Reading Notes #613

Good Monday! This week Reading Notes are more listening notes 😅 and we go from .NET Aspire and  containers, passing by communication with AI to camping!

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.

Cloud

• Creating an Azure Static Web app (moving from WordPress, part 2) (Michael Eaton) - Yes indeed it is simple to get started with Azure Static WebApp.This post shares a user journey while migrating.

• Windows ARM installing Azure CLI (Jani Nevalainen) - Cool tips to make CLI works on ARM processor device,until the real version comes out.

Programming

• Docker Best Practices: Choosing Between RUN, CMD, and ENTRYPOINT (Jay Schmidt) - Nice post that explains really clearly the differences between those three and provides cheat sheet and examples.

Podcasts

• Introducing .NET Aspire with Damian Edwards (Hanselminutes with Scott Hanselman) - Nice episode where .NET Aspire is really well explained, but yes it's kind of hard to say in a few words what it is.

• 687: Getting Better at Internal Communication, with Roy Schwartz (Coaching for Leaders) - Nice episode that talk how AI can help or harm a good communication. Used smartly it can definitely help...

• Camping Tips for Your Next Adventure with Lestarya Molloy (Wild Ideas Worth Living) - I grow up camping every summer, but for many they didn't have that chance and it's hard to start... But there an App for that!

• CosmosDB and AI with Mark Brown (.NET Rocks!) - AI and data! AI and data! AI and data! It's not a typo, I wrote it 3 times... It's everywhere, evolving fast and you must look at it.

• 86. Power Platform, Blazor and beyond: Maintaining internal apps - with Sophie van den Akker (Betatalks the podcast) - Nice episode about how and where use Blazor, the limits of Power Platform and more.

~Frank

Reading Notes #611

Welcome to this week’s edition of Reading Notes! In this roundup, we explore a variety of topics across cloud, programming, databases, and AI. From understanding Docker’s USER instruction to styling Blazor components with CSS, I’ve got you covered. Let’s dive in!

Suggestion of the week

• Understanding the Docker USER Instruction (Jay Schmidt) - A great post to that explains really clearly the basic usage of user when building our container. After reading this post you should feel confident to follow this best practices.

Cloud

• Azure Static Web Apps–SWA CLI behind the scenes (Bart Wullems) - Cool post to that quickly explains how the CLIworks and a few different tools.

Programming

• Blazor Basics: Styling Blazor Components with CSS (Claudio Bernasconi) - That will solve an issue I was having... Blazor for the win!

• Is Your ASP.NET Core Application Running In A Container? (Adam Storr) - Very neat tip to know when the App is or not in a container.

• Setting up NGINX load balancer for .NET WebApi (Oskar Dudycz) - Very well done tutorial to set a reverse proxy.

Databases

• Automating SQL Deployments using GitHub Actions - Part 2 (Eduardo Pivaral) - That's pretty neat. Of course, there is a SQL option but I never thought about it. Excellent idea to keep everything in one place with versions.

AI

• Updated Documentation for Semantic Kernel (Sophia Lagerkrans-Pandey) - Nice update in the documentation, new content new look.

~frank

Reading Notes #606

It's reading notes time! 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.

You also read something you liked? Share it!

Cloud

Azure Developer CLI (azd) – Build 2024 Recap (Grace Kulin) - All developers should look at how it can really speedup and simplify your Azure deployment and ease the creation of your infrastructure as code file (bicep and terraform).

Programming

Catch Up on Microsoft Build 2024: Essential Sessions for .NET Developers (James Montemagno) - Perfect for . NET developers who would like to know what's new and what's coming

Avoiding interactivity with Blazor? (Jon Hilton) - Nice post that examines how some fancy checkbox or button interactivity works in Blazor.

Must-have resources for new .NET Aspire developers (Anthony Simmon) - This post contains a list of other posts and videos about aspired really interesting if you want to get started.

Microsoft Dev Box introduces new ready-to-code and enterprise management capabilities - Wonderful powerful device where and when you need it. This post shares the most recent new features.

Developing cloud-native apps with .NET Aspire and Visual Studio (Mark Downie) - Nice post that celebrates the general availability of .NET Aspire and shares many advantages of using it with Visual Studio.

It turns out, it's not difficult to remove all passwords from our Docker Compose files (Frank Boucher) - We all did it. Hardcoding password in code, because it's "just" a quick thing, or it's just for us, and we think it's okay... but is it? This post shares my learning while removing passwords from docker-compose file.

