Reading Notes #669

This week explores the synergy between Dapr and WebAssembly for modern microservices, highlights the transformative potential of Wasm 3.0 for .NET developers, and delves into best practices for structuring Rust web services. In the AI realm, we examine the emergence of developer-friendly AI frameworks like Microsoft’s Agent Framework and Google’s Jules Tools, which bridge AI capabilities directly into terminals and workflows. Additionally, we examine AI obfuscation techniques and their implications, alongside updates on Perplexity’s free Comet AI browser and its new background assistant. Whether you’re building scalable systems, optimizing code, or integrating cutting-edge AI tools, this post offers a snapshot of trends shaping tech today.

Cloud

• How Dapr and WebAssembly Team Up for Microservices (B. Cameron Gain) - New and better version of Dapr.

Programming

• Wasm 3.0 for .NET Developers (Sam Basu) - Wasm 3 looks amazing! And that Uno Studio.. I'll have to try!

• The best way to structure Rust web services - LogRocket Blog (Jude Miracle) - I don't code in Rust, but I was curious about the project structure. This is a nice post to learn exactly that.

AI

• Introducing Microsoft Agent Framework (Preview): Making AI Agents Simple for Every Developer - .NET Blog (Luis Quintanilla) - The new SDK was released last week, and honestly, after trying it, it works really well, so more to come on that. This is a great post to get started

• Meet Jules Tools: A Command Line Companion for Google’s Async Coding Agent (Jiahao Cai, AK Kulkarni) - The Google AI is now also available directly from our terminal. More options for the users.

• Obfuscation for AI: How it Works, Best Practices, and Metrics – PreEmptive (preemptive) - It's been a while since I last used a station in my code because I'm doing demos most of the time, but it always fascinated me. I feel I should try it with AI, it looks very interesting and powerful. This post shares a lot about what's possible, the risk, and so much more

• Perplexity’s Comet AI browser now free; Max users get new 'background assistant' (Rebecca Bellan) - Interesting new product from Perplexity

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 #660

This week’s notes cover GenAI vs agentic AI, fresh Docker and Aspire news, how to run WordPress in containers, and building apps with React and .NET. Plus a few podcasts worth a listen.

Enjoy!

AI

• GenAI vs. Agentic AI: What Developers Need to Know | Docker (Michael Irwin, Yiwen Xu) - Interesting post that compares the two recent AI types and how they can be used for development, and of course, with containers

Open Source

• Does it Make Sense to Run WordPress in Docker? (Lukas Mauser) - Looking at different options to run  WordPress? Check out this blog post. All the code to do it in a docker container is shared and also details the reasons why you should do it or not

Programming

• Building a Full-Stack App with React and Aspire: A Step-by-Step Guide - .NET Blog (Sayed Ibrahim Hashimi) - A great tutorial that goes into all the details, mixing .NET, React, and containers. It explains how to use Aspire to wrap this all in a simple solution

• Aspire 9.4 is here with a CLI and interactive dashboard features - .NET Blog (Maddy Montaquila) - You release of .NET aspire with many features (I love the externalURL), the great CLI is finally GA, and unfortunately it happens (the release) while David Fowler was in PTO 😉🤣

Podcasts

• Stop fixing wellness symptoms, fix the work (Modern Mentor) - Important wisdom, it's simple and impactful

• Is AI ready for DevOps? (Agentic DevOps) - Great new podcast about AI for DevOps, and it starts by asking if it's ready... What do you think? ;)

• My Favorite AI Terminal, Prompt Injection, and More (Agentic DevOps) - Interesting conversation about terminals and what it can become when AI is integrated. Nice evolution of Warp.

Miscellaneous

• Docker Unveils the Future of Agentic Apps at WeAreDevelopers (Michael Irwin) - Cool ideas and services that are now integrated with docker compose I'll have to try that

Reading Notes #655

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

Open Source

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

Programming

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

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

Cloud

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

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

AI

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

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

If you have interesting content, share it!

~frank

Reading Notes #577

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

• Enabling developer collaboration with Radius - Microsoft Open Source Blog (Will Tsai, Aaron Crawfis) - Oh wow! This new cloud native CNCF project looks amazing!

• Notary Project - the signing technology behind AKS Image Integrity (Toddy Mladenov) - Great oss project to help with security when working in CNCF solution.

Programming

• Markdown: How to Add Images to README.md on GitHub (Chris Pietschmann) - Where are you putting your images?

• A better debugger for PowerShell Universal by using VS Code and PowerShell Editor Services - Awesome! Debugging is soooo important happy to see the too long getting better.

• When a form is actually... oh it's a form (Jon Hilton) - Because simple is beautiful! Nice way to do the same in Blazor btw.

• Updates to Docker images in .NET 8: Exploring the .NET 8 preview - Part 10 (Andrew Lock) - Amazing light production containers for our .NET applications. This post share a few things to be careful of when building our final containers.

Low Code

• Quickly Add Multiple Rows to Excel Table In Power Automate (Matthew Devaney) - Its so fast! And on top of it its simple. These are the kind of solution we all like!

• Fastest Way To Read Large Excel Table In Power Automate (Matthew Devaney) - Now the read version of interacting lightening fast with Excel.Brilliant !

~Frank

Reading Notes #521

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

• No-code Automation for Azure Boards Using Azure Logic Apps, Power Automate, and Power Virtual Agents (Jason Hand) - You have so many options to watch this workshop. The bite-sized videos will teach you how to be more efficient with Azure DevOps without any code.

• Extending Docker’s Integration with containerd (Djordje Lukic) - Docker team shares the roadmap for their adoption of containers as basic components in image management. Learn more about it and how you can try it today in this post.

• How to Change an Azure Function Written in .NET from In-Process to Isolated Process (Nick) - Great post that from scratch create a regular Azure Function into Visual Studio publish it and then quickly migrate it to an Isolated one.

Programming

• .NET MAUI Cloud Skills Challenge - Learn .NET MAUI, Get Stickers! (Matt Soucoup) - This is a really interesting cloud challenge. With .NET MAUI I could build apps for mobile and desktop...

• 3 ways every company can get started with an open-source software strategy (Ashley Wolf) - Open source can be so much and it is normal to not understand all of it at the beginning. This nice post answer a few questions for enterprises who would like to start.

• Announcing built-in container support for the .NET SDK (Chet Husk) - After the .NET included in Ubuntu a few days ago, now simplistic containerization has so many great new tools and opportunities.

• Getting Started With TypeScript and React (Ifeoma Imoh) - This is a nice tutorial to get started.

• How I made an ai to watch my cats poop for me (Estefannie) - Great project using Raspberry Pi, node, C, and a lot of creativity. The video is a must, it provides a better overview of the journey, and the story is gold.

• Merging two GitHub repositories without losing commit history (Schalk Neethling) - Nice work documenting this flow. Keeping as much information as possible is often very important. A post to bookmark for later use.

• No more Dockerfiles with the help of .NET CLI (Christian Nagel) - Interesting stuff coming up in .NET 7 that we can experiment today.

Podcasts

• 588: How to Help Your Manager Shine, with David Gergen (Coaching for Leaders) - Interesting discussion about how to help your manager with a very special guest. David Gergen is the author of Hearts Touched With Fire, and talks about the importance of the relationship between a manager and a direct report.

Miscellaneous

• How to Colorize Pictures With OpenVINO™ on Ubuntu Containers (Valentin Viennot) - This very complete post shares the realization of a kubernetes and docker project with all the required details so we could give it a try.

~frank