Reading Notes #717

This week we have a collection of tools and articles that genuinely improve how we build software and manage our daily workflows. From automating pre-push checks to refining SQL formatting, these notes share practical wins for the modern .NET developer. Give them a read through before your next commit or sprint starts.

Databases

• I Built My First VS Code Extension: Meet Rainbow SQL (Frank Boucher) - A simple but very useful VS Code extension that helps when writing SQL. And yeah, a shameless plug.

Programming

• A faster, lighter C# Dev Kit - .NET Blog (Drew Noakes) - Understand better all the goodness in this upcoming new release of our beloved VS Code extension, C# Dev Kit

• Should I break down my Blazor page into multiple components? - I will have to try that Blazrlytics, and I know exactly which project to use it for.

• Use C# unions and closed hierarchies in ASP.NET Core (Dmitrii Korolev) - Really nice way to use a union to make a C# type accept both int and string. Like Kubernetes maxUnavailable, which accepts 3 or 42%

DevOps

• Before you push or deploy: Automate nine .net project checks with the spargine dev tool (David McCarter) - Interesting script, curious to see the output on some of my projects

Open Source

• Why every .NET library deserves a proper start Dennis Doomen - A really cool series of templates to help us start writing.NET package. It brilliant and customizable

Miscellaneous

• Volunteers Don't Quit. They Fade. (Henk Boelman) - Communities are so important; would it be in person or online. We really need to learn how to be better at keeping a healthy balance

• Anti-Patterns in Software Blogging · Refactoring English - Love it! So much best practices in a single post. I'm guilty of doing some of those patterns, but will do my best to change that right away.

Reading Notes #714

This week's collection highlights practical advice for managing Azure Service Bus and making more cost-effective choices when selecting AI models. I have also gathered some useful perspectives on layered security for authentication and the nuanced debate surrounding SQL foreign key constraints.

Cloud

• Azure Service Bus - what to watch out for (Dominique St-Amand) - A nice post that shares tips and best practices.

AI

• Getting started with GitHub Copilot Spaces - I confess, I'm one of those who didn't realize (or know) that space was included in my GitHub Copilot subscription. Interesting feature!

• Your work might not need the smartest model - Microsoft for Developers (Waldek Mastykarz) - This post shares thoughts about model requirements and some tips to save money.

Programming

• Your access token was stolen. Now what: three layers of defence in your own OpenID providerty (rinat kozin) - Great post to learn more about security best practices and some patterns (ex: bff)

Databases

• Should your SQL Server database use foreign key constraints? | Simple Talk (Greg Low) - The eternal debate... How do you like your databases?

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.

 ~frank

Reading Notes #708

I’ve gathered a few insightful pieces this week exploring smarter ways to manage AI costs, practical hardware setups, and the foundational logic behind better programming. Each link offers a different perspective on how we can refine our workflows and think more intentionally about the tools we use every day.

AI

• MCP Beyond the Chat Window: Build Diagnostics in CI (Jan , Yuliia) - Instead of copy-pasting the log, the promises of this MCP server are very interesting.

• Why Reusing AI Instructions Costs You More Tokens (Ken Muse) - This post shares great advices on how we must think when writing or planning skills and queries.

• Set up OpenClaw on your Raspberry Pi (Lucy Hattersley) - Tease about a very interesting post (available in the Raspberry Pi Official Magazine) more to come

Databases

• Learning a few things about running SQLite (Julia Evans) - Nice post sharing some useful lessons learned.

Programming

• The Power Of “Why?” (codemanship) - A great post that reminds us that asking the right question helps us understand the real need and build better solutions.

Miscellaneous

• The Knowledge You Give Away (Mark Downie) - A quote that hopefully makes us think.

• Microsoft reveals 15+ products losing support in 2026, check if you're affected (Abhijith M B) - It's worth having a look while you have time to plan something. Products will continue to work, but no more updates or support.

~frank

Reading Notes #706

This week's collection highlights several practical upgrades for your workflow, ranging from cleaner C# patterns to more secure ways to manage AI agents. I’ve also included a few podcast episodes and articles that offer some much-needed perspective on productivity and community life.

