Reading Notes #352

Suggestion of the week

• Node.js Everywhere with Environment Variables! (John Papa) - Wow! This awesome post brings you from zero to hero with steps of a extreme clarity. If you are interested in Node.js it a must.

Cloud

• Azure Functions Contact Form HTTP Trigger (Tom Faltesek) - A really interesting and useful utilization of an Azure Function to boost an existing solution (in this case a blog)

• Azure Functions Dependency Injection with Autofac (Jason Roberts) - An interesting tutorial that explains how to improve our functions.

Programming

• Best practices for building Kubernetes Operators and stateful apps | Google Cloud Blog (Palak Bhatia, Jun Xiang Tee) - Great post that lists the best practices to for our kubernetes projects

• Building a Web App With Yeoman (Oscar Salas) - A very complete and detailed post about yeoman. What it is, what it can do, how to install it. The only thing missing could be one final example to get started.

• Testing a WebAPI in .NET Core with Integration tests (Dominique St-Amand) - This post explains a good and simple way to build tests.

Data

• Azure Data Architecture Guide (Ed Price) - Nice new book, based on the best practices of the AzureCAT... Yeah. We all need this book!

Miscellaneous

• Updating my ASP.NET Website from .NET 2.2 Core Preview 2 to .NET 2.2 Core Preview 3 (Scott Hanselman) - Really cool "live" post where we follow Scott updating his website.

Books

• The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business (Josh Kaufman) - An interesting book that helps to get in the mood, get prepared, and maybe for some whom weren't sure yet about the idea of a personal MBA (compare to the regular one)... Help to start planning and get moving. This book isn't an one book miracle MBA certification, but most likely a really good way to understand the journey the reader is about to start. The complete list of books to achieve this adventure is constantly updated and is available online. 

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Reading Notes #338

Suggestion of the week

• Why Code Reviews Hurt Your Code Quality and Team Productivity - Simple Programmer (Lou Bichard) - A very interesting story that told us a huge change that a team implemented.

Cloud

• AWS Step Function Serverless Applications (Gerald Bauer) - What a great tutorial! Very interesting all the plumbing and toolings is explained in this Hello word AWS Lambda.

Programming

• 5 Essential Tips for Service Worker Development (Kezz Bracey) - Nice top 5.
  
• Containers - What Are They Good For? Running Our CI Builds (Jimmy Bogard) - Cool post that helps to avoid a lot of errors.
  
• Fritz and Friends present The Virtual Software Architecture Workshop (JeffFritz) - Wow, a very impressive achievement done by the man with a million hats Jeff. I'm still not done watching all that content. However, I can assure you that every bit is delicious.
  
• PowerApps Newbie – getting started (Jen Kuntz) - Nice first post of a promising series ;) To all the #powerusers of planet earth... you want to use PowerApps... so this is your chance to get started!

Miscellaneous

• The Ability Hacks: The story of two hackathon teams embracing the transformative power of technology (Jenny Lay-Flurrie) - An inspiring post that I'm sure is just a glimpse of what we will find in this book. This book definitely found his place at the top of my to-read stack.
  
• Chocolatey Package Manager and How I Use It (David Giard) - Chocolatey is a must tool to have to any developers or power user on Windows.
  
• Markdown View — Markdown Viewer for the Web, Windows 10, Android and everything (Alan Mendelevich) - It looks pretty cool and simple. I'll install it for sure.

Reading Notes #332

Cloud

• Generate the OpenAPI definition for Azure Function Apps (Abhijit Jana) - Learn how to save time and get your API definition generated for you.

Programming

• ASP.NET Core Web API Best Practices (Marinko Spasojevic) - Great post. The perfect post to refresh our memories or learn the best practices.
• Adopting Kubernetes step by step (santiago arias) - Perfect post to get started with Kubernetes even more if you know React.
• Clean out your Docker images, containers and volumes with single commands (ryanwhocodes) - Useful post that gives a few examples of how to use the Docker commands.
• How to use Visual Studio Code (Flavio Copes) - Another post that confirms that VSCode definitely worth our attention. This post gives examples, and shows deferent extensions... If you don't know vscode... Yep start here.
• Controllers as action filters in ASP.NET Core MVC ( Filip W) - Same good old tricks, but with a fresh twist.
• C# Enum: Definition, Examples, Best Practices, and Pitfalls (Justin Boyer) - Nice post that ENUMerate the best practices and pitfalls.
• Preview of Visual Studio Kubernetes Tools (Visual Studio Blog) - Exciting news! This post introduces a new tool... I Think this is my cue to do more kubernetes!

