and what you can do with it.

Miscellaneous

• How to achieve a pixellated secrets scene in OBS for Windows (LUCE CARTER) - So simple and very efficient.I will give it a try.

~frank

Reading Notes #473

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!

Suggestion of the week

• Transform C# objects to a flat string dictionary (Josef Ottoson) - I love so much those developer's coding journey. We learn so much more than if only the "happy path " was shared. Great post thank you for sharing.

Cloud

• Develop production-scale modern web apps quickly with Azure Static Web Apps (Daria Grigoriu) - Nice summary of what is an Azure Static web app and what and all the included features since it reached Global Availability this week.
• The New Azure Logo - Microsoft Azure Icon (Abhijit Jana) - This is my favorite so far.
• Using Auth0 with Static Web Apps (Aaron Powell) - Ah wonderful! I noticed this new feature in Azure static web App this week. This post details how it works and gives a great example.

Programming

• VS Code shortcuts that you must know! (Mac and Windows) (Raynaldo Sutisna) - Learning new shortcuts is always nice.
• 4 Tips on How to Refactor Code in Visual Studio Code (Alex Omeyer) - Nice! I didn't know about that cool extension.
• 5 Ways to Improve the Performance of C# Code for Free (Sasha Mathews) - Interesting deep dive in the performance of our code and the why it goes fast or could go faster.
• Add a README to Your NuGet Package (Christopher Gill) - Now I understand! I noticed that, earlier this week, and thought: Wow, this is wonderful, why they are not all doing that! Now it all makes sense.
• How To Customize Azure DevOps Projects Process Templates? (Abhijit Jana) - Azure DevOps is a very very powerful tool. This post and video will show you how to start customizing it.
• What Do You Mean By Automated Tests And Continuous Integration? (Charles L Flatt) - Great answer.

Podcasts

• Bonus: Understanding Digital Body Language (Modern Mentor) - That we wanted or not, we need to get better with those new tools: the webcam, the microphone. We need to understand how to use them correctly and how to understand what the person on the other hand is really sharing. Great episode.
• Social Robots with De'Aira Bryant (Hanselminutes with Scott Hanselman) - Okay I crack at... If only they knew! A very interesting episode about... yes robots!
• Write Great APIs (Coding Blocks) - What's an API, what's a good API, why it's good, or why it's bad... Great episode that may me think... I really need to get back to my code and update a few things.

~frank

Reading Notes #472

Cloud

• Announcing NubesGen, an Open Source tool to automate Azure deployments (Julien Dubois) - A very interesting project use can use it participate and learn.
• Azure Bicep Refreshed (Justin Yoo) - Infrastructure As Code with Bicep. It looks great.
• Effective ways to delete resources in a resource group on Azure in 2021 ( Stephane Lapointe) - Nice post that shows us how to be smarter even when we delete resources.
• Getting Started with Azure Web PubSub Service (Abhijit Jana) - This is a great new service and the cherry on the top... It's fully managed!
• What’s the most configurable Kubernetes service in the cloud? Does it matter? (Richard Seroter) - Interesting post that compares the configuration options of the different service providers. From my point of view (code focus), it's not who has the more options that are the more appealing. It's Who let me go with the fewer click with a good setup.

Programming

• Build and ship software better with GitHub and Microsoft Teams (Teams team) - I installed the app with pure curiosity, but I kept it because it is useful. I'm happy to see those new features.
• 10 Reasons to Attend DockerCon LIVE 2021 - Docker Blog (David Oro) - It's coming soon...
• Blazor - Component Mockup Library (Cody Merritt Anhorn) - Anice tutorial that explains how to get started with this lib.
• Securing an ASP.NET Core app and web API using windows authentication (Damien Bowden) - Nice tutorial with tons of code snippets.
• tabs ↹ over ␣ ␣ ␣ spaces (Jiri Cincura) - Experimenting is still one of the best ways to learn things. Just like in this post.

