Reading Notes #681

This week’s reads blend cutting-edge tech with practical insights, like how Aspire elevates JavaScript to a first-class citizen in modern development, or why AI’s push toward typed languages might just be the future. From building a self-hosted model registry to uncovering AI’s surprising role in video

production (who knew Adobe had a sound AI gem?), there’s plenty to unpack. And if data-driven wardrobe experiments count as quirky, this week’s got you covered too.

Programming

• Aspire for JavaScript developers (David Pine) - JavaScript and all its frameworks are now first citizen in Aspire. This post explains what it means and what the benefits are for developers.

AI

• Why AI is pushing developers toward typed languages (Cassidy Williams) - This post shares the evolution of which AI uses languages. I would agree, as I noticed TypeScript was used in more and more blog posts and videos I was seeing online

• Self-hosting a MCP Registry for discovery using modelcontextprotocol.io registry (Dominique St-Amand) - Nice real-life story about how to build a full app to help manage all those MCP servers

• What AI Has (and Hasn't) Taken Over in Video Production (Golnaz Alibeigi) - As someone who creates a lot of video content, I agree with Golnaz and was surprised by the Adobe sound thing. I didn't know about that.

Miscellaneous

• I tracked everything I wore in 2025. Was it worth it? - I never thought about data related to my wardrobe, but playing with data and trying to understand what it means and how it can be used, that's always a fun thing. Thanks for sharing

~frank

Reading Notes #679

Exploring the intersection of AI and code this week, I stumbled on a treasure trove of practical insights, from building AI agents in n8n to Meta’s groundbreaking SAM Audio model. The blend of low-code tools, IDE integrations, and deep dives into .NET profiling shows how innovation is bridging creativity and technical rigor. Whether you’re automating workflows or decoding audio separation, there’s something here to spark curiosity and curiosity-driven coding.

AI

• 15 Practical AI Agent Examples to Scale Your Business in 2025 - This post contains many very good ideas of low-code agents that can really help you go through many different types of data

• Introducing SAM Audio: The First Unified Multimodal Model for Audio Separation - An insightful post about how AI could be used in audio

• How to Build an AI Agent in n8n for Beginners: Complete 2025 Guide (Snaplama) - I'm a fan of integration tools, and n8n is obviously part of those great tools. That AI node is very useful, and there are numerous ideas and applications you can explore with it. This post shares how you can do it as an agent, and I think a lot of people should try it

• When AI Amplifies Your Bad (and Good) Habits | The JetBrains AI Blog (Kris Kang) - Another post that helps us picture AI, giving us references to better understand how to use it to achieve the desired result.

• Bring your own AI agent to JetBrains IDEs (Sergey Ignatov) - This post shares many news, yes, you can bring your agent into writer, but also a collaboration with Zed and many new features related to those agents, looking forward to dig into those novelties

Programming

• Aspire 13.1 - Our holiday gift to you (David Fowler) - Nice update for Aspire!

• Creating a .NET CLR profiler using C# and NativeAOT with Silhouette (Andrew Lock) - A deep and very interesting post that plays with the unmanaged function.

• Aspire—Your Stack, Streamlined - Great release. There are breaking changes with Redis, so totally worth the 2 minutes of reading.

~frank

Reading Notes #677

This week I'm looking at some interesting .NET stuff like Typemock's architecture and how Copilot Studio uses WebAssembly to boost performance. There's also a good reminder about why setting up CI/CD early (when your app is tiny) saves you tons of headaches later. Plus, I found a couple of great podcast episodes on building modern SaaS products and what actually makes a personal brand different from just having a reputation.

the toughther salad resisting to snow 

Programming

• ⭐ Typemock Architecture: How the .NET Isolation Engine Works Under the Hood (Eli Lopian) - An interesting framework with a lot of promises.

• Background tasks in .NET | Microsoft Community Hub ( riturajjana) - Short post with all the code.

• How Copilot Studio uses .NET and WebAssembly for performance and innovation - .NET Blog (Daniel Roth) - Nice real-life example of how to use technology to improve the user experience.

DevOps

• Why you should set up CI/CD from day one for your apps - LogRocket Blog (Lewis Cianci) - And I suppose that gives many reasons to start with the cicd, but on top of that, I would say when your app is super small ,it's much easier to create that cicd that at the end when it's super complex

AI

• Introducing GPT-4o Audio Models in Microsoft Foundry: A Practical Guide for Developers | Microsoft Foundry Blog (Allan Carranza) - New model.

Podcast

• 118. Designing Smarter SaaS Workflows: Rethinking Legacy Constraints - with Yasen Dinkov (Betatalks the podcast) - Great episode talking about what it means to build a Software As a Service (SaaS) today and what you need to do for it to grow.

• 757: The Key Elements of a Powerful Personal Brand, with Goldie Chan (Coaching for Leaders) - I really like this episode explaining the difference between personal brand and reputation and so much more.

~frank