Books

• [Invisible Ink: A Practical Guide to Building Stories That Resonate] (Brian McDonald)  - We all know it, a story is the element that will give that little plus to our post, and video. This short book explains how to really make an effective one talking about the not visual things...
  Really interesting.
  
  ISBN 0984178627 (ISBN13: 9780984178629)

Reading Notes #329

Suggestion of the week

• Azure Logic Apps, tips from the real world (gord) - Nice post that explains a real-life situation fixed using Logic Apps.

Cloud

• Create Your First ‘No Code’ Logic App in Microsoft Azure (Timothy Warner ) - Another great example of how easy and useful logic apps are.
• How I choose which services to use in Azure (Barry Luijbregts, Scott Hanselman) - Oh wow! Very interesting video, presenting a nice and structured way to pick our cloud services.
• Import Azure Portal Dashboard (Abhijit Jana) - Nah! I didn't know you could import/ export... That's cool.
• Quick Navigation using Azure Portal Keyboard Shortcuts (Abhijit Jana) - Nice reminder... I'll definitely have a new look at them and use them more.
• Serverless with AWS Lambda and Scala (Rob Hinds) - Interesting Tutorial to get started with the AWS Lamba Amazon Serveurless offer}
• Exploring Azure App Service – Web Apps and SQL Azure (Andrew B Hall) - Quick and simple tutorial about Azure webapp with EF and a database.

Programming

• Installing PowerShell Core on a Raspberry Pi (powered by .NET Core) (Scott Hanselman) - It looks like the Raspberry Pi is now "more accepted" into the familly. It's time to try docker and PowerShell again.
• Building, Running, and Testing .NET Core and ASP.NET Core 2.1 in Docker on a Raspberry Pi (ARM32) (Scott Hanselman) - Fantastic! Now that .Net Core is So easily portable on Pi, I can start building my summer project with a familiar language.
• Introducing Play with Kubernetes (Mano Marks) - Bookmark this post, next rainy day ( or before) let's learn some new stuff.
• Do you need to speak English to Code? Noor - An Arabic Programming Language (Ahmed Abdalla, Scott Hanselman) - Very interesting question, and even more interesting the solution Ahmed built! Great episode.

Books

Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World (Gary Vaynerchuk) - Great book, for all of us you are trying to tell something, pass a message on the social media... This is a must.

Miscellaneous

• Why invest in backend developers when your customers don’t care? (Forrest Brazeal) - Interesting post about serverless and architecture patterns.
• Entreleadership #263: Thriving in the Age of Overload (Juliet Funt, Ken Colman) - I love that idea of Whitespace. Great episode very inspiring.

Reading Notes #316

Suggestion of the week

• Why should I care about Kubernetes, Docker, and Container Orchestration? (Scott Hanselman) - I really like how this post brings why containers are great.

Cloud

• Azure ARM Template Deployment with Duo Authentication (Eric Leonard) - Nice quick tutorial using the best practices with Azure resources manager.
• Gain better control over your Microsoft Azure costs and governance using Overcast (Stephane Lapointe) - This new product definitely looks interesting.

Programming

• 3 key insights that make D3.js easy to learn - A geek with a hat (Swizec Teller) - I love Power Bi and since I start using it, I would like to try to do some custom visuals. If you think the same thing, then this post is a got pre-learning reading.

Miscellaneous

• How to Coach: A Programmers Cheat Sheet (Lou Bichard) - Very interesting post that shares really good advices, and even suggests a book to go deeper.
• The POC Problem (William Vorhies) - Very interning thoughts about a frequent scenario in our business.
• Why You Must Have an Online Presence as a Programmer NOW (Antonio Cucciniello) - An inspiring post about how to start/ continue/ improve our career as developers/ data scientist/ devops/ architect...

Reading Notes #315

Suggestion of the week

• DAX optimization examples (Alberto Ferrari) - An incredible dive into a DAX performance analysis. I loved it.

Cloud

• Bing Speech API extends its text to speech support to 34 languages (Qinying Liao) - Great new languages supported.
• Brand Detection in Microsoft Video Indexer (Dr. Abed Asi) - This is a great addition to this service.
• In order event processing with Azure Functions (Jeff Hollan) - This post explains how to keep our Functions in control to respect the message order.
• Monitoring issues on Stack Overflow with serverless, CosmosDB and Teams (Shayne Boyer) - Awesome post that gives all the detail on how a reel life solution is built.

Programming

• Docker for Windows Desktop... Now With Kubernetes! - Docker Blog (Jim Armstrong) - This post explains all the wonderful things you will have only by checking one simple checkbox.