AI

• Why AI Agents Need Isolation with Docker SBX (Karan Verma) - Power comes with responsibilities. It's well known (at least for Spider-Man fans), but more seriously, AI users have a simple way to stay safe. And now, with "the kits", it looks like it's even easier.

• Using AI to Build a Blazor App 1: Start With the Problem (Jon Hilton ) - It's so true that AI doesn't always do or act the way we expect. In this case, I wonder if a different model would have been better. In my experience, GPT is better at doing things compared to brainstorming.

Databases

• Fundamentals of Azure DevOps with SQL projects - Azure SQL Dev Corner (Drew Skwiers-Koballa) - This post provides all the details and pieces of config/ code required to get an Azure DevOps pipeline to work, no magic.

Programming

• Azure WAF - Never used yet Yarp, but nice to see a great example exists for when I will. Great solution.

• How to match names in C# without exact string comparisons (Nick Harrison) - Excellent post that shares many patterns and strategies (with code snippets) to optimize our research.

DevOps

• New: Versioned CLI and SDK Docs (Cam Soper) - That's a nice feature that more should implement! You pick your API version, and the documentation follows.

Podcasts

• Create a Happier Version of Yourself: Redirect Your Energy for Positive Thinking (The Mel Robbins Podcast) - I think this episode should be listened to by so many! It's a simple discussion between a son and mom, but so helpful for anyone.

• The space between the Commits with Zed and DeltaDB's Nathan Sobo (Hanselminutes with Scott Hanselman) - I was happy to listen to this episode with Nathan and learn more about his projects: Zed and DeltaDB.

• Azure Container Apps with Paul Yuknewicz and Jan Kalis (.NET Rocks!) - Hmm, a very interesting usage of Azure Container Apps! I'll have to try that.

Miscellaneous

• 3 Tricks to Help You Stop Procrastinating (Suzanne Scacca ) - Need tips to improve your time management? This post is for you.

• Goodbye, forever, probably. (Salma) - Sad news for the communities, but at the same time, it's because of those same communities. This post shares a very sad portrait of the online world that affects many people.
  

~frank

Reading Notes #704

This week’s collection highlights practical ways to improve developer workflows, from faster test runs and more manageable pull requests to intuitive new AI integrations. I have gathered a few standout articles on Blazor components, Azure Functions updates, and the nuances of training coding agents for your specific stack.

Suggestion of the week

• Stop overloading your skills - Microsoft for Developers (Waldek Mastykarz) - The post ends with: "In many cases, models don’t need a textbook. They needed a cheat sheet." It's so true! And this post explains why and how to validate it.

Programming

• I built a little Claude that dances when it needs me (Jim Bennett) - I've been thinking about one of those notifications, and I really like what Jim did here. Have a look, it's way more useful than you think

• How to Filter a Blazor Table Control using .NET | ComponentOne (Ashwin Saxena) - Another Blazor component: ComponentOne. It's nice to have options.

Open Source

• How pull request limits are cutting down the noise (Camilla Moraes & Ashley Wolf) - This will help control the flow for many OSS projects. Hopefully, it will be seen positively by the communities.

DevOps

• Distributed Test Runs in the Aspire Community Toolkit | LINQ to Fail (Aaron Powell) - I didn't know all that was possible. This is a great post that shares the optimization iterations to make unit test runs take less time.

AI

• Azure Functions MCP Extension: What's New at Build 2026 (Lily Ma) - An easy win. Simple to write, fast and straightforward to deploy, and serverless.

• Intelligent Terminal 0.1.1 is here: bash support, new slash commands, and more customization (Hamza Usmani) - Finally! I know someone who has wanted this terminal for a very long time. It looks nice, I saw the demo at Build.

• When the model has never seen your code - Microsoft for Developers (Waldek Mastykarz) - A very interesting post, part of a series about how to make AI coding agents work correctly with your technology.

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. 

 ~frank

Reading Notes #702

This week’s compilation explores a mix of critical topics ranging from integrating AI models with SQL Server to navigating the complexities of Azure container troubleshooting. I’ve selected these particular articles because they offer practical ways to streamline your workflow and better understand the latest shifts in cloud infrastructure and software development.