Podcasts

• Designing the Future with Brian Collins (A Bit of Optimism) - Great episode, very inspiring. How as more experienced humans can we help the younger ones to build a better future... And learn in the process.
• Use Storytelling to Get Ahead at Work (Modern Mentor) - Storytelling is important and this episode help to get started. Because the best stories are not improvised.
• Épisode 93 - Quand la santé tourne à l’obsession (Grand écart) - In French, with so many people that run... We need to stay focus and do it for the good reason. It an eye-opening episode.
• Hello World: April 22, 2021 - Special Hello Earth! (Hello World) - Shameless plug... Hello World is now available in Podcast!
• 252: Linux GUI Apps on Windows - WSLg (Merge Conflict) - I was happy when I saw the news about the WSL GUI Apps announcement, but didn't have the time to try anything. In this episode, Frank and James ask all the good questions and provide so many answers. Awesome.
• SPI 482: The 3-Second Rule That You Need to Know (The Smart Passive Income Online Business and Blogging Podcast) - Getting out of our comfort zone is hard. And introducing ourselves could be so challenging. I love the idea of that tips.
• Leadership, Radical Delegation, And Integrated Problem Solving with Admiral John Richardson (The Idealcast with Gene Kim by IT Revolution) - Interesting episode. The first thought was if the military can review their approach, everyone can. Great lesson.

Miscellaneous

• 10 Best Visual Studio Code Extensions for Increased Productivity (Dirk Strauss) - This post is so much more than a list of 10extensions...It explains some differences between Visual Studio and VS Code, and shares those extensions, and explains why there are so amazing.

~frank

Reading Notes #471

Cloud

• Lost in Azure cloud identity - part 1 (Daniel Krzyczkowski) - That looks very promising. A series of posts to learn more on Azure Active Directory.

• Building and auto-deploying an ASP.NET Core application (Imar Spaanjaars) - A nice step-by-step tutorial to build your own deployment.

  

• Localize your website with Microsoft Translator (Krishna Doss) - Really interesting services.

Programming

• Converting a 13 year old .NET WPF app called BabySmash to a self-contained .NET 5 app with the .NET Upgrade Assistant (Scott Hanselman) - This is interesting, I remember Babysmash! I need to check that stream to see that tool in action.

• Create a Windows 10 development virtual machine (Thomas Maurer) - Great tutorial to create a dev environment.So useful when we need to create a specific context or use a different version to investigate client issues.

• Visual Studio 2022 (Amanda Silver) - I'm always impressed by how new features are continuously added to VS. Such a great tool.

Miscellaneous

• Why you should never quit too early ... (Donn Felker) - An inspiring post to help us persevere and time is hard. But also to try to step aside and have an open mindset.

~frank

Reading Notes #470

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

• How to Display the Current Azure Subscription in your CLI (Sam Cogan) - This is a game-changer for me. Every time I work in the terminal I was checking what was my current subscription (you don't want to deploy things in the wrong one right?) But know it will always be visible. Wonderfull!

Programming

• Devlead.Statiq - Part 2 - Theme from external web resource (Mattias Karlsson) - That's cool and clever. And cleaner than the modules.

• @devlead - Mattias Karlsson's Blog - Devlead.Statiq - Part 1 - Tabs (Mattias Karlsson) - Cool feature from Statiq the static content generator.

• ASP.NET Core in Action, Second Edition is available now! (Andrew Lock) - Nice update, its a lot of work to keep up with .Net. Great work.

• Chocolatey GUI - The Path to 1 million downloads (Gary Ewan Park) - Congratulation! I love Chocolatey and this little historic review is super cool.

• Take your Windows Terminal and PowerShell to the next level with Terminal Icons (Scott Hanselman) - Nice quick tips, super simple, and yeah way prettier.

• Viewing overwritten configuration values in ASP.NET Core (Andrew Lock) - Nice post that goes deep in debugging and shows how to make things more visible.

• Devlead.Statiq - Part 3 - IncludeCode 🤺 (Mattias Karlsson) - An interesting feature that I didn't know about...

Miscellaneous

• Writing, Editing and Formatting a Technical Ebook in 2021 (Rob Conery) - Interesting post. I knew writing a book was a lot of work, of course, but never thought the formatting was such a challenge.

Reading Notes #469

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

• Deploying an Azure Function App with Bicep (Mark Heath) - A nice example of a bicep script with a few resources. Not too many so it is complicated but enough to cover some particularities.

Programming

• ASP.NET Core User Secrets and Secret Manager Tool (Steve Gordon) - Its hard to explain secret or invisible things, but this post does a really good job.

• Blazor Power BI Paginated Reports (Michael Washington) - Ooooh It's been a moment since I play with my friend PowerBi... This is very interesting. I just needed a project with data... That shouldn't be that hard to find, right?