Databases

• Share reports with your teams and partners | Microsoft Power BI Blog | Microsoft Power BI (Lukasz Pawlowski) - Perfect, we can now share report directly like we could with dashboard.
• Power BI Desktop February Feature Summary | Microsoft Power BI Blog | Microsoft Power BI (Amanda Cofsky) - So my great new features!

Miscellaneous

• How Long is Long Enough? Minimum Password Lengths by the World's Top Sites (Troy Hunt) - Do you use good passwords? Because length is not the only thing.

Photo credit: nickpettican on Visual Hunt / CC BY-NC-ND

Reading Notes #311

Suggestion of the week

• 4 Common Datetime Mistakes in C# — And How to Avoid Them (Carlos Schults) - This post is a must to all C# (and you know what?! All developers), because we all need to use dates at one point in our code and script...

Cloud

• Create Precompiled Azure Functions With Azure Event Grid Triggers (Jason Roberts) - A nice quick tutorial that shows how to plug the Azure Functions with the new Event Grid.
• Microsoft releases new time series data developer tools for Azure (Anirban Ghoshal) - It looks pretty neat and it is certainly easy to deploy. Looking forward to trying it.
• Setting up a managed container cluster with AKS and Kubernetes in the Azure Cloud running .NET Core in minutes (Scott Hanselman) - Not that long ago I would never guess that Building and deploying a cluster could be that easy... If you got 30mins it's a demo to try.
• The moment I came to play with .NET Standard 2.0… (Dominique St-Amand) - In this interesting post, the author shares with us all the gotchas and lessons learned developing his project.

Programming

• Styling Social Media Icon Lists in CSS (Mark Heath) - Yeah right, we can read CSS and probably hack some stuff... But it's excellent to learn how to do simple things the good way. And this post shows exactly that.

Data

• Microsoft Deep Drive Track at the Data and BI Summit April 22-26 (Charles Sterling) - Wow, it looks packed with so much great content!
• Power BI Desktop January Feature Summary (Amanda Cofsky) - It looks like some team did not take a lot of time-off during the Holidays... So many great new functionalities; it's a fantastic way to start the year.

Miscellaneous

• Long Distance Relationships, or How to Manage a Remote Team (Natallia Brych ) - Remote working is not for every situation nor everybody. This post will help you to get started on the topic.
• Why Consider a Website Redesign – Tips and Recommendations (Daniel Schwarz) - Good post, food for thought.

Reading Notes #308

Suggestion of the week

• Serverless^2 - Azure Logic Apps and Azure Container Instances (Michal Smereczynski) - Great news! So much simpler than installing Azure PowerShell into the Function App... I'm starting to use it right away!

Cloud

• Continuous Deployment of Azure Functions with Slots (Thomas Ardal) - Nice tutorial that explains how to deploy Azure functions and why doing it that way.
• Azure Application Architecture Guide (Mike Wasson) - A free book (pdf only) with all the best of the AzureCAT team? You really don't want to miss that opportunity.
• Azure Cloud Shell (Scott Hanselman) - Ooooooh, I love it!
• Running the Azure Functions runtime in containers on Kubernetes and more (Shayne Boyer) - Very cool update that opens many possibilities.
• Serverless^2 - Azure Logic Apps and Azure Container Instances (Michal Smereczynski) - Great news! So much simpler than installing Azure PowerShell into the Function App... I'm starting to use it right away!
• Understanding Azure Event Grid ( Jason Roberts) - Nice little post that introduces event grid, differentiate it from the service bus, and quickly go over the pricing.
• Cloud en 5 minutes (Frank Boucher) - If French is your primary language, I just start a Youtube channel where every Wednesday I will publish a new video. // Si le français est votre langue première, je viens de lancer une chaine Youtube où à chaque mercredi je publirai un nouveau vidéo.

Programming

• Introducing metaparticle.io - making Kubernetes and Docker idiomatic for developers (Shayne Boyer) - Wow.pretty cool idea, I like it. It looks so simple.

Miscellaneous

• How to download embedded videos with F12 Tools in your browser (Scott Hanselman) - Very useful hack to build your airplain mode video Playlist.

Reading Notes #303

Suggestion of the week

• Writing tests in Postman (joyce) - With all the connected things and all the API in our system, this post shows a brilliant and simple way to test all those external calls.

Cloud

• Benefits of using the Azure IoT SDKs, and pitfalls to avoid if you don’t (Yi Zhong) - All open sources and packed of good stuff thus post shares all these goodies and some best practices if you decide to go without it.
• Container Orchestration Simplified with Managed Kubernetes in Azure Container Service (AKS) (Scott Hanselman, Rob Caron) - Great video that shows us how simplified our work could be.
• How we set up daily Azure spending alerts and saved $10k (Mike Larah) - Cloudyn is definitely a must in many cases. I need to see how it manages CSP subscriptions and limited access for clients. This post also shared how to integrate it in Slack, pretty cool.
• One-click replication for Azure Virtual Machines with Azure Site Recovery (Sujay Talasila) - Fantastic! It couldn't be more simple.