AI

Announcing the AI Toolkit for Visual Studio Code (John Lam) - Nice! The favorite editor of so many now have an AI extension! I missed the Microsoft Build sessions with the demos. Lucky me they are available on demand!

~frank

Reading Notes #601

It's reading notes time! 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.

Having interesting content? Share it! 

Suggestion of the week

• Announcing: Azure Developers (Mehul Harry) - Looking forward to this event. I have the pleasure to present a session with Jerry Nixon about Data API Builder. Join us!

Cloud

• Demystifying Azure CLI pagnination (Jeremy Li) - That's great! It's so sad when all the information is "throw" on us without any control and it's on us to find our "needle" we are looking for in those screens full of line. This will definitely helps.

Programming

• Blazor Basics: Localization Using Resource Files (Claudio Bernasconi) - A nice and complete tutorial.

• What's new for .NET in Ubuntu 24.04 - .NET Blog (Richard Lander) - This is a good news! Definitely going in the right direction.

• Minimal APIs Nuget Packages (Shawn Wildermuth) - Same great tools but new names to make it easier to remember and more of the same family.

• Useful features in Entity Framework Core 8 for your application (Dennis Frühauff) - A great post with detailed explanation and code samples that covers the major new feature and enhancements of EF8.

• Better Minimal APIs Endpoint Organization With Carter in ASP.NET Core (Ivan Gechev) - Carter looks like a very useful library definitely something to explore a bit more.

• Warp’s Team plan for developer productivity is available today (Melanie Crissey) - I started using this terminal a few weeks ago on a personal device. It's interesting to see all the different options an the possibilities for teams.

Open Source

• Open sourcing MS-DOS 4.0 - Microsoft Open Source Blog (Scott Hanselman, Jeff Wilcox) - That a cool news! I'm curious what people will do with it, what kind of experiments they will try.

~ Frank

Reading Notes #600

It's reading notes time! 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.

Having interesting content? Share it! 

by: Microsoft Designer

Suggestion of the week

• Streamline your container build and publish with .NET 8 - .NET Blog (Richard Lander) - As containers takes more and more space in our development life, it's great to see the tools evolving too. This post is a must for all .Net developers.

Cloud

• Announcing a new login experience with Azure PowerShell and Azure CLI (Damien Caro) - This is a great news. Have a look before you update.

Programming

• Build & test resilient apps in .NET with Dev Proxy - .NET Blog (Waldek Mastykarz) - Every web developers needs that tool. Dev Proxy is just pure gold.

• C#: What is the difference between 'string' and System.String? (Chris Pietschmann) - Memory check passed .... Did you knew?

• Blazor Basics: Handling Images Dynamically (Claudio Bernasconi) - A nice simple tutorial playing with images within Blazor.

Miscellaneous

• What is an RDP Browser? (And How To Get One) (Peter) - A great alternative when you want to test on different browser or version of a browser, for gaming, And also for cyber security when investigating.

~Frank

Problem in my local paradise: Func CLI doesn't upgrade

Last Friday, I encountered an issue while trying to run my Azure Function locally using VS Code. Despite having installed the Azure Function extension and the Azure Functions Core Tools, I was unable to execute the func start command without encountering an error saying that no functions could be found. 

In this post, I will share the various troubleshooting steps I took, what didn’t work, and how I ultimately resolved the issue. Spoiler alert: everything is now working correctly.

The Problem

My Azure Function is a .NET 8 Isolated HTTP trigger. When I attempted to execute the func start command, it failed to find any functions. A quick look at the documentation, I discovered that version 4 of the Core Tools was required for type Isolated process. However, I had already installed version 4 via the update popup in VS Code.

Something was wrong. I tried func --version and it returned 3.x.xx, weird... And this is how I knew there was a problem.

Failed attempts

Following the Azure Functions Core Tools documentation I found that there were multiple methods to install the Core Tools. Because that laptop was on Windows 11, I started by downloading the func-cli-x64.msi installer and run it. It didn't work, the version 3 was still there.

I tried to install the Core Tools v4 using NPM: npm install -g azure-functions-core-tools@4. It didn't work.

I tried to uninstall the version 3 with npm uninstall -g azure-functions-core-tools. I tried using the command palette in VSCode

Still nothing was changing anything, the version 3 was still there.

