Reading Notes #670

Dives into the intersection of AI and development, exploring tools like GitHub Copilot’s AGENTS.md and the MCP Toolkit for automations, alongside .NET 10.0’s performance gains and OpenAI’s recent updates. Whether you’re optimizing serverless APIs with AWS Lambda or mastering the Web Animation API, this post highlights breakthroughs in code efficiency, model customization, and cloud innovation. Dive into these thought-provoking reads to stay ahead in a rapidly changing world.

Have a nice week!

Suggestion of the week

• OpenAI - 2 Updates That Might Change How You Build Software - Many new things from OpenAI. It's definitely a post to read. A lot of new things and changes that will impact our way of building stuff.

Cloud

• Building Fast Serverless APIs With Minimal APIs on AWS Lambda (Milan) - Nice post to get started with the serverless cloud AWS offering aka: lambda

AI

• Developer and AI Code Reviewer: Reviewing AI-Generated Code in .NET - .NET Blog (Wendy Breiding) - Interesting post that suggests a little twist on how to use AI to make code review with a little bit more focus.

• GitHub Copilot's starts supporting AGENTS.md: A step toward unified AI Instructions (Bart Wullems) - Nice move from GitHub to share a common instruction set across all different AI services

• Add MCP Servers to Claude Code with MCP Toolkit (Ajeet Singh Raina) - Very cool way to create automations. I have used a lot of low-code and different alternatives to create automation workflows in the past, but this mCP server interactivity is pretty awesome.

• Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA) Explained (Ignasi Lopez Luna) - Nice post that shows how we can specialize a model ourselves for a very narrow, specific topic

Programming

• How .NET 10.0 boosted JSON Schema performance by 18% (Matthew Adams) - Another example of the gain in performance just by upgrading to the latest .NET version.

• The Web Animation API (Christian Nwamba) - It's the first time I've read about this web animation API, pretty cool even if we need to be careful, I think that precision offers could be very interesting for some animations.

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 #663

Here are my reading notes for the week: a mix of AI research and evaluation, .NET and Linux troubleshooting, testing framework changes, and JavaScript/TypeScript perspectives, plus a few podcast episodes on C#, work design, and software modernization that I found worthwhile. 

AI

• Introducing Research-Eval: A Benchmark for Search-Augmented LLMs (Reka Team) - One thing that has fascinated me since the beginning of this AI trend is how they test and measure the efficiency of those models. This post is going to go into details and share the benchmark (oss) and the results very interesting

Programming

• Fixing an old .NET Core native library loading issue on Alpine (Andrew Lock) - Great post that not only provides the solution but also explains the process of thought and experimentation to find that solution. I love it!

• Converting an xUnit test project to TUnit (Andrew Lock) - Like Andrew said in this post, changing your test framework is a big deal, but I will definitely consider TUnit for my next project. A very interesting post.

• JavaScript or TypeScript? How To Benefit From the Dichotomy (Ivan Velichko) - Interesting opinion for an interesting question, and the author has a lot of experience in many different types of language so it's a good read

Podcasts

• C# 14 with Dustin Campbell (.NET Rocks!) - Nice episode talking about C# and more precisely things that are related to Razor Pages. Always nice to listen to Carl and Richard.

• 10 Steps To A Manageable Podcast Social Media Plan (For You Or Your Assistant) (Feed Your Brand) - In this episode, she goes over all the steps to do our Podcast Social Media Plan. What to do or not, things to avoid, and this kind of details.

• How work design can reignite tremendous results (Modern Mentor) - Two Modern Mentor episodes this week, I love those shorter, concentrated episodes. This one focuses on ideas to help leaders redesign how work gets done.

• How to learn at work when there’s no time for learning (Modern Mentor) - That one is about bold ideas to spark new ideas and learn from them.

• The Transformation Trap: Why Software Modernization Is Harder Than It Looks (Screaming in the Cloud) - Interesting episode that covers interesting topics like AI in software development and upgrading legacy systems.

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 #653

Welcome to Reading Notes #653 another packed edition of insights, tools, and updates from the tech world! This week's roundup dives into legendary engineering wisdom, AI controversies, and the latest innovations in Docker, Azure, and VS Code. Whether you're exploring MCP, refining your scripting skills, or gearing up for the newest Azure Developer CLI release, there's something here for every developer.

Let’s get into it!

Cloud

• Azure Developer CLI (azd) - June 2025 (Kristen Womack) - Love that tool, great updates, so many new features and improvements in this version, very looking forward to try all of them, turning them all

AI

• Publishing AI models to Docker Hub (Kevin Wittek) - Running model locally is a lot of people are looking forward to it, so this is good news can't wait to try it

• Build Agents using Model Context Protocol on Azure - MCP is still a thing and can definitely be used in your app, and helps your agents. Learn more about how to get started in the doc.

