Reading Notes #582

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!

Fridge with wings, realistic rendering 

 

Cloud

• How to Write NoSQL Queries with Copilot for Azure Cosmos DB (Lee Stott) - Copilot is such a time saver.For everyone who jump from projects to projects using different languages and data sources.

• Creating Zip Files in Azure Blob Storage (Mark Heath) - Great quick post with code snippets AND a solution for some gotcha.

Data

• Getting Started with GitHub Copilot in Azure Data Studio (Japhlet Nwamu) - Data studio is the perfect tools to work your queries from any platform. With the Copilot extension it's just became even easier and faster.

Programming

• 5 Awesome C# Refactoring Tips (Milan Jovanović) - Refactoring is an important skill to have. Most code grow by patches and at some point it needs some help.

• Hot Reload for C# Dev Kit (Mark Downie) - Wow! Things are evolving so fast, we pass from syntax highlighting from hot reload so fast!

• How to Toggle Between Light and Dark Modes in Blazor (Jefferson S. Motta ) - Nice tutorial that explains how to have that great dark mode.

• Adding environment vars to .NET Aspire services (Tim Heuer) - Nice post to continue to learn about Aspire.Net.

• Validating JSON Against a Schema (Paul Michaels) - For some reason, I was expecting something more complicated.Its simple! Love it.

~Frank

Reading Notes #581

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

• ASP.NET Core Basics: Essential NuGet Packages (Part 1) (Assis Zang) - Great idea this post! Those five packages are definitely very useful, and I like that they are not just mentioned but also explained and implemented in the demo solution.

Programming

• Announcing .NET 8 - .NET Blog (Gaurav Seth) - Tons of update with as many videos. Enough to satiate everyone.

• Entity Framework Core 8 (EF8) is available today - .NET Blog (Arthur Vickers) - Of course the Entity framework update to follow .NET of course.

• Get ready for .NET Conf, Microsoft Ignite, and GitHub Universe (Matt Graven) - So many events and news packed in a single month. This post helps to do an overview so help us make an ideas.

• Connect to localhost from inside a dev container (Jim Bennett) - Interesting... I thought Dapr was the easiest but the solution presented in this post could be a easier workaround, at lease while coding/ testing it.

• Fake It Til You Make It...To Production - .NET Blog (Martin Taillefer) - This post shows 3 pretty useful fake/mock included in .NET 8: Logger, Clock, and Metric.

• Building debugging context for Copilot Chat (Mark Downie) - Cool extension for Visual Studio.

• Announcing .NET Chiseled Containers - .NET Blog (Richard Lander) - The new image are available.Yay

Databases

• Importing Flat Files into Azure SQL DB (Josephine Bush) - Omg! That makes Azure Data Studio the easiest and low friction tool to import data from a flat file into a Ms SQL database

Miscellaneous

• OpenAI drama is over. (Kim Menikh) - Well.I was curious.I didn't follow all of it.

~Frank

Reading Notes #570

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

• .NET MAUI Summer Coding Adventure (Bruno Capuano) - Nice a series to be quickly but surely started with MAUI.

• Beyond the Basics: .NET MAUI Extension in Visual Studio Code (Leomaris Reyes) - That pretty interesting! Looking forward to test that on my Linux machine. Instead of booting my VM I could use this for a quit fix or test/demo.

Open Source

• Windows Terminal on Open at Microsoft (Christopher Nguyen) - Like many a love the new windows terminal, and learning more about the making of and the challenges they encounter was really interesting. Learn more about all that series of video in this post.

• slash7 with Amy Hoy » Blog Archive » Help Vampires: A Spotter’s Guide (Amy Hoy) - Beware of those vampires! Interning read on a unfortunately real and serious topic. Useful post.

Low Code

• Power Automate Standards: Flow Architecture & Design Tips ( Matthew Devaney) - Very useful post that lost so many best practices to make sure our flow are secure, performant and easy to read.

• Announcing the integration of Power Automate telemetry data with Azure Application Insights (Rakesh Krishnan) - This is so useful! And once more the timing was excellent! Collecting information to a central place and from there take action.Brilliant!