The Solution

What works, was using Chocolatey command choco uninstall azure-functions-core-tools to uninstall the version 3. Some how, it must have been install at the different location or some "config" got lost at some point (it's a developer laptop after all), and the other methods (npm, msi, vscode) couldn't see that version 3 was installed.

After that, I installed the version 4 using NPM npm install -g azure-functions-core-tools@4. And it worked! The func --version returned 4.0.5571 and the func start command found my function.

I wrote this quick post hoping that it can help someone else, as I cannot be the only one with this problem.

~Frank

Reading Notes #591

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!

Suggestion of the week

• Make demo typing easy with DemoType in ZoomIt v8.0 (John Stephens) - This is such a game changer! Of course live demo are the best but losing precious secondes because of a typo is a real nightmare.

Cloud

• Planning for Resiliency with Azure OpenAI (Matthew Anderson) - Like everything else in the cloud we need to think about resiliency. This nice post get us started and explains 2 different architectures for our system.

• Azure Developer CLI (azd) - February 2024 Release (Grace Kulin) - Cool feature now supported in this new release with helm support for kubernetes and many other features.

Programming

• The Difference Between RESTful APIs and Web APIs Using ASP.NET Core (Januarius Njoku) - A very complete post about APIs their definition and differences.

• Scaling Docker Compose Up (Milas Bowman) - Interesting post that do a deep dive into docker compose file.

• Our Vision for .NET 9 - .NET Blog (.NET Team) - Inspiring plan for the future release of .Net.

• My Top 10 NEW Visual Studio Features of 2023 for .NET Developers - .NET Blog (James Montemagno) - I don't code everyday and when I do it's on all kind of device and OS so I end up more often using VS Code. But, when I can use Visual Studio it's always a treat. In this post, James shares his favorite new features part of that great IDE. Those are only the recent ones, there are so much more!

• Scaling Docker Compose Up (Milas Bowman) - Interesting post that do a deep dive into docker compose file.

• 8 ways to set the URLs for an ASP.NET Core app (Andrew Lock) - What!? So many different ways to assign the url.

~ Frank

Reading Notes #585

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

• Announcing the Azure Migrate application and code assessment tool for .NET - .NET Blog (Olia Gavrysh) - Neat tools that can be added via CLI (cross platform) or as Visual Studio extension.

Programming

• Using the CLI to Build and Run .NET Applications (Dusko Mirkovic) - This is a short tutorial that shows the basics functionalities of the command dotnet... Its very useful and it works on al platforms.

• Docker whale-comes AtomicJar, maker of Testcontainers (Scott Johnston) - Great news! Anythings to facilitate testing.

• Development slowness in big and legacy applications [and how to hurry it up] (Michael Shpilt) - Great post. Feels like years of experience in many different places.... Worth your time reading it for sure.

• What User Interface Framework Should You Choose for .NET Desktop Applications? (Claudio Bernasconi) - I didn't know all the frameworks, it is always good to be aware of the options we have.

• Building a Critter Stack Application: Asynchronous Processing with Wolverine (Jeremy D. Miller) - This post show a cool implementation using wolverine.

• Functional Programming With C# - Scan and FindIndex (Simon Painter) - Nice post that explains three C# function.

• Scanning Uploaded Files for Malware in C# (Vladan Petrovic) - This post shows how to use a pretty neat tools to improve security in our C# app. And there is a free version.

~Frank

Reading Notes #580

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

• Azure Developer CLI (azd) - November 2023 Release (Savannah Ostrowski) - So many feature in this CLI, I really need to look into it!
  
  
  

Programming

• Unlocking Git’s Power with GitLens: A Visual Studio Code Extension Guide (Sarah Lean) - Great quick intro and nice video about GitLens. It's one of those tool that you didn't know it but once you do, you can't imagine how you could live without it before.

• Introducing v1.0.0 Beta6 for the .NET Semantic Kernel SDK (Matthew Bolanos) - Sementic Kernel is a pretty cool tool.

• Explaining Kubernetes To My Uber Driver (Jessica Wang) - Pretty cool story that explains in a comprehensible way what is Kubernetes and why it is useful.

• Where fetch data in your Blazor components (Jon Hilton) - Having a optimization strategy is important.This post is a good place to start when using Blazor.