• The Complete MCP Experience: Full Specification Support in VS Code (Harald Kirschner, Connor Peet, Tyler Leonhardt) - Sweet, looking forward to try it with the URL shortener mCP server that I created but notification scaling everything is looking very exciting

• How to Build, Run, and Package AI Models Locally with Docker Model Runner (Vladimir Mikhalev) - Nice new model feature integrated within docker..

• AI Toolkit for VS Code June Update (junjieli) - Nice update to a great extension, learn more about it

• What humans and Github Co-Pilot have in common (John Hilton) - This controversial tool, is it good or bad? I like the way the author of this post answers that question.

Programming

• Run C# Scripts With dotnet run app.cs (No Project Files Needed) (Milan Jovanović) - Really cool and light way to use C#. Nice post with real scenarios.

Miscellaneous

• Why Legendary Engineers Build Systems, Not Just Code (Peter Smulovics) - So true! It's all a question of time, but maybe not where (or when) you think.

~frank

Reading Notes #642

This week, I explored posts about improving cache management for ASP.NET Core applications and understanding error handling in Blazor. These articles, along with others on AI model selection and development productivity, offer valuable insights for developers.

Cloud

• Hello HybridCache! Streamlining Cache Management for ASP.NET Core Applications - .NET Blog - Already GA! Wow, great library that really simplifies having the best cache experience possible.

Programming

• Blazor Basics: Handling Errors and Exception Logging (Claudio Bernasconi ) - This nice post explains the fundamentals about the errors with Blazor.

AI

• Selecting the right model for coding (Mark Downie) - Nice post that answers a question, that I'm sure many of us thought without really knowing the answer.

Miscellaneous

• Announcing Dapr AI Agents (Mark Fussell, Yaron Schneider, Roberto Rodriguez) - I like those tech savvy agent that knows about one thing. I f|l I can trust them more and it usually go faster.

• Mastering GitHub Copilot: When to use AI agent mode (Andrea Griffiths) - Using copilot the "good way" can and will definitely improve your productivity. This post helps you to get started

• Xbox + .NET Aspire: Transforming Local Development Practices (Craig Taylor) - Since I started using Aspire, I want to use it everywhere. Yes, it's that good and this story is just another proof.

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 #633

This edition of Readings Notes covers the synergies between C# and Rust, open-source software licensing challenges, and securing the software supply chain. It also feature a beginner’s guide to programming C# in Visual Studio Code. Finally, we delve into the evaluation process of AI models for GitHub Copilot. 

Enjoy the read!

Programming

• Why Every C# Developer Should Explore Rust (Chris Woodruff) - Even though I heard of Rust I don't think I ever wrote a single line. This post gives a brief list of ideas where we could make a combo c#-rust, and where to get started. Hmmm.

• .NET OSS Projects: Better to Re-license or Die? (Aaron Stannard) - What are the options when a free OSS project changes its license? Nice post that provides an overview of a recent change like this.

• Protecting the Software Supply Chain: The Art of Continuous Improvement (Melissa Sussmann) - This post lists the tools available to help us keeping our app secured and clean.

• How to Program C# in Visual Studio Code (Claudio Bernasconi) - It cost nothing and it is simple to start coding in C#, from .NET as this tutorial shows.

Miscellaneous

• How we evaluate AI models and LLMs for GitHub Copilot (Connor Adams, Klint Finley) - This is an interesting post that shares the methods used to test the different models before they can be included. Testing a model is different than testing a regular piece of code, what are they looking for, and what's important?

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 

~frank

Reading Notes #610

Happy Canada Day!
It's reading notes time! 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.

You also read something you liked? Share it!

Cloud

• Is .NET Aspire NuGet for Cloud Service Dependencies? (Phil Haack) - I like the comparison with NuGet. Using .NET Aspire in a project does indeed simplify a lot things. I'll be waiting for that follow up post.

Programming

• Dev Home Preview v0.15 Release (Kayla Cinnamon) - Cools news updates in Dev home.

• Announcing TypeScript 5.5 - TypeScript (Daniel Rosenwasser) - Really good news for the JavaScript developers. This post shares all the new features like ECMAScript, Set Methods support, and the performance improvement included in this release candidate of Typescript.

• Refactor your code with default lambda parameters - .NET Blog (David Pine) - A really good post, last of a series of four about new features of C# 12. I really like that new way to declare defaults I think it's much clearer.

• Blazor Basics: Dealing with Complex State Scenarios (Claudio Bernasconi) - Interesting package Fluxor that help managing states. The post also explains different pros and cons of methods to maintain states.

Databases

• What is SQL Injection in Cybersecurity? How to Prevent SQLi Attacks (Jen Swisher) - This post explains what are SQL injections and how they could affect our website. When I shares how to prevent those attack the post focuses on CMS like WordPress.

AI

• Mistral Introduces AI Code Generation Model Codestral (Daniel Dominguez) - On nice! A new model that specializes into code, and many languages on top of that.

~frank