Databases

• How to host an AI text embeddings model for SQL Server using Ollama (Greg Low) - Cool use of Ollama to get free AI with our databases.

AI

• Learn Anything With My /teach Skill (Matt Pocock) - I use AI to learn many times, but I didn't think doing a skill. Looking forward to trying it.

• How AI coding agents actually use your technology - Microsoft for Developers (Waldek Mastykarz) - A very interesting post that explains all the steps executed by VS Code harness when we submit our prompt. The post also provides some insights on why AI could still get bad results even if we provide SDK and MCP servers.

Cloud

• Troubleshooting Azure Container Apps and Jobs for .NET and Django Workloads | Microsoft Community Hub - First post of a series that covers the most frequent issues and provides methods to investigate and resolve the problems.

DevOps

• Open Source Observability: Tools, Setup, and Trade-offs (Spence Taylor) - A post that introduces many different tools used to collect or display information about logs and metrics, with potential challenges and more.

Miscellaneous

• How I made a 45-video course without wanting to die (Salma) - Doing a series that will work definitely requires preparation. Thank you for sharing Salma.

• Working with product managers (sean goedecke) - Was I that lucky all my life that I never encountered those types?

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. 

 ~frank

Reading Notes #701

Modern infrastructure and AI agent development move fast, requiring a sharp eye on both backend stability and frontend polish. This week’s curated notes highlight critical shifts in observability, security best practices for autonomous agents, and practical updates for .NET MAUI apps. Check out these essential reads to stay ahead of the curve.

AI

• Build 2026: From observability to ROI for AI agents on any framework | Microsoft Foundry Blog (Sebastian Kohlmeier) - Foundry offers observability features and has many other whistles. There were a few sessions about that during Build. This post provides an overview and session names for demos.

Programming

• Give Your .NET MAUI Android Apps a Material 3 Makeover - .NET Blog ( Gerald Versluis) - So simple that it's hard not to try it

DevOps

• Why Choose Pulumi Over Terraform? (Pablo Seibelt) - I have never tried Pulumi or terraform, but they look great, and after reading this post, I'm very interested in learning more about ballooning

Data

• AI observability vs monitoring: What's the difference? (Jesse Sumrak) - Do you know the difference? You understand both, but where one ends and the other starts? Good post to clarify that.

MS Build

• How to Secure AI Agents: A Practical Overview (Srini Sekaran) - This post suggests grounded practices and explains the reasons behind them.

• Microsoft Agent Framework at BUILD 2026 | Microsoft Agent Framework (Shawn Henry) - List of Microsoft Build event sessions about the Agent framework.

~frank

Reading Notes #700

Seven hundred weeks.

When I started taking notes about the articles I was reading, I never imagined I would still be doing it 700 weeks later.

Back then, my notes lived on a USB key. I carried a small personal wiki with me and used it to save interesting articles, ideas, and discoveries. It was a simple way to build my own searchable knowledge base so I could find things again when I needed them.

In 2011, I started sharing those notes publicly on my blog, Franky's Notes. A few months later, I made another important change: I switched from writing in French to writing in English. At the time, I wasn't fluent, but I wanted to improve. "Notes de lecture" became "Reading Notes", and every week became an opportunity to learn something new while practicing a language that would eventually become a big part of my career.

Over the years, the format evolved. Articles were joined by podcasts, books, videos, and whatever else helped me learn and stay curious. Technology changes constantly, and one of the things I enjoy most about working in this industry is that there is always something new to discover.

What never changed was the habit itself.

Most mornings start the same way: a coffee, my e-reader, and a few articles. Throughout the week, I collect the things that made me think, taught me something, or simply felt worth sharing. Then, every Monday, I publish a new edition.

Seven hundred weeks later, these reading notes have become much more than a list of links. They are a record of what caught my attention, what I was learning, and how both technology and I have changed over the years.

If you've been reading along for a while, thank you. If you're new here, I hope you discover something interesting in the links below.