• .NET MAUI on Linux with Visual Studio Code (Bruno Capuano) - This is pretty interesting! Instead of having a Windows vm on my Linux laptop I could run natively ...I'll need to try that!

Miscellaneous

• Announcing Microsoft Copilot Studio (Jared Spataro, C) - Copilot Studio was for sure one of the big announcement during Microsoft Ignite. Learn more about what it is, what it does, and how you can get it in this post.

~frank

Reading Notes #572

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.

A-30 bridge 

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

Suggestion of the week

• Azure Developer CLI (azd) - September 2023 Release (Savannah Ostrowski) - Wow! I'm trying that today!

Programming

• Delay, Sleep, Pause & Wait in JavaScript — SitePoint (James Hibbard) - As an occasional JavaScript developer that post was pretty interesting.

• Async Lazy In C# – With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility (Nick Cosentino) - Great post from our friendly neiboor.But seriously very well explained.

• Exploring Blazor Changes in .NET 8 - Auto Render Mode (Jon Hilton) - Pretty cool changes coming up with .NET.

Open Source

• Unleashing the Entrepreneurial Spirit: Microsoft's Open-Source Solutions on Display (Japhlet Nwamu) - Open source it there, everywhere. Learn more about how it could help you transforming your ideas in real project!

Low Code

• Migration automatique grâce à l'IA… Oui et non (Frank Boucher) - We all have one of those Excel sheets that start just as a quick thing and became way too big. This video shows how to leverage AI to transform it into a PowerApp.

Books

Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect 

Author: Will Guidara

- This book really resonate with me. It's a mix of auto-biography and business, and some may argue that hospitality motivated by profit is actually hospitality? But it's about working smarter, and respecting the human while doing business. Trying harder to find a solution that respect the human, the environment while achieving our goals.

~Frank

Reading Notes #566

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

• What is the difference between the Azure Command Line Interface and Azure Developer Command Line Interface? (Liam Conroy Hampton) - I keep telling myself I should give it a try. That new AZD CLI seems pretty sick. No more excuses for my next project.

• Azure OpenAI Landing Zone reference architecture (Freddy Ayala) - Using Open AI or planning to do it this post shares a great list of Azure services that will help you do it effectively and securely.

Low Code

• Power Automate Apply To Each Loops 20X Faster (Matthew Devaney) - Smart way to gain performance, but make sure to do your homework and validate the connector limits and adjust the variables.

Data

• Learn about Microsoft Fabric for Data Analytics (Koen Verbeeck) - Learn more about this new one-stop service that was announced during Microsoft Build.

Miscellaneous

• GitHub Repository Rules are now generally available - The GitHub Blog (Patrick Knight) - Wow! very interesting... Great update!

~Frank

Reading Notes #563

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

• Using WSL and Let's Encrypt to create Azure App Service SSL Wildcard Certificates (Scott Hanselman ) - A nice step-by-step tutorial. And after this, you will have a very useful script.

• Deploy your Blazor app to Azure now for free! (Dennis Frühauff) - This is a simple easy-to-follow tutorial to deploy your Static web app in the cloud.

Programming

• API Architectural Styles: REST vs. SOAP vs. GraphQL vs. gRPC | Postman Blog (Bruno Pedro) - Selecting the best architecture for our needs that a scary decision. This post explains the different architecture and shares a real-life story and tools to help decide.

• Creating a VS Code editor extension (Tim Heuer) - The journey of a dev building an extension for Visual Studio Code.A very interesting post.

Open Source

• Build an Open Source Project: Behind the Scenes (Alexey Yuzhakov) - This post shares a story of a real-life open source project. It's about putting in the effort and doing the extra work to make our project more useful and accessible.

Low Code

• Power Apps Dynamic Forms - Generate Forms From A Questions List (Matthew Devaney) - A tutorial that shows how to build a very useful form using code. But once you build it you can reuse it at many places.

• Power Apps Code Review Tool (Mehdi Slaoui Andaloussi) - That's a really cool tool! I need to test it now!

Podcast

• Podman In Action: Desktop, Machine, and more (DevOps and Docker Talk: Cloud Native Interviews and Tooling) - The perfect episode to get started with Podman. Very interesting.

• Building Apps using OpenAI with Mark Miller (.NET Rocks!) - So much energy in this episode and great topics.

