Reading Notes #444

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

• Optimizing bandwidth in the Azure Cosmos DB .NET SDK | Azure Cosmos DB Blog (Matias Quaranta) - Optimization is an art& sooo important.

• Publishing an ASP.NET Core App to Azure App Service Using Visual Studio (Code Maze) - A nice tutorial very easy to follow that explains how to create and deploy your first web app to Azure using .Net.

Programming

• Cross-platform diagnostic tools for .NET Core (Scott Hanselman) - Interesting sets of dotnet commands.

• .NET Conf 2020 and Community Events this October | Xamarin Blog (microsoft.com) - Nice event coming up mid-November...

• 6 Tools I use for Web Development (Jakob Klamser) - A nice list of great tools. I'm surprised to read that notion would be more flexible then OneNote, I heard a lot of good from it but never tried it.

• Bringing the browser developer tools to Visual Studio Code (Microsoft Edge Team) - Cool...I need to try that.

• Render diagrams on the fly in your Blazor apps (Jon Hilton) - A cool and simple way to add graphics inside your App, wonderful!

• WebAssembly Could Be the Key for Cloud Native Extensibility (Joab Jackson) - Oh, interesting topics, I need to check that podcast.

Reading Notes #434

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

• One Ops Question: What are Azure Blueprints? (Pierre Roman) - For post and nice little video that gives you everything you need a clear explanation and steps to get started.
• Using External Inputs in Azure Durable functions (Damien Bod) - A very nice tutorial with all the code we need, just as we all like.

Programming

• Always Use the for…of loop to iterate in JavaScript (Dhananjay Kumar) - I thought I knew how to loop in JavaScript, apparently, I didn't.
• Exciting new updates to the Git experience in Visual Studio | Visual Studio Blog (Pratik) - Wow, that nice update. Good tools are important when moving and merging code... We don't want to make mistakes.
• Getting Started With Kubernetes: Application Basics (Sophia Parafina) - A nice second post in a series on kubernetes. Learning layer by layer.awesome.
• How to Create and Delete Branches in Visual Studio Code (Jason N. Gaylord) - Nice quick tips. I didn't know how to delete it.

Podcasts

• AsapSCIENCE - YouTubers on Building a Creative Team, USA vs Canada and the Crossover of Art & Science (That Creative Life) - Cool podcast talking about sooo many things... like sciences, politics, and hangover...
• DOs and DON'Ts of your First 100 YouTube Subscribers (Your Thriving Side Hustle) - A nice little episode about the rebranding of the podcast, and some good tips for YouTubers who, are starting their channel.
• #164 – Facing Down an Existential Threat to Your Business with Scott Keyes of Scotts Cheap Flights (The Indie Hackers Podcast) - Interesting story about how an enterprise was built and adapted to the current time in a very difficult period in its market.
• 082: Starting Your DevOps Career from Scratch (CloudSkills.fm) - Discussion questions about DevOps, answering auditor questions: how to prepare, what to expect... very interesting.
• SPI 430: Passive Income Success Story: How Jacques Hopkins Finally Made (Significant) Money Online (The Smart Passive Income Online Business and Blogging Podcast) - Amazing episode once again, about an electric engineer that became an online piano teacher and live from it happy and nicely.

Miscellaneous

• Backing up an Azure database : Algorithms for the masses - julian m bucknall (Julian M Bucknall) - Just a reference to the Azure tips and tricks, but it still very worth it. Do your backups
• Best Markdown Editor (Jimmy McBride) - Nice cool project. As a markdown user, I will definitely have a look.
• How we launched docs.github.com (Sarah Schneider) - Wow, a very interesting story, and all that in one year.Impressive.

~☁️

Reading Notes #427

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. As you will quickly see This week is heavily tinted by the Microsoft Build event. I still have tons of videos to watch since I was was busy monitoring the chat during most of the performances.

You think you may have interesting content, share it!

Cloud

• 10 Tips for Building and Deploying Hugo Websites on Azure Static Web Apps (Jason Hand) - A very nice blog post that shares tons of gotcha and will make you save a ton of time.

