Reading Notes #719

Welcome back for another round of Reading Notes, the weekly list of links I wish I had found sooner. This edition leans into .NET performance with CBOR and NativeAOT, includes what you need to know before touching Xcode 27 in your MAUI apps, and answers the question everybody keeps asking about the Copilot SDK. Skim the headings and jump straight to whatever catches your eye.

Programming

• An introduction to Compact Binary Object Representation (CBOR) in .NET (Andrew Lock) - When space or resources are limited, it's nice to see there is something smaller than JSON.

• Stripping extra dependencies in .NET NativeAOT apps using linker substitutions (Andrew Lock) - Nice post that shares many lessons learned while trying to reduce a package's size.

• Get Your .NET MAUI App Ready for Xcode 27 - .NET Blog (Gerald Versluis) - Looks like things have changed with Xcode 27, but the good news is we have the CLI and the skills to help us migrate easily.

AI

• Bring Your Own Model to the GitHub Copilot SDK with C# - .NET Blog (Bruno Capuano) - This post answers the most-asked question about the Copilot SDK. After reading this, you are set to go.

• Azure MCP Server 3.0 stable release: More tools. More possibilities - Azure SDK Blog (Sandeep Sen) - Nice New version!

LowCode

• Making n8n Workflows Testable and Maintainable with Runtime Variables (Caleb Jenkins) - Testing is important. This post shares how to use dependency injection in workflows.

Miscellaneous

• Swipe, Match, Cook! (Alexandre Brisebois) - Really cool app that solves a real problem. Love it!

~frank

Reading Notes #705

This week’s collection features a mix of critical .NET lifecycle updates and practical strategies for optimizing your database interactions. These selected articles offer helpful insights into everything from edge computing deployments to the evolving landscape of AI in modern workflows.

AI

• AI Raised the Bar (And Now We're All Tired) (Golnaz) - It's so true! So much can be done quickly today. An interesting question is: how do we avoid burning out resources and tokens? How, as human we stay smart? After all, life is a marathon, not a sprint!

Cloud

• How to Deploy Azure Local Small Form Factor (SFF) – Bringing Azure to the Edge (Thomas Maurer) - This post shares many information about what is possible to deploy on edge devices. It's not a how-to, however.

Databases

• EF Core LINQ Querying: Filtering, Projections, and Performance (Nick Cosentino) - This is a great post to quickly learn key principles and immediately improve the performance of our interactions with the database when using EF Core.

• EF Core vs Dapper in .NET: When to Use Each (Nick Cosentino) - Great post for developers or architects planning a future project. Both tools are great, so the decision factor depends on the context.

• Optimizing PostgreSQL on Azure directly in Visual Studio Code (Jesse Sullivan) - Interesting new tools in VS Code and Azure for PostgreSQL users. Curious to learn more about that Azure HorizonDB.

DevOps

• WSL container is now available for public preview (Craig Loewen) - This is great news; this will help improve deployment as now people can have an environmental test in WSL.

Programming

• Creating Dual Use Windows GUI and Console Applications (Rick Strahl) - I never thought about that complexity, and you would think that in 2026 it would be much simpler. Good to know!

• SkiaSharp 4.0 is here: announcing the first stable release - .NET Blog (Matthew Leibowitz) - Learn more about SkiaSharp that run under things like .NET MAUI and UNO platform. This new release should improve performance a lot.

• .NET 8 and .NET 9 will reach End of Support on November 10, 2026 - .NET Blog (Rahul Bhandari) - Time flies; it's good to have a reminder. This post includes a helpful timetable and references to help you migrate.

Miscellaneous

• Evaluating performance and efficiency of the GitHub Copilot agentic harness across models and tasks (Shibani Basava & Carlos Castro) - This is a nice post to learn a little about benchmarks.

~frank

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

Reading Notes #655

Welcome to the 655th Reading Notes. This edition explores embedding Python in .NET, working with stacked git branches, and an introduction to cloud-native. Plus, a quick tip for the Azure Portal and using local AI for code reviews. 