Suggestion of the week

• Harness, Scaffold, and the AI Agent Terms Worth Getting Right (Sergio Paniego, Aritra Roy Gosthipaty) - This post shares a list of definitions. If you feel like there are some terms used in the "AI world" that you are not sure what they mean, this post is for you.

AI

• Building an On-Device Voice Assistant with Microsoft Foundry Local | Microsoft Community Hub (Lee Stott) - Cool project! Really need to look into the local Foundry.

• Building Fluent Icon Finder with the WinUI Copilot Skill (TheJoeFin) - I like the idea of these vibe-coded tools, as I often spend a lot of time searching for the right icon.

• The Untrusted Autonomous Workload and AI Sandboxes (Vladimir Mikhalev) - Very nice post that shares how Docker sandboxes could help us do our work safely.

• 9 Things People Get Wrong With /grill-me and /grill-with-docs (Matt Pocock) - These are excellent tips to use with this skill, but they are also true in many other circumstances.

• Meet Gordon: AI Agent for Container Workflows | Docker (Nuno Coracao, Deanna Sparks) - Gordon looks like the specialized agent we are all looking for. Looking to see if it delivers as advertised.

Programming

• aspire init is no longer one-size-fits-all. The aspireify skill and your coding agent tailor the AppHost to your repo. (Erik Lieben) - I would say an interesting twist in this new version. A smart upgrade (pun intended)

Miscellaneous

• An important update: Transitioning Gemini CLI to Antigravity CLI - I migrated this week to Antigravity IDE 2.0, and it works great. I had an intense coding session with the CLI (thanks to the crappy weather), and it just worked! No issues, no adaptation, no conversion. 5/5

~frank

Reading Notes #691

This week’s notes bounce between terminals, copilots, and the shifting shape of AI tools in our daily work. From real-world experiments in large .NET projects to small quality-of-life improvements that just make coding smoother, there’s a lot to chew on. A few links stood out more than expected and might change how you approach your setup or your workflow.

All ready the end of the month!

Open Source

• Windows Terminal Preview 1.25 Release (Dustin Howett) - Nice to see a new update for our beloved terminal.

AI

• Ten Months with Copilot Coding Agent in dotnet/runtime - .NET Blog (Stephen Toub) - A real and big project, 10 months of experiments, 1 takeaway and a lot of details with numbers to explain it all.

• Claude Code with Docker: Local Models, MCP, Sandboxes (Yiwen Xu) - Short jump-post. It contains the references needed, including a video, to package Claude Code locally.

• OpenAI is planning a desktop ‘superapp’ (Jay Peters) - Interesting to see the result of this app merge.

• You no longer have to wait for Copilot to finish thinking (Bart Wullems) - Amazing! I love it! Another scenario where this is useful is when you press the wrong new-line key combination, and it sends your request instead of adding a new line.

• My 'Grill Me' Skill Went Viral (Matt Pocock) - After trying grill me, I knew I couldn't do without it. It is a great skill as it forces us to really flesh out our idea.

• Product management on the AI exponential - Interesting post where we learn more about the day-to-day of a PM at Anthropic

Miscellaneous

• DevRel Is Not Measured Like Other Roles — And That Needs to Change (Dewan Ahmed) - This in between role is are to define and to measure.

~frank

Reading Notes #690

AI keeps changing how we build, think, and even feel about software. This batch of posts & episodes mixes practical agent skills, vibe coding, and faster shipping with a bit of reflection on the old internet and why it still sticks with us.

AI

• 5 Agent Skills I Use Every Day (Matt Pocock) - This post shares really useful and impactful skills and explains how they work.

• A beginner's guide to vibe coding (Jessica Wachtel) - A nice and light post that describes the rules or the freedom of vibe coding.

• How VS Code Builds with AI (Pierce Boggan) - From shipping monthly to weekly, this post explains how the VS Code maintainers achieved that.

• Let your Coding Agent debug your browser session with Chrome DevTools MCP | Blog | Chrome for Developers (Sebastian Benz, Alex Rudenko) - That's a nice one! Really useful MCP

• 9 Ways AI Coding Has Rewired My Brain (Matt Pocock) - An interesting post that not only describes an efficient way to code with AI but also to stay relevant.