~Frank

Reading Notes #556

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

• Azure Developer CLI (azd) - May 2023 Release (Savannah Ostrowski) - The Azure Developers CLI just is evolving so fast! New Java early functionalities, improvement with Container Apps... Looking forward to watching Build sessions and seeing all of it!

Programming

• Announcing the new Azure Container Registry libraries (Mario Guerra) - Nice update! And there are more languages supported, which is fantastic.

• How I used GitHub Copilot to build a browser extension (Rizel Scarlett) - Another great story about how Copilot helps the productivity of a developer. And at the same time, great tutorial to build and Chrome extension.

• Choose Your Own Adventure in Open Source: Paths to Success (Bekah) - This is a nice post that provides many excellent reasons why you should start contributing to open source and how it is good for you

• Quick Progress in Software Development (Mike Krop) - Interesting... A Development Sim game?!

LowCode

• Exploring the Power Platform GPT Prompts: Unleashing the Potential of AI in the Power Platform (Lee Stott) - When new tools are coming up with such potential its great to have ideas of how to work with it. This post helps users get started or find new ways, and advance users an opportunity to share.

• Fueling Creativity: Introducing our Power Platform Prompt Samples Repository! | Power Platform Developer Blog (April Dunnam) - A great initiative to get us started when the spark is missing.

Podcasts

• Molly's Game with Molly Bloom (A Bit of Optimism) - What a story! An inspiring journey with so many challenges.
• 357: The Zune UI was the Best UI (Merge Conflict) - Ahhh! Now I understand why so many people are talking about the Zune! Great episode that go over some souvenirs and memories.

Miscellaneous

• Discover Ways to Make Open Source Contributions to Microsoft (Kiran Panjwani) - Great post shows how you, students, can make a huge difference.

• Why Put PostgreSQL in Azure - Grant Fritchey (Grant Fritchey) - Great post that explains why Azure is a great hosting platform. In this case, it's about the database and it is so true. But it's also true with many other services...

~Frank

Reading Notes #545

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

• Azure portal January 2023 updates (Allison Cordle) - Noce quick update from the portal.A few new features related to VMs.

• Creating a Configuration Module for your Infrastructure as Code (Sam Cogan) - This is a great post to help us be more efficient in our DevOps practices when writing IaC.

• Fetching Credentials with the Azure CLI (Mark Heath) - Awesome post that shares very useful commands. Add this on your cheatsheet or bookmark that post.

• Host WordPress in Microsoft Azure with App Service (PaaS hosting) (Chris Pietschmann ) - When we are interested in WordPress, we are looking for a key in-hand experience. We don't want to manage code and connections and too much technical stuff. Having it hosted in PaaS Azure simplifies even more this.

Programming

• Docker Desktop 4.17: New development functionality (Alyssa Shames) - Learn more about how this new release helps us to be more secure and track the details of our containers in the post.

• Dapr 1.10 - More steps in the right direction (Mark Heath) - This is great! I'm happy to see the multi-app functionality as I was totally waiting for it. And the workflow is definitely something that interests me.

• What To Be Wary of With Iterators and Collections in C# (Nick Cosentino) - An interesting deep comparison between different ways to fetch and manipulate data in C#.

~ frank

Reading Notes #542

Cloud

• Adventures in Dapr: Episode 1 - Azure Service Bus (James Dawson) - In this post the author switch the pub sub service and it looks so simple. Interesting.

• Adventures in Dapr: Episode 0 - Introduction (James Dawson) - This first post of the series provides us details about the plans and why Dapr seams interesting as a resource for this project.

• Azure Communication Services February 2023 Feature Updates (Daysha Carter) - Happy to see the new release coming up packed with useful features and capability.

• Azure Developer CLI (azd) - February 2023 Release (Savannah Ostrowski) - Wow! The Dev CLI is kicking the new year with a big release. New templates on many languages and new features.

• General availability: Mount Azure Storage as a local share in App Service Windows Code (Unknown) - Important milestone reached. Congrats!

Programming

• A Fancy Hover Effect For Your Avatar (Temani Afif) - Wow! From my point of views this look loke magic. With only one HTML element and a few lines of CSS... Bravo!

• Blazor and Azure OpenAI (Michael Washington) - Cool demo using OpenAI API. Because yes ChatGPT is fun but there are APIs to build real apps.

• How to use Entity Framework Core in ASP.NET Core (Khalid Abuhakmeh) - This is a very nice tutorial that guides us each steps along the way. Clear detailed, very nice.