Open Source

• Embed Python in .NET applications to run models with transformers (Anthony Simmon) - Yes you read it right, we can now mix python in our .NET code.

Programming

• Working with stacked branches in git (Part 2) (Andrew Lock) - Second part of the series about using multiple branches when doing a feature very interesting

• Upgrade Your Application and Prepare for the Future with .NET Aspire (Mike Yeager) - Great story of a migration. Disposed share the tools used for that migration the reason why they were used very interesting story thank you for sharing your journey

Cloud

• Introduction to Cloud Native Computing (TNS Staff) - Very complete and interesting article that is the perfect point to get started with clout native application covering what it is the strategy the architecture everything

• Azure Tech Tip: Go to Azure Portal with Specific Credentials (Jani Nevalainen) - Nice and easy tip to ease the login

AI

• Local code review with Docker and smollm2 before pushing to git (Gerardo Lopez) - Great idea to validate our code before pushing using the brand new model feature of Docker.

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 it!

~frank

Reading Notes #649

Welcome to another edition of my reading notes! This week I've come across some interesting articles spanning from programming decisions to career tips and AI innovations. Hope you find something valuable in this collection.

Programming

• Why we built our startup in C# (Sam Cox) - I really like those true-story blog posts; they teach us about the thought process and the reason behind a decision.

• It wasn’t the idea that failed: it was the execution (Salma Alam-Naylor) - Even though I feel like I'm missing a few points about sigma and new stuff coming up in 2025, this post is an amazing memory of our past in terms of evolution in the web industry

AI

• Accelerate AI innovation and business transformation (Byron Rader) - It's important to look forward, and you know what? There are people to help and guide you and your enterprise.

• Why APIs Are Essential and MCP Is Optional (for Now) (Gil Feig) - Great post that clarified the distinction between an API and the mCP servers. It's an interesting post.

Miscellaneous

• Thriving After a Layoff: The First 30 Days (scrappy girl project) - A friend of mine shared with me this post, and I think it will help me in the upcoming days. So here I am sharing so more can benefit from it

Books

• The Let Them Theory (Mel Robbins) - Stop wasting energy on things you can’t control. It something we all know, but probably forgot the power if it. Let go is hard, but it works in so many scenario. In this book Mel explains how to make it works, and how to use it with a let me action.
   

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 it!

~Frank

Reading Notes #599

It's reading notes time! It is a habit I started a long time ago, close to 600 weeks ago in fact, where I share a list of all the articles, blog posts, and books that catch my interest during the week. 

Having interesting content? Share it!

    

Cloud

• Configure Azure Functions to use Identity Based Connections (Mark Heath) - this is a great post that explains really well in detail how to migrate from using a connection string to using identity from the infrastructure to the code

Programming

• Self-hosting on a Raspberry Pi cluster (Savannah Ostrowski) - Super cool post that explains how she did it. It make me want to have a PI cluster too!

• Syncing a git branch between Windows and WSL filesystems (Andrew Lock) - It's true that by habit or reflex most people will think of Git as centralized... But it's not! Once you understand that so many possibilities are available. This post both summarize that and shows and example.

Low Code

• Testing Your Native AOT Applications - .NET Blog (Marco Rossignoli, Jakub Jareš, Jakub Chocholowicz) - With code ahead-of-time (AOT) we still need tests but how to do it with that stripped version. of .NET? This short tutorial shows how.

Podcasts

• Richard Lander: Containerization and Linux - Episode 289 (Azure DevOps Podcast) - Really interesting episode about the progress and the current state of .NET.

• Modular Monoliths in .NET with Steve Smith (.NET Rocks!) - In this era of micro services it's not often that someone talk about monoliths, but maybe we should.

Miscellaneous

• How to automate tasks in Windows (David Nield) - Seeing things getting done by some automation you built is a nice feelingThis short post introduces 4 tools that will get you started with automation.