• Deploy Blazor WebAssembly apps to Azure Static Web Apps (Christopher Maneu) - That seems really cool and easy.... Very interesting.

• Getting Started with Azure Static Web Apps (Dan Wahlin) - Another great post that helps us to get started with the new SWA announced earlier this week.

• I Built a Simple Serverless Storage Solution (Eldad Bercovici) - Pretty cool personal project and definitely useful.

• Static Web Apps - First Look (John Papa) - Awesome get started blog post about the new SWA.

Programming

• Blazor WebAssembly 3.2.0 now available | ASP.NET Blog (Daniel Roth) - Finally here, I mean officially since it was available for many months. It's now more than ever time to start playing.

• Using Visual Studio Codespaces with .NET Core | .NET Blog ( Tim Heuer) - Codespace can simplify so much your dev or testing experience!

Podcast

• Chocolatey with Rob Reynolds (.NET Rocks!) - Awesome episode talking about all the good and the great of Chocolatey that awesome package manager.

• A path to technical leadership with Keavy McMinn (Hanselminutes with Scott Hanselman) - Because the most interesting path are more then often not the straight one... Great talk about the choice we make in our lives...

• #41: Scott Hanselman - A Few Minutes of Wisdom and Technology [S02-E20] (The Solo Coder Podcast) - Just great. Yeah, listen to it... I just wish it was longer ;p

Miscellaneous

• What’s New in Microsoft Teams | Build Edition 2020 - A lot of nice new features added to Teams. Looking forward to try them.

• Windows PowerToys FancyZones is the essential window manager for Windows 10 (Scott Hanselman) - In this short post Scott gives more details about how he was managing his windows during MS Build and how you can also do it.

~enjoy!

Reading Notes #422

Cloud

• Azure Functions: Extend Execution Timeout Past 5 Minutes (Chris Pietschmann) - Very cool post that explains how to take advantages of this new feature.
• Create, Build, Deploy and Configure an Azure Function with Azure DevOps and Azure CLI (Damien Bowden) - The perfect tutorial to get started with Azure DevOps.It contains all the code we need and a ton of references
• Introducing the Azure Key Vault Credentials Provider for Jenkins (Tim Jacomb) - Great news for all the Jenkins users and nice extension for Keyvault.
• Making an Interactive Cognitive Portrait Exhibit using some Creativity, .NET, Azure Functions and Cognitive Services Magic (Dmitry Soshnikov) - Very cool project mixing art and techno.

Programming

• GitHub is now free for teams (Nat Friedman) - That was definitely a piece of good news this week.
• Bring your own machine to Visual Studio Online | Visual Studio Blog (Allison) - Fantastic news! Before it was possible to access a powerful developer environment from our poor local devices. Now we can also access our own powerful machine from elsewhere! That's very very nice!
• Tips, tricks, hacks, and secrets from Jason Etcovitch ( Jason Etcovich) - An incredible post there is so many awesome tools and references in it.

Podcasts

• 195: The Hanselman Machine Learning Model (Merge Conflict) - Great episode where Frank and James discuss how James could build a sentiment analysis of Hanselman tweets, is it possible or not and what would be the cost (effort, and money).
• GitHub Actions with Enrico Campidoglio (.NET Rocks!) - I think it's my first .Net Show since the Pandemie. Well with was a create show that dig deeper in the GitHub Action. Loved it.
• 068: How to Build Your Personal Brand (CloudSkills.fm) - I really liked this episode as I did "created" my personal brand (without really realizing it ) a few years ago.
• 455: How to Create Great Relationships, with Colleen Bordeaux (Coaching for Leaders) - Interesting discussion with the author of the book: Am I Doing This Right?: A Philosophical Guide to Life in the Age of Overwhelm, that is now in my to read list/

Miscellaneous

• Backing up SQL Server databases to Blob Storage using Impersonation (Dominique St-Amand) - Nice post that not only shows us and to do backups, but how to do it in a very secured and structure way.Excellent!
• Free SSL vs. Paid SSL Certificates: Why Pay for SSL? (Chip Securis) - Before reading this post I assumed what could be the differences. NOW I know.
• How viewers can be actors in streams on Twitch (null) - Interesting post about streaming and how to leverage the channel points
• Microsoft Learning Blog (Alex Payne) - This is nice.

