Reading Notes #414

Every Monday, I share my "reading notes". Those are 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.

Cloud

• Comparing Serverless and Containers: Which is Best? (Aditya Joshi) - Oh, lots of interesting thoughts on a very trending question...

• Migrating your applications to Azure using Virtual Machine Scale Sets, Packer and Virtual Machine extensions – Part 3 (Dominique St-Amand) - This is the third post in a series and very details tutorial that explains why and how to do your scaleset settings.

Programming

• Blazor by Example - A dismissable banner (Jon Hilton) - A really interesting post that explains how to build a webpage by showing it by iterations. If you know me, you know those are my favorite.

• Command line tricks for managing your messy open source repository (Victoria Drake) - Nice post that shares a few tips of all kind, in a loose style... Which ones did you not know, or think about?

• Dungeons & Dragons Max Hit Points Calculator (Rachel Soderberg) - A nice and different little project to learn some c# in a Windows form environment.

Podcasts

• 0240 - Anthony Giretti - Le protocole gRPC (Visual Studio Talk Show) - Nice episode where they talk about gRPC and gRPC web, where it comes from, why it's different than the previous version, and how it's possible to use it with .Net. All that in French!

Miscellaneous

• Habits Of Top Programmers (NgNinja) - A little spark of motivation just for you.

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Reading Notes #413

Cloud

• Calling an Azure Signalr Instance from an Azure function (pcmichaels) - This is a nice tutorial to show how to connect different services together.
• Updating to Azure Functions v3 in Visual Studio (Brandon Minnick) - Nice quick post that shows how easy it is to start using the new version.
• Using Azure Functions Durable HTTP APIs (Mark Heath) - This post explains well how to use this new feature in the durable functions.

Programming

• Announcing .NET Interactive - Try .NET includes .NET Notebooks and more (Scott Hanselman) - This .Net interactive is really interesting.
• GitHub Enterprise is now free through Microsoft for Startups (Kelly Stirman) - This is fantastic news and a great opportunity for startups. If you are a startup, check out this program!
• It's time for you to install Windows Terminal (Scott Hanselman) - Definitely an incredible tool this Windows Terminal. Try it you will see. And the thing I like is it never stops to amaze me with new features.
• Manage secrets and more with the GitHub Actions API (Chris Patterson) - New API, new possibility with the runner... This is really interesting... I need to try that.
• Reading RSS Feeds With .NET Core (Nong Vang) - I don't know why I always thought it was complicated to parse an RSS feed. A very nice quick tutorial.
• VS Code Integration with GitHub and Azure (Robert Green, Aaron Powell) - A fantastic 10 minutes video that shows the most frequent scenarios of developers using GitHub and how easy it is with VSCode.

Miscellaneous

• Surviving as a remote tech employee with Jayson J. Phillips | Hanselminutes - Fresh Talk and Tech for Developers (Scott Hanselman, Jayson J. Phillips) - As a full-time remote worker for the past 6-7 years, I can easily identify myself in this podcast episode. And you gave me some ideas that I didn't think about... Awesome!
• Your Todo application is too complex or not complex enough (Scott Hanselman) - Learning by reading code is great, but we need some sources. Well in this post you will find a GitHub repo that is a gold mine.

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Reading Notes #401

Cloud

• Run Azure Cloud Shell in Windows Admin Center (Thomas Maurer) - Nice tutorial and demo video to enable Cloud Shell.
• Serverless HTTP With Durable Functions ( Jeremy Likness) - Great post that shows, with code examples, the new functionalities for the Durable Functions.

Programming

• ASP.NET Core 3.0 MVC Secure Authentication | Okta Developer (Lee Brandt) - Nice tutorial to add authentication to an existing .Net Core App.
• Custom Terminals and User Interface (UI) in Windows Terminal (Jeremy Likness) - Learn how to get and customize your Windows Terminal in this quick post.
• GitHub Actions for Azure is now generally available (Usha Narayanabhatta) - Fantastic news..and perfect timing... At least for me!
• GitHub Learning Path (Premier Developer) - Nice source of info to get started or... Get better.
• What is Blazor? A Tutorial on Building Web Apps with Authentication (Andrea Chiarelli) - Great article that describes in detail how to create a simple blazor app with authentification.

Miscellaneous

• Easily move WSL distributions between Windows 10 machines with import and export! (Scott Hanselman) - First I was Whaaat!? Very simple yet useful feature no need now do redo all your customization on all your computer...just export and import.

Reading Notes #396

Suggestion of the week

• The one who created languages (Anne-Laure Civeyrac) - Fantastic article and video. It's a must.

• What's the difference between a console, a terminal, and a shell? (Scott Hanselman) - Fantastic post short and clear. It's so simple, yet could still be confusing at the same time. Well, until you read this post.

Programming

• Now is the time to make a fresh new Windows Terminal profiles.json (Scott Hanselman) - I have never been so excited about a terminal. But this one wants to do things right, option and flexibility without being too complex to use and setup.

• Blazor Server in .NET Core 3.0 scenarios and performance (Daniel Ruth) - Great post that explains which version of Blazor could be used in different scenarios and when it better to use something else.