~Frank

Reading Notes #554

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!

Cloud

• Migrate ASP.NET Web App to Azure App Service (Justin Yoo) - This great post shows and explains the very few changes suggested to migrate our .NET website into Azure.

Programming

• Minimal API growing with .NET 7 (Christian Nagel) - Ooh! That looks really nice! I will need to play around a little with it to fully appreciate all and I have just the right project for it.

• Visual Studio–Generate C# client for OpenAPI (Bart Wullems) - Interesting post that explains what is happening behind the scene of the OpenAPI client generator.

• Web API development in Visual Studio 2022 - Visual Studio Blog (Sayed Ibrahim) - Wow! You have the choice of that super detailed post with all the new features to help us be fantastic at creating APIs or also included in the post the video with a similar overview.

Podcast

• Episode 172: Maintainer Month 2023 with Sarah Boyce & David Blass (Sustain) - Special double episode for the Maintainer Month.
• Donovan Brown is Retiring - Episode 242 (Azure DevOps Podcast) - Whatever Donovan is talking about you can feel his passion. Extremely interesting episode. Enjoy your new challenge sir!
• 356: Sunsetting software, libraries, & APIs (Merge Conflict) - You build stuff? Great, but what do you do after, when do you know when it is time to retire an API or a service? James & Frank might not have all the responses, but they definitely feel the problem.
• 56. Building Drabble.social using Azure PaaS - Bram de Buyser (Betatalks the podcast) - Great episode! What a challenge. It takes only a few seconds to create an account ;)
• Can You Really Convert Podcast Fans Into Active Subscribers? (Feed Your Brand) - So many great tips in this episode. By looking at the type of email I receive... many should listen to it.
• Creating Walkable Cities with Nathan Allebach (Hanselminutes with Scott Hanselman) - What do you think when you read walkable? Was it what was discussed in this episode? Strange how something great ideas are derailed without any bad intentions.

LowCode

• Master Power Apps Do Until Loops for Efficient Workflow Management (and Unleash Your Inner Nerd) 🤓 (Shane Young) - Funny and educational tutorial about a very powerful tool indeed.

~frank

Reading Notes #548

The suggestion of the week

• GitHub Copilot X: The AI-powered developer experience (Thomas Dohmke) - Wow! Very excited about this news. Copilot is way more than just a buzz. After using it for a while I really appreciate the suggestions it was making. Looking forward to trying that next release.

Cloud

• Announcing: Azure Developers (Mehul Harry) - A nice online event is coming up. I'm honored and excited to be part of the sneakers. Looking forward to it.

• General Availability: ASP. NET web app migration to Azure App Service using PowerShell Scripts - This a nice tool that can help so many with that first step.

Programming

• A first look at Blazor and .NET 8 (Damien Bowden) - The future of Blazor looks very promising and interesting in .NET 8

• Announcing Docker+Wasm Technical Preview 2 (Djordje Lukic) - This wasm+docker is making progress fast! I feel like it was yesterday when they announced the first bits.

• Secure your .NET cloud apps with rootless Linux Containers - .NET Blog (Richard Lander) - In this post, the .NET teams explain their decisions ti make the images more secure. Safer containers are always better, right?

• Turn your database into an API in minutes with Data API builder for Azure Databases (Jasmine Greenaway) - A pretty cool open-source project that can definitely help.

Miscellaneous

• What’s different about these layoffs (Eira May) - It is a troubled period. how many of us were affected directly or indirectly.

~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 #513

Good Monday, it's time to share new readingnotes. Here is a list of all the articles, and blog posts, that catch my interest during the week. 

If you think you may have interesting content, share it!

The suggestion of the week

• Deploy Azure Static Web Apps With Bicep | LINQ to Fail (Aaron Powell) - Great tutorial that explains how to build a well-structured deployment pipeline using bicep and GitHub action. I will need this for sure, bookmarked.