• Microsoft Graph Fundamentals learning path – Module 1 (Luise Freese) - Wonderful! Does this learning path as been created just for me? Perfect timing.

• Windows Containers on Windows 10 without Docker (using Containerd) · James Sturtevant (James Sturtevant) - Interesting container project.

Books

Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know 

Author: Adam M. Grant

- I really like this book. It validates that it's okay to rethink decisions, to change your mind. The goal is to have (and keep) an open mindset. It seems easier than it is, of course. I heard amazing comments about this author, so it's probably not the last one I will read from him.

Miscellaneous

• GraphQL Editor - new release v. 4.5 (Tomek Poniatowicz) - I didn't know that tool, but now I really need to look at it; it seems awesome.

~ Frank

Reading Notes #468

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

• Bicep - Why do we need yet another way to deploy stuff in Azure? (Mark Heath) - I still didn't play with bicep, but really looking forward to it. This post just made me even more excited about finally trying g it.

• Why won't you load my configuration Azure Functions? (Adam Storr) - Yes, it can definitely be a little confusing at the beginning, but that way is the secure way.

• Common Misconception #2 – Serverless is good for APIs (Jason Farrell) - Interesting post about lamda and serverless in general.

Programming

• How to make Command Prompt, PowerShell, or any Shell launch from the Start Menu directly into Windows Terminal (Scott Hanselman) - This is just what I was looking for amazing... And so simple!

• Monitoring and Observability in Cloud-Native ASP.NET Core apps | ASP.NET Blog (Nish Anil) - Nice post about this misunderstood topic. There are good examples and references to it. Excellent pairing it Scott Hanselman podcast episode with Tori Wieldt.

• The Windows Terminal made better with the Command Palette plus Multiple Actions in one Command (Scott Hanselman) - Wow, okay this is super cool and even more useful... Let's get started!

• Who Is Responsible For Building Tests? - Redgate Software (Grant Fritchey) - That's an excellent question! What's your answer?

Miscellaneous

• Add Developer PowerShell and Developer Command Prompt for Visual Studio to Windows Terminal (Luise) - Del

• What shall I use for managing tasks? Email? Outlook Tasks? Planner? To Do or even OneNote? (Luise) - Still, using pen and paper and thinking to move digital? This post is for you.

~Frank

Reading Notes #467

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!

This week's image brings us to 2017, back when I was a Microsoft MVP, yes my name is on that wall with so many of my friends! Have I great summit this week!

Cloud

• Azure Functions Support for node.JS 14 and .Net 5 Is Now Generally Available (Steef-Jan Wiggers Follow) - A quick post that detailed what is new and why it's nice.

• Azure Workbooks - Set it to Auto-Refresh (Shikha Jain) - Your mouse will thanks you, because of less clicks.

• Cloud-Native learning resources for .NET developers (Nish Anil) - A nice post that explains the cloud-native idea and lists sooooo many resources to get started.

Programming

• 5 things to include in your project ASAP (Lior Bragilevsky) - This is a very JavaScript focus post, but easily portable to other languages.

• Debugging configuration values in ASP.NET Core (Andrew Lock) - A great tutorial that teaches some great ways to debug and inspect the appSettings.

• Introducing AWS SSO support in the AWS Toolkit for VS Code | Amazon Web Services (Garret Sweetwood) - Another great VS Code extension, this time to help you with your authentification with AWS.

• Scaling Microservices on Kubernetes (Ashley Davis) - Interesting post about scaling. Scaling horizontally, vertically the advantages and complexities of each options.

• Tetris in Blazor WebAssembly (Matthew Jones ) - I keep repeating it, coding is fun and creative! Learn more about this cool open source project in this post.

• The common misconception about TypeScript (Narasimha Prasanna HN) - This is a great post that shares simple best practices in TypeScript.

Miscellaneous

• Get better at programming by learning how things work (Julia Evans) - Inspirational post to stay curious and keep learning.

~Frank

Reading Notes #466

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!

The suggestion of the week

• How do I Navigate GitHub Code? (Brian Lagunas) - Two very simple tricks that make a huge difference when you browse a GitHub repo.Wow.

Cloud

• Prevent exceeding Azure budget with forecasted cost alerts (Adam Wise) - Clients are worry to spend more than plan. But they could avoid many surprises by using this tool.

