Reading Notes #648

Welcome to this week's reading notes! Dive into the latest on Microsoft's new AI chat template, explore Docker's MCP CLI, learn about integrating AI into .NET applications, and discover how to automate .NET MAUI library publishing with GitHub Actions. 

Whether you're interested in AI advancements, programming techniques, or DevOps practices, there's something valuable waiting for you below.

MsDevMtl Meetup - Uno

Suggestion of the week

• Exploring the new AI chat template (Andrew Lock) - This new .NET template looks pretty useful and has a lot of components already baked in. This post explains those and shows how to customize it for our usage.

Programming

• Crates and Dependencies: NuGet, Meet Cargo - Chris Woody Woodruff (Chris Woodruff) - Interesting comparison there, a bit more love toward Rust, I think, but that doesn't make this series less valuable.

• How to Host Blazor WASM on Docker (Rikam Palkar) - Nice post with all the code you need to reproduce.

DevOps

• Packaging and Publishing a .NET MAUI Library with GitHub Actions - .NET Blog (Sweeky , David) - I'm always amazed by what we can do with automation. Second post of a series on .NET MAUI.

AI

• Getting Hands-On with the Docker MCP CLI (Sarthak Varshney) - How to get, use, and connect the brand new MCP tool from Docker.

• AI Repo of the Week: GitHub Copilot Adventures (Dan Wahlin) - When open-source meets AI, and this time, games! Interesting series where AI-related repositories are featured.

• Microsoft.Extensions.AI: Integrating AI into your .NET applications (Japhlet Nwamu) - This package is amazing. It allows you to connect to many models hosted in many different places. This post is the perfect place to get started.

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 #496

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!

Cloud

• Is Serverless Just a Stopover for Event-Driven Architecture? (Mark Hinkle) - An interesting post. I'm still using many serverless services as one year ago... Am I marginal? Is there a trend that I did see (that more like it)?

Programming

• A Full-Stack Web App Using Blazor WebAssembly and GraphQL: Part 2 (Ankit Sharma) - This second post is in a series where there build a real-life type of application. Really interesting to see all pieces go together (have you ever noticed are package names are funny?). Nice work.

• Blazor Custom Components (John Peters) - Nice series to learn how to write reusable code.

• Testing ASP.NET Core 6 Apps (Khalid Abuhakmeh) - A nice quick tutorial on how to do unit tests. Wonderful.

• Upgrading an ASP.NET Core Web API Project to .NET 6 (Christian Nagel) - This post is not about changing the version of the package, but how to use all those features to make you more productive with fewer lines of code.

Podcasts

• Modern Code Generation with Jordan Adler (Hanselminutes with Scott Hanselman) - Very interesting discussion about code generation, the different pattern, difficulties, and so much more.

• SPI 551: Why Lying to Yourself Helps You Become More Successful with Marisa Peer (The Smart Passive Income Online Business and Blogging Podcast) - Without falling into the magic thinking, this shows how strong our mind can be. Great episode.

• Make money with open source software (Software Engineering Unlocked) - Open source software is another world: Unknow, different, scary. This week guest shares his experience and story, while transitioning into Open-Source.

• Happiness with Arthur Brooks (A Bit of Optimism) - It's important to love what we do, as in has an huge impact on our level of happiness.

• Greg and Anna McKeown on The Power Of Small Wins (What's Essential) - Lovely episode where Greg's wife Anna joins him to share examples of small wins impact.

~Frank

Reading Notes #489

Suggestion of the week

• How to Use Git and GitHub in a Team like a Pro – Featuring Harry and Hermione (Damian Demasi) - Really good post (story style) to get started with GitHub. There is a little something that makes me think of Project Phenix... And crave Harry Poter.

Cloud

• 5 reasons to attend the Azure Virtual Desktop Master Class (Sue Hartford) - That could be so useful for many now that we are working more from home... A more secure and powerful machine could be easy to reach and maintain.

Programming

• Adventures in Dapr: Episode 1 (James Dawson) - First post of a promising series on Dapr.This one dressed the table, shares the links.....waiting for the next one.

• Compiling sqlcipher (sqlite encrypted) for Windows using Visual Studio 2022 (Dominique St-Amand) - Wow. This post was a big reminder for me of two things: how far we come, and some souvenirs of homework from when I was in school.

• Docker’s Top 10 Most Popular Blogs in 2021 (David Oro) - Nice quick list of great resources.

• Windows, WSL, Docker, and Free Starters (Sm0ke) - Nice quick start tutorial to set up your Django tools on Windows.

Miscellaneous

• Helping team members deal with Imposter Syndrome (Mark Downie) - Interesting post. I think it is really important to talk about it, as it affects us all.

• Tips & Tricks for Query Pagination in Azure Cosmos DB - Azure Cosmos DB Blog (Tim Sander) - This important concept, not only used with Azure Cosmo DB but any database, is very well explained in this post.

• Why Are More Companies Trying Four-Day Workweeks? (David Cassel) - Interesting. I didn't suspect that it was growing so much in popularity.