Cloud

• Azure Container Hosting Demystified - 2022 Edition (Sam Cogan) - Great post that lists all Azure services that use containers, with their pros and cons.

• Building Messaging Endpoints in Azure: Container Apps (Jimmy Bogard) - This excellent tutorial shows all the steps from code to deployment.

Programming

• The Best C# .NET Web Application Tech Stack: Choosing The Front End (Michael Shpilt) - Nice post that describes all C# frontends with their pros and cons.

• ApiController Attribute in ASP.NET Core Web API (Code Maze) - This post contained many best practices and detailed explanations to get a great API and make sure the user experience is the best possible.

• Continuous Integration Vs. Continuous Delivery: Know the Differences & Draw a Line (Hiren Dhaduk) - This post is very interesting as it describes both parts of the flow, and lists the benefices and challenges.

• Incremental ASP.NET Migration Tooling Preview 2 (Mike Rousos) - The second preview already! Things are looking good...

• Understanding your middleware pipeline in .NET 6 with the Middleware Analysis package (Andrew Lock) - This post introduces a nice package to have better visibility into our code. Nice.

Miscellaneous

• New Resources to Get Started with .NET MAUI - .NET Blog (Matt Soucoup) - Are you planning to learn something new this summer? I suggest you .NET MAUI, to build an application that can go everywhere. This post shares tons of references to get you started.

• Why Microsoft Measures Employee Thriving, Not Engagement (Dawn Klinghoffer, Elizabeth McCune) - Interesting article.

~frank

Reading Notes #446

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

• Introducing the new Azure SDK for C++ Beta (Jeffrey Richter) - Oh wow! Now I just want to take from my dusty memory shelf my c++ knowledge and mixt it with Azure...
• Migrating this blog to Azure. It's done. Now the work begins. (Scott Hanselman) - A very exciting and promising series of posts related to migration. So many of us have websites that are old and clunky. I'm looking forward to reading more.
• Update Azure CLI from the command-line (az upgrade) (Dan Patrick) - Tools are great! And If you never try Chocolatey... What are you waiting for, it's awesome.
• Zone Redundancy for Azure Cache for Redis now in preview | Azure blog and updates | Microsoft Azure (Kyle Teegarden) - Great news for the Redis Cache users.

Programming

• Moq vs NSubstitute vs FakeItEasy - Which one to choose? ( Thomas Ardal) - A very interesting post that compares three mocking solutions. No bad choices here it depends on your taste.
• Async Await JavaScript Tutorial – How to Wait for a Function to Finish in JS (Fredrik Strand Oseberg) - Really interesting post. I learn better by trying... And now I have all the snippets I need.
• Creating a .NET Core Global Tool (John Smith) - Cool project. It gave me ideas of little things I would like to have available...
• How to Docker with .NET: Getting Started (Dave Brock) - A truly beginner tutorial. If you know about Docker but never did really play with it, here is your chance. First post of a trilogy that definitely worth our time.
• Keeping your WSL Linux instances up to date automatically within Windows 10 (Scott Hanselman) - This is sooo simple! Wonderful.
• Let's use NUKE to Quickly Deploy an App to Azure via Zip Deployment - Dangl.Blog(); (Georg Dangl) - Interesting build/ automation framework. Definitely worth giving it a try.

Suggestion of the week

• Learn Node.js with this series of short videos for beginners (Microsoft) - An amazing series of tiny videos. I started myself and already learned so much! Perfect bite-size to watch in a break, or to find THE topic/ answer you are looking for.

Books

Take Control of Your Life

Author: Mel Robbins

Great book. I wasn't sure first but someone recommended it and since, I like her first book and thought why not! I was not disappointed. I like this journey through interviews. Each person (yes real person, not characters), is great; full of emotions, victory, fails... like us, well me at least. 

~

Reading Notes #418

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. Enjoy!

Cloud

• How to live-stream meetups on Twitch without any special equipment (Alex Casalboni) - Really cool experimentation and ideas using AWS cloud.