• Merging Git repositories without losing history (Dennis Doomen) - Great tutorial that not only provides the solution but explains step by steps why we do each of them.

Podcasts

• 341: Frank Masters In-App Subscriptions (Merge Conflict) - A big thank you to Frank and James for sharing that journey. We too often only ear about the happy path, and it's great to listen to all those challenges you incountered and how you managed to move forward.
• Embracing The Fall with Carla Hall (A Bit of Optimism) - YES! So true! Falling instead of failling. Like a very wise man told me long time ago, the important is to bounce; get back on your feet and standup.
• Alice and Bob Learn App Security with Tanya Janca (.NET Rocks!) - Great great episode with the amazing Tanya. Looking forward for that next book!
• 49. Using Azure Container Apps, KEDA, Infrastructure as Code and ARM - with Eduard Keilholz (Betatalks the podcast) - From the MVP stories, to the infrastructure as code with the detour around the bulletproof demo or candies... This episode is indeed like a delicious candy.

~Frank

Reading Notes #540

Good Monday!

Already 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, podcast episodes, and books that catch my interest during the week.

You think you may have interesting content, share it!

Cloud

• Accelerate your Azure cloud management using Azure Cloud Shell with Predictive IntelliSense (Jason Helmick) - That's excellent news! After trying it locally, I cannot stop using it.

• Take your Azure CLI skills to the next level (nadavbh) - Oh wow, nice! I'm customizing my prompt right away!

Programming

• Bringing GitHub Actions to GitHub Mobile (Maximilian Sachs) - I'm Involved in a few repos, and being about to review some PR or questions and be able to answer them quickly is super nice. Learn more about this app in the post.

• How I built the first PDF report for KlipTok using IronPDF (Jeffrey T. Fritz) - A nice tutorial that shows how this tool was used with a Blazor static web site to print reports. A real implementation with his real challenges.

• Windows Package Manager 1.4 (Demitrius Nelon) - The more I use this tool the more I like it. Nice update that makes it even easier to use.

• Windows Terminal Preview 1.17 Release (Christopher Nguyen) - Nice new features, new configurations...I like that mica effect.

Databases

• Azure Data Studio 1.41 release - Microsoft SQL Server Blog (Erin Stellato) - Nice new update on this nice tool. Not all of them are visible, but the impact is big nevertheless.

Miscellaneous

• Practice Tests released on Microsoft Learn (Georgia Kalyva) - So many of you asked me about where they could find those tests... Happy to provide an easy answer moving on.

Reading Notes #538

Good Monday, 

Already time to share new reading notes. 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!

Cloud

• Azure Developer CLI (azd) - January 2023 Release (Savannah Ostrowski) - Easier to install and more secure. A nice update.

• Develop Your Cloud App Locally with the LocalStack Extension (Ajeet Singh Raina, Harsh Mishra) - Interesting tools that can emulate your AWS environment locally, perfect to develop and not stress about the cloud cost busting your budget.

Programming

• 6 Command Line (PowerShell & CLI) Tips & Tricks for Microsoft Azure you should know about! (Thomas Maurer) - Great tips that really enable us to be more productive and efficient.

• Get Started with GitHub Actions (Mandy Hubbard) - This is a great post to get started with CICD. GitHub is free and accessible, give it a try and then automate some tests or a deployment.

• Introduction to DevSecOps on Azure (Daniel Krzyczkowski) - New Pluralsight course announcement.

• The Problem With Dependency Injection Frameworks (James Shore) - A very interesting post that continues to explain why DI frameworks are bad even though they help us.

• Public Preview: Azure Automation Visual Studio Code Extension - Nice I like Azure automation. An extension to manage those cloud cron jobs, I say yes.

• Release notes for Microsoft Q&A - Love that new look!

• Why tuples in C# are not always a code smell (Dennis Frühauff) - I didn't use Turple yet but it's not hard to see the potential and how it could become ugly. This post shows and explains a few simple rules to stay clear.

Miscellaneous

• Announcing Cosmos DB to Azure Data Explorer Synapse Link (public preview) (Vincent-Philippe Lauzon) - Two worlds touched. This new connection looks super cool.

• Lazy and once-only C# async initialization (Ian Griffiths) - An amazing post that explains so much and that has all the code snippets to be clear about it. I will have to copy-paste those into some test applications to really try them, but it is clear what I should expect.