• Get Started with Copilot on Microsoft Power Apps (Rachel Irabor) - Here are the steps to get Copilot in your environment. Very cool.

Miscellaneous

• Unleash Your Entrepreneurial Spirit at Hack Together: Power Platform AI Global Hack! (Lee Stott) - Learn more about this cool opportunity.

• OpenAI tokens and limits - Surface Duo Blog (Craig Dunn) - Great post that uses a real application to explains how we can get the best without going over the limits.

~Enjoy!

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

Reading Notes #562

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

• Getting Started with API Management: A Beginner's Guide for Developers (Neha Hafeez) - This a very interesting post that explains why and how those tools are useful for us.

Programming

• Top 14 Game-Changing Websites Every Developer Should Know About 🚀🔥 (Arjun Vijay Prakash) - An interesting list indeed of website-tool.

• Comparing MVVM and MVUX for building a Multi-Platform Application using .NET, C# and XAML with the Uno Platform (Nick) - A detailed comparison of those two models with Uno platform.

Open Source

• How to write a perfect README for your GitHub project (Marc Seitz) - This is a nice and simple guide to make sure your readme help visitor to land well on your project.

• 5 Ways OpenTelemetry Can Reduce Costs (Morgan McLean) - Great tools from the open-source community to help save money.

• Open at Microsoft – OmniBOR (Aeva Black) - Did you know there is a tool that can help you see the security flaws or your dependencies? Learn more about this project in this post and video.

• Dapr (AugustaUd) - Learn more about Dapr with this series of 3 videos that each contains short demos. With a very active community, there is no dough that OSS project is healthy.

Low Code

• How to get ready for Microsoft 365 Copilot (Zachary Cavanell) - Learn more about the best practices and how to prepare your enterprise.

Miscellaneous

• Building Your DevRel Resume with Open Source (BekahHW) - A different journey for each of us for the best devRel teams.

• Accountability for Effective Teams (Jessica Joy Kerr) - Interesting thoughts. Measuring and staying trustful is so hard.

~Frank

Reading Notes #561

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!

The suggestion of the week

• How to use GitHub Copilot: Prompts, tips, and use cases (Rizel Scarlett, Michelle Mannering) - A very helpful post that helps thinking how to communicate efficiently with Copilot, by breaking down our instructions and being more specific.

Programming

• Step-by-Step Guide: Testing HTTP Endpoints in Visual Studio 2022 Using Endpoints Explorer (Andy) - So many new API related features these days in VS. This post shows you some of them.
• Learn how to mock your HttpClient in C# now with 2 simple methods (Henrique) - Nice post that explains how to Mock these HTtp calls... Because unit tests are important and APIs are everywhere it's a must!
• Docker Desktop and Windows – what’s the best option for you? (Vinicius Apolinario) - I didn't know there was such a difference between those two! I mean I get it but I'm still surprised by the differences. This is a very instructive post.
• Azure App Configuration and .NET API: a smart and secure way to manage configurations (Davide Bellone) - This is a nice tutorial that shares best security practices.
• Introducing the New T4 Command-Line Tool for .NET - .NET Blog (Mike Corsaro) - Feels like ages since I used T4... Happy to see that this powerful tool is still around and even more, updating.

Low Code

• Exploring the Power of AI Builder: Empowering Students and Educators (Lee Stott) - Why should you be interested in AI Builder and where to find it. This is what that post is about.
• Integrating Microsoft Sentinel and Power Platform to better monitor and protect your low-code solutions (Simran Kaur) - Currently only available in preview this solution will definitely help enterprises to manage their Power Platform more securely.

Miscellaneous

• Introducing the Microsoft Store channel on Discord - #ifdef Windows (Sergio Pedri) - Nice news. There is now a place to talk about the store.
• 9 Steps to Master the Keyboard and Become an Ultra Efficient Software Developer (Michael Shpilt) - Short post that gives a few ideas on how to use more efficiently your keyboard and enjoy it.

~Frank

Reading Notes #560

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!