• Run Azure PowerShell in a Docker Container (Thomas Maurer) - Really useful tips to use different versions of PowerShell without having to install them.

Programming

• How to migrate an ASP.NET MVC app from .NET Core 2.2 to .NET Core 3.1 (Claudio Bernasconi) - This is a good step by step tutorial for a migration.

• EF Core 5.0: Using ToQueryString() method to translate LINQ query to SQL (Gunnar Peipman) - Nice little and cool feature coming up in the next version.

• How to create better code using Domain-Driven Design - Software House Altkom Software & Consulting (null) - A really interesting and complete article that explains it all.

• Introducing the New Pull Request Experience for Azure Repos | Azure DevOps Blog (Apeksha Awasthi) - Wonderful PR used to be a GitHub only feature... Really happy to see that it is now also present on Azure DevOps Repos.

• WSL2 will be generally available in Windows 10, version 2004 | Windows Command Line (Craig Loewen) - WSL2 is the next best thing I install on my PC since Win10 and used with the new Docker for Windows... It's fantastic

Shameless plug

• How to know how much your application is consuming on Azure (Frank Boucher) - Great post and video in both French and English that explains how to plan, visualize and monitor the cost of your applications in the cloud. And there is also a great MS Learn Azure Cost Management module.

Podcasts

• Des fonctions courtes, qui font une chose (Les Semi-Colons) - First time for me listening to this podcast, third time for them. A very interesting podcast in "Canadian French". They are passing through the book Clean Code of Robert C. Martin. This episode was about chapter 3.

• vygl - Le balado Ep.17 (vygl) - Great podcast in French. It was my first try and I really liked it. We can ear the experience of the speaker in their voice but also by the quality of this audio.

• Episode 14: What developers should know about security with Troy Hunt (Software Engineering Unlocked) - Okay, I know I've been a big fan of Troy for years, but this podcast is an incredibly interesting interview.

Miscellaneous

• An Update on the MSDN and TechNet Migration to docs.microsoft.com (Jeff Sandquist) - It was looking mostly like an impossible mission, but with a lot of work, it is really incredible the things that can be achieved. This post shares the status of the migration of each section.

~

Reading Notes #417

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.
Enjoy!

Cloud

• Making a cleaner and more intentional azure-pipelines.yml for an ASP.NET Core Web App - Scott Hanselman (Scott Hanselman) - This post provides explanations about the steps of an Azure Pipeline file. If you are new to azure DevOps it helps a lot with the comprehension.

• Azure Free Account? Is it really free? ( Michael Crump) - Ooh yeah! I still remember that moment where I created my first service.... Get started free is free.

• Build apps for free with Azure Cosmos DB Free Tier | Azure Cosmos DB Blog (Deborah) - A free NoSQL database with the specs of Cosmo...thatts really cool. This post gives you an idea of what it means and a few ideas of what you could do with it.

• Cloud migration: 5 common traps and how to avoid them (Rael Winters) - A great post that can really help you to avoid losing time and money...Once you know the traps, it's easier.

• Tip 254 - Use WAF to protect your web applications with Azure Front Door (Michael Crump) - Nice and easy tip to live more secure in the cloud.

• Tips for keeping your Azure Subscriptions Clean (Michael Crump) - Great post that explains how to keep your money in your pocket.

Programming

• Postman: The Easy Way to Work with APIs - Postman Blog (The Postman Team) - A wonderful tool, a most if you work with API.

• Upgrade Your .NET Console App Experience (Khalid Abuhakmeh) - A nice list of cool libraries to help to add color, table, and menus to our apps.

Podcast

• Making a Living on Instagram with J.N. Silva and Dave Krugman (That Creative Life) - Nice episode... Honestly, they got me with their history when they start doing photography.

• 192: Getting Started with Live Streaming (Merge Conflict) - Nice episode about what you need, or in fact what you don't need to start streaming.