~

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 #411

Cloud

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

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

Programming

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

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

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

Podcast

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

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

Reading Notes #410

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.

Programming

• 6 Blazor component libraries to speed up your development (Jon Hilton) - Nice list of libraries some are free other not, depending on your needs and requirements.

• Cookies and Consent in ASP .NET Core 3.1 (Shahed C) - This post explains how to implement cookie consent as a professional.

• EF Core Tips: Make sure to call Update when it is needed! (Arthur Vickers) - Good to know.

• Hide Your Secrets in VS Code with Cloak (John Papa) - What a fantastic extension! Areally think it will become a must for anyone doing presentations...

• User Registration with ASP.NET Core Identity - Code Maze (Marinko Spasojevic) - A nice tutorial that explains how to build from scratch our own login (registration).

Databases

• Using ASP.NET Core 3.0 Identity With MySQL (S.Ravi Kumar) - A simple tutorial that provides a step by step explanation to configure or MySql

Podcast

• Myself: It's not weird at all (Hanselminutes - Fresh Talk and Tech for Developers) - I nice episode much longer than the usual, but the guest is also special... It's Scott. During a Live Stream on Twitch it the Live Coders... People suggest making a podcast episode of the interview... I couldn't agree more.

• The Power of Humor in Tech with Chloe Condon (Screaming in the Cloud) - Very refreshing episode with the awesome and very colorful Chloe. Nice show that goes to fast. Very interesting discussion about the non-traditional way to technical work, and its success.

• Gather Your Community or Get Left Behind—Mighty Networks and More (The Smart Passive Income Online Business ) - Nice episode that talks about what comes after blogging... The alternative to Facebook community and different opportunities to answer our graving of community and feeling of appurtenance.

Reading Notes #409

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

• Azure Cloud Shell + zsh, oh-my-zsh, tmux, and badass terminal! (Jessica Deen) - Cool walkthrough that explains all to get a nice looking cloud shell.

• Updating the my blog from AppService to Containers...finally (Shayne Boyer) - Awesome walkthrough. As an ex-user of Ghost on Azure I understand the trouble. Containers and a database as service are perfect for this situation.

Programming

• CLI vs GitKraken Git GUI Speed Test (Jesus Murillo) - I love GitKraken, I still use the CLI and the integrated git in VSCode, but to really see things... It's the best, and wow it looks cool.

• ASP.Net Core 3 – Dependency Injection (Michał Białecki) - A nice tutorial that explains an important concept, and shows how to implement it.

• Create fake user for ASP.NET Core integration tests (Gunnar Peipman) - An awesome tutorial that explains how to build a very useful utility...a fake user.

• Yori - The quiet little CMD replacement that you need to install NOW (Scott Hanselman) - I love it. I didn't even finish reading this post and one thing bringing another I was streaming live installing and playing with Yori.

Podcasts

• Episode 49 - Blazor, .Net Core 3.1 and spelling reforms with Daniel Roth (Coding After Work Podcast) - Great episode with the very energetic Daniel. A ton of information and thank you for all the URLs in the notes.

• SPI 404: The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team with Patrick Lencioni (The Smart Passive Income) - I read The Five Dysfunctions of a Team a few years ago and loved it. It was really interesting to listen to the author talking sharing all that wisdom. A must! (book and episode).

• Entity Framework Core 3 with Julie Lerman (.NET Rocks!) - What a great episode with Entity framework goddess in person. As I'm planning to use EF in a new project, this refresh was awesome!