~frank

Reading Notes #529

Good Monday (standard time for many :) ),

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 Developer CLI (azd) – November 2022 Release (Savannah Ostrowski) - New beta version released with java and bicep updates...Great work.

• Azure SQL Database Overview (Daniel Calbimonte ) - This post is a great one to get started on Azure SQL Database. It answers many of the initial questions and provides the answers.

• Build a globally resilient architecture with Azure Load Balancer | Azure Blog and Updates | Microsoft Azure (Mahip Deora) - An azure load balancer is definitely a powerful tool when your customers aren't centralized. This post provides a nice overview.

Programming

• Create your .NET portfolio in the .NET Conf student zone (Katie Savage) - The .NET Conf conference is next Tuesday (Nov. 8) and students have a very special place. Have a look!

• How to Implement Decentralized Storage Using Docker Extensions - Docker (Marton Elek) - Second and last part of a series discussing about the storage with docker.

• Performance improvements in ASP.NET Core 7 (Brennan Conroy) - It's both impressive and inspiring to see so much improvement in performance in that next version.

• [Improving Your Desktop Applications—ToolTips in .NET MAUI](Leomaris Reyes ) (https://www.telerik.com/blogs/improving-desktop-applications-tooltips-dotnet-maui?utm_source=readingnotes) - Tooltips are now here!

• Personalize a static site based on a previous site referral (Salma Alam-Naylor) - This is a cool tutorial that explains how to leverage Netlify edge code to change a static website page base on where the visitor came from.

Miscellaneous

• Bicep for Real Site Launched (Sam Cogan) - Wonderful! The tutorial a was waiting for and it will be good because it's done by Sam.

~frank

Reading Notes #522

Yep! It's Monday again :) 

 Already time to share new reading notes. 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!

Cloud

• Introduction to DevSecOps on Azure (Daniel Krzyczkowski) - DevSecOps is a real thing and it's accessible for all. This post explains what it is and provides examples of how it could be implemented at a high level.

• Using Azure CLI Authentication within Local Containers (James Dawson) - This post provides two very useful workarounds with WSL and docker to a difficulty we might encounter while using a different platform.

Programming

• #RaspberryPi – Install raspi-config on Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS (Bruno Capuano) - A short post that shows how to get Unbuntu 22.02 on your Pi.

• Adding color to bracket pairs (Mads Kristensen) - A call for feedback on an up common feature of Visual Studio. Rainbow Brackets yes it will colorize the brackets but what should be the options?

• Browser Extension with Blazor WASM - Cross-Browser Compatibility (Justin Yoo) - Nice post in a series that really shows in the details and explains how to use the extension.

• DevOps monitoring: The Why, What, and How of DevOps monitoring (Hiren Dhaduk) - This is an excellent post to get us to think about our first step. It explains the reason why we should care and briefly lists a few tools available today on the market to help.

• Get started with NDepend: Uncle Bob and the Zone of Pain (Dennis) - A nice article that explains how to get started with NDepends.

• Rewrite your git history in 4 friendly commands (Salma Alam-Naylor) - The git trick of the week for when you want to do a major cleaning.

• Working with System.Random and threads safely in .NET Core and .NET Framework (Andrew Lock) - Interesting post about Random numbers in .NET.

Podcasts

• 38. Open source framework MVVM Light, Azure Static Web Apps & timekeeper.cloud with Laurent Bugnion (Betatalks the podcast) - Cool episode about, well my friend! :)
• How to be a great (new!) leader (Modern Mentor) - Really interesting episode for new leaders/ influencers.

~frank

Reading Notes #515

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!

Cloud

• Azure App Containers (Kevin Logan) - An interesting post that shares the first contact and spets with Azure container Apps. Where to learn, how to build what is included.

• Introducing the Azure Developer CLI: A faster way to build apps for the cloud (Savannah Ostrowski) - Exciting new preview looking forward to try and see the future of this tool.

Programming

• Making production diagnostics easier with Source Link (Mark Downie) - This post shares a pretty neat trick to make investigation (debugging) easier.

• How to build & publish NuGet packages with Azure Pipelines (James Croft) - All the steps are clearly explained in this tutorial for us to be ready.

• Using the Microsoft Docker Extension for Visual Studio Code (David Giard) - This post is a quick tour of the Docker extension. A very simple and powerful one.

~Frank