Miscellaneous

• Recovering from Burnout and Depression (null) - An important topic. This post was recommended during a talk about remote working. Very interesting.

~

Reading Notes #408

Every Monday, I share my reading notes. Those are the articles, blog posts, podcast episodes, and books that catch my interest during the week and that I found interesting. It's a mix of the actuality and what I consumed.

Cloud

• Deploying Azure Functions With Github Actions | LINQ to Fail (Aaron Powell) - Fantastic post that shows how with only a few lines of code you can auto-deploy to Azure your serverless components.

• How to Prepare for a Successful Cloud Migration (Aaron Woods) - This post list the questions we should ask ourselves before migrating. This will definitely help to reduce the bumps of a migration.

Programming

• Future Ready Blazor Application Architecture (S.Ravi Kumar) - Great tutorial that explains how to build our own component and start to reuse code.

• How to Add Infinite Scrolling to Your React App (John Au-Yeung) - Nice react tutorial for an optimized webpage.

• Solving Sudoku with backtracking : Algorithms for the masses (Julian M Bucknall) - Interesting post to read about code patterns applied to something we all know... Sudoku.

Miscellaneous

• Mastering the all-remote environment: My top 5 challenges and solutions - A great post. That really list the challenges you can encounter as a remote worker with there solutions, or suggestions to ease them.

☁️

Reading Notes #384

Programming

• Creating your first Node.js REST API with Nest and Typescript (Chris Noring) - Nice and complete tutorial.

• Is JavaScript really getting too complex? - A geek with a hat (Swizec Teller) - Very inspiring post about the evolution of computer science and a parallel with JavaScript.

• Up your Git game and clean up your history (Christopher Kade) - A cool little tutorial that clarifies some less frequent Git commands.

• Install WSL 2 on Windows 10 (Thomas Maurer) - Awesome tutorial. If like me you didn't want to wait until the next Windows release or take the time to compile and debug a deployment....this tutorial is for us!

• Introduction to Kubernetes Security (Anita) - A nice post that details some security options that we have.

Databases

• Microsoft Azure For Spoiled People 3: Migrate A Database (Jen Looper) - Nice post that explains the steps to migrate a database to Azure storage table.

Miscellaneous

• 3 Mindfulness Rituals That Will Make You Happy - Barking Up The Wrong Tree (Eric Barker) - An interesting article about doing peace with yourself in the present.

~

Reading Notes #367

Suggestion of the week

• Eight things your existing ASP.NET apps should get for “free” from a good platform (Richard Seroter) - If you have a solution that runs on-premises, this is why you should at lest consider doing a lift & shift... Seriously, this post is a must.

Cloud

• Accessing Azure Key Vault using Managed Service Identity Logic Apps (Vincent-Philippe Lauzon) - An awesome tutorial that hit two targets with one demo.
• Migrating Azure Functions from v1 (.NET) to v2 (Jeremy Likness) - A great story and an migration walkthrough. It's most likely that by following these steps we can only be successful with our migration.
• Announcing launch of Azure Pipelines app for Slack (Atin Bansal) - Great integration on a tool that so many of us used.
• Update to Azure DevOps Projects support for Azure Kubernetes Service | Blog | Microsoft Azure (Atul Malaviya) - It's now easier to use these two great tools together.

Programming

• Everything You Need for Coding with Node and Cosmos DB in 60 Seconds-ish (John Papa) - Get started quickly. Excellent tips.
• Introducing the Cake.VsCode.Recipe Package (Gary Ewan Park) - Great set of tools to help us build awesome VSCode extension.
• Introducing draft pull requests (Luke) - That look like a very useful feature! Looking forward to try it.
• Keep Calm, and Keep Coding with Cosmos and Node.js (John Papa) - An excellent first-time tutorial.