• #23: John Sonmez - Becoming a Finisher, Part 1 (The Solo Coder Podcast) - I know, read and follow Simpler Programmer. It was so great to heard all the work that was put in to arrive to the current status. So many of us think it's a night success... Looking forward to listening to part 2.

Miscellaneous

• 8 reasons why we should all walk more (BBC Radio) - Interesting post that shares the benefits of a nice walmk.

• How to Create Great Tech Demos and Presentations (Thomas Maurer) - Awesome list of tips to give the best presentation possible.

Reading Notes #395

Cloud

• Announcing Azure Storage Explorer 1.10.0 | Blog | Microsoft Azure (Catherine Wang) - That new managed disk capability is a really requested feature and embeded azcopy is awesome.

• Building a serverless blog site on Azure (Erik Lieben) - A very cool post that explains how to build a static website generator using serverless. Weel done!

Programming

• GitHub Pull Request Integration with Glo Boards (Jonathan Silva) - Really nice integration and automation with Github PR...Already using and loving it.

• New workflow editor for GitHub Actions (Chris Patterson) - Have you tested the new GitHub action? If yes you will be pleased with this new editor...Ending the research of that missing space somewhere.

• Single Page Applications and ASP.NET Core 3.0 (Shawn Wildermuth) - A very interesting post that explains all the little configurations or twists required to have a great SPA experience with .Net Core.

Miscellaneous

• What You Need for Effective Remote Work (William Gant) - This is a full chapter of an up coming book about remote workers... If you are new to this adventure and even more if you are fulltime remote, this read is a must.

Books

Better than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives 

Author: Gretchen Rubin 

I really enjoyed this book. I found very interesting the categorization of all those habits and comportment grouping. I like also the habits association to help to break some or creating new ones. It's obvious, but I didn't think about it before.

Cleaning your mess in the cloud automatically

We all do it. We create resources in the cloud for a demo, or a presentation and forget about them. Then at the end of the month, we receive a bigger invoice then expected and it's the panic.

This is why I thought about AzSubscriptionCleaner. It's an open-source project that could be deployed in your subscription very easily. The goal is to have it deployed by one click directly from GitHub.

The tool can be deployed in two versions, using Azure Automation, or Azure Functions. Based on a schedule it will execute a query to search all resources with a tag expireOn with the value is older than now(), and delete them.

I wrote two blog posts, paired with a YouTube video that explain how to tools where built.

Azure Automation

Read the complete post on Dev.to: Keep your Azure Subscription Clean Automatically

Video:

Azure Functions

Read the complete post on Dev.to: Use Azure Function to Clean-up your Mess, Automatically

Video:

GitHub Repo

This is an open-source project github.com/FBoucher/AzSubcriptionCleaner, you are welcome to see the code, clone the repository, ask for more feature or do a pull request to add a new one!

~

Reading Notes #393

Suggestion of the week

• GitHub stars won’t pay your rent (Kitze) - What a great story! This is an awesome journey of a developers who worked hard, took some risk and... Got result. All developer should read this.

Cloud

• 5 Minute Serverless Functions in Azure without an IDE (Heather Downing) - This post and videos are a fantastic way to get started with Azure Function the good way... With security.
• A quick introduction to Azure function proxies (Nadeem Ahamed) - A nice quick intro... That remind's me I should definitely use proxies in one of my project!
• Using KeyVault References to Read Key Vault Secrets (Scott Allen) - Excellent News!

Programming

• Blazor – on the server or on the client (Christian Nagel) - A great post about blazor that explains very well the current status of this very promising tool.
• What Are gRPC Web Services and When Should I Use Them? -- Visual Studio Magazine (Peter Vogel) - A very good post that clarifies things. I'm looking forward to see the example with .Net Core.

Miscellaneous

• Role Based Security in an ASP.NET Core Application (Mahesh Sabnis) - A great tutorial that gets you started with identity and asp.net core.

Reading Notes #390

Suggestion of the week

• HttpRepl: A command-line tool for interacting with RESTful HTTP services (Angelos) - What a great tool, looking forward to trying it.