The suggestion of the week

• GitHub Copilot Fundamentals Learning Path - Your New AI programming friend! (Bruno Capuano ) - A free series of lessons to get to know how to use Copilot ( an AI partner application).

Cloud

• Azure Communication Services June 2023 Feature Updates (Daysha Carter) - A series of pretty cool new features from Azure communication services.

Low Code

• Power Apps Dataverse Offline Mode For Canvas Apps (Matthew Devaney) - This is a nice step-by-step tutorial that guides us to make our Apps offline capable.

Programming

• Should We Use Records With EF Core as Model Classes? (Code Maze ) - Fantastic post that not only explains how Records could be used with EF but also explains why they aren't always the best choice.

• Best Practices for Building Secure Micro Frontends (Grgur Grisogono) - Nice short post about security best practices.Because it's important everywhere and its the job of everyone.

• How to Start an Open Source Project with VS Code (Bekah) - This is a nice and simple tutorial that overviews how to get started.

Miscellaneous

• Microsoft’s Satya Nadella Is Betting Everything on AI (Steven Levy) - A great interview with a focus on AI technology.

~Frank

Reading Notes #558

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 have interesting content, share it!

Databases

• Introducing GitHub Copilot for Azure Data Studio (Drew Skwiers-Koballa) - That's such a great idea! I spend less time writing queries than I used to. This will help save time remembering the schema and other quick things.

Programming

• Introducing Dev Home (Kayla Cinnamon) - Very excited by the potential of DevHome.It was announced at Build and it's looking great already. As Kayla talked about it I installed it from the store. A project to watch for sure.

• 8 Free and Open Source Blazor UI Libraries (Claudio Bernasconi ) - Wow! I didn't know so many free and great libraries existed!

• Announcing an update for .NET Upgrade Assistant with a new CLI tool! - .NET Blog (Olia Gavrysh) - An interesting tool indeed! Would be if we could do the same to upgrade the packages.

LowCode

• Create a Microsoft Power App for your ASP.NET Core Web API - Visual Studio Blog (Julia Kasper) - This is an excellent tutorial to build a mobile app without code and using an API as a source of data.

• What’s new: Power Apps May 2023 Feature Update (Clay Wesener) - That month was packed! I need to try these new features.

• Transforming Excel into Power Apps: A Game-Changer with Microsoft's CoPilot AI (Shane Young) - Hopefully this will helps a few people to move out of Excel. Because yes there is a time for that.

• More power with pipelines in Power Platform (Anthony Sheehi,) - Next deployment new feature in the Pipeline. There are also a few video references to learn more about it.

• Power Apps is empowering coders with next-generation AI capabilities (Ryan Cunningham,) - So many mind-blowing new capabilities! Copilot's presence will really change the game in terms of productivity.

Podcasts

• Remote Versus Local Development with Mike Brevoort (Screaming in the Cloud) - Remote or not remote, that's the question... right? Interesting discussion around a polarized question.
• DevPod for Dev Containers (DevOps and Docker Talk) - I heard of DevPod before, but it wasn't stable enough for my occasional usage. But now it looks just perfect! Looking forward to trying it!
• Blazor Web Assembly by Example with Toi B. Wright (Hanselminutes with Scott Hanselman) - You can hear the passion in her voice! I'm sure the book is excellent, plus I love the idea of picking only the part that you want/ need and not missing anything.

~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 #551

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

• Microsoft Cost Management updates—March 2023 (Michael Flanakin) - Because we all need it and or worry about it. Learn the new features that are available for you in the cost management.

• Azure Spring Clean: Compliance for Bicep with Checkov (Sam Cogan) - That's a pretty cool tool to add to our box. I need to get that onto my pipeline...like now!

• Logic Apps Aviators Newsletter - April 2023 (Kent Weare) - One of my friends shared this with me, and I loved it! It's packed with information about new features, and upcoming events...

• This Month in Azure Container Apps: March/April 2023 (Anthony Chu) - I caught the live stream by pure chance and they pass through all the news contained in the post. Very happy to see Azure Container App growing so quickly!

Programming

• Run dotnet core projects without opening visual studio (Karthik Chintala) - Yes, it is possible and even fun! I code in VSCode 80% of the time.

• How to Do an Inner Join in LINQ? (Code Maze) - Nice post to get started about relations between tables type of joints and of course how to do it with LINQ.

• Running .NET Console Apps in Azure Container Instances (Mark Heath) - A neat way to run an application in the cloud. Have a special look at how the secret config is managed to avoid pushing them into the code repository.

Podcast

• Let's Chat About AI (Ep 76) (Community Pulse) - Extremely interesting episode about AI. Should we be worried, what would be the impact? So many great questions asked.
• 54. Cloud native and the Container landscape on Azure - with Daniel Paulus (Betatalks the podcast) - A little bit about the container's history, its present, and potential future.
• Chris Sainty: Blazor in Action - Episode 238 (Azure DevOps Podcast) - I already like Blazor, but I think you will also after listening to this episode.
• Down A Rabbit Hole with Seth Godin (A Bit of Optimism) - Great episode is about many different little things to make life better. You can feel the complicity between Seth and Simon.
• Windows WSL and Containers in 2023 (DevOps and Docker Talk) - WSL what it is and why people say it's so useful. All that and more in this episode.

Miscellaneous

• Technical Writing 101: Working with SMEs - Big Nerd Ranch (Cole Henry) - effectively.

~frank

Reading Notes #550

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

• Improving multi-platform container support - .NET Blog (Richard Lander) - I really enjoy those optimization posts. The explanation of why things as been decided, and how it was made. This is a very interesting post.

• Creating a ToolTip Component in Blazor (Steven Giesel) - What a nice little gem! This is a fantastic tutorial that explains how to create custom components.

• GitHub Copilot for the Command Line is amazing! (Christian Heilmann) - Wow! Those explanations are a huuuuge plus. Not only Copilote helps us at that time but then it also helps us to learn and improve. I like that. Looking forward to use it.

Miscellaneous

• Managing Workflows with the GitHub Actions Extension for VS Code (Anthony Bartolo) - This is a great extension! With highlights and all definitely useful when trying to understand a workflow.

~Frank

Reading Notes #519

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!

Suggestion of the week

• .NET 6 is now in Ubuntu 22.04 (Richard Lander) - So many amazing news in this post, all .NET dev must read it.

Cloud

• Announcing Microsoft Dev Box Preview (Anthony Cangialosi) - That seems very interesting! Developers don't need powerful machines all the time.

• Deploying Logic App Standard resource through DevOps pipeline (Shree Divya) - This is an excellent example of deployment, that includes all requirements.

Programming

• Thoughts on Copilot (Dave Rupert) - Interesting opinion about copilot after a few months.

~Frank

Reading Notes #510

Good Monday, Already time to share new reading notes. Here is a list of all the articles, blog posts, and podcast episodes that catch my interest during the week. 

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

The Suggestion of the week

• Incremental ASP.NET to ASP.NET Core Migration (Taylor Southwick) - Migrating an application is not an easy task. This post shares the new GitHub repos that the .NET team puts in place with guidance, pattern, and toolings to help us. Really interesting, bookmark that one for future references.

Cloud

• Azure Logic Apps team is interested in your feedback – BizTalk Business Rules Engine Survey (Sandro Pereira) - Integration technologies are so useful, help the teams to plan their priorities.

Programming

• Introducing Project Volterra (Mark Downie) - This little beast really caught my attention during Build. I'm impatient to learn more about it.

• GitHub Copilot AI Programming Assistant to Hit GA This Summer (Rabia Noureen) - The demos are really impressive, and the comments are all positive. I'll try it for sure!

Data

• Introducing the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform | Azure Blog and Updates | Microsoft Azure (Rohan Kumar) - This post is an excellent summary of the data and AI news from Microsoft Build.

Miscellaneous

• Microsoft's metaverse rival Meta chooses Azure as strategic cloud provider (Arif Bacchus) - Meta, a new world to explore...

~frank