Miscellaneous

• Exploring nopCommerce - open source e-commerce shopping cart platform in .NET Core (Scott Hanselman) - This open source project looks very interesting.
• Applied AI in Software Development (Afsana Atar) - This post is an excellent overview of whats AI at ten thousand feet in the air. Perfect if you are not a data scientist and would like to learn more about that trend.
• My Twitch Live Coding Setup (Suz Hinton) - A great post from Suz (aka Noopkat) a long time technical streamer, who his both very smart and generous. Definitely, a post to read.
• Using the Basic Process Template in Azure DevOps to make support management easier (Matteo Emili) - I love it. Start simple to learn fast. Then if you need it, grow, but smartly.

Reading Notes #366

Cloud

• Using Environment Variables in Azure DevOps Pipelines (K. Scott Allen) - A great little tutorial that explains how to use configure our variables.

Programming

• An open source parser for GitHub Actions (Patrick Reynolds) - Looking forward to try those GitHub Actions.
• Code coverage reports for ASP.NET Core (Gunnar Peipman) - Very interesting post to learn more about how to get a useful report about our tests.
• Dependency injection in .NET Core console applications (Gunnar Peipman) - Fantastic and concise post that introduces a way to do simple dependency injection with .Net Core using Autofact.
• Rust Governance: Scaling Empathy (Manish Goregaokar) - A friend recently introduced me to Rust. This post assumed we all already familiar to it, and talk about the current problems of this new language and potential solutions.

Databases

• Migrating your existing on-prem SQL Server database to Azure SQL DB (Angelos Petropoulos) - Are you planning to migrate your app to Azure? If the database is also part of the migration here three different way to migrate it including one that doesn't require downtime!

Miscellaneous

• Benefits of using Azure API Management with microservices (Mike Budzynski) - Nice post that explains how to structure Azure Functions (microservices) with Apim and explains why it's a good practice.
• Designing for Dark Mode (kirupa) - Interesting topic indeed. As I'm migrating one of my blog the timing is excellent.

Reading Notes #362

Suggestion of the week

• ARM Templates vs Azure CLI (Mark Heath) - What a great post that answer (well..explains) the pros and cons of each method. Great post Mark!

Cloud

• Creating a Massively Scalable Blog with Ghost, MySQL and Azure (Rob Conery) - Nice script, neat explication and tweak.
• Deploying a personal blog with GitHub Actions (Den Delimarsky) - Very cool tutorial... Nice to see a static generator in Go.
• Moving your ASP.NET applications to the Microsoft Cloud (Premier Developer) - If you are thinking to migrate to the cloud, it's important to plan your migration. This post is the perfect point to get started, it contains references to deeper books and documents.

Programming

• Connecting to Microsoft SQL Server in NodeJS Applications (Michael Szul) - Nice tutorial that shows how to write some test in Typescript.
• What are all the Chocolatey repositories for? (Gary Ewan Park) - Woooh.I didn't know Chocolatey had so many repos! Awesome and very instructive post.
• Kubernetes Ingress Controllers and Certificates: The Walkthrough (Jessica Deen) - Awesome video!
• The Life of a GitHub Action (Jessie Frazelle) - A nice quick post that clarifies things around those actions.
• The Rise of Microsoft Visual Studio Code (Lyn Levenick) - Cool statistics about editor usage. Not sure of the real correlation with the editor used and the skill level, but it's still an interesting coincidence.

Miscellaneous

• How to Forget About Work When You’re Not Working (Art Markman) - Interesting post that treats an important topic.
• Stream Deck Tricks for Streamers… and Muggles too! (Jeff) - Fantastic post that explains so much why that little thing can save you so much pain. As THE day when I'm starting to stream get closer and closer... This is gold.