Programming

• Highlights from Git 2.31 (Taylor Blau) - There definitely new features that I will use. And some that I didn't even know was possible that become better and faster.

• Implement Unit Testing in ASP.NET Core 5 Application – Getting Started (Sanjay) - An extremely complete article with code simple and architecture example.

• Integrating ASP.NET Identity Password Policies with Password Managers (Scott Brady) - A great tutorial that explains how to take control of the strength of the password in our app.

• Learn to build HTTP APIs with .NET (Jon Galloway) - So many great suggestions for blog posts, videos, and even a brand new learning path!

• Use C# to upload files to a GitHub repository (Dave Brock) - This is awesome no need to create a rest wrapper and all those little things.

Miscellaneous

• How to Be Happier Without Really Trying - Barking Up The Wrong Tree (Eric) - Is it tricking your own mind, or is it just taking back control? Well as much as we can take control ...of course. Nevertheless, these are interesting ideas that I will try.

~Frank

Reading Notes #465

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

• Announcing Az Predictor preview 2 (Damien Caro) - Already preview 2 it looks so great.

• Ask About Azure: Why do resource groups need a location? | Dave Brock (Dave Brock) - Brilliant! This question is asked so many times, and the answer is perfect.

• Azure Communications Voice Calling QuickStart (Dan Wahlin) - Wonderful solution and I know some dev who is now very happy that they now have this tool.

• Azure REST API through Logic App (Brad Watts) - I love Logic Apps I think it's a tool that is overviewed by too many. Great post.

• Penny Pinching in the Cloud: Azure Static Web Apps are saving me money (Scott Hanselman) - Azure static web app for the win! Seriously they are amazing I use them a lot. It's still in preview. But all good.

Programming

• Easily nuke secrets from your Git history | Dominique St-Amand (Dominique St-Amand) - Interesting post going deep into Git spelunking artifact from our history.

• Installing Docker Desktop for Windows and WSL 2 (Andrew Lock) - This post guides ys in the installations of WLS2 with Docker on Windows. It is now kind of simple... But a lot of us are still afraid. We shouldn't, give it a try!

• Your Open Source Project Needs a devcontainer - Here's Why | LINQ to Fail (Aaron Powell) - The dev container tools are pure madness. BUT on the positive side. It is incredibly useful and easy to use. Pair with Codespace its magic. I'm looking forward to seeing the public release.

Miscellaneous

• How to: Deploy GitHub Pages on a Schedule to Publish Future Posts (Sean Killeen) - Omg! So simple. A wonderful post. Thank you so much for this.

~Frank

Reading Notes #464

Every Monday, I share my "reading notes". This is a curated list of all the articles, blog posts, 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

• Azure REST APIs with Insomnia (Jon Gallant) - Awesome post I didn't know that extension and they had never tried the import. Very useful.

• Microsoft Ignite 2021 Book of News (Microsoft) - If you are looking for the complete list of all the news done at Microsoft Ignite here it is.

• Top 5 things to get the most out of Microsoft Ignite (Rick Claus) - Nice tips to get ready.

Programming

• Tip 307 - How to create faster and smarter apps with .NET 5 | Azure Tips and Tricks - A nice quick review of .Net improvements.

• .NET Interactive with SQL!| .NET Notebooks in Visual Studio Code (Maria Naggaga) - A very interesting tool when you want to do a quick exploration of the data or invalidate some queries while in your code.

• Don't forget about the GitHub Command Line (Scott Hanselman) - I forgot about that CLI... That could be useful.

• Generate iCal calendar with .NET using iCAL.NET (Kristoffer Strube) - A nice quick tutorial for that package.Looking forward to seeing in the latest .Net version.

• IntelliSense for appsettings.json | ASP.NET Blog (James Newton-King) - That's a cool feature! How many times I was in the settings and struggling on the format, or name of a properties.No more Internet search!

• What Makes VSCode so Popular?. Visual Studio Code is bae | by Richard So | Feb, 2021 | codeburst (Richard So) - A great post that will put words into your thoughts. And if you don't use vsCode, it will explain why so many people around love it that much.

• You must be insane to be a software developer (Matt Lacey) - Interesting question.

Miscellaneous

• 4 Ways To Balance Under And Over-Communication As A Remote Work Manager (Shitika Anand) - Important and simple tools for our times.