Podcasts

• Your Images are Out of Date (probably) - The Silent Rebuilds problem (DevOps and Docker Talk: Cloud Native Interviews and Tooling) - Very interesting episode. I guess I never realized how true it is that as soon as you download your image, they are outdated. This episode talks about the concept of silent rebuilds and tools to help us solve that issue.

• 503: Welcome to Tiny Tool Town (Merge Conflict) - With a name like Tiny Tool Town, my head always goes to Looney Tunes. No idea why, but this episode is not about that. It's about the collection of open source tools named: Tiny Tool Town, and they also talk about different models in GitHub Copilot.

• Building Software using Squad with Brady Gaster (.NET Rocks!) - Turn your Coplot to 11 with Squad. Carl and Richard talk to Brady Gaster about Squad, a tool for creating an AI development team using GitHub Copilot.

• Daniel Ward: AI Agents - Episode 393 (Azure & DevOps Podcast) - In this episode, they talk about the different AI tools used by developers and DevOps people, and the trends.

• Everything Is a Graph (Even Your Dad Jokes) with Roi Lipman (Screaming in the Cloud) - Nice episode about different database and most obviously about graph databases. Very interesting to learn more about all that explosion of database types.

Miscellaneous

• Kill Your Ego, Ship Your Work (Golnaz) - Great advice from Golnaz in this post. This is why so many people want to work with her.

• I Think a Lot of Developers Are Quietly Grieving the Old Internet (NorthernDev) - I think this feeling is real and I hope it won't stay long.

Sharing my Reading Notes is a habit I started a long time ago, where I share a list of all the articles, blog posts, podcasts and books that catch my interest during the week.

If you have interesting content, share it!

~frank

Reading Notes #687

Welcome to this new Reading Notes post, a collection of interesting articles and resources I've been absorbing lately! This week's roundup dives into a variety of topics, from practical storage solutions and leveraging AI for code upgrades to exploring the intersection of AI and business value. Get ready for a diverse mix of tech insights and management reflections.

Programming

• Upgrading old code with Copilot (Mark Downie) - In this post, Mark shows one area where AI is really making a huge difference.

AI

• Hosting Declarative Markdown-Based Agents on Azure Functions (Anthony Chu) - A pretty cool idea to make accessible simply and get quick responses. Looking forward to seeing what people do with it.

• Vector Data in .NET - Building Blocks for AI Part 2 (Jeremy Likness) - Instructive post that shows and explains the value of AI.Extensions in our code.

• The Missing Link Between AI and Business Value (Kris Kang) - How do you benchmark or track the efficiency of your AI usage?

• So, you want to run OpenClaw? (Jim Gumbley) - An interesting post that gives us hits where to start searching for more information about how to raise protection.

Books

The Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You (Julie Zhuo) - Most management books are written by advanced managers, people with a lot of experience who already have the "manager" mindset well established in their heads. This book feels different, more accessible, closer to a conversational tone. In this book, Julie shares her stories of becoming a manager and the advice she learned along the way. I think it's a good book to get started on this topic, especially if you are new to that position or thinking about it, to understand and be better equipped for the new challenges coming your way.

Miscellaneous

• Active vs Archival Storage: How We Store Petabytes on Pennies (Golnaz) - Storage is always a concern over time. How can you keep years of data without getting ruined.

~frank

Reading Notes #686

This week's Reading Notes is packed with AI insights, open-source discoveries, programming tips, and podcast episodes that will leave you eager to dive in. From Ralph Wiggum's coding secrets to the dangers of one-shot glamour, we've got it all covered. So grab your favourite beverage, settle in, and get ready to level up your tech game!

AI

• Run NanoClaw in Docker Shell Sandboxes | Docker (Oleg Selajev) - I like that sandbox idea. That might be enough for me to try Clawbot... Or not, but the sandbox, hell yeah!

• 11 Tips For AI Coding With Ralph Wiggum - This post is a gold mine of best practices and really good advice to start using the Ralph loop in safety.