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Reading Notes #361

Cloud

• Deploying ASP.NET Core App Services using Azure Key Vault and Azure Resource Manager templates (Damien Bowden) - Great tutorial easy to follow. It's the perfect one t get started using keyvault and an ARM template.
• Choose your default view in Azure Portal (Abhijit Jana) - Nice new little tweak for your landing page in the portal.
• Deploying Azure Functions with the Azure CLI (Mark Heath) - This is a nice tutorial that explains all the step to great your setup with Functions.
• Four ways to take your apps further with cloud, data, and AI solutions from Microsoft (Frederico Pravatta Rezende) - A very interesting post that provides an easy checkbox list of actions we can do to improve our solution.
• How to set up a Let's Encrypt SSL Cert for Azure Web App with Linux in 5 steps (Jessica Deen) - Very useful tutorial to switch our webapp to https.

Programming

• Creating Web Pages with Blazor ( Peter Vogel) - This post is definitely a good place to get started with Blazor.
• Load your work items into Azure DevOps Boards with .NET (Jeremy Lindsay) - A project to follow very interesting tutorial that explains how this migration tool was built.
• Continuous Integration (David Posin, Paul Duvall) - This is the chapter 1 of a book. It covers all aspects of a CI, really Really interesting.
• Converting OpenAPI specs to Postman collections (Abhijit Kane) - Oooooh that's awesome... I really need to try this new import feature.
• New year, new GitHub: Announcing unlimited free private repos and unified Enterprise offering (Nat Friedman) - Awesome news! So happy about that!
• VS Code: Now creating pull requests (Meaghan Lewis) - Another must have extension I think...

Miscellaneous

• Relationship Hacks: Playing video games and having hobbies while avoiding resentment (Scott Hanselman) - It's always such a pleasure to read those post full of wisdom. It gives us a windows to see how others are doing and ideas on how to improve.

Books

TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking

Author: Chris J. Anderson

Fantastic book that covers a lot of topics related to presenting. It covers the before, during, and even the after very smartly. There are no recipes here and this is exactly what makes this book so great. A must.











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Reading Notes #359

Cloud

• GitLab 11.6 Supports Serverless Function Deployment (Sergio De Simone) - Interesting post that introduces a CI/CD tool that works really well with the serverless offering from all providers.
• How to migrate from AzureRM to Az in Azure PowerShell (Madeleine Clayton) - A mandatory read to migrate without hiccups.
• Great News, Azure Developers! Microsoft is Simplifying Your Path to Certification! (Liberty Munson ) - That's excellent news!

Programming

• 11 Of the Best Scrum Tools to Increase Your Team’s Productivity (Ben Aston) - Nice list of great tools. I would add Azure DevOps to it.
• Background jobs in ASP.NET Core made easy with Hangfire (Matthew D. Groves) - This post helps us to be quickly set up with hangfire.
• How to Use a jQuery Progress Bar in Your Web App (Alberta Williams) - This post shows many different ways to use some progress bar as long as you have Kendo UI.
• Introduction to Bash Scripting: Iterative Statements Using Loops (Daniel Farina) - Great introduction tutorial to the fundamental loops. This time it's in bash... Yeah, if you didn't know, you probably need it.
• Quick Introduction to C# Span. (Doug Mair) - A nice new feature in C# that is absolutely not related to the span in Html that we know....aaah!
• Using Visual Studio Code to program Circuit Python with an AdaFruit NeoTrellis M4 (Scott Hanselman) - Very cool son-dad project post and how to use the tool we like.
• When You SHOULD Comment Your Code (Peter Kellner) - Commenting or not commenting... Should it be THE question?

Databases

• MongoDB on Windows in Minutes with Docker (Jeremy Likness) - This post is a fantastic setup tutorial, perfect to get started in a snap! Using docker so easy...

Miscellaneous

• Enjoy some DOS Games this Christmas with DOSBox (Scott Hanselman) - With DOSBox and Retropie... We should be good for the holidays... If you don't have a Raspberry Pie this post is perfect for you since it focuses on DOSBox.

Books

How to Be a Bawse A Guide to Conquering Life
Lilly Singh
Not only the message is strong, but the way she delivers it is awesome. Many times I laugh and nod of the head... Definitely a great book to read at the end of the year when resolution time is not far...









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