Cloud

• Azure Blob Storage SAS Guidelines (Mark Heath) - Great post that shares best practices.
• Containerized Azure Pipelines Agent using Docker with WSL2 (Wes MacDonald) - Wsl 2 looks incredibly interesting... This post shows one more reason why you should also be looking forward to using it in your everyday work.

Programming

• 10 Tips For Debugging in Production (Molly Struve) - A very interesting real-life story... Will they find the solution?
• Clean up your code with destructuring (Carl) - Interesting way to keep your code clean. It uses a different syntax but seems to work well.
• How to write 90% cleaner code with Hooks 5535657251 (Amandeep Singh) - Okay. I don't know React, but it's really nice to see that framework continue to evolve like that with his community. A very interesting post.

Podcasts

• Economics of Kubernetes, with Owen Rog (Craig and Adam) - Really interesting episode. Of course all the news about Kubernetes were interesting, but even more the economics of cloud computing with the guess of the week, Owen Rog.

Miscellaneous

• Docker Desktop for WSL 2 integrates Windows 10 and Linux even closer (Scott Hanselman) - Nice thoughts about the new upcoming wsl2.
• Top 3 Tools For Boosting Your Productivity (Emma Wedekind) - Oh, it's a bummer that not all suggestions are multi-platform because they ALL look amazing.

Reading Notes #389

Cloud

• 
  How to audit Key Vault Access Policy using Azure Resource Graph (Stephane Lapointe) - Another great example of how Azure Graph can help you to search and more importantly find quicky what you are looking for.
• 
  Managing Jenkins Artifacts with the Azure Artifact Manager Plugin (Jie Shen) - This post explains very clearly how to leverage those two great tools together.

Programming

• 
  Remote Edit Files on Azure Linux VMs using VS Code (Thomas Maurer) - An awesome tutorial that teaches us a nice way to edit files remotely.
• 
  Remote SSH access with Visual Studio Code (Sana Ajani) - It's sooooo easy and powerfull! Take two minutes and try it!
• 
  VS Code Profile Switcher Extensions Support (Aaron Powell) - Wonderful! Thanks Aaron, you just create the extension group has been asking for so long!
• 
  ASP.NET Core and Blazor updates in .NET Core 3.0 Preview 7 (Daniel Roth) - Nice update, it's amazing to see how fast this project evolves.
• 
  Installing PowerShell with one line as a .NET Core global tool (Scott Hanselman) - On every platform or even from inside a container...Pretty cool.

Miscellaneous

• Top Developer Collaboration Tools (Roman Zhidkov) - Wow, a pretty cool list with tons of suggestions for all kind of needs.

Reading Notes #386

Cloud

• Delete your resource groups in parallel using the az group command (Wes MacDonald) - What!? So cool, and efficient.

• Demystifying Azure App Services Plan (Scott Allen) - Very clear and so well explained. I love it.
• Understanding Azure Durable Functions - Part 1: Overview (Jason Roberts) - A nice quick introduction to the durable functions. A series to watched.
• Managing Azure Functions Keys (using the new ARM APIs!) (Mark Heath) - This post shares all the required code to get, list, or change our keys using the new API and some PowerShell.

Programming

• Git is case-sensitive and your filesystem may not be - Weird folder merging on Windows (Scott Hanselman) - A nice tip to know when creating a multi-platform application.
• How YOU can use Nest to build a GraphQL API (Chris Noring) - A pretty cool tutorial that gives us all the code to get started with GraphQL.
• The Top 5 DevOps Automation Tools .NET Developers Should Know (Heather Downing) - So many great tools! Could it be the opportunity to try something new that you were waiting for?
• Azure DevOps Hidden Gems #3 - Pull Request Validation Builds AND Releases (Graham Smith) - Amazing features that I didn't know even existed! A very promising series indeed!

Databases

• Using SQL Server in Docker containers for basic tasks (Michael Jolley) - Stop installing SQL server on your dev machine!? After reading this post you may consider that as a really good idea.

