Reading Notes #319

Cloud

• Azure Log Analytics ML: Using the evaluate operator with the app() or workspace() scope function (Iris Classon) - A nice blog post that shares some beat stuff to make our queries to work.
• Custom Vision service deployment on Azure with ARM template (Vivien Chevallier) - The perfect post to get started following the best practices.

Programming

• Setting up Application Insights took 10 minutes. It created two days of work for me. (Scott Hanselman) - Application Insights is really an incredible tool. A must-have in any online project... Not only the cloud one, just need to have internet access.
• Using Swagger to automatically generate the client code (Evgeny Zborovsky) - A nice tutorial that explains how to do cool stuff with swagger.

Databases

• Making Azure the best place for all your applications and data (Rohan Kumar) - A few great products that turn GA are announced in this post.

Miscellaneous

• Finding What's Changed in Your Code (Peter Vogel) - This post is like a big slice of wisdom cake...
• Follow Your Passion Is WRONG? (What About MONEY?) (John Sonmez) - Follow your passion or what I personally refer to "fun".It's very important.

Reading Notes #295

Cloud

• Announcing Default Encryption for Azure Blobs, Files, Table and Queue Storage (Lavanya Kasarabada) - Awesome, now more secured without any efforts for our part, I like it that way.
• Azure Functions Visual Studio 2017 Tooling (Mark Heath) - One cool video lesson about the tooling.
• Creating distributed workflows with Azure Durable Functions (Tamir Dresherl) - A perfect post to get started and learn more about the new Durable Azure Functions.

Programming

• 4 Benefits of Migrating to ASP.NET Core 2.0 (Jonathan Danylko) - This post clarifies some ambiguities about the migration to Asp.Net Core.
• How to cook Azure Mobile Apps (node.js): Xamarin and .NET Standard (Sergiy Baydachnyy) - This great tutorial shows a few gotchas that could happen when developing a Xamarin App.

Databases

• Using PostgreSQL Document Databases with Azure Functions and Marten (Jason Roberts) - Quick in simple, I like it.

Reading Notes #219

Suggestion of the week

• I Hated JavaScript - Awesome post that presents Typescript under is best light.

Cloud

• Announcing the Azure SDK 2.8.2 for .NET (Brady Gaster) - This post will explain why you really want to upgrade to this new SDK version.
  
• Syncing Files Between Devices with Azure File Sync | - Nice tutorial that shows how to build a Xamarin application leveraging files synchronization between devices.
  
• Upgrading to the Azure Search .NET SDK version 1.0.1-preview - Wow!So So much in this new version, I'm looking forward to play with it.
  
• Getting Started with Selenium Testing in a Continuous Integration Pipeline with Visual Studio (Charles Sterling) - Great tutorial that shows how to use one of the more popular testing tools in a CI solution running in VisualStudio Team Services (VSTS).

Programming

• Visual Studio Code and local web server (Lachezar Arabadzhiev) - Really cool and light solution to develop a website or web application.
  
• Interactive Coding with C# and F# REPLs ScriptCS or the Visual Studio Interactive Window (Scott Hanselman) - Repl...Yep it's real thing an it could be really useful. L more about this tools and where to find it, in this post.

Books

• Free eBook: Enterprise Cloud Strategy - Hmmmm. To read.

Reading Notes #161

Cloud

• Azure: New Marketplace, Network Improvements, New Batch Service, Automation Service, more - A great package of new features was announced last week, learn more about them in this post.

• Building myEcho - A real startup running on Azure - Great video about how Azure is really used in a real product. A must to see.

• Azure Table Storage little gem – InsertOrMerge (Boris Lipschitz) - An interesting post that explores the just as interesting method InsertOrMerge of the Azure storage.

• #Azure Table Storage - Using StartsWith to Filter on RowKeys - Nice post that explains a good practice to get quickly what we are querying for, and while keeping our code clean.

Programming

• Building a working Robot controlled by a C#, an iPhone, and Monkey.Robotics (Scott Hanselman) - Really exiting stuff...