• Getting Started With Ralph (Matt Pocock) - Nice idea that loop. Very well explained tutorial.

• Solve Context Window Limits With Context Packing (Philippe Charrière) - A very interesting post that explains in detail, with code samples, how to compact.

• The danger of glamourizing one shots (Scott Hanselman) - Very well said Scott!

Open Source

• I replaced Windows 11’s default apps with these open-source tools (Mauro Huculak) - A cool list of tools that, on top of everything, are open source

• Microsoft Launches winapp to Simplify Windows App Development (Aminu Abdullahi) - A new CLI to help set our environment and other things. I like the idea, I will have to try it out.

Programming

• Aspire—Your Stack, Streamlined - Cool nice free event coming up!

Podcast

• 499: Going Full Ralph, CLI, & GitHub Copilot SDK?!?! (Merge Conflict) - Really fun episode to listen to, the explanation of the Ralph loop pattern and hearing Frank panicking (sorry Frank) with all the emojis, it was a fun and very instructive episode.

• How Homebrew Became Mac's Package Manager with Mike McQuaid (Screaming in the Cloud) - As a user of Homebrew, I was really happy to learn more about its history and how it became what it is today.

• Married, Dating, or Single: The Best Relationship Advice You Will Ever Recieve (The Mel Robbins Podcast) - Because we are all in relationships with the community, our co-workers, families, and maybe lovers. Great episode to listen to.

• Making Reliable Software in 2026 with Damien Brady (.NET Rocks!) - An interesting conversation about how to make software reliable. It was very nice to hear from Damien again.

• What Grit Really Teaches Us About Happiness with Professor Angela Duckworth (A Bit of Optimism) - I've had her book on my reading list for a while, but listening to that passionate discussion on grit and happiness has reignited my interest and motivated me to bump it up my stack.

~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

Reading Notes #674

This week: Cake v6.0.0 is out, Docker Desktop adds helpful debugging tools, and .NET 10 brings a ton of changes worth exploring. Plus some thoughts on working with AI coding assistants and a great cybersecurity podcast.

AI

• Treat Your AI Assistant Like an Overconfident Junior Developer (Marko Crnjanski) - I really like that I meant, I think it's pretty close to reality, and this post contains a lot of good tips.

• AI Vision: Turning Your Videos into Comedy Gold (or Cringe) (Frank Boucher) - A cool demo in Python that leverage AI Vision to watch your video and generate a funny roast.  

DevOps

• Cake v6.0.0 released - Great news! I will have to upgrade my pipeline. Hopefully, the upgrade will be smooth.

• Docker Desktop 4.50 Release (Deanna Sparks) - Nice update, and oh wow! I'm looking forward to try that debug, that's great news

Programming

• Get Ready for .NET Conf 2025! (Jon Galloway) - 3-day event and all about that net dispose chair, what is happening each day, so a good way to plan your listening

• ReSharper 2025.3: Day-One C# 14 Support, Visual Studio 2026 Compatibility, and Major Performance Gains | The .NET Tools Blog (Sasha Ivanova) - Great to see that those tools are ready for .NET so quickly

• Announcing .NET 10 - .NET Blog (.NET team) - There are so many changes. This post list a lot of things that just change with that .NET 10, and I really looking forward to watch in that video and read a more specific article to see demos and try it myself

Podcasts

• 116. The Evolution of Cybersecurity - with Paula Januszkiewicz (Betatalks the podcast) - What a great episode! Yes, about Cybersecurity but also about how to talk about a topic and share.

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 #671

From debugging Docker builds to refining your .NET setup, this week’s Reading Notes delivers a sharp mix of practical dev tips and forward-looking tech insights. We revisit jQuery’s place in today’s web stack, explore AI-enhancing MCP servers, and spotlight open-source projects shaping tomorrow’s tools. Plus, PowerToys gets a sleek upgrade to streamline your Windows workflow. 

Let’s check out the ideas and updates that keep your skills fresh and your systems humming.