~Frank

Reading Notes #463

Every Monday, I share my "reading notes". This is a curated list of all the articles, blog posts, 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

• Add a Pipeline Expression Value to an Azure DevOps Variable (Jason Gaylord) - Nice quick post/ tips about pipeline.

• Secure Azure AD User File Upload with Azure AD Storage and ASP.NET Core (Damien Bowden) - Great tutorial with all the code.

• Using Azure Key Vault to manage your secrets (Chris Noring) - A nice post from Chris. Azure Key Vault is a fantastic tool. Don't miss it.

Programming

• Free Windows 10 development virtual machines for HyperV, Parallels, VirtualBox, and VMWare (Scott Hanselman) - Cool tips to have a nice dev environment.

• Using source generators to generate a menu component in a Blazor app (Andrew Lock) - Nice post.pretty cool way to avoid hard coding routes or "magic string".

• What I wish I had known about single page applications - Stack Overflow Blog (Michael Pratt) - I totally get it. I found myself in similar situations many times ( I like to learn, and the best way is by building something). Great share.

Databases

• Azure SQL Database or SQL Managed Instance Database used data space is much larger than expected (Sabrin Alsahsah) - A very interesting post. I learn a ton reading it.

• Getting Started with Azure Synapse Link for Cosmos DB (Ron L'Esteve ) - Near real-time analysis without impacting the data source performance... Pretty impressive.

Podcasts

• Game Jam Lessons Learned (Coding Blocks) - Very happy the listen to this follow episode from show 151. I've been tenting to try participating in a Game Jam. Really interesting to learn their experience and how they would do differently.

• Can networking be simple? with Tailscale's Avery Pennarun (Hanselminutes with Scott Hanselman) - Networking is definitely my strength or passion. Nevertheless this episode was extremely interesting. I learned so much!

• How to Make 30k a Month: The System that Took Her from 5k to 30k with Jessie Harris-Bouton (Influencer Entrepreneurs with Jenny Melrose) - NIce episode cool story, because life is life. Love it.

Miscellaneous

• Fix for Elgato Key Light not found by Control Center (Scott Hanselman) - Sorry, but I feel happy to not be alone with those thoughts, and in that situation. My Keylight is now optional in my setup because when I need a light NOW, I don't have time to figure out issues.

~Frank

How to copy data in Azure using AzCopy

Data is the key to almost all solutions. Obviously, at some point, we will need to move it. And this is when AzCopy  will come to the rescue. In this short post/video I will share how you can securely copy a Zip file (aka. data), from one location (blob storage, AWS) to a blob storage in an Azure subscription (the same subscription or a different one).

What is AzCopy 

AzCopy is a command-line utility that you can use to copy blobs or files to or from a storage account. It can run on Windows, Mac, and Linux. And... It's already available pre-install inside Cloud Shell!

How it works

AzCopy can do many things but let's focus on the "copy" feature. To copy a file from a location to another one here the command to execute:

azcopy copy https://url-source https://url-destination

It looks simple, right? And it is. To keep it secure AzCopy can use Shared Access Signature (SAS) tokens. To get those in Azure, you can execute a command (ex: az storage container generate-sas) or use the Azure Portal. 

Once you are in the Azure portal open the account storage of your source or destination (you will have to do both).

From the option on the left search for Shared access signature or just sas and click on it. Select the type of options you need. A best practice is to allow the minimum requirements. If you know you are only moving files then unchecked the File, Queue, and Table. Same things for the resources types, permissions, and expiry date/time.  Once you are done click the Generate SAS and connection string button.

Use those URLs with the SAS token in your command, and voila!

Video demo

How about Az CLI and PowerShell

If you prefer copying or moving your files using native commands in Azure PowerShell and Az CLI it's also possible here a previous post about that: How to copy files between Azure subscription from Windows, Linux, OS X, or the cloud. There is also a video for this one https://youtu.be/cE8qwnSk9qs

References:

• AzCopy: https://aka.ms/azcopy 
• Az CLI Generate SAS token

~Frank

Reading Notes #462

Every Monday, I share my "reading notes". This is a curated list of all the articles, blog posts, 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

• Azure Functions in C# quick FAQs and tips ( Dominique St-Amand) - Nice post that answers the frequent questions and shares best practices.

• Using Multiple Accounts with Azure (Sam Cogan) - Nice tips a must. So helpful.