Miscellaneous

• A better way to sell your skills as a developer than just "hire me!" or mass applying (Corey Cleary) - Interesting post that shows the proper way to do things.
• How I Started Existing on the Internet (Ryland G) - An awesome story. Hopefully, it will help those who didn't start yet...
• The Best Book to Read as a Developer (Ryland G) - Looking for something technical to read this summer? Well, this one look interesting.

~

Reading Notes #380

Suggestion of the week

• Azure Pipeline YAML Templates and Parameters | LINQ to Fail (Aaron Powell) - An awesome post that will save you hours (or days) of trials and errors. A must.

Cloud

• AZIdentity | Getting It Right: Key Vault Access Policies (Matt Small) - Great post that explans how to use keyvault and sets security correctly.
• 
  Creating a Free Web Site with Elixir and Redis using Docker Compose (Rob Conery) - Great videos continuing our journey in the linux/ azure / docker aventure.
• 
  Which of the 295,680 platform combinations will you create on Microsoft Azure? (Richard Seroter) - Interesting post that explains why enterprises see the cloud differently and what they are looking at.

Programming

• Containers? Images? An introduction to Docker in Rider (Rachel Appel) - This post shows how well-integrated Rider is to Docker and demo how easy and powerful it is to do side with that setup.
• Visual Studio Code Remote Development may change everything (Scott Hanselman) - So many aaahs and oohs while reading this post. I don't have the insider version installed ... But this might be the reason I needed for.

Miscellaneous

• The Pomodoro Technique and other methods to get more done (with tools to help) (Geoff Stevens) - For new developers or older ones, it is always good to revisit the time tracking or tools to help us get better and more productive... There is almost always something new.

~

Reading Notes #379

Cloud

• 
  An experiment - The Azure Cloud Shell at the command line with AZ SHELL (Scott Hanselman) - Oooooh I love it! I will right now check what are my option and install/ configure one.
• 
  Auto blogging Jekyll with Logic Apps, ACI Containers and .NET Core (Shayne Boyer) - Great post that explains how we could use Docker in any flow with logic apps. This time it generates blog post.
• 
  Kubernetes vs Docker: How to Choose (Eric Boersma) - Interesting post that answers to a trending question.
• 
  Reading Azure Cosmos DB Data In Azure Functions (Jason Roberts) - Nice post that share code snippets for different situations.
• 
  The Urlist — An application study in Serverless and Azure (Burke Holland) - The tool looks awesome, and this post explains how it was build and gives the reasons why some choice has been made.

Programming

• 
  REST API Design Best Practices for Parameters and Query String Usage (Kay Plößer) - This is a nice post That explains some of the best practices... Now let's get back to the design table of our last API and see what is missing.
• 
  5 Reasons to Containerize Production Windows Apps on Docker Enterprise - Docker Blog (David Friedlander) - If you thought that modernizing your app is mostly impossible, this post is the light at the end of the tunnel, showing you one possibility.
• 
  Docker from the beginning — part III (Chris Noring) - Third of this docker series. I like how it is not only a happy path but the learning path with the fails and victories.
• 
  Introducing the Try .NET Global Tool - interactive in-browser documentation and workshop creator (Scott Hanselman) - That look like a very useful tool...

~

Reading Notes #375

Cloud

• 5 Developer Tools you need to check out! (Tomek Poniatowicz) - Really cool (and useful, obviously) tools to work with AWS.
• The Most Minimal Serverless Function (Ryan Levick) - A nice introduction post to Azure function.
• 
  

Programming

• Dependencies and Git branches (Felix Rieseberg) - Git never stops to amaze me. This short post explains a nice trick.
• How developers can release custom newsletters for $0.00 (Geoff Stevens) - This post explains a great solution that requires only node.js and a free account ... Pretty slick.
• Particle Workbench: supercharge your IoT development with professional tools (David Scheltema) - Nice! I didn't know some extensions were available for IoT in VSCode.
• Top 15 Visual Studio Code Extensions in 2019 (Gift Egwuenu) - Nice list of extension that targets primarily JavaScript developers but there's definitely a few gems for all of us.