Programming

• A quick look at Dev Tunnels (Mike Irving) - This post shares a very cool feature where you can make your local Host available to someone else to reproduce a bug or try an API without having to deploy. Pretty cool,

• 6 Steps for Setting Up a New .NET Project the Right Way (Milan Jovanović) - This nice post provides some simple best practices. It helps to keep the code consistent and efficient when the solution contains multiple projects or when multiple developers are involved.

• Debug Docker Builds with Visual Studio Code (Remy Suen) - Wow! Great update on this extension that will help us debug a dockerfile.

• Why I Still Use jQuery in 2025 (and When Not to) (Aniket Bhattacharyea) - I guess you know jQuery? If you do, this post tells us how to be sure when or not to use it. Nice.

AI

• 5 Essential MCP Servers That Give Claude & Cursor Real Superpowers (2025) (Prithwish Nath) - MCP servers are really powerful and really boost your compilot productivity. I wouldn't say they are essential, but definitely useful

• 9 open-source projects the GitHub Copilot and Visual Studio Code teams are sponsoring—and why they matter - Microsoft Open Source Blog (Stacey Haffner) - Those projects definitely need a look. They are very interesting if you're using mCP servers.

Miscellaneous

• PowerToys 0.95 is here: new Light Switch utility, faster Command Palette, and Peek with Spacebar (Niels Laute) - Lots of very interesting new features and a performance boost in this month's release.

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 #666

Welcome to another edition of my reading notes! This week I've gathered some interesting finds across programming, AI, and general tech topics. From exciting Cake updates to practical AI implementation advice, here are the articles that caught my attention recently.

Programming

• Cake.Sdk 5.0.25257.82-beta released (devlead) - I'm happy to see the new release of this cake version coming to a recent .NET version. I have one of my projects using cake, and I was waiting for it; this is amazing

AI

• Performance Improvements in .NET 10 (Stephen Toub) - There's a lot of good advice in this post. Assuming you're using AI you should definitely read it

• Reka Speech: High Throughput Speech Transcription and Translation Model with Timestamps (reka team) - Because not only should the text be translated into different languages, but the voice too! If it's now possible very easily.

• Vibe coding has turned senior devs into ‘AI babysitters,’ but they say it’s worth it (Dominic-Madori Davis) - True experience of a new ‘AI babysitters’...

Miscellaneous

• 9 Rules for AI PoC Success That Actually Ship (Jim Clark) - Very useful post that shares great advices that are easy to implement and that will have a huge impact on your projects

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 #654

Welcome to another edition of my reading notes! This week, I’ve gathered a selection of insightful articles and resources covering topics like AI, cloud security, open source, and developer productivity. Whether you’re interested in best practices, new tools, or thought-provoking perspectives, there’s something here for everyone. 

Dive in and enjoy the highlights!

Suggestion of the week

• Copilot, The Good Parts: Efficiency (Rob Conery) - I love that post, it's so true! There are good and bad ways to use any tools. And I personally would really like seeing Rob build his stuff. Let's him know If you think like me.

Programming

• Zero-Trust Architecture for Cloud-Based AI Systems (Goodness Woke) - This is a perfect article to get started on zero trust architecture, its complete details and very interesting

• Fantastic Alert Messages Using SweetAlert (Héctor Pérez ) - A great component to manage our alerts in C# instead of having JavaScript. That makes code easier to test when all is in the same language.

• You DON’T Need Microservices for Serverless! (Derek Comartin) - A great post that explained the difference between cold coupling and monolithics versus microservices great post.

Open Source

• How to convince your boss to sponsor Open Web Docs (Patrick Brosset) - Open source is important! And to contribute, it doesn't have to be code. Nice post that shares ideas and explains a few things about OSS.

Databases

• What’s New in MSSQL Extension for VS Code v1.33 ( Carlos Robles) - It's great to have such a nice tool as an extension. I wish it would support more databases.

Miscellaneous

• Local code review with Docker and smollm2 before pushing to git (Gerardo Lopez) - This is a great idea! Definitely a good way to avoid the light of shame and be able to quickly validate that your code looks okay. It's also a great way to experiment free hook.