Programming

• ASP.NET Core Dependency Injection: What is the IServiceCollection? (Steve Gordon) - A very clear and complete tutorial.Taking us from zero and teaching us what it is, how it works, how to use it, and some best practices.

• Announcing Dapr v1.0 (Dapr project maintainers) - A great new open-source tool just got to v1. This post will tell you all about it.

• Building an Android app with .NET 6 (Nick) - This is so cool. Looking Good.

• DotNet Boxed includes prescriptive templates for .NET Core (Scott Hanselman) - This is super cool. I really like and appreciate how the .Net CLI is builded.

• Visual Studio 2019 Docker Tooling (Mark Heath) - A nice post that shows how those two great tools work together.

• What is the difference between a DTO and a POCO (or POJO) (Steve (ardalis) Smith) - A very clear explanation. Straight to the point.

• Blazor on Desktop (Sam Basu ) - This post demonstrates by showing how to build those two flavors that it is possible to build a desktop app. Interesting.

Miscellaneous

• 7 Ways to Improve Your Developer Ads � DeveloperMedia - Marketing is hard. I'm not sure developers are that different than others. those tips felt good, they are probably good with all audiences.

~Frank

Reading Notes #461

Every Monday, I share my "reading notes". This is a curated list of all the articles, blog posts, 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.

The suggestions of the week

• Visual Studio Code comes to Raspberry Pi - Raspberry Pi (Jim Bennett) - Great post from Jim. You can feel his excitement about this news... It's really motivating.

• Master These Three Skills to Improve Time Management 🚀 (Anastasia) - Wow. This post contains tons of information, references, and good advice. To read.

Cloud

• What Is Azure Functions (Mahesh Chand) - The great simple post that explains what is an Azure Function and how to create/ debug/ deploy one

Programming

• Creating a Running Game in VueJS - Part 3 - Component Files and Installing Vue - The Long Walk (Paul Michaels) - Interesting step by spet tutorial part 3 of a series.

• How to Install Windows Software Remotely Using PowerShell and Chocolatey - Petri (Russell Smith) - A very cool and simple way to solve a common difficulty why all those new people not working in the office.

• Open-source HTTP API packages and tools (Brady Gaster) - Excellent tutorial, second post of a series. It's definitely a great place to get started.

• Save the Date for .NET Conf: Focus on Windows, February 25, 2021 (Katie Akrop DeSantis) - Looking forward to this event. Thursday the 25th.

• Creating Discoverable HTTP APIs with ASP.NET Core 5 Web API | ASP.NET Blog (Brady Gaster) - An extremely complete tutorial to learn more about API.

Podcast

• Épisode 11 - La famine en Ukraine (Les Pires Moments de l'Histoire) - OMG! I have nothing else to say. I knew that part of the history was dark and complex... but I knew nothing. Great episode.

• SPI 457: The Secret to Taking Risks & How to Make It Work - Behind the Scenes with Katie Kimbal (The Smart Passive Income Online Business) - Very motivating episode. When we start a journey we don't know most of the time where our decisions will bring us. Therefore it's always frightening to take risks, but with time and effort... grandiose thing can appends

• Containers on Azure with Tom Kerkhove (.NET Rocks!) - What a great episode! And it's so true there is so many ways "to do your containers" ( like in a recipe )

• Épisode 87 - La sécurité des coureuses (Grand écart) - Sometimes I feel so ashamed to be a man... I know I'm doing it right, but I need to do more... for the others that forgot that we are all equal.

• 633 - How to Use Rejection to Your Advantage (Modern Mentor) - In our lives, we will encounter many nos or rejection. This episode talks about how you could use those detours to learn more, and transform them in opportunities.

• 101: Windows Virtual Desktop with Travis Roberts (CloudSkills.fm) - I remember when "infra" people couldn't see anything positive about the cloud... Times as changed a lot. There are so many opportunities.

• The myth of turning your hobby into a job with writer Aley Arion (Hanselminutes with Scott Hanselman) - Is it a myth or a reality? I totally think it's possible. But yeah in all the amazing love (or adventure) movies there are always some challenges. But happy 95% of the time.. I take that!

Miscellaneous

• Fun times with batch files : Algorithms for the masses - julian m bucknall (Julian M Bucknall) - Nice journey in the bach world.

• Scheduling Integration with the Azure Health Bot (Gregory Lisiak) - Nice way to use technology, today, to help to educate people.

You think you may have interesting content, share it!

~Frank