Podcast

• Anthos Migrate, with Issy Ben-Shaul (Kubernetes Podcast from Google) - Nice update. I like the talk about Anthos it look like a great migration tool. I need to find that GitHub repo...

Reading Notes #374

Cloud

• Publishing Static Content to Azure Blob Storage (Jason N. Gaylord) - Yet another great tutorial to copy files from inside an Azure Pipeline.
• The Wide World of Microsoft Windows on AWS | Amazon Web Services (Jeff Barr) - Great list of Windows services running on AWS with some context, very instructive.

Programming

• Accessibility Insights for the Web and Windows makes accessibility even easier (Scott Hanselman) - Nice tools. Definitely, something I will look into.
• New features for extension authors in Visual Studio 2019 version 16.1 | The Visual Studio Blog (Mads Kristensen) - That's a lot of 'little' thing that would make a big difference. Well done.
• Progressive Web Apps & Electron (Felix Rieseberg) - Excellent post that does a thorough comparison between pwa and electron app.
• Tests code coverage in Visual Studio Code with C# and .Net Core (Alberto Bar-Noy) - Awesome post that introduces a code coverage tool for .Net Core.

Podcast

• Hevesh5 - Making a YouTube Career from Viral Domino Art (#46) (That Creative Life) - Great show. An amazing story.
• Azure Functions using Node with Simona Cotin (.NET Rocks!) - Great show. I just switch my website following that Jam stack pattern. I was planning to use Azure Functions to add a few little twists.... I'm happy to see that I not alone thinking like that!
• 0230 - Alain Vezina - Le métier du DevOps (Visual Studio Talk Show) - Super épisode, très intéressant d'entendre parler du rôle de DevOps de quelqu'un qui le vie au quotidien. Merci de la suggestion, je crois, bien que je suis du pour relire The Pheonix Project.
• Goal Setting Tips & Tracking KPIs (Video Pursuit Podcast) - Really interesting episode. Everybody is talking about matrix and KPI... But it's not frequent to hear about the "how". I really like how the goals are explained, achievable, but not easy... And how we should react when we don't reach them.
• 
  

Miscellaneous

• Show the Time to Read Your Markdown in VS Code (John Papa) - Cool new little extension for writers.
• Surface Pro – Don’t forget to update the Dock (buildbod) - Great advice, that will save you a lot of time.

~ Good week!

Reading Notes #368

Cloud

• Right click publish quickly to Azure App Services with VS Code extensions and zipdeploy (Scott Hanselman) - Let's make it fast...For a quick test or POC, I love it.

• Accessing Azure Key Vault using Managed Service Identity Logic Apps (Vincent-Philippe Lauzon) - An awesome tutorial that hit two targets with one demo.

Programming

• First steps with Docker and Kubernetes - Introduction (Matteo Pagani) - Wow, fantastic post to get started with Kubernetes the author mention that after reading this you won't be an expert... However, you will definitely know enough to be dangerous.
• How to build a multistage Dockerfile for SPA and static sites (Maxime Rouiller) - The more I read about Docker the more I discover new ways to use it.
• The Smart Ways to Correct Mistakes in Git | CSS-Tricks (Tobias Günther) - This post is so helpful! I'm keeping the bookmark close by... For a friend of course.
• Use Docker to Create a Node Development Environment (Dan Arias) - An incredibly clear docker tutorial that explains the layer of encapsulation to create an easily moveable development environment.

Miscellaneous

• Adopting Azure DevOps : A Step-by-Step Approach (Omer Raviv) - Very interesting post of a journey embracing the DevOps...see you are not alone and it could be easier.
• Validating Azure ARM Templates with Pester (Leandro Wajswajn) - Wow! An incredible and very powerful tool to have with us when writing ARM templates.

Books

Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us 

Author: Seth Godin 

A book that will polarize you. In my case, I really enjoyed it until the last page. I felt motivated, and it and was nice.

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.