• ASP.NET MVC 5.1 New Features -- Visual Studio Magazine (Eric Vogel) - Nice post that introduces a new feature of Asp.net MVC 5 and shows how easy and powerful it becomes.

Miscellaneous

• Ghost Onboarding - How We Increased Conversion by Over 1,000% - This post is a nice proof that by knowing the impact of our product features we can achieve great things.
  
• Microsoft Office coming to Android in early November (Alex Cobb) - This is a good news, my tablet will become a real on the road device... until I go for a surface 3...

• 10 email security fundamentals for everyday people - This post gives all the best practices to stay out of trouble...

~Frank Boucher

Reading Notes #145

Suggestion of the week

• Thinking About Strings, Quotes, Tokens, And Tildes In Less CSS - Less CSS seams really interesting. Next web projects, I seriously think use it.

Cloud

• Lessons Learned – On #Azure, Log Everything!s (Alexandre Briseboi) - Great post about how we should use the Event Trace Windows (ETW) to do our logs.
• Using Time-based Partition Keys in #Azure Table Storage (Alexandre Briseboi) - Nice tips about how saving our logs in Azure.
• How to get notifications from a Windows Azure website - Wow, this is truly amazing and really easy to do.

Programming

• How to connect your Windows Phone 8 & 8.1 app to Yammer - Nice short tutorial to learn how connect Windows Phone (wp) apps to Yammer.
• PowerShell Tools - v0.8.0 - Now with REPL! - Time to get or update this great add-ons in our Visual Studio.
• Thinktecture.IdentityManager as a replacement for the ASP.NET WebSite Administration tool (Scott Hanselman) - This post introduces a great project to manage our memberships in our Asp.Net projects through a nice interface.

Mobile

• Windows First: A New Strategy for Mobile Development and Beyond - Programming multi platform application is becoming much easier. This post explains some of your options.

Architecture

• The Open Group Open Platform 3.0™ Starts to Take Shape (The Open Group Blog) - This post talks about an interesting white paper. What’s good in it and why we should read it. This new 3.0 platform look very promising.

Miscellaneous

• How to use an Xbox One controller on your Windows PC (Scott Hanselman) - Really.?! That simple? That’s great!
• Windows Live Writer going Open Source? - This post explains why our help is needed in order to give a future to Windows Live Writer.

Reading Notes #142

Suggestion of the week

• How To Refactor for Dependency Injection -- Visual Studio Magazine (Ondrej Balas) - I really liked this post. Seriously, I'll be referring to it each time someone will be asking why we should use IoC.

Programming

• Web Performance Optimization is Simple - Can Your Developers Execute? (love2dev.com) - Nice post that explained why knowing more than a hello word is important.
  
• Announcing Update to Productivity Power Tools 2013 - Ah. Great.
  
• The Magic of using Asynchronous Methods in ASP.NET 4.5 plus an important gotcha (Scott Hanselman) - This post explains very clearly how we should do our async call in a web app.
  
• Using Asynchronous Methods in ASP.NET MVC 4 - Great tutorial that covers everything we need to know about async in a web application context.
  
• Test Plan and Test Suite Customization with TFS2013 Update3 (Manoj Bableshwar) - Visual studio is already to update 3! This post shows one of the new feature that was the most requested by users.
  
• Becoming SOLID in C# - Really interesting article that encoureage us to know more about SOLID principles in C#.
  
• Change Risk Anti-Patterns & Code Complexity - This post explains an interesting method to calculate the risk of your code when facing changes.

Mobile

• Xamarin.Forms - Write Once, Run Everywhere, AND Be Native? (Scott Hanselman) - Very interesting post that proved how amazing Xamarin is becoming.

Miscellaneous

• 5 Ways Your Business Can Benefit from Agile Engineering Practices Today - A really interesting article that explains an concept in a simple way.
  
• Waterfall to Agile (Andy Watson, B. Clay Shannon JD Meier) - I likethis post because it shows strong images to explains the difference between waterfall and agile.
  
• Self-Improvement In Agile Teams - Interesting post about how we should think when we feel to do something more, in an agile team.