~frank

Reading Notes #635

This week Reading Notes, covers various topics in programming and databases. Discover the latest ASP.NET Core release, the importance of clear error messages, and coding with voice commands. Learn about new features in Azure EasyAuth and Microsoft Entra Authentication for Azure PostgreSQL. We also bid farewell to Azure Data Studio as it moves to VS Code extensions.

 
Let's get started!

Programming

• ASP.NET Core on .NET Framework servicing release advisory: ASP.NET Core 2.3 (Daniel Roth) - Learn more about this new release.

• The Importance of Good Error Messages (jdanton1) - I cannot agree more with the idea! How many of us have lost hours trying to figure out what was the error because the description wasn't clear!

• From pain to productivity: How I learned to code with my voice (Salma) - I watched a few of Salma's streams where she was struggling with those tools. This post shares the entire story, the different tools, and her progress.

• Giving Granular Controls to Azure EasyAuth | Microsoft Community Hub ( Justin Yoo) - EasyAuth is like the name suggests pretty simple to setup and use, but also more minimalist than other solutions. This OSS package changes everything making it more versatile.

Databases

• Microsoft Entra Authentication for Azure PostgreSQL (Arun S) - Learn how ease security enforcement (ex: password rotation) by centralizing the account with Entra.

• Azure Data Studio Retirement | Microsoft Community Hub (carlosrobles) - I used in love Azure Data Studio and I'm a little bit sad to see it go away but I think it's for the best since all the functionality will be now available in vs code extension

Miscellaneous

• A case for getting dressed every day (Salma) - I agree one hundred percent with her it's so true.

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

 ~frank

Reading Notes #633

This edition of Readings Notes covers the synergies between C# and Rust, open-source software licensing challenges, and securing the software supply chain. It also feature a beginner’s guide to programming C# in Visual Studio Code. Finally, we delve into the evaluation process of AI models for GitHub Copilot. 

Enjoy the read!

Programming

• Why Every C# Developer Should Explore Rust (Chris Woodruff) - Even though I heard of Rust I don't think I ever wrote a single line. This post gives a brief list of ideas where we could make a combo c#-rust, and where to get started. Hmmm.

• .NET OSS Projects: Better to Re-license or Die? (Aaron Stannard) - What are the options when a free OSS project changes its license? Nice post that provides an overview of a recent change like this.

• Protecting the Software Supply Chain: The Art of Continuous Improvement (Melissa Sussmann) - This post lists the tools available to help us keeping our app secured and clean.

• How to Program C# in Visual Studio Code (Claudio Bernasconi) - It cost nothing and it is simple to start coding in C#, from .NET as this tutorial shows.

Miscellaneous

• How we evaluate AI models and LLMs for GitHub Copilot (Connor Adams, Klint Finley) - This is an interesting post that shares the methods used to test the different models before they can be included. Testing a model is different than testing a regular piece of code, what are they looking for, and what's important?

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 

~frank

Reading Notes #568

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!

Programming

• What Does an Open Source Triage Team Do? (BekahHW) - There are so many ways to get involved in the community and make an OSS project better. It's fantastic.

• Replacing Mock and Stub with a Fake by Mark Seemann (Mark Seemann) - Learn more about how fakes can simplify your test and some best practices in this post.

• 5 Benefits of a Container-First Approach to Software Development (Ben Cotton) - Container without being the solution for everything did indeed change a lot in the industry. Nice post that highlights that.

• EF Core Fundamentals for EF Core 7 (Pluralsight) (Julie Lerman) - Great course from Julia to learn the fundamental of EF 6 or 7.

• Using SQL Server as a Message Queue with Wolverine (Jeremy D. Miller) - I love the idea of reusing SQL instead of adding more components to your system. Well done Wolverine.

Data

• Unleashing SQL Sorcery: Increasing Performance and Complexity with GitHub Copilot (Subhojit Basak) - Copilot is a very useful pair programming partner. This post shares how to use it for your queries.

Low Code

• Power Automate Standards: Variables (Matthew Devaney) - Nice series about best practices in flows.

Open Source

• On Moq and our Part in the OSS Sustainability Social Contract (Sean Killeen) - An excellent post that explains the controversial event that occur with the Moq project recently and shares thoughts.

~Frank