Programming

• Miniblog.Core is a new blog engine built using ASP.NET Core 2.0 (Mads Kristensen) - This post is not only about a sweat new blog engine, but also a call for coders. Everything is available on GitHub.
• Server-side charts with ASP.NET Core, Node services and D3.js | Gunnar Peipman - Programming Blog (Gunnar Peipman) - D3 is an amazing and very popular library, this post shows a very nice project built with it.
• Create a .NET Core 2 application on Linux with Visual Studio Code (Benjamin Perkins) - Nice quick tutorial to quickly get started.
• How to install NuGet Package in Visual Studio Code Linux Ubuntu (Benjamin Perkins) - Quick and easy.

Data

• What is Power BI Embedded? (Guy in a Cube ) - A quick video that explains perfectly the purpose of The embedded offer.

Miscellaneous

• What’s Your Project Problem? (Johanna) - Interesting post of view and many good references about time and resourceful people management.

Reading Notes #291

Cloud

• App Service Environment v2 release announcement (Christina Compy) - That a really good news let's go full PaaS.
• Fast and Easy Containers: Azure Container Instances (Corey Sanders) - A very promising new service in Azure.
• Import Power BI Desktop files into Azure Analysis Services (Josh Caplan) - A quick post that shows how convenient is the new AAS.

Programming

• .NET Application Architecture Guidance (Cesar de la Torre) - This post is like an amazing trailer about all the great things that will be created in this blog... Stay tuned for more.
• Docker Basics, Part Zero: Why Should I Care about Containers (and Microservices) Anyway? (Michelle Gienow) - Great post with the best description of what are containers I have ever read.

Miscellaneous

• Announcing Ghost 1.0 (John O'Nolan) - Wow! So happy and proud to be part of the early adopter of this platform. It never stopped to get better, and it stayed free. Now I just need to upgrade.
• Follow-up: The Windows Insider Program has lost its way (studio384) - Interesting thoughts about different Microsoft programs.
• Passwords Evolved: Authentication Guidance for the Modern Era (Troy Hunt) - Amazing post again from Troy, things are evolving we must also change.

Reading Notes #282

Cloud

• Enhancements to Application Insights Smart Detection (Anton Fritz) - Really cool new service that will improve our way to detect problems.
  
• How to easily and silently obtain AccessToken (Bearer) from an existing Azure PowerShell session (Stéphane Lapointe) - Nice optimization of our environment and still be secure.

Programming

• Deploy Cognitive Toolkit model to Azure Web Apps (Ilia Karmanov) - Nice short demonstration, all the code is available on GitHub.
  
• Load Balancing Node.js Applications with NGINX and Docker (Bruno Krebs) - This is a really good tutorial that explains thing very clearly and simply.
  
• Using .NET and Docker Together (Rich Lander) - This post is a fantastic list of references to get started with .Net Core and Docker combination.
  
• Kubernetes in action: How orchestration and containers can increase uptime and resiliency (Brendan Burns) - Wow I was really impressed by how Kubernetes works and mange things effortless (for simple cases).

Reading Notes #276

Suggestion of the week

• Contributing to Open-Source - My first roslyn pull request - Fixing the bug (Maxime Rouiller) - Awesome post where Maxime shares with us that journey with us and helps us to understand what it is really about.

Cloud

• Announcing Azure SDK for Node.js 2.0 preview (Matt Hernandez) - This post details all the new features of this update.
  
• How to easily deploy Azure Hybrid Use Benefit (BYOL) virtual machines from marketplace images and Azure Resource Manager Template (Stephane Lapointe) - Nice post that explains how to save money using the BYOL VMs.
  
• Tips & Tricks: Cost savings using Logic Apps (Rene Brauwers) - Very interesting post where the author did the exercise of comparing different scenario's performances and prices.

Programming

• What is Kubernetes? An Intro for Beginners (Paul Burt) - This post is the perfect starting point to know what is Kubernetes are and understands what it can do for you, without getting deep technical.
  
• Setting up a Shiny Development Environment within Linux on Windows 10 (Scott Hanselman) - Nice post that describes how to setup your text-mode dev environment the Hanselman's way. Take what you like, adapted what you don't.

Miscellaneous

• How to control PowerPoint on Windows with a Bluetooth Nintendo Switch JoyCon controller! (or a Surface Pen) (Scott Hanselman) - Really cool trick.