• ASP.NET Core and Blazor updates in .NET Core 3.0 Release Candidate 1 (Daniel Ruth) - Wonderful! The release candidate is already available.

• How to build with Cake on Linux using Cake.CoreCLR or the Cake global tool (Andrew Lock) - Great post playing with .Net Core on the Linux side...does v3.0 will have an impact...

• Run an External Executable in ASP.NET Core (Changhui Xu) - An interesting post, very clear.

• Visual Studio Remotes: Simplifying developer environments (Martin Moxon) - If you didn't try yet the remote feature of VSCode, read this post and give it a try. It's a game-changing feature.

Miscellaneous

• Runtime binding with Azure Functions (Craig Shoemaker) - Great post that goes over the Azure Function binding.

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Reading Notes #391

Suggestion of the week

• How to Use Github Professionally (Aaron Stannard) - This post is great! Tons of information and best practices (with an explanation of why its a best practice).

• Please, everyone, put your entire development environment in Github (Burke Holland) - OMG! It is sooooo simple! I was already using containers to develop, but didn't know VSCode could manage that for me! And make it easily reproducible!

Cloud

• The Azure Cloud Shell Connector in Windows Terminal | Windows Command Line Tools For Developers (Pankaj Bhojwani) - Pure happiness.

Programming

• 5 Things to Try with Docker Desktop WSL 2 Tech Preview - Docker Blog (Ben De St Paer-Gotch) - So cool...
• 10 Git Tricks to Save Your Time and Sanity (Jacob Herrington) - Really useful (and even cool) git commands. Try them you'll see what I mean.
• ASP.NET Core and Blazor updates in .NET Core 3.0 Preview 8 (Sourabh Shirhatti) - Nice update. Be aware of a few breaking changes...but it's all for the best.
• Build Data-Driven Web Apps Blazing Fast with Blazor and OData ( Jeremy Likness) - This post is a great tutorial that explains how to build a complete todo list use that tech. Really cool.
• Developing Docker-Powered Applications on Windows with WSL 2 - Docker Blog (Antonis Kalipetis) - That new Docker desktop version looks very promising
• GitKraken & Glo Boards Now Support GitHub Actions (Lauren Witte Girard) - Great. Now we only just need the GitHub action...
• Investigating Drag and Drop with Blazor (Chris Sainty) - Interesting share of an experiment.

Books

Living with the Monks: What Turning Off My Phone Taught Me about Happiness, Gratitude, and Focus 

Author: Jesse Itzler

I really enjoyed this book. Yes it's light and funny, but don't get fool, there is a deeper message here. I think Jessy wins his challenge by going into a monastery so we don't have to. We all have what it takes to live a more purposeful life, we just need to pause. Showdown, to go faster, do less to do more... Embrace the silence.



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Reading Notes #385

Suggestion of the week

• Copying Azure Blobs Between Containers the Quick Way (Mark Heath) - Pretty sure that you will get back to your code after reading this nice short (but packed of awesomeness) post.

Programming

• You can now download the new Open Source Windows Terminal (Scott Hanselman) - Lovely! Downloading it right now!

• 7 Top Reasons for Introducing Technical Debt (Mark Heath) - Excellent post that lists a few reasons, because yah... Sometimes it okay to write less perfect code.

• Adding Reaction Gifs for your Build System and the Windows Terminal (Scott Habselman) - Brilliant post of a funny idea, and if you have a few minutes go check Tyler's stream it was awesome.

• Choosing the Right React Datepicker UI Component (Eric Bishard ) - This post will help you to avoid a few gotchas when selecting your datepicker.

• Docker ❤️ WSL 2 - The Future of Docker Desktop for Windows (Simon Ferquel) - Wow! Very exciting news! This new WLS 2 is getting better every day!

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Reading Notes #292

Suggestion of the week

• I Almost Left Tech Today, Here’s Why (Clémentine Pirlot) - What a shame we are in 2017 and those behaviors not only still exist, but are tolerated.

Cloud

• Migrating a Web App from ClearDB to Azure Database for MySQL (Jason Anderson) - Great tutorial that explains step by step how to migrate your database. For all the people that use the Wordpress in Azure ns have complained about this very limited ( but free) ClearDB setup, this post is for you.
• The gap is filled: How Azure Container Instances completes the PaaS hosting spectrum at last – Opsgility (John Adams) - Learn a bit of PaaS history in this nice post.

Programming

• A proper terminal for Visual Studio (Scott Hanselman) - Hmmm. I like that idea...
• VS Code Quick Tip: Install Curl to Speed Up REST API Testing -- Visual Studio Magazine (David Ramel) - Great way to speed up API testing indeed, and very simple too.

Databases

• Introducing the #Azure #CosmosDB Change Feed Processor Library (Judy Hanwen Shen) - Cool post that lists a few scenarios where CosmoDB could really help you.

Miscellaneous

• Build apps faster with Azure Serverless (Raman Sharma) - Full automatic and all on demand, today's cloud offer a lot.