Reading Notes #695

A mix of thoughtful perspectives and practical updates this week. From evolving AI tools and model selection guidance to changes in developer workflows and tooling, there’s plenty to reflect on. Add in insights on streaming and a strong push toward more secure environments, and you get a well-rounded set of reads worth your time.

Suggestion of the week

• Why MicroVMs: The Architecture Behind Docker Sandboxes (Srini Sekaran, Craig Gumbley) - Yes! Officially launched, so we can finally include some security in our processes!

AI

• Introducing Claude Design by Anthropic Labs - Looking forward to try the new interface that that seams to allow a more artistic interaction.

• The importance of people who care – Rachel Andrew - Interesting post about people who care in the world, where doing a lot of stuff fast is seen as a goal

• Changes to GitHub Copilot Individual plans (Joe Binder) - Big changes for Copilot that will probably affect your workflow. This post shares the details and reasons of this disturbance; it's all for a good reason

• GPT-5 vs GPT-4.1 - choosing the right model for your use case - Microsoft Foundry - Yes, this post is about two specific models in Foundry, but it's still true that it can definitely help to understand when to pick one model over the other in general

Programming

• It's Time for a Visual Studio Upgrade - This post does a comparison between the old and the new versions of the Visual Studio IDE and shares details about the most impactful changes.
  
  

Miscellaneous

• Livestreaming Before It Was Cool (Golnaz) - Curious to learn more about the streaming options from the different platforms to the tools, and the pro and cons of each? This post is for you, and on top of that, you get the Microsoft story.

~frank

Reading Notes #694

A fast-moving mix this week: AI tooling, ARM readiness, Docker sandboxes, and real-world lessons from agents. Practical insights across .NET, DevOps, and local-first workflows.

Suggestion of the week

• Token Exhaustion: What Three AI Coding Agents Taught Me in a Single Week (Alexandre Brisebois) - Great post! Everyone needs to learn this lesson. Now you have an alternative instead of the hard way.

AI

• How Intelligent is AI? (Shawn Wildermuth) - Interesting thoughts about the current situation between code, developers, and AI

• How to Analyze Hugging Face for Arm64 Readiness (Ajeet Singh Raina) - This is a great tutorial that explains in detail how, in 7 steps, you can produce a stable arm container image.

• Foundry Local is now Generally Available (sam kemp) - Interesting solution when you need to stay local.

• Copilot CLI vs VS Code - When I Use Each (Golnaz) - Learn when some prefer using a CLI or an editor. There are so many different angles and things to do.

Programming

• Running AI agents with customized templates using docker sandbox (Andrew Lock) - The post have been waiting for! This post goes further than the happy path. Shows how to add the tools you want or the os you need.

• Why .NET MAUI Popups Lag and How to Fix Performance Issues (Kompelli Sravan Kumar) - Good to know performance as such a huge impact[on the user experience.

DevOps

• Reclaim Developer Hours through Smarter Vulnerability Prioritization with Docker and Mend.io (Adam Dawson, Dor Hayun) - Understand better the vulnerabilities with the new integration of mend.io to Docker

Podcasts

• Our Favorite Agent Setups (Agentic DevOps) - Nice discussion that goes through many AI harnesses, agents, models, and what they are playing with right now. OpenClaw, OpenCode, Claude Code, Copilot, and all of it.

• Michael Perry: AI-assisted Development - Episode 397 (AI DevOps Podcast) - Interesting discussion about AI-assisted Development (or can we say programming?) with a focus on skills and how they could be defined.

Reading Notes #693

I'm always on the lookout for innovative ways to enhance my coding experience, and this week's Reading Notes are filled with exciting discoveries! From cutting-edge UI libraries to secure sandbox environments for AI agents, I've curated a selection of articles that showcase the latest programming trends and technologies. 

Whether you're interested in harnessing the power of Docker sandboxes or exploring the potential of smart glasses integration, there's something on this list for everyone.

Programming

• What's new for the Microsoft Fluent UI Blazor library 5.0 RC2 (Vincent Baaij) - V5 already! Wow, time flies! Tons of features in this release, looking forward to try the pinned column from the grid.

AI

• Docker Sandboxes: Run Agents in YOLO Mode, Safely (Eric Jia, Srini Sekaran,Timir Karia) - From what I saw, it is very secure, and it is that simple to set up. Looking forward to do more with it.

• Running AI agents safely in a microVM using docker sandbox (Andrew Lock) - This post answers so many questions! I heard a lot about those sandboxes and tried a few things, but had so many questions. Great post Andrew.

• Experimenting with AI subagents (Nicolas Fränkel) - An interesting story with what seems to be a good vision of the future.

• Old Protocols, New Pipes (Mark Downie) - Well said! And I hope you had a good time doing it.

• I Recorded 13 Hours of My Day With Smart Glasses for AI. Here's What I Built and What I Learned (tash-2s) - A really cool project that uses AI to make a pile of videos into some kind of dataset. A new to do daily journaling.

Miscellaneous

• Claude Code Windows Migration Guide: Move Your Setup (Dirk Strauss) - There is always a part that is easy in starting a new computer and a part that requires more effort.

~frank