~frank

Reading Notes #369

Cloud

• Improving Azure Functions Blob Trigger Performance and Reliability - Part 1: Memory Usage (Jason Roberts) - Interesting first post of a series about the Azure Functions.
• Improving Azure Functions Blob Trigger Performance and Reliability - Part 2: Processing Delays and Missed Blobs (Jason Roberts) - Second post of a series. This one focuses on a simple pattern to reduce the chances to have a blob to not be processed.
• Improving Azure Functions Blob Trigger Performance and Reliability - Part 3: Using Event Grid to Respond to New Blobs (Jason Roberts) - Great third post of a series this one introduces the event grid. Love it.
• Should I containerize my cloud app? (Mark Heath) - Excellent reflection on the containers frequently asked questions... A great post.
• How to use Azure DevOps open REST API with Curl (Jessica Deen) - A very cool demo that shows what the API can do.

Programming

• Converting an Excel Worksheet into a JSON document with C# and .NET Core and ExcelDataReader (Scott Hanselman) - That a little tool that we should all have in our toolbox...Who never had to work with Excell documents?! ;)
• Peacock - Late Night Coding FTW (John Papa) - I tried this extension and I cannot work without now...

Miscellaneous

• 3 Things You Can Do to Improve as a Developer (John Papa) - Great ways to improve, and not only as a developer.
• Late Valentine Day Gift: Version 4.0.0 of Microsoft Integration and Azure Stencils Pack (BAPI, AI, Office 365 and much more) for Visio is now available on GitHub (View all posts by Sandro Pereira) - Woot woot! Awesome.

~

Reading Notes #307

Cloud

• Azure WebJobs vs. Azure Functions (Simon Timms) - This post answer a question that is often asked... What's The difference...
• How to Create a Logic App Connector in an ARM Template | Vincent-Philippe Lauzon's on WordPress.com (Vincent-Philippe Lauzon) - Here it is guys, the definition of the CosmoDb connector for ARM.

Programming

• DevOps for Data Science – DevOps Maturity (Buck Woody) - This post is the fist of an interesting series.
• Different code styles for different code blocks in ReSharper and Rider (Maarten Balliauw) - Pretty cool comparison.

Miscellaneous

• Extreme Remote Work: The Pros And Cons Of Teamwork Beyond Borders (Tanya Accone) - Are you working in has remote or does your team has remote member? If yes, you should read this post.
• The Value of Continuous Delivery (DAVE NICOLETTE) - This is a really good post that talk/ question why cd.

Reading Notes #286

Cloud

• Azure Portal: The missing ClearDB MySQL database (Iris Classon) - Wooo! This is an amazing workaround of what could be a major problem. Good catch!
• Azure Site Recovery between Azure regions - Easier than ever.
• Enable client side monitoring in Azure with Application Insights (Beckylin Orooji) - Pretty slick new way to get client side Application Insights running.
• Tutorial: Login with Amazon Integrations - Auth0 - Cool tutorial to add more flexibility in our Amazon web apps.

Programming

• Docker for .NET Developers (Part 3) (Steve Gordon) - Great post that gives all the details on the context of this series. Why Docker, why .Net Core...etc.
• Testing ASP.NET Core MVC Controllers: Getting Started (Jason Roberts) - Nice little tutorial it shows us how to build our first test using moq and .Net Core.

Reading Notes #50

Cloud

• 5 Reasons Why Your Company Is Safer in the Cloud - This is only 5 reasons why your data is safer in the cloud but 5 good one. What do YOU do to make your data safe?
• Simple .NET Database Programming using SQL Azure - Nice tutorial to get started with Azure SQL when developing an application.
• Cool Azure InfoGraphic - See how the cloud is creating job...
• Azure Store XRay - Great tool that improve the simplicity to work with Azure Storage Analytics. Available on CodePlex, a project to follow.
• Windows Azure Multi-Tenant (Hosted) Sample - Another nice Codeplex project that will require our attention.
• Outside-the-Box Pizza, Part 5: Hosting the Front End in the Cloud (David Pallmann) - I like this series about buildind a complete application. This post is focusing on how to structure your front end to be cost efficient and stay scalable.
• Announcing New Windows Azure Services to Deliver “Hybrid Cloud” (blogs.msdn.com) - This is a great news! Joy Joy Joy! (this is me dancing the happy dance) When this note will be posted the Meet Windows Azure event will be past, I hope you didn't miss it.
• New - Programmatic Access to AWS Billing Data - Good idea, this could be very useful for a multi-tenant solution. With this tool you can parse your billing data and breakdown the information to generate some invoices.
• Meet the New Windows Azure - Really nice summary of the keynotes. If you can’t watch the video (or want shorter version) then this post is for you.

Programming

• Site44 Turns Dropbox Folders Into Websites - Really good initiative! It couldn't be easier to build AND maintain a web site than doing it using DropBox.... brilliant.
• Using GitHub for Windows with non-GitHub repositories - Get started with GitHub for Windows. This post is doing step by step everything so be connected with a Codeplex project.
• Marked As Pertinent - The perfect post to read when looking for a NoSql (or a key/value store), because this post compare a lot of them.

Miscellaneous

• How to Speak More Strategically (Peter) - Nice post and nice reflection too.
• You're Not Trying Hard Enough (Dave Jafari) - Nice post that explains working harder is less efficient than working smartly.
• It’s not about them, it’s about you - Easier to say then to do. It's true that the ideas of what other people will think is difficult or forget, but if you succeed you will be free.

~ Frank