Reading Notes #696

This week's collection highlights the rapid evolution of AI agents, exploring their asynchronous capabilities, deployment journeys, and their impact on DevOps and video editing. On the programming front, we explore new Git features and API versioning with OpenAPI in .NET 10. We also dive into some fascinating podcast discussions ranging from the GUI vs. CLI debate to generational perspectives in the workplace. 

Enjoy the reading!

AI

• All your agents are going async — /dev/knill (Zak Knill) - An interesting solution is explained in this post to ease our communication with AI agents.

• AI Didn't Kill Video Editing (It Made Some Nice Motion Graphics) (Golnaz) - It's so easy and convenient to think that AI is doing the work and could replace humans if you don't know what really is the tasks.

• From Local to Production: The Complete Developer Journey for Building, Composing, and Deploying AI Agents | Microsoft Foundry Blog (Takuto , jeffhollan) - Finally reaching v1! Hurray! And a new name for a VS Code extension.

Programming

• New features in Git 2.54: easier rebasing, hooks, and statistics (Andrew Lock) - A nice post that explains how to rebase correctly with the new features included in the last release

• Combining API versioning with OpenAPI in .NET 10 applications - .NET Blog (Sander ten Brinke) - There is a lot in this post. Close to the end, she explains how to configure SwaggerUI or Scalar to visualize your API. Nice, since now API doc is generated by OpenAPI.

Podcast

• 510: AI Agents: Claws, Copilot, GUI vs CLI Debate (Merge Conflict) - In this episode, James is put in the spotlight and needs to talk about this phone situation. Honestly, interesting discussion and they finally end up talking about the AI agent, you know, CLI versus UI.

• The Real Reason Young People Don't Have 'The Hunger' for Work (And What Leaders Need to Hear) with Generations Expert Dr. Eliza Filby (A Bit of Optimism) - I'm sure, like me, you heard about "the Gen Z are doing this" or "the millennials are like that". It's interesting to go deeper than this and understand the reason why the Boomer, the Gen X, all those generation they do what they do, and also understand the phase, the years, like why all those generations seems to get closer and closer.

• Can AI Agents Safely Become DevOps Engineers? (Agentic DevOps : AI + Infra Ops) - I read and consume a lot of AI as a developer, it's interesting to see the DevOps side waking up and are building AI agents that focus on DevOps.

• Chet Husk: .NET Tooling - Episode 399 (AI DevOps Podcast) - I never thought about that competition, the human versus the machine, related to the consumption of the output of a CLI. This was a very interesting episode about the performance and the priorities.

~frank

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 #682

This week’s Reading Notes bring together programming tips, AI experiments, and cloud updates. Learn to build Python CLI tools. Untangle GitHub issue workflows. Try running AI models locally. Catch up on Azure news. And explore ideas around privacy and cloud architecture. Short reads. Useful takeaways.

Programming

• Make a CLI command from your Python package (vast cow) - Nice way to create a CLI. It looks very simple.

• Programmatically Setting GitHub Issue Types (Den Delimarsky) - This post shares a cool workaround to work with types in GitHub

• 5 Minimal API myths and the real truth (David Grace) - Nice post, I really like minimal API, and it's true that people are asking themselves a lot of questions. Here you will find many great answers.

• How does Aspire expose resource connection info to the Azure Functions runtime? (Safia Abdalla) - This post explains how to connect Azure resources.

AI

• Private AI Coding: OpenCode + Model Runner - A very interesting post about how we can use local models in open code, looking forward to trying that.

• All the Azure news you don’t want to miss from Microsoft Build 2025 | Microsoft Azure Blog (Alysa Taylor) - Well, it's all in the title, and yes, this post is packed with news because Build is one of the biggest Microsoft events.

Miscellaneous

• Who Decides Who Doesn’t Deserve Privacy? (Troy Hunt) - A very interesting post about privacy. We should also think about all that when designing systems and applications.

~frank

Reading Notes #639

Welcome to Reading Notes #639, a curated selection of intriguing articles across programming, AI, cloud computing, and more. Dive into new productivity features in Visual Studio, the latest front-end development trends, .NET AI evaluations, and essential learning techniques. 

Grab your coffee and enjoy the read!

Cloud

• Some observations while writing my first Azure Function (Tim Deschryver) - I really like those types of posts where we follow the journey of the author going through learning or completing tasks.

Programming

• Great new productivity features in Visual Studio - Visual Studio Blog (Mads Kristensen) - Wow, there are so many cool features! I personally love the new line wrap and horizontal scroll bar—little details that make a big difference.

• Is this the next step in the evolution of front end dev? (Salma Alam-Naylor) - I never used those frameworks, but I'm curious now and will have to try.

• What are Custom Integrations in .NET Aspire? (Kalle Marjokorpi) - This second post in a series shows how to configure the identity server name Curity. It's implemented in a .NET Aspire solution and looks very well structured.

AI

• Unlock new possibilities for AI Evaluations for .NET - .NET Blog (Wendy Breiding (SHE/HER)) - That looks like a cool plugin for Azure DevOps Pipeline

• Announcing new models, customization tools, and enterprise agent upgrades in Azure AI Foundry | Microsoft Azure Blog (Asha Sharma) - So many models and plenty of new features, that's a great update!

Miscellaneous

• 5 Learning techniques you should know (Marco Siccardi) - Learning how to learn is a concept that in underrated. This post shares 5 accessible tips with big impact.

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