Reading Notes #695

A mix of thoughtful perspectives and practical updates this week. From evolving AI tools and model selection guidance to changes in developer workflows and tooling, there’s plenty to reflect on. Add in insights on streaming and a strong push toward more secure environments, and you get a well-rounded set of reads worth your time.

Suggestion of the week

• Why MicroVMs: The Architecture Behind Docker Sandboxes (Srini Sekaran, Craig Gumbley) - Yes! Officially launched, so we can finally include some security in our processes!

AI

• Introducing Claude Design by Anthropic Labs - Looking forward to try the new interface that that seams to allow a more artistic interaction.

• The importance of people who care – Rachel Andrew - Interesting post about people who care in the world, where doing a lot of stuff fast is seen as a goal

• Changes to GitHub Copilot Individual plans (Joe Binder) - Big changes for Copilot that will probably affect your workflow. This post shares the details and reasons of this disturbance; it's all for a good reason

• GPT-5 vs GPT-4.1 - choosing the right model for your use case - Microsoft Foundry - Yes, this post is about two specific models in Foundry, but it's still true that it can definitely help to understand when to pick one model over the other in general

Programming

• It's Time for a Visual Studio Upgrade - This post does a comparison between the old and the new versions of the Visual Studio IDE and shares details about the most impactful changes.
  
  

Miscellaneous

• Livestreaming Before It Was Cool (Golnaz) - Curious to learn more about the streaming options from the different platforms to the tools, and the pro and cons of each? This post is for you, and on top of that, you get the Microsoft story.

~frank

Reading Notes #488

Good Monday, time to share my reading notes. Those are a curated list of all the articles, blog posts, podcast episodes, and books that catch my interest during the week and that I found interesting. It's a mix of the actuality and what I consumed.

You think you may have interesting content, share it!

Programming

• .NET6 Razor Pages CRUD Operations With Entity Framework Core (Naveen Bommidi) - A great post to get started with EF with Razor, everything is well explained and clear.

• Introducing new Git features to Visual Studio 2022 (Taysser Gherfal) - Wow, many impressive features are available straight from Visual Studio.

• Polymorphism in C# (Code Maze) - Oh nice, it's been a while since I read such a good post about this concept.

• Codeless != Designless (Steve Fenton) - Of course, always design/ plan/ at east napkin drawing before starting putting the pieces together.

• Using Minimal APIs in ASP.NET Core Razor Pages (Mike Brind) - Okay, okay, I think I could get used to this new minimal approach thing. I will need to code a little by myself first, but thanks to this post I have a good idea.

Books

Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most 

(Greg McKeown) 

- Nice continuity of his first book Essentialism. I appreciated this reading. Many simple and easy ideas that we can start to apply. If interested in this topic Greg also has a podcast: What's Essential.

~Frank

Reading Notes #61

 
[This week, the image is provided by Marc Gagné @marc_gagne, a Windows Azure Ninja.]
Cloud

• Amazon AWS is the Cloud (for now anyway) (Ofir Nachmani) - It is true, Amazon web services is a strong well establish cloud provider. And big players like Google and Microsoft will force it to always improve the quality of their services.
• Cloud Fundamentals Video Series (Alfred Thompson) – Wow! 25 good reasons to bookmarks this posts... if you want to get started on Windows Azure.
• Importing and Exporting Virtual Machine Settings (Michael Washam) - A post to bookmark. Very useful cmdlets that will save you a lot of trouble... and money.
• To TechDays 2012 and Beyond (Jonathan Rozenblit) - A lot of possibilities to learn more great Windows technology are coming, here is a sneak peak.  
• Connecting to the Cloud–Part 1 (Tyler Doerksen) - Nice post that explains at high level two ways to connect the cloud with a on premise solution: data synchronisation and application layer.
• Connecting to the Cloud-Part 2 (Tyler Doerksen) - In this second post learn more about two other way to connect Azure with both on-premise or another cloud provider (like amazon or Rackspace): machine to machine and network layer.
• How does Hyper-V compare to VMware? - The main idea is this: Windows Azure is no longer running to catch up there has leapfrogged the competition. Download the entire whitepaper.
• Episode 89 - Windows Azure Mobile Services (Channel 9) – Great demo in this episode about the brand new Windows Azure Mobile Services.

Programming

• Custom jQuery UI Draggable bounds (Name) - Great demo of JQueryUI Draggable. I will surely you this in a future project.
• What is GOOD software design? - I would add that a good design is not always easy to do.
• Traffic Technique 6: Backlinks (Darren Rowse) - Today's website/blog are prettier than in the past with all the bling-bling. So the to increase the traffic you need to play in subtlety. A good series to learn more on those basic rules.
• The best way to manage Ruby applications - Everything is in the title, and now it's even better...
• ASP.NET MVC DisplayTemplate and EditorTemplates for Entity Framework DbGeography Spatial Types (Scott Hanselman) - Really nice sample that leverage the axp.net mvc scafolding complex type with EF. And nice trick with NuGet when compiling.
• WebMatrix 2 is Released! + New Windows Azure Features (blogs.msdn.com) - WebMatrix is a great tool now with this new version it's even belter! From Windows Azure Portal you can download your web site edit it and republish it in few clicks... that only one thing among the things WebMatrix can do to simplify our lives.
• The Hanselminutes Podcast - Very nice, I cannot wait to try the update database feature with the code first...
• EAI Bridge Message Sender and Queue Message Receive tool - Great tool! It will be very useful for demo, debug and for quickly see some under the hood code.

Miscellaneous

• The Right Way to Speak to Yourself (Peter) - Nice reading that can to be more efficient with yourself.
• Why Remote Workers Are More (Yes, More) Engaged (Scott Edinger) - Nice post that explain how today with all the alternative we have to communicate that the distance is not a factor anymore. In business at least...
• Cost Comparison: Amazon Glacier vs S3 - Quick post that shows the advantage of going with AWS Glacier from S3 from a money perspective.
• Unofficial Amazon AWS Glacier Calculator - Nice initiative. A calculator is always welcome.
• The price of textbooks is ramping up far faster than inflation, and with good reason, say publishers (Danielle Kurtzleben) - Interesting topic. I thought that with all the options available today all students can found their way to get all theirs books at a price they are willing to pay.
• Shifting Blog From WordPress to Bloggers (gotchacode.blogspot.in) - I did the same choice for mostly the same reason few years ago. But now that you can host Wordpress in Windows Azure... maybe ;)
• The Dew Review – Intel Next Generation Ultrabook™ with Windows 8: Initial Impressions - Review of a dream machine... thin, fast and light.
• Pro tips: 20 steps to the perfect website layout - Nice tips that should be considered not only for website but for any user interface.
• Cloud Computing: Start with the problem (BuckWoody) - Interesting exercise to do